House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord True Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in endorsing what the noble and learned Lord has just said, I think it would be remiss to allow my noble friend Lord Ashton to hide behind his natural diffidence. Without him, this would not have happened; we owe him a great debt, as do the families of those Peers who may wish to make use of this provision in future. Of course, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader for her assistance in this matter. It is regrettable that this looks as though it is the only amendment to this Bill which will survive to Royal Assent. However, at least it is a good amendment that we can all celebrate.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment. I underline the thanks that have been expressed to all the various people mentioned, including the lawyers, who have played a very important part.

As has been said, the noble Baroness the Leader tried very hard over a long period to find an appropriate and successful solution to this. Many people, including my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others, felt it was safer to have a legislative underpinning. She has accepted that and put a very constructive amendment to the House. I thank her for that. I also thank her for the firm and clear assurance she gave on Amendment 3. Since I may not have another occasion—I have not had much engagement with them—I also thank the Bill team for their work; some of their faces are quite familiar to me, and I know they will have given great service to the Government.

It would have been good to see other minor incremental changes made to the Bill, and there were some ideas floated. Let us hope that we can find some other occasion to take those things forward. In the interim, I am very happy to have associated my name with this amendment, which carries the support of your Lordships on this side of the House.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the other amendment in this group, Amendment 5, is in my name. It is a small change, consequential to the amendment your Lordships made during our first day on Report. Since the Bill now seeks to abolish the system of hereditary by-elections and to let those who currently sit in the House leave in the same manner as the rest of us—by one of the routes set out in the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, or by some far higher authority—Amendment 5 changes the requirement in Clause 6(4) for their Writ of Summons to expire at the end of the Session, as originally proposed.

I am very grateful to noble Lords—temporal and spiritual—from all corners of the House who supported this change to the Bill. I believe it is consistent with the Government’s manifesto commitment. As well as being kinder and less abrupt, it is consistent with the ways that we have treated other groups of noble Lords who have had their time in this House brought to an end: the Irish Peers in the 1920s and the Law Lords after 2009.

I thank the Leader for her support and echo the comments made about the amendment on power of attorney. It is often awkward for those of us in this House to debate the composition of our House or to confront the consequences it has for our Members, but she has been clear throughout in her praise for the public service given by our hereditary colleagues over many years. I thank her for saying that throughout and for the consensus she has achieved on the amendments she has brought today. It is a very good thing that an amendment is going to the other place bearing not just her name but those of my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Pannick. I hope we might be able to find some further areas of consensus still, but I am grateful for this one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the other place admitted the Bill to this House for our scrutiny in December of last year. Since then, we have spent eight days—nine including today—considering the legislation, which is a total of over 51 hours of scrutiny. A total of 146 amendments were tabled in Committee, with 124 debated and a further 36 tabled on Report. The Government, including myself, are grateful for the debates we had on the Bill. I particularly thank the usual channels for the collaborative effort on the amendments relating to resignation, which we have just had, and regarding the power of attorney, as well as a number of other Members—too many to go through by name—who contributed to the wider debate on reform of this House.

With regard to progressing further reform of your Lordships’ House, I have already spoken about my intention to establish a dedicated Select Committee on the issues of retirement age and participation, and the impact that would obviously have on the size of the House. I look forward to progressing those issues following the passage of this Bill.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, I have been ably assisted by a first-rate Bill team and other officials behind the scenes. I thank them for their hard work in helping me, my noble friend Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, and my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, who stood at this Dispatch Box. I am also grateful to the number of noble Lords who, over several months—even before the Bill came to your Lordships’ House—met me both privately and in small groups to discuss issues about which they had particular concerns or suggestions they had for the Bill.

A number of noble Lords have followed the journey of this Bill from the beginning, and it has been quite a journey. It will now go to the other place with amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said, and will no doubt return to our House for further review. It is my hope that we will deliver on the Government’s manifesto commitments on this Bill and see legislation on the statute book as soon as possible. I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal for her emollient words. I hope very much that in the time that elapses between now and our return in September careful thought will be given by the Government and the other place to the merits of the amendments and debates in your Lordships’ House. I hope the Government will think positively, even if not in the context of this Bill, about proposals from your Lordships that all Ministers in your Lordships’ House be paid and that we reaffirm the right of the monarch to create peerages that do not require the holder to sit in this place; those ideas are worth taking forward.

For my own part and, I venture to suggest, in the hopes of many other noble Lords, I would like to think that the joint amendment on power of attorney could be the symbol of other accords that might be reached as this reform goes forward. I remain committed to the principles I set out at the beginning of Committee, which include—along with a more reasonable attitude to those of our colleagues who have long sat among us—a voluntary understanding to address the perceived issue of numbers, and a reinforcement of the conventions on the conduct of this House and its relations with the other place. That would liberate this House from the unnecessary late nights that no one here enjoys. I hope that will still be possible, for without the fullest trust, respect and good will between the Government of the day and His Majesty’s Opposition—and I value the candour and friendship of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House—this House cannot function. The brutal reality is that the full exclusion of over 80 Peers does not evidence full respect and cannot be the basis of full good will.

Be that as it may, in asking my colleagues to agree that the Bill do now pass—which I know many on this side in their hearts regret—I invite the whole House to assent to the principle that no person should again enter this House to any degree by right of heredity. That has long been the professed wish of Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches.

My only regret now is that it has not been accompanied, as was promised in honour in 1999, by properly worked-out proposals for reform. The British people have never been asked to assent to an all-appointed House in perpetuity. This Bill, as presented, would have left, along with a sprinkling of Bishops, a House of life Peers created by a statute passed as recently as 1958—an all-appointed House, which is almost unique in the world. No other liberal democracy would long tolerate that a Prime Minister of whatever party—even one such as that of Mr Farage, which is not yet represented here—should have full control of the numbers and people sent here. Add to that the untrammelled power to purge and throw out Members of the sitting legislature. Such a constitutional settlement could not, and should not, long endure.