House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord True and Lord Collins of Highbury

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Correct, and you have just had six; you could have nominated hereditary Peers as life Peers. There was nothing stopping you—nothing. The important point is that we have had opportunities to deal with this issue over the last 25 years and have not done so. As a consequence, Labour put in its manifesto a clear commitment to deal with the hereditary principle once and for all, which is what we have before us in this very short, simple Bill.

Let me just address this point. The Prime Minister also invites the House of Lords Appointments Commission to make nominations to the Cross Benches. In deciding the number of these nominations, the Prime Minister considers a range of factors, of course, including the political balance of the House. Certainly, retirements and other departures mean that new Peers will always be needed to ensure the House has appropriate expertise and, as has been said before, there is no reason why hereditary Peers cannot be nominated in future lists. Political parties have the opportunity to do that. My noble friend the Leader has recognised the special position of Cross-Benchers and committed to discuss it with the relevant parties. That is the commitment she has made.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, is concerned with the party balance of the House, I remind your Lordships that even if this Bill is passed the Government Benches will make up 28% of this Chamber, compared to 31% for the party opposite. As my noble friend the Leader has said before to your Lordships, this House functions best when there are roughly equal numbers between the two main parties; I stand by that. As I have said to the noble Baroness, there are many occasions when we operate on a cross-party basis. I do not see that this Bill will change that one bit—far from it. It will bring about a more sensible balance in this House.

With respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, this amendment is unnecessary. It is not appropriate for this Bill and I respectfully request that she withdraws it.

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Lord has returned to the question of numbers, completely ignoring the points I made about other ways of addressing that. I set that to one side but, as I understood it, his concept was, “Well, you”—I do not think that he can have meant me—“can send some people here if you want to”. The Government are about to expel 44 of our people. Is the noble Lord saying that the leader of the Opposition can name 44 who will come straight back? That appeared to be the logic of his position. Will he answer the specific point on numbers? The Prime Minister decides the numbers; that is the fact.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Certainly I know that is the case, and we found that out the hard way in the past 14 years. But can I just say—and the noble Lord knows this—we are dealing with an imbalance at the moment? He keeps talking about how many Conservative Peers are hereditary, but that is not the question in this Bill. The question in this Bill is about the principle of hereditary Peers, not about whether they are Conservative. In fact, so much of the debate has been about how they are not political and not partisan, but then the noble Lord keeps repeating how many of them are Conservative.