House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendment 11. People have tried picking holes in it, but it does not say that all have to be elected. It says:

“introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords”.

The proposals, which would be thought through and brought with a Bill within 18 months, could contain all sorts of different proposals, which I know everyone wants to debate in a moment. I will leave that to everybody else because there are some very good ideas in there.

The whole point about Amendment 11 is that it gives voice to that promise of Privy Council oath, given from the two Front Benches, that there would be further democratic reform of the House of Lords. That is what Amendment 11 states, and it puts a time limit on it. Therefore, the Secretary of State has to do something about it, not just kick it into the long grass. We will not be here, but those who follow us will be here to see proper further reform of the Lords, introducing a democratic bit to it. As I said before, without that democratic element, it will eventually have all its powers removed because it will have no democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brady spoke very eloquently, but he did not refer to his Amendment 90C:

“A person can only be a member of the House of Lords if they are not a Minister of the Crown”.


I do not know why he did not refer to that, but it is a very bad idea.

One of the most striking features of politics in the more than 50 years since I was elected to the House of Commons is that as the diversity in gender and ethnicity has widened—which is a good thing—the diversity of life experience has narrowed considerably. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, there were people who had a lot of business experience, people who had been active in trade unions—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment that the noble Lord is speaking to is actually in group 18, whereas we are starting with group 1. We will debate Amendment 90C later.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

Then I will move to the other amendment which I wish to speak to and take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

Democracy is the central feature of our governing system, and the House of Commons must always be the superior House. However, precisely because MPs’ experience has narrowed to the extent that it has, we have seen that the House of Commons has given up on its scrutiny function over time. When I was first elected, guillotines were very rare. They are now very common. Bills come up to this House that have barely been scrutinised.

My question to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and those who support his amendment, is: would an elected House be interested in the scrutiny function? The House of Commons has its representative functions. It does a great deal of useful work in different areas, but in terms of scrutiny it has rather given up the ghost. That has been left increasingly to the House of Lords. That is not a desirable situation, but it is the situation that exists. Would an elected House have the interest in scrutiny that we need? If we did not have scrutiny in the second Chamber, we would not have enough scrutiny at all.

It would be wise to consider that a democratically elected second Chamber is not the only way forward. It may well be better to look at some alternatives and at the function first rather than the form. At the moment, we are all talking about the composition and the form of the House but not its function. If one looks at the function of the House, what system of election, selection, appointment—whatever—would be most appropriate?

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, no doubt there are two different ways of furthering a democratic mandate for the House of Lords. One is, as we have heard, through a directly elected House, maybe following a referendum on that principle, as advocated by my noble friend Lord Blencathra in Amendment 11B, and perhaps including a partially or fully directly elected House of 200 Peers with constituencies, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Brady of Altrincham in his Amendment 90D.

The other solution is advocated in a later amendment, Amendment 75, to which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and my noble friend Lord Trenchard have already referred. This is through an electoral college, representative of all parts of the United Kingdom and responsible for indirectly electing two-thirds, or 400, political and temporal Members of a reformed House of 600, where one-third, or 200, Members are non-political Cross-Benchers directly appointed by a statutory appointments commission.

It can be strongly argued that this is a much better formula for three reasons. First, it avoids conflict with another place, which direct elections to a reformed House of Lords would lead to, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra eloquently pointed out. Secondly, it is far more likely to preserve our current high standard of legislative and government scrutiny. Thus, thirdly, through this quality function, to which my noble friend Lord Tugendhat has just referred, it would thereby be better in preserving and improving democracy itself in the United Kingdom.