House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak slightly earlier than I expected.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, on her well-earned retirement, having given such great service to both Houses. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Brady on his excellent maiden speech, although that is slightly through gritted teeth because he takes a huge sideswipe at me in his autobiography, where he unfairly accuses me of having been to school at Eton. I have to tell your Lordships that that is fake news and disinformation of the worst kind. Still, I assure noble Lords that they can listen to my noble friend in future and be assured that he will speak truth unto power, having learned his lesson.

I have some skin in the game in this Bill. I inhabit a very small office with five of us in it, but after the Bill there will only be three of us. Noble Lords might expect me to vote for it and have some self-interest, but I have decided to put my self-interest aside and talk more objectively about the Bill.

I think it goes without saying that the hereditary peerage cannot be intellectually justified, as others have said, but neither can the hereditary monarchy be justified, nor, really, an appointed Chamber. We in this House all know that we are looking at an institution and an organisation that works, in its quirky and eccentric way. In some ways, it is rather like an old banger in the garage: we cannot quite work out which bits of the rubber bands are keeping the show on the road, but it is working.

I therefore approached this whole issue with a very open mind. Obviously, I like to be seen as a modernising, hip and trendy Conservative and would therefore like to say that hereditary Peers are unjustified, but I wanted to listen to the argument. The most persuasive argument, echoing what was said just now about the Bill being put forward in haste, is the need for wider reform.

I have often thought that you could incrementally reform this House easily with sensible changes. We have talked about a retirement age, and it cannot be beyond the wit of man or Peers to work out a proper one. We have talked about perhaps limiting the size of the House. Amendments may even be put down—dare I say it?—about the Lords spiritual and their future. A personal bugbear of mine is the appointment of Ministers who are then put into the Lords; they can resign a week later and stay here for life. Why not give the Government the opportunity to appoint people to the Lords to serve as Ministers and then leave once that job is done? There are so many changes that could make the work of this House not just as effective but appear more effective to those who look on our work.

However, it is also true that, having been in this House now for four or five years, I have become a fully paid-up member of our inchoate trade union. All those in the Chamber today arguing for the virtues of the hereditary peerage have at least provided clear and unequivocal evidence of the astonishing work rate of our hereditary colleagues—people who come here with a great sense of obligation, knowing that they are here partly by a quirk of fate, although paradoxically they are the only people in this Chamber who are actually elected to serve in it, however quirky that electoral system may be. They serve not only as Ministers, shadow Ministers and Whips but on our committees as well.

With the greatest respect to the Leader of the House, who pointed out some compelling statistics about how the make-up of the House will be barely changed when our hereditary colleagues depart, she failed to mention the impending New Year Honours List, and the appearance, no doubt, of many new Labour Peers, which will skew the balance further.

That goes to the fundamental point. Once the hereditary Peers go, this House will be fully appointed on the whim, effectively, of the Prime Minister, or the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, of the day. That will inevitably shape the character of the House. It will remove not only people who work extremely hard in this place but, as has been pointed out—this is an argument I had not heard before—people who have, by and large, had to make their way in the private sector before coming here, unlike people such as me, who have been career politicians and have a narrow, blinkered view of the country.

There are so many compelling arguments that should give us pause for thought. Somebody earlier said, “Be careful what you wish for. What next?” There are so many parts of our constitution where the beacon of democracy does not shine. Judges are appointed, effectively, behind closed doors, and they exercise powers almost as great as those of this Chamber and this Parliament. I urge the Government to hear those arguments and to think again about a wider case for reform and changes to this House, which would give the public the confidence that it is updating itself but not losing the best of itself.