House Of Lords: Appointments System

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I very often agree with the noble Baroness, except I have never tweeted in my life, and I recommend her not to. The policy of the Green Party is to replace the system of appointment—which has given us all the excellent noble Lords here on these Benches in their parties—with a PR-democratically elected Chamber. Frankly, that would simply replace an accountable appointments system, where Prime Ministers are openly responsible for who they appoint, with an unaccountable appointments system of lists drawn up by secretive party secretariats.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we have lots of time. Let us hear from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, then we very much look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, when the last reform of the House took place between 1997 and 1999, the then Government stated clearly that, ad interim, it was the Government’s policy, agreed with the Conservative Opposition and the Leader of the Conservative Opposition in the Lords, that no party should have a disproportionate number of Peers in the Lords.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I remind Conservative Peers that on a current poll basis the Conservatives have exactly twice the poll percentage of public support that we do, so we are not overrepresented.

Particularly under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have broken that agreement. Do the Government not accept that we are now in a position where any change of government would have to be accompanied either by the voluntary resignation of a substantial number of Conservative Peers or the appointment of a large number of new governmental Peers, which would be bad for the size of the House?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think the question of “disproportionate” was answered by Members of your Lordships’ House rather than me, so I will not add to the pain of those Benches. I think that there needs to be—and I have advocated this publicly in the House and privately—better representation of His Majesty’s Opposition in your Lordships’ House. I do not think it is generally acceptable that His Majesty’s Opposition should have fewer representatives in this House than the Cross Benches. I recognise that, and for all the criticism of the previous Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, he approved the appointment of Labour Peers. I hope that will go forward.