House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I do not actually believe in God. However, just in case, I always seek to adhere to the highest ethical and moral standards, especially so far as public life is concerned. I do not propose to speak to the next group because it is so closely related to this one.

The vast majority of your Lordships’ House are nominally Christian. If your Lordships want to have Prayers read by a Bishop—and I do—we need about 27 Bishops so that one of them can be the duty Bishop for the week or for two weeks, or however they organise it. An important point about the Bishops is that they normally retire, although, as the noble Baroness pointed out, a few come back as life Peers—and they are welcome. Bishops are appointed by the Prime Minister. If there were a problem, I am sure that in most cases the Prime Minister would find out; I am not sure that HOLAC is any better equipped, especially in so far as some of these safeguarding issues are concerned.

It would be profitable for the Leader to find some way for other religious leaders to have temporary membership of your Lordships’ House in the same way as the Anglican Bishops. I do not think this point has been made today, but just because only a few other states have a revising Chamber with religious or moral input, that is not a good reason for us not having such input. I would counsel leaving the Bishops well alone.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Scriven has his name to Amendments 48 and 49 but is unable to be here, sadly, so let me speak briefly from our Benches. I declare my interests as a member of the Church of England and as a former member of the Westminster Abbey Foundation; I am still active with it.

I am very disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not suggest that abbots should be restored to their places here. Clearly, if we are discussing longer-term reform of the Lords, we need to address the question of the Bishops. At the same time, we might as well—other noble Lords have done this via Amendment 34 —address the question of faith representation in the House. In my lifetime, I have seen the Church of England—and certainly Westminster Abbey—become much more welcoming to ecumenical arrangements of all sorts. The Cardinal Archbishop has read the lesson in Westminster Abbey several times. I have been to a joint Jewish-Christian service in the abbey. I have listened to readings of the Koran in the middle of an abbey service. That is part of how the Church of England now tries to maintain its position as a national Church representing all faiths.

It is worth mentioning in passing that this House is not entirely without representation of other Churches and faiths. My namesake was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland two years ago and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, is one of the most distinguished Methodists. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, was the lead rabbi of Liberal Judaism, and we had a retired Chief Rabbi on the Benches of our House for some time.

There is a broader question, which we clearly need to address, about the role of representatives of faith in a different House, if we are slowly moving further in that direction. The Bishops need to respond to that, and I hope they will contribute to that debate. That is as far as we need to go when discussing this Bill because it is not necessarily part of the Bill. But in the broader, wider discussion that we are unavoidably finding ourselves having in Committee, that has to be one of the questions under discussion.

The noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not remark that there were only 14 or 15 Bishops in the Middle Ages, as I remember, and that the reason the number was fixed at 26 was because the number of dioceses was mushrooming so fast in the course of the 19th century. Perhaps that is the number we should go back to as an interim measure, but I look forward to hearing from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield if he is about to contribute to the debate.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Moore, in the fact that the Bench of Bishops is briefly going to speak up on its own behalf. He may be surprised, as may many noble Lords opposite, that in the first eight months of the current Parliament the Bishops have voted 29 times, and only five times with the Labour Government. The Bishops are not party political; we really do seek to improve and scrutinise legislation. That is by the way.

I am grateful for the opportunity offered by this range of amendments to address some of the concerns expressed by Members of this Committee about the place and role of those of us who serve on these Benches. Although we are not whipped and do not have a party line, the Lords spiritual are pretty much all of one mind that your Lordships’ House would benefit from some reform, not least to do with numbers and patronage. As noble Lords would expect, we believe that a reformed House of Lords should include Lords spiritual and should continue to reflect the present constitutional arrangement.

I will try to speak briefly to all the amendments in this group, taking first Amendments 33 and 78, which seek to reduce the number of Lords spiritual serving on these Benches. Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would reduce the number from its current 26 to five—the two Archbishops and three others nominated by the Church’s General Synod.

In practice, since every one of the Lords spiritual has full-time responsibilities outside this place, a reduction to five would make it impossible for the remaining Lords spiritual to perform their functions as parliamentarians alongside their duties as diocesan bishops or primates. Although there are at present 26 Lords spiritual, noble Lords will notice that we are never by any means all present at any one time. That is because the demands of our other responsibilities prevent it. Only a minority of Lords spiritual are able to be present in this Chamber on any given day, and I urge noble Lords to keep this in mind in any consideration of a reduction in the number of those serving on these Benches.

Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, seeks to reduce the Lords spiritual by a smaller number, to 20. As in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, there is no obvious rationale for the number chosen. We are very open to the possibility of a reduction in the size of your Lordships’ House as a whole, with consequences for the Bench of Bishops, but we believe that a conversation about the number of Bishops should take place as part of a comprehensive review of membership of this House. We would warmly welcome representations not just from other Christian denominations but from other faith groups in this country.

Amendments 48 and 49 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would prevent new Lords spiritual receiving writs to join the House but would allow current Bishops to remain until retirement and would not prevent someone who is a Bishop being made a life Peer. However, the amendment would permit a bishop to enter for the purposes of reading Prayers. While we appreciate the latter aspect of this amendment, we note that the role of the Lords spiritual is much more than mere chaplaincy. We highly value the privilege of leading your Lordships’ House in prayer, but we do not regard that as our only, nor always our most significant, contribution.

Ultimately, on these Benches we oppose these amendments on the basis that they would effectively sever the constitutional link between Church and state. This limited Bill is not the place to settle questions about the constitutional status of the established Church of England—that is a bigger discussion for another time.

Finally, Amendment 90B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, would amend the Bishoprics Act 1878 so that the issuing of writs to Lords spiritual would be subject to the approval and effective veto of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. I understand the noble Baroness’s desire for the appointments process for diocesan bishops who become Lords spiritual to be robust. We on these Benches share that view and, indeed, would be open to the direct scrutiny of this House if that is what the House desires. However, there is already a stringent process for assessing propriety in the appointment of the diocesan bishops who subsequently become Lords spiritual. In fact, I venture to suggest that, while of course not perfect, the process overseen by the Crown Nominations Commission in the discernment of new diocesan bishops is at least as thorough as the other processes used to appoint Members to this House. Moreover, Writs of Summons to Lords spiritual are issued by the operation of law, not by the will of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, so any involvement of the House of Lords Appointments Commission would need to be quite carefully calibrated.

Noble Lords will hardly be surprised to learn that we on these Benches are not able to support this group of amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it would be a really useful flexibility in our system if life Peers could be appointed without the right to sit in the House of Lords. Frankly, there are people who deserve a peerage but who do not want the obligations, which we have been discussing today, to attend here and deal with the minutiae of legislation. In particular there are those who have grown senior and grand enough that arguing whether a comma should be moved one word to the right is not how they want to spend their life—unlike me.

So this would be a useful addition to the structure of our life peerage. It would enable people to be honoured properly and to be given a seat in this House only if that is what they really want and they intend to make full use of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I support the sentiment of this amendment. Again, this is a longer-term issue, but separating the honour from the obligation is an important part of how we should be moving forward. We know that a number of people have desperately wanted peerages—I am one of the many who found, after my appointment to this House, that the number of people who wished to invite me out to lunch to tell me what excellent Peers they would make increased very considerably.

This House has—happily—become much more professional in the past 20 years. We do now recognise this as a job, but we do not necessarily need to be Peers to do the job. Perhaps if we were called “Senators” or whatever, that would work quite as well. I immensely enjoy my title, in the sense that Saltaire is a very special village. It is now a world heritage site. It has a Hockney gallery, and I suspect that no one apart from me in this House knows that Paul Hockney, David’s elder brother, was a Liberal Democrat councillor and the Mayor of Bradford.

The more important thing for the long-term interest of this House is that we have good people appointed to the second Chamber, and that this is thought of first as a second Chamber and not so much as a House of Lords. Those who wish to have titles could perhaps have titles that do not have the obligations that we all now willingly accept to examine legislation, to debate difficult issues and to play a part in the governance of this country.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I just say that I will have to leave at 10 pm, but I think we have time for me to make a speech. I am not convinced that this is a good idea, although I understand my noble friend’s thinking. Like it or not, we live in a much less deferential society. It always depresses me when I read of senior military officers or junior ratings or NCOs in the Regular Army being referred to as “Mr”, even in a military context. Many years ago, when I was just a full corporal in the reserves, I was proud of the rank that I held and what it indicated. However, I am not sure now that being a Peer is an attractive rank or honour any more. We see one Baroness who is a national treasure more often referred to by her damehood than her peerage.

I have a point for the Minister and perhaps the Leader to consider. So far as I am aware, there is no reliable, regularly used database of preferred styles for their Lordships. Googling an active Member will take an unsuspecting user to a highly misleading page on the House website. The result is that the uninitiated will inadvertently send irritating emails to traditional Peers such as myself, but at the same time they may irritate other Peers by being far too deferential—the worst of all worlds. Would it not be better if the House of Lords website made it clear what each Peer’s preferred style was?

The situation is even worse, as some potentially really good members, particularly from the party opposite, may be deterred from putting themselves forward for consideration for a peerage because they would be horrified by the prospect of being addressed formally as a Member of your Lordships’ House. This problem could be alleviated by having the database I have referred to and encouraging its use, particularly by the lobbying industry.