House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, before the birthday boy, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, begins to wind up for the Front Benches, I will speak very briefly to my Amendment 28, which seeks to provide for a maximum participation threshold, as well as a minimum. I do so with the humility and self-awareness of one who is speaking on the Bill from both the Front Benches and the Back Benches.

My amendment is an important flip side to the debate and there are some salutary examples from what happened in another place. A few years ago, there was the invention of a number of websites and journalistic tools, such as TheyWorkForYou, which track the participation levels of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. That encouraged some to game the system by making lots of short speeches or interrupting others with great frequency, preferring quantity over quality.

There is value in restraint. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said about what we can learn from academic theory. The Swiss-American psychologist and pioneer of organisational development, Edgar Schein, set out the concept of humble inquiry. He said that those in public life or leadership positions should ask themselves three questions before making a speech. Does it need to be said? If so, does it need to be said by me? If so, does it need to be said by me now? I should say that I was put on to the work of Professor Schein by one of our more taciturn and thoughtful colleagues in your Lordships’ House.

I have often suspected that, if one looked at the top 10% of speakers and the bottom 10%, it would serve as an interesting competition about those who one would rather hear from. I asked the Library to crunch the numbers for me relating to the last Session. It is not as large or interesting reading as the now famous spreadsheets of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, but it certainly reveals some interesting points.

I am sure we can all guess some of the names that appear in the top 10%, so I will not name names, other than to confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that the Green Party is the group from which we hear most frequently. We have the pleasure of hearing from the noble Baroness on 68% of the days that she can speak. Personally, I find the other 32% of days to be days of great sadness.

All of us who miss our late noble friend Lord Cormack will be impressed to hear that he still made it into the top 5% of speakers, even though he was sadly taken from us before the end of that Session.

By contrast, 106 noble Lords spoke on only 1% of the days that they could have done. If one glances down that list, which is available from the Library, one sees many examples of what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has rightly described as low-frequency, high-impact Members. One sees the names of three former Cabinet Secretaries, a former Governor of the Bank of England, former Leaders of your Lordships’ House from both sides of the House, a director-general of the Security Service rendered quiet by his service in the Royal Household as Lord Chamberlain, and fellows, and indeed the next president, of the British Academy. I see some of them in their places today—I see them in their places frequently—and I am glad that they are using their brains more than they are using their mouths.

I agree with what my noble friend Lord Swire said about the dangers of debate that just repeats verbatim the briefings we are given from lobby groups. I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, says about the many other valuable ways that Members of your Lordships’ House can influence the way that we are governed in this country. With that, I shall take my own advice and shut up.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, beneath the wide-ranging and sometimes unfocused discussion we have had on these amendments, there is a degree of limited consensus that we should build on. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, shows us the way we should go. I hope that between Committee and Report, we will have a number of discussions, off the Floor, about where we go from here that will build on that limited consensus. I hope that the Government will consider accepting a limited number of amendments, which would show us the direction in which we go further, as well as committing to make some clear statements about how they would see further developments.

On the questions of attendance, participation and retirement, I agree strongly with my noble friend Lord Newby that some of this can be done through Standing Orders and agreements of the House and does not require legislation. That is part of the way that we may go forward.

I suggest that we all know pretty well what we mean by a minimum level of attendance and participation, and can name quietly, but we will not, some of the people who fail to fulfil it. I recall some years ago being invited to an office in the City of London to brief the CEO of a rather major operation on how to make a maiden speech. He had been a Member of the House for almost a year and I do not think that he had attended more than two or three times. He did not understand the House and he felt that he ought to make a maiden speech. That is clearly below the level of attendance and commitment.

This is a Parliament in which we are supposed to parley with each other—to exchange ideas, to listen and to learn. I have learned a lot through taking part in Bill Committees. I look at the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and I remember the Procurement Bill, which we worked through in the previous Session. It was not my area of expertise, but I learned a great deal from him and from a number of other participants. We are here to examine in detail proposals that the Government make and to discuss difficult issues that the Government sometimes do not want to grapple with. That requires a minimum level of attendance and interaction between us. That is part of what we are here for.

Having said that, I hope that we will now be able in the rest of this evening to get through several more amendments, much more rapidly. I hope that the Government will think about what assurances they need to give us in order that we can make greater speed on Report. We should never forget that how this House is seen from the outside is something that we all need to be conscious of. The size of our House and those who come in for just 20 minutes and go out again are an embarrassment, and are picked up by the media. Honours and obligations need to be balanced. A later amendment suggests that we should be moving towards separating honours from the obligation to attend and participate, but these are all questions for the longer term. Dividing what we think this Bill can achieve from what we need to commit ourselves to discuss for the future is part of what we need to discuss between Committee and Report. I hope that this amendment will be withdrawn, but we should bear in mind that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is offering us a very useful way forward.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken—sorry, I am forgetting that I am not a Minister anymore; that is what the noble Baroness says. This debate has generally conformed to the good-natured debates that we have been having. I am very grateful to the Front Bench opposite and to others that that has been the case.

If I may say so, I was disappointed by the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which slightly changed the atmosphere for a time. The noble Lord and I were good comrades, he will recall, in the Brexit years, when he and I were among the very few people in the House who thought that we should do what the British people had voted for. There were times then when I felt, and I am sure he felt very often, that the House did not really want to hear from us again on the subject. I beg him to understand that we are facing a situation where many of our colleagues are threatened with leaving this House, and it does not help if they are told that they should not be heard from again. We will never be able to hear from them again. I have to say that the noble Lord has never been known not to repeat arguments on the House of Lords that he has put before—I have heard them many times. I shall break the rules of the House and say, “Come on, Bruce, let’s put our smiles on again”.

This has been a good debate. Again, many noble Lords have said, quite correctly—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made this point in a measured and sensible way—that it is important that we should understand the direction the Government are going in, and it is perfectly legitimate that House of Lords, faced with a Bill to reform and change the House of Lords, should express views about the future of the House of Lords. Let us recall that this question of participation is not a subject that has been dreamt up by some deviant Back-Bencher to put before your Lordships’ House; it was put before us in the Labour manifesto, so of course we should look at it.

When I hear these debates, it seems there is a widespread feeling in our House that there is a strong case in equity, and in the interests of the whole House, for finding some way towards a transition that allows many of the best of us who are threatened with expulsion to remain. I also believe there is an equally widespread feeling across the House that we should not continue to protect those who never come here, while working to throw out people who do contribute.

The question on participation is, how do we define it? It goes far further than attendance, and this debate has illustrated that. The Government surely must have had a view on this when they put the Bill in the manifesto, but there are many ways in which we can measure participation, and these have been brought out in the debate. I could cite those who serve as Government and Opposition spokesmen, Deputy Speakers or indeed Convenors of the Cross Benches—they are vital to the operation and functioning of your Lordships’ House. Hereditary Peers currently make up 27% of our Opposition Front Bench, 21% of Deputy Speakers and 100% of the Convenors of your Lordships’ Cross Benches. I say these things because I believe that noble Lords who are already with us—all of us, not just the hereditary Peers—should be judged, if we are to be judged at all, on our participation and contribution to your Lordships’ House, and not on any of our identities or characteristics.

I acknowledge how difficult it is, potentially, to define participation, and this has come out in the debate. There are many ways that noble Lords contribute to the House, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra, in his repeated brilliant speeches, keeps bringing up so many of them. Noble Lords can make legislation, propose amendments to Bills, participate in Divisions, ask Oral and Written Questions, contribute to committees, participate in debates, serve as Opposition spokesmen and even take part in international work, as my noble friend pointed out. They can also make use of their expertise and experience—as have several noble Lords who have spoken in this debate—to contribute in myriad ways to the work of this House and the progress of our nation behind the scenes. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee spoke to those points eloquently. One Peer, who was recently attacked in the media for not speaking enough, has been a diligent, active and hugely valued member of your Lordships’ committees for decades.

My noble friend Lord Lucas focused on a broad definition of committee work in his Amendment 40. This is extended to participation in all Bill stages, Questions and Statements by my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s Amendment 42, but as I and this debate have illustrated, the participation net could be cast even wider. My noble friend Lord Blencathra suggested a practical solution in his Amendment 26, which sets out some initial suggestions but would otherwise allow for a participation requirement to be determined flexibly through Standing Orders and a committee of the House.

I will come to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in a moment, but the more we can do in this House—this is no disrespect to the Minister; I would have said it of my own Government—and the less we can leave to Secretaries of State in the House of Commons, the happier I will be. There is great wisdom in this House, and the more we can reach solutions here through the kind of consultations the Minister is initiating, the better.

In his Amendment 63, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has not sought to pre-empt the definition of “participation” or, in fact, the level at which it would be required. But he proposed a structure to make and implement decisions that would need to be made. Given the broad range of views that we have discussed today and our need to reach consensus, while avoiding any unintended consequences, I—like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire—consider the content of the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to be a sensible basis for progress. However, I repeat that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra that it would best to keep the House of Commons out of it as far as we can.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the principle behind terms, but I cannot support and would not vote for any of these amendments. The idea behind terms is a great one because it limits our contributions to while we are fresh. I do not agree with prejudice as expressed by age, which I think is irrelevant and hard to justify. Even murderers do not get life any longer, so I think “life” is an inappropriate term.

Finally, as with many of the speeches on the amendments we have heard today, this is not the time nor the Bill to be debating these issues. They need to be referred to and considered in the round, but that is for another day. There are many issues about our constitution that deserve attention. Should we have an established Church? In what relation is the Supreme Court held to Parliament? Many things have yet to be remedied, but not in this Bill. For that reason, I would not vote for these amendments. These are worthy issues that should be debated in another place when we have the time, but not in the time we are taking to debate this Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this and the next three groups are about related issues, and we cannot avoid moving from one on to the other. They are about limiting the conditions under which one becomes a Member of this House.

When I was appointed to this House 29 years ago, the majority of Members clearly saw this as a part-time job. It was explained to me that it was a part-time job. I managed to go on being a full-time professor at the LSE for another nine years. Now we have a more professional House. We are expected to commit ourselves to working hard while we are here. Life expectancy has risen and more of us have some expectation of living well into our 90s. I am told that my life expectancy, given my parents and my elder sisters, is around 98, so I can perhaps look for many years to come. Clearly, we need to take this on board and the Government need to give us some indication of how they are going to moderate the lifetime rights to sit in this House.

As we have become a professional second Chamber, do we think that retirement, life terms, participation or attendance is the most useful way to do it? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that term limits are the easiest way. The 2012 Bill proposed for the elected Members a single term of 15 years, elected in thirds, and a 15-year term for those who were appointed. That, at the time, commanded widespread support. I suggest that the Government look back to this; we have been around this circuit before.

I will also say briefly that we have to remember the context in which we are discussing this. Popular disillusionment with politics in Britain is high; respect for both the Commons and the Lords is low. We have, outside Britain, much that we dislike in populist politics, anti-democratic tendencies, the belief that strong men make politics easier, and we see the problems of systems where checks and balances built into their constitutions are being ignored. We cannot entirely ignore that, as limited outside opinion looks at the way that we as a second Chamber behave. If the Government are going to push this limited Bill through, they must also respond to that for the longer term. The sort of second Chamber to which we might slowly shuffle is one in which term limits are perhaps one of the ways in which one limits the life cycle of Members.

[Lord de Clifford (CB)]

I support this group of amendments and other groups that follow with regards to Lords reform. I take this opportunity to say again that, as an hereditary Peer, I am not opposed to Clause 1, but having the opportunity to be elected to the House of Lords is not an appropriate way of selecting people to sit in the House in the 21st century, for many reasons. This is a simple Bill with one purpose: to remove the right for hereditary Peers to continue to sit, contribute and vote. It is a great privilege to be a Member of this House, and I am fortunate enough to have experienced it for a short time.

The Bill achieves some reform of an outdated process, possibly the easiest one, as it is a simple one. If this Bill is so simple, why have so many amendments been put down? That concerns me and others such as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The fear is that there will be no further reform for many years after the Bill has received Royal Assent and the hereditary Peers have left. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal has said on many occasions that further House of Lords reform is under consultation. Sadly, the track record of the House in making decisions on legislative reforms is not a good one, as proven by Bills from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and many others, and the implementation of the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee.

This group of amendments makes suggestions for reform, one of which concerns the length of term a Peer can serve in the House. Having been in the House for only just over a year, I would say that the ways of the House are quite challenging at times, especially if you are not used to the way that government works. A bit of time is needed to understand the way that the House works, to gain experience and to be best able to contribute. I feel strongly that, in the majority of cases, a term of 15 or 20 years is appropriate for Peers to serve in the House. As Peers have many skills and experiences that they can bring during their term, they can contribute to the workings of the House. When they come to the end of a term, there are many outside this Chamber, as some Peers have already commented, who have similar skills and different experience to bring to the House: the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, stated this clearly on the previous group.

Another feature of the 21st century is that there are not very many jobs for life with no formal review process, appraisal or performance review. That privilege and the privilege of the role can be maintained with just half a day’s work every year. I agree that a consultation on this matter is appropriate, and I agree with the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. That has great promise, and I agree that it should apply only to Peers who enter the House at this stage. I note what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said regarding the consultation process that is ongoing. Can I ask when she might bring reform to the House on one or two of the areas that we are about to discuss in the next few minutes?

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

That is why I support my noble friend’s amendment, because it brings just a little glimmer of democracy—as he says, a controllable element of democracy—into your Lordships’ House on a limited basis. I would like to go further and to see a larger element of democracy in your Lordships’ House if we are going to make change at all, but I will go with what my noble friend Lord Lucas is proposing, precisely because it opens that door. I really wish to hear from the Minister on the Front Bench why that is such a bad idea and why a glimmer of democracy is not possible, and a little bit more than we have had so far in terms of that programme, on which, in every attempt to raise it, she has just brought down the shutters.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Conservative Benches that if we are talking about what has been in manifestos, there was a very clear pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to set up a commission on the constitution to examine some of the underlying difficulties of the British structure of government. I recall the noble Lord, Lord True, on a number of occasions, defending from the Government Front Bench the reason why nothing had happened on that. Constitutional matters get easily put off and, once put off, we tend not to get back to them.

With these amendments, we are now beginning to talk about where we go from here, which I am sure the Leader of the House will recognise we all want to hear more about. Where do we go next, after this? This is a rather ingenious proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am not entirely sure that ,as an electorate, this House is the best place. There might be a certain tendency in our current composition to overselect people who have been to the same school as we had, or people who are very like us, when actually, some of the people who are not like us are particularly good.

For example, if you had asked me to vote for a ballerina, on first impression I would have thought that was totally the wrong person for the Lords. I regard the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, as one of the most valued Members of the House, which was a great and wonderful surprise. If you had asked me to vote for the noble Lord, Lord Bird, as the candidate, again I might not have thought at first impression that he was a good person for the Lords. That is the hesitation I raise: elites selecting new members of the elite tend to go for the safe people like them, which is not necessarily ideal.

I will make a few wider remarks about where we go from here. I have on my shelves a full shelf of reports on House of Lords reform and previous Bills. The 2012 scheme, which I had the duty of trying to move in this House, was relatively clear. It was agreed by the coalition partners, although it was Conservative Back-Benchers, as much as the Labour Party, who let down that scheme.

[Lord True (Con)]

It was Labour.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Well, let us agree to differ on that.

The Gordon Brown proposals are out there, and there are a range of other matters that we could begin to pull together very quickly; we do not need to start again. I find the reference to the Council of the Nations and Regions interesting. In two or three weeks I have a Question on how precisely the new Council of the Nations and Regions will fit in to our constitutional arrangements, because I am not at all sure that I or the Government yet understand how it will fit in.

We need to level up the way our politics are done. I have spent most of my political life in Yorkshire. We now have a situation in which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some voice in London, but the English regions and the English principal councils do not. I am not entirely sure that mayors elected on perhaps 29% or 30% of the vote on a 25% turnout will have that much legitimacy to represent their areas to the central Government. The question of how far the second Chamber should be constituted so as to strengthen the representation of areas outside London in the centralised governance of this country is very important, so we need to move on to that.

We shall say from these Benches to the Government Front Bench, several times, that before we clear this Bill we need some assurance as to where we go from here and when we might start to move from here. This is an interesting, slightly idiosyncratic set of proposals, but one could perhaps throw it into the mix.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that this is an ingenious, but perhaps at points impractical, solution. But it does address one of the more eccentric features of the by-election procedure, not least the use of single transferable vote. Of course, the only Members of the UK Parliament elected by single transferable vote are the hereditary Peers elected in by-elections. I am not sure whether that is the proposal for the by-elections in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment, but I am speaking of the nature of the electorate—or selectorate—for the by-elections. The 92 under the present reforms are largely elected by the hereditary Peers of each party and group, save for the 15 places that were occupied by Deputy Speakers in 1999, when the vote was by all Members of the House. As I understand the proposal from my noble friend Lord Lucas, the Deputy Speaker solution is proposed for these by-elections.

I must say, as a sideline, that I particularly enjoyed voting in one of those by-elections, when the House had to choose between the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and Earl Lloyd-George. I do not think I am breaking any confidences by saying that I voted for Earl Lloyd-George because he demonstrated a particular fondness for the creation of hereditary peerages, although perhaps not always for the best reasons.

Be that as it may, this amendment highlights the core of the mischief of this Bill, in that it means that one of the few avenues of getting into this House that is not controlled by the selection of the Prime Minister—whereby everybody in this House has to be sharp-elbowed enough to catch the eye of the Prime Minister pro tem —is being closed. I commend my noble friend Lord Lucas on proposing a solution that keeps open another avenue into this House.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, along with others, I share the concerns of my noble friend Lord Caithness, as I also much appreciate the comments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

As already indicated, the priority aim for a reformed House of Lords must be its quality of function as a revising Chamber and, therefore, the continuation of its present very high standard of legislative and government scrutiny.

In a later amendment, it is proposed that, within a reformed House of 600 temporal members, the non-political Cross-Benchers should be in the majority with 200 members, while the Government and Opposition have exactly 150 each and the Liberal Democrats, and others, 100. Compared with others, this formula can far better protect our present legislative scrutiny high standard, otherwise threatened and undermined if, instead, the Government of the day, whoever that might be, were to be the largest group within a reformed House.

Political patronage to create non-parliamentary peerages would continue. However, its current ability to appoint members of this House would be abolished, becoming replaced by two processes: first, as already indicated, by the Appointments Commission appointing 200 non-political temporal Peers and, secondly, by an electoral college representative of all parts of the United Kingdom indirectly electing 400 political temporal Peers.

For the necessary transitional period, as your Lordships are well aware, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, indicates a very good, workable system, which is this: in a given year, the collective total of life Peers who retire or die are replaced at 50%. That means that, in a natural way and over not too many years, the current number of temporal Peers, which is now just under 800, will have come down to about 600.

Obviously, it would come down more quickly if life Peers were coerced to retire at 80 or 85. Yet it would be much wiser not to enforce that. Instead, with the retirement age of 90, the transitional period can be expected to be a bit more than five years, with the advantage of enabling some new Peers in the reformed House when they first begin to serve their 15 years to do so alongside existing life Peers, thereby being all the more able to develop and uphold the skills, usefulness and democratic efficacy of this House as a revising Chamber.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has just indicated the difficulty of discussing some of the broader issues that this Bill raises when we have so many different groupings. I suggest, in the very constructive spirit of the noble Lord, Lord True, when he opened the debate on the first amendment, that it would be wiser, if we are going to discuss as we go through this Committee stage some of the longer-term issues that it raises, that we should group the large number of amendments we have together, rather than have a constant repetition of broader points from one amendment to another. This certainly this cannot be done today, but I suggest that, before the second day of Committee, the usual channels have a constructive conversation about the number of groupings that we need. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that I think that it is the consensus of the House that we would have a more constructive Committee stage if there was a much smaller number of groupings into which the major themes are contained.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

On the question of groupings, I understand that the Opposition put forward some suggestions for groupings to the Government Whips’ Office at the end of last week, and they were rejected without even being looked at until the Government had put forward their own proposals. That is my understanding.

I think that the whole question of groupings is important and useful, but we are only on the second amendment of the day and I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was suggesting that this amendment should be grouped with. I am happy to listen to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The first four separate amendments seem to me to have a very natural linkage, and it would have been much more sensible to debate them in a group, for example.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, let me carry on on the groupings that we have and on the speech in introducing his amendment of my noble friend—

Foreign-owned Social Media Companies

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, free speech is crucial, but it brings with it responsibility. I think we would all say that, although people have no right not to be offended, it is important that any comments made, whether on social media or in any other form of media, are factual, accurate and well-informed. It strikes me that on issues that are contentious we should perhaps lower the temperature, not the tone.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The Leader of the House may be aware that, in the latest incident, Elon Musk has responded to Ed Davey’s criticism in language that Tommy Robinson might well use but, I am sure, Nigel Farage would disapprove of. It is important to have a sense of commonality in public debate. A public broadcasting network on which there can be a national conversation becomes all the more important when misinformation is being put into this country by social media outfits abroad. Can the Leader of the House assure us that the Government will do their best to defend and promote the BBC, which all public opinion polls show is the most trusted source of news for the largest proportion of our population?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a great defender of the BBC, not least for its fantastic production of “Wolf Hall”. If we look back through history, we find that misinformation has caused enormous chaos time and again. It is important that all of us see truth, accuracy and decency as a collective responsibility, and that debate is conducted in a way that is conducive to providing information and helping people to understand the issues. I repeat that we should lower the temperature on contentious issues. It seems that some people are sometimes too interested in lowering the tone of the debate, not the temperature.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in spite of the fireworks we have occasionally had from the Conservative Benches, this long debate has shown some elements of agreement about where we go from here, and I hope we will pick those up and take them further.

I will be very sorry to lose the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, with whom I have worked on many things for many years. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Brady, who may remember that we first met 20 years ago, when the temperature was dropping from minus 10 towards minus 20. He had not brought a hat with him, and I lent him mine. We look forward to cross-party working with him, as we all do here.

When I was appointed to this House three years before the 1999 reforms, it was in many ways a club. The Conservatives were the dominant party, and the hereditaries were the dominant element within the Conservative group. One Tory life Peer told me that his hereditary colleagues referred to their lifers as “the day boys”. Public school people will know exactly what that means. It has changed a lot since then; it has become much more serious. The Cross-Benchers work infinitely harder than they did then—so do we all. It has become much more clearly a working House, and there is now clearly a consensus that Peers are expected to pull their weight, and that those who drop in only occasionally do not deserve their place in the House. However, its reputation outside remains poor and its work is little understood there.

We on these Benches are disappointed at the modesty of the Bill. We want to hear from the Lord Privy Seal what the Government plan to do next. What we most wish to hear from her is a commitment that, within this Parliament, there will be further measures along the lines agreed across the House, and that those will be carried through. That will make the passage of this very modest Bill much easier.

I am astonished at the obstinacy and self-denial—and occasional hysteria—on the Conservative Benches. There is constructive opposition, and there is obstructive opposition. I fear that we are faced with what may easily slip into very obstructive opposition. The Conservative manifesto of 2010, nearly 15 years ago, said:

“We plan to work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the … House of Lords”.


We have not got very far with that. After cross-party negotiations had successfully been agreed in 1999, the White Paper stated that

“For the transitional House, the Government will ensure that no one political party commands a majority in the Lords. The Government presently plans to seek only broad parity with the Conservatives”.


As has been remarked, the number of Labour Peers did not pass that of the Conservatives until 2005. The elephant in the Chamber is that there are now over 100 more Conservative Peers than Labour, and I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, as she winds up for the Conservative side, will at least address that elephant and recognise that it is there, and that it is one of the underlying motivations for doing this first and only before we move on to other things.

We know why: Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister, broke the 1999 agreement. Let us be clear when we are talking about who broke what. Indeed, the last Conservative Government broke a whole host of constitutional conventions. You have only to read Tim Shipman or Anthony Seldon to know just how bad it was. Conservative Ministers in that Government have to take responsibility for what went wrong. The noble Lord, Lord True, was a Minister of State in the Cabinet Office for the first two years, and thereafter was a Minister in the Cabinet. To call now for consensus, when the Conservatives did not pursue consensus in any way in the last five years, is, to say the least, a little odd. Conservatives must take responsibility for what went wrong and recognise that, if we are talking about rebuilding public confidence in our constitution, they have to start from where they were.

The noble Lord, Lord Swire, called for a constitutional convention. The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised us as a convention on the constitution, to explore

“the broader aspects of our constitution”.

I remember that the noble Lord, Lord True, tried to explain to us on a number of occasions in the years since why the Conservative Government had not actually done anything about that. Now they are out of office, they would like the Labour Party to do it instead. Perhaps there will be consultations in which we will reach some agreement as to where we go ahead. I remind the Conservatives that in this election they received 23.7% of the vote and that they have only 121 MPs in the other Chamber. That does make it difficult to justify a Lords group getting on to 40% larger than their group in the Commons.

The language in this debate has been quite extraordinary. The noble Lord, Lord True, talked about class war; the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, talked about political assassination. We had “sheer vindictiveness”, “political spite”, “despicable, intemperate and reckless”, comparisons to Pride’s Purge in the midst of the Civil War, to Animal Farm, and even to communist dictatorship. Above all, we had “gerrymandering”. I am not quite sure what that means, I think it means fixing the election, in this case, for your advantage. The fixing that went on was to add the extra 100 Peers in the last Parliament. We are going to unfix that, so let us all discuss it and have some consultations. Of course, consultations require compromise on all sides; they do not simply require the rest of us moving towards the Conservative position.

We have heard quite a lot about the romantic image of the hereditary peerage. Those of us who have watched “Wolf Hall” have heard about the Courtenays causing trouble for Henry VIII. I am sure they caused trouble for Elizabeth I and James I as well. As I have looked around at hereditary peerages, I discovered that a Camoys commanded the left flank at Agincourt, and that the first Lord de Clifford was killed at Bannockburn. I wish I could say that it was a Wallace who was responsible for that, but unfortunately the most distinguished Wallace was killed by the English nine years before.

Since the end of the 17th century, and certainly since 1714, all hereditary peerages, and now life peerages, have been a matter of prime ministerial patronage. As Prime Minister, Walpole produced so many new peerages that the first Bill to cap the size of the House of Lords was introduced in 1719—it did not get very far. Under Gladstone and Disraeli, two-thirds of those appointed to the upper House were former Members of the lower House. That is, again, political patronage. In the House of 1958, the clear majority had been appointed since 1900.

The difference between the lifers and the hereditaries is that the lifers were appointed by the current Prime Minister under patronage, while the hereditaries were appointed by a previous Prime Minister’s patronage: that of Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee or Eden. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, whose grandfather was appointed by Anthony Eden, was one of the last hereditaries. Had the noble Lord’s grandfather been appointed to the House of Lords five years later, he would probably have been made a life Peer. We would have been deprived of the wonderful lectures that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has given us over the years on the importance of the House not standing up to a Conservative Government when there are a Conservative Government in power. The noble Lord, Lord Moore, said that the Lords has been ridiculed more since 1958 than before. I recommend that he reads Lloyd George’s speeches of 1910-11, or even Lord Rosebery’s speeches of 1894-95, when he was proposing the abolition of the House of Lords.

We are asking the Government to move forward with the next stage of reform and to consult us on what it should be. The consensus in the House is fairly strong. We want to talk about term limits or age limits. I am older than President Biden, so I think that age limits might be a good thing. Biden clearly went on for too long, just as Gladstone, who was Prime Minister into his 80s, went on for too long—he should not have done.

There should be a separation of appointments to the second Chamber from honours; HOLAC should have much greater powers to disapprove of nominations; there should be agreement on a formula for the balance of new appointments, and there should be something on improving the regional and national balance.

Above all, we have to remember how we look to the outside, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, have said. How do we look to our disillusioned public? All the opinion polls show that the British public are more disillusioned with national politics than any other democratic country except the United States. They also show, as my noble friend Lord Newby pointed out, that a clear majority believe that an elected House would be preferable to the current one. Only 25% of Conservative voters have a positive view of the Lords as it is now. For Labour, Liberal Democrat and Reform voters, the figure is much lower.

Everything we do on this Bill—and how long we spend on it—has to take the broader public issue into account. We and the Commons have to regain the public’s trust. That means being not a club but a working House. We have a job to do, and we should pursue our reform in that constructive context, with constructive opposition on all sides.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—the second Lord Strathclyde—who has the distinction of having one of the last hereditary peerages created, which was in 1955 for his grandfather. This was three years before the Life Peerages Act and nine years before Governments stopped providing hereditary peerages. A little later and his grandfather would have been a life Peer, and he would be a very distinguished commoner.

We have to be careful not to romanticise our hereditary peerages. There are Courtenays and Wellesleys, but only 29 Peers survived the Wars of the Roses—the noble Earl’s family was lucky—and the majority of extant Peers have been created since 1832, and nearly half since 1900. What distinguishes life Peers from hereditary Peers is that we have received direct prime ministerial patronage, while most hereditary Peers have received patronage from their grandfathers or great-grandfathers.

There is a wider context which we need to consider: the depth of public disillusionment with Westminster politics as a whole and with democratic politics, as we see in this country, have just seen in the United States and are seeing on the European continent. Public trust, as measured by polls, has sunk to between and 5% and 10% of the public, which is the lowest ever recorded since polling began. In July’s election, as other Peers have remarked, more than four out of every 10 registered voters did not bother to turn up and vote. Of those who did, 40% voted for parties other than the two on which our entrenched two-party system is built. That is dangerous, and means that we all need to think about how we rebuild public trust.

As for the Lords, as YouGov polled recently, 14% of people had a positive view of the House, 42% had a negative view, and 33% did not bother. Asked what reform of the House of Lords they preferred, 16% said that it should remain as now, 39% said that a partly elected and partly appointed House would do, and 55% said that they wanted an entirely elected House.

We need to recognise what public legitimacy means for Parliament as a whole. We need to think about Parliament as a whole, and I regret that we keep hearing these arguments about the primacy of the House of Commons. I was listening to a newly elected Labour MP last week, who told me how appalled he is by the way he is treated by his Whips and by how Ministers patronise him and his colleagues. Prime ministerial primacy is what we have, disguised as the primacy of the Commons. If we are going have a strong democracy, we will need a stronger Parliament—both Houses together, not just maintaining prime ministerial primacy of the Commons and then Commons primacy over the Lords.

If we are going to discuss broader reform, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, that we have an awful lot of material—I still have a lot of it in my study from the 2010 to 2012 period. It is good that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has reminded us just how much work we put in and—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord True—how much was done jointly through various Joint Committees. There were wide consultations. The proposals were for a statutory appointments commission; an end to the link between the honour, title and membership of the Lords; and 360 elected Members, with 90 appointed, 12 Bishops, 8 Ministers and a 15-year term.

We can start from there; that is a good foundation on which there is, I suspect, general agreement. We are more likely to get something like that by compromising consensus than most of the alternatives. Some people would say no to direct election, but indirect election, which several Members here have suggested, might be an alternative. The Gordon Brown proposals touched on this also.

As I spend my time commuting between Yorkshire and London, I am deeply conscious of the London dominance of British politics and the weakness of the English regions in representation in Parliament and in government. A second Chamber which represents the nations and regions would be extremely beneficial for the quality of our government.

We talk about balance, but no one has really tackled the question of the imbalance of party representation, which is a legacy of the last Government. We have, after all, nearly 100 more Conservative Peers in this House than Labour. I had half hoped that the Leader of the Opposition would start informal discussions with the Government about some scheme for voluntary retirement of some of the older Conservatives, just to come back towards a balance. Part of the agreement we came to in 1999, which I was on the edges of as part of my party, was not just that we would have temporary by-elections and then further reform but that, in the interim, neither of the major parties would seek to have an overall majority of Peers. That part of the agreement has now clearly been broken, and that is part of the justification for the current proposals.

That is where we are, and we now have a very modest first step. I say to the Leader of the House: we need to be reassured. We on these Benches want to go a great deal further towards a fully reformed second Chamber, and want to know where we are going next. We are told that there will be consultation, that we will perhaps move towards term limits for new appointments, and that there will be a stronger HOLAC, as many noble Lords have said, and we are willing to support much of that. We certainly wish to be involved in conversations on it, but we need to keep going. The sense from this debate is that most of us accept that this is a necessary next step, but it should not be the only step for the next 20 years. It should be the first step in a number of things that will take place not in this Session but in this Parliament.

Ministerial Gifts and Hospitality

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am almost speechless. As I have said, the important thing is transparency. The only reason why there is information in the public domain about any gifts or donations is transparency. I am surprised that the noble Baroness did not comment on the changes being brought forward by the Government. It seems to be a terrible anomaly that under the last Government, Ministers who received hospitality gifts would have a quarter in which to declare them as ministerial hospitality gifts with no value, yet a Member of Parliament sitting next to them would declare them in a month, along with the actual value. That has to be changed.

I get why cultural events like orchestras, cricket, football and other sporting events are so popular, and why that is important. However, I struggle to understand why Ministers should not have declared these in the same way MPs did. They did not under the noble Baroness’s Government; they will under ours.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, as well as looking at gifts more strictly, should the Government not also be looking at subsidies for politicians? We read that Boris Johnson is receiving £4 million for the publication of his brief memoirs. Does this suggest that the Daily Mail and others are overpaying in order to support his political activities and lifestyle? We also read that GB News is paying Nigel Farage MP £1 million for a part-time job as a presenter, and six-figure sums to several others, like Jacob Rees-Mogg. GB News announced a loss of £30 million last year. If these are effectively subsidies for political activities, should they not also be investigated and reported transparently?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, any gifts, earnings, et cetera to Members of Parliament have to be declared in full. Of course, not all those whom the noble Lord mentioned are still Members of Parliament. I think all organisations would want to make a judgment on whether or not they were getting value for money.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Church of England moves slowly, but not as slowly as the reform of the House of Lords.

I grew up in the heart of the Church of England, as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, when it was very much a male Church. I then found myself taking my children to a local church with a very traditional vicar who did not believe that women should be allowed in the chancel during a service—something that shook my daughter to the point where she has not gone to church since. Happily, we have slowly moved forward. We have also moved forward on the Church working with other Churches and other faiths.

When I sang in the Coronation as a small boy, the cardinal archbishop who had been invited to attend the service in the abbey refused to give his recognition to what was going on in this Protestant ceremony by coming inside the building and sat in a gallery outside. At the 50th anniversary service, his successor for cardinal archbishop read the first lesson, with representatives of other churches sitting behind him in the chancel and representatives of Britain’s other faiths sitting in the lantern. I have attended services in the abbey in which there have been readings from the Koran by an imam, and another in which the choir for a Sunday evening service was provided by the Belsize Square Synagogue.

We have managed to move forward in a number of ways. One of the most difficult things for the abbey, which I have been involved in through conversations over many years, has now at last been resolved, and we have a girls’ choir, the St Margaret’s Choristers. One of the young women who sings in it is the daughter of a senior member of the Lords staff. I have heard them once and look forward to hearing them again.

I am an antidisestablishmentarian, unusually for my Benches. I believe, as Tom Holland’s recent book suggests, that a Christian culture and our national identity are deeply intertwined, and that the Church of England, in all its messy uncertainty, represents the sort of consensus that we need. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, called himself a Christian socialist. I call myself a liberal Christian. Doubting Thomas is my patron saint, and the Church of England in that sense represents doubting Thomas’s view of Christianity —that we should not be too sure that we know what is right and what is wrong, and that we should always be questioning everything. That is a liberal faith.

I have happily watched the progress of women in the Church of England. The quality of the women priests we now have is remarkably good. It has strengthened the Church, which continues to do very valuable local work—I see it in Yorkshire, as well as in London—and to hold the community together.

When radical reform finally reaches this House—perhaps when my grandson is middle-aged—I have no doubt that we shall have to reconsider the role of the Bishops. I note that we already have some representation of other Churches and faiths in the House. I remind the House that my very distant cousin, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, was Moderator of the Church of Scotland last year. We had the Chief Rabbi on our Cross Benches, and we have had those who speak for the Sikh faith as well. That is also, perhaps, in a reformed House, part of what would then be the appointed element, in what I would hope will be a predominantly elected House. I hope that we eventually move that far, but I fear that we will move towards reform only by a series of shuffles, rather than by radical reform. Having said that, I welcome this small shuffle and hope that the Bill will pass easily.

House of Lords: Composition

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I have always admired the noble Lord’s ingenuity, and never more so than today. It is a bit of a reach to say that a Statement should have been made to this House first. This was first debated around the hereditary Peers by-elections, it was debated following the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment, and I have had numerous conversations since the election and will continue to do so. A Bill has been introduced in the other place today; it will come to your Lordships’ House and we will have our discussions in the normal way. The noble Lord says that there was agreement previously. It was because there was no agreement during the passage of that Bill that further discussions took place and temporary arrangements were made on a transitional basis to exempt some hereditary Peers from the legislation. This will complete that process. I remind the noble Lord that my comment to the press about the Bill’s introduction—made in the normal way—started by recognising the valuable contributions that many hereditary Peers have made to Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that my party is committed to further reform of this House, including the introduction of an elected element, which we first declared as party policy in 1911. I also remind the House that, during the last Parliament, a number of Conservatives—who know very well who they are—spent a great deal of time complaining that the Liberal Democrats were overrepresented in this House because of our small numbers in the Commons. It is now quite clear that one of our most immediate problems is the overrepresentation of Conservatives compared to their small numbers in the Commons. Can the Leader of the House tell us whether there have been any discussions so far about a voluntary reduction in the number of Conservatives in this House to reflect the new situation since the election?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I have had no approaches from the party opposite about its numbers. On the noble Lord’s point about wider Lords reform, for the last 25 years one of the arguments has been that nothing should be done until everything can be done—but no one agrees on what “everything” is. A piecemeal approach is by far the better way. The party opposite complains about Lords reform, but in the years that it was in government the only proposal it came forward with was to move the House of Lords to York.