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.

Civil Service: Recruitment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am confident that the rules in place mean that no Government have made dodgy appointments to the Civil Service—because the rules are very clear on this. On the first part of my noble friend’s question—why the current review is being carried out only from 1 July—apparently there is a regular, ongoing, routine investigation and audit by the commission, but this is exceptional and in addition to that. Apparently, the commissioner wrote to heads of department to say that it was in view of the “recent interest in appointments by exception”—but all appointments are part of a regular audit process.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the statements that the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, made on a number of occasions during the coalition Government that the Civil Service benefits from the recruitment of outside experts to senior roles? I declare an interest: I happen to have worked with one of the two people recently recruited for a short period of time in Labour Together and I never had any impression when working with her of any partisanship—she was extremely professional. Does she further agree with what Henry Newman, formerly a Conservative special adviser, wrote in TheWhitehallProject two weeks ago:

“There is nothing inherently wrong with appointing either individual, but it should have been done with transparency and through clear procedures”?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, there are clear procedures in place. The department has to be satisfied when bringing in external expertise at all levels of the Civil Service. We are talking about 9,000 out of 80,000, and these are not just senior appointments. We might need to bring in expertise for short-term reasons or for specialist knowledge. It might be because of the nature of the appointments; if they are short term, it might not be appropriate to have a long recruitment process. It is absolutely right that an appointment has to be signed off by the department, which must be satisfied that it is justified, relevant and complies with the Civil Service Code. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Maude, who introduced those appointments to the Civil Service around 2010.

House of Lords: Nominations for Appointment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, we have heard from the response from across the House how seriously those who are here in your Lordships’ House take their responsibilities. It is an honour to be appointed a Peer, and that brings with it responsibilities to the work that we do. I listened to the noble Lord’s comments on the King’s Speech about this, and I will look at and consider the issue. The House is large, and I think we have to ensure that we focus on the active contributions. Going forward, we will look at colleagues’ participation and the range of participation that Members are involved in—from voting in the Lobbies to taking part in committees to engaging in debates. I will take his views away and will take soundings from other colleagues across the House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the prerogative power of the Prime Minister to appoint to this House remains absolute, as we saw under Boris Johnson? As a prerogative power remaining from the Middle Ages, the Prime Minister could announce that from now on the Prime Minister would not make appointments to this House without consultations with ACOBA and various bodies. Is that part of what is under consideration? Is there not a consensus now that it may be time for us to consider separating the honour of a peerage from the duty to attend the upper House?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, that is exactly the same point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about having two separate categories of peerage. I come back to the point that for all noble Lords it is an honour to be appointed to your Lordships’ House, but that brings with it responsibilities. I know noble Lords from across the House are very disappointed if colleagues are appointed and we do not see them, so I will take that back. Those who are appointed to this House at present do have a responsibility. I do not mean that everybody has to be here all day every day and be a full-time Peer, but we do have expectations that Members will be committed to the work of this House and play a part in it.

Government Standards

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My noble friend has put a number of those questions to me over the years, given her interests and experience on this subject. She is right: public confidence can be improved by our being open and transparent about the decisions being taken. I can tell her that there are systems in place to ensure transparency around many of the issues that she mentions, but there is often a concern that they are not working as well as they could. As a first step, the Government have to ensure that they work better, including information being published on time but in a way that is easy to access and easy to understand. The ethics and integrity commission could look at this issue.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, practice matters as well as principles and regulations here. In terms of ministerial practice, will the new Government try their best to ensure that Ministers stay in office for at least two years each, rather than using constant ministerial reshuffles as a matter of party management? Can we also ensure that Ministers show us that government is not constant campaigning? There should be occasional weeks when neither the Prime Minister nor any other Ministers are shown in the press in fluorescent jackets running around offices rather than providing good government for the country?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the entire Front Bench endorses the noble Lord’s comment and wants to stay in office. One problem of publishing information on a quarterly basis is that, in the last few years, by the time we got to the end of a quarter the Minister had gone and someone else was in place. There is a serious issue about continuity in office. As for fluorescent jackets, with a Government who are committed to infrastructure improvements in this country we may see some fluorescent jackets being worn, but the noble Lord makes an important point. Governance is a serious issue. We have seen that, because of election campaigning, political decisions that would be difficult for any Government, such as the issue of prisons that we have had to consider, have been delayed when they should have been taken in the interests of the country. I give the noble Lord a categorical assurance that we will act in the interests of the country, will not put off decisions because they are difficult but will take them when we have to, and will report back to your Lordships’ House.