House of Lords: Governance

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker for tabling this debate and declare my interest as a partner of the Shaftesbury Partnership, which is exploring some of the tools for governance that I will mention in my speech.

As is right with this House, given its rich and long history as an essential part of our unwritten constitution, it is normal to expect it to flex as times and needs change, while rightly maintaining our traditions. This is no different when it comes to how it is itself governed. I fear, however, that there is a tendency to start not by asking ourselves why we are here and what is the appropriate way to achieve that through governance, but by imposing management structures, dress, furniture and approaches more common in, say, the business world as part of modernisation; or by putting in place training, codes of conduct and rules, as others have mentioned, to counter the caricature of our being a House that is outdated, costly and not always honourable.

As a result, we sometimes forget that we exist primarily to revise legislation or, to put it more plainly, to help make better laws. Our internal governance in both the Chamber and committees, as well as all the support and management of this building and the operations that enable us to do what we do, ought always to flow from that mission: to make better laws. By this yard-stick, on one level, we are doing a pretty good job. At least a third of the amendments we suggest to the other place are accepted and, at the last count, our costs, if you think of us in terms of being around 300 to 400 full-time equivalent lawmakers, are equivalent to those of many other Parliaments around the world. Given that many of us are part-time, it is not off the scale. I do not think that our comparison to the Chinese Parliament is fair as it meets only a few weeks a year.

To top it all off, we are actually quite innovative, despite appearances—not least if you go way back to the idea of being an advisory Chamber to the sovereign or, today, to the Executive and to the other place, but also in the way we discuss and amend laws. As I first observed when I arrived a decade ago, we are a kind of legislative Wikipedia, where we as Peers operate a bit like editors and moderators when we are working at our best. Of course, our adoption of remote voting has in fact allowed us to leapfrog the other place by enabling wider participation, whether during lockdown or after, and to enable information to flow better to help us all make better decisions. This is something to celebrate, not be ashamed of, as long as it helps us make better laws.

Where do we need to improve? Other Peers have mentioned matters relating to the administration of the place and how it could be more transparent and consultative so I will not focus on them, except to ask how they help us make better laws rather than just being reactions to the latest set of media attacks.

There is an area we need to improve: how much our laws are actually used in the courts and deployed for the benefit of the public. Recent analysis indicates that a good number of laws passed by this House and the other place, especially those forced through using statutory instruments, delegated powers, and other Executive measures, were not used at all, or not much, on the ground or in the courts. If you take that as an output as part of an outcome—the better governance of the realm—then input all the debates, speeches and work that we carry out, and the money spent supporting what we do across both our own and the other House, you could argue that there is room to improve.

I have not done the calculation but I suggest that this would come down to several million pounds per law actually used. You might do this calculation every 10 years on a rolling average to take account of laws that get dropped by the Government or courts if they are not useful. Everything we do could flow from this one metric, which you could then optimise based on the quality of laws, the cost of the administration and our allowances leading to the laws and how many get actually used. Ultimately, it is about how much we involve the public, experts, lawyers and judges—whose disappearance from this place I truly lament—to increase the chances of laws working and being used.

We need to build on the success that is born out of innovation. What can be done to improve the chances of us making better laws more efficiently? Strangely, it is not the hours of speeches in the Chamber that improve our hit rate, as it were, nor, I would argue, how we were appointed or elected or in how many codes of conduct we have and how representative we are. Wikipedia does not elect its moderators and is essentially self-governed, like us. Its moderators are not measured by speaking time in chambers, but they seem to create a pretty good encyclopaedia for relatively little cost.

We need to build on the success born out of the innovations in governance that enabled us to be one of the first Parliaments—the mother of Parliaments, in fact—and the first in the land to vote remotely. We ought to partner with the likes of Jimmy Wales to create our own legislative Wiki, which could enable Peers, and one day the public, to interact with draft laws, help shape priorities, suggest changes, predict what might work or not, and know what is being discussed at any one time and why. We ought to harness philanthropic resources and have virtual versions of our Chamber and committees—a Lords metaverse—so that people can learn more about what we do, virtually enact debates and law-making, and understand how we make our laws.

We ought to involve judges and experts in the public to help red-team our laws, supporting committees but kicking the tyres and sense-checking whether what we propose will work on the ground. Every law ought to be road-tested with the public, six months or a year after it has been passed, using technology such as swarm-based feedback, to check whether it is working and being used for the intended purpose. We should harness a rating system, a bit like Tripadvisor or Amazon, to rank laws to encourage a better hit rate.

Finally, I shall close by exploring what this focus on our mission to make good laws might imply in terms of our size. Many noble Lords know my view, which is that we should have a tenure-based system, not a cut-off by age but on the principle that, each time the Prime Minister appoints a Peer, he ought to be able to select from the 10 longest-serving Peers and invite one or two to retire. Over time, this could get us down to an optimal size. The question is how small we need to be in order still to make good laws. Again, if we follow the concept of our being a Wikipedia for law, the question would be how many domains of law we need to make laws on and how many experts we need to moderate those domains. Where there are domains such as STEM, where we are lacking expertise, that might help those nominating new Peers chose people to help fill the gap.

It is time we innovated again to govern well, while honouring what is working well.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Wei Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests on the register. Broadly, I add my voice to those of other noble Lords who have spoken in support of these measures, which are necessary given the need to get the economy rolling in the coming months. There is an opportunity this summer, as more will be staycationing in the UK, to ensure that our local traders take back some of the losses that we have seen over the spring—I will focus more on the retail side of things in my speech. In fact, one of the projects that I am engaging with at the moment is with a town in the Midlands—I will not name it just yet. We are actively exploring some of the more innovative things we can do to help the high street rebound, helping shops, restaurants, pubs, and so forth. These measures are welcome in light of enabling our citizens to come back and consume, drink and, essentially, socialise once more.

At the moment, the measures are quite limited to the responsibility of each individual pub or establishment to set out, for example, tables and chairs outside their area, and generally it is where permission has already been given or there is some kind of precedent. Some of the more innovative things we could do could involve councils doing things such as shutting down entire streets to traffic and opening up sections in the middle of streets, as we have seen in Scandinavia and elsewhere in the world, so that multiple restaurants can serve customers, who then take their food from the restaurants and eat it in the town square. Can the Minister say whether these rules intend to cover and make provision for those kinds of situations—shared eating spaces, if you like, perhaps even cordoned off so that people can meet in their support hubs? What provision is there for that within this thinking, or is this merely just for the case where there is space available outside for that establishment, which it then looks to take control over and open out into?

Another area we are seeing innovation in is drive-throughs—we are seeing an explosion of drive-through cinema. What provision is being made in any of this to enable drive-through facilities to fit in and be fast-tracked?

Finally, I will touch on the beginning of an idea, which is possibly not appropriate for this legislation but may be. It could be that what we do today, even though it is emergency and temporary, can set the scene for longer-term changes. Given that the high street was struggling massively already before Covid, one thought to be potentially explored is whether you could give free empty shop space or space that had previously been restaurant space and so on, but on the basis that the council, the landlord or whoever is facilitating that could share royalties with the pub owner or the retailer, not just for any physical sales that happened there but for any online sales when they receive whatever support they get. They would therefore start to work in partnership with the business concerned to help it, not just to sell physically in the street but online as well. I know that this is very much about this physical streetscape, but moving forward we need to craft laws and measures that support the increasingly blended nature of businesses, whether they are pubs or other businesses, given that we will all have to check who is coming in and make appointments using apps and the internet. Can the Minister say whether any ideas around that are being explored or whether this is purely just to address the immediate, short-term nature of things?

House of Lords

Lord Wei Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for tabling this very timely debate. I wish to declare an interest as the youngest Member of, and a relative newcomer to, your Lordships’ House.

In my brief four or so years as a toddler here, it has occurred to me that any discussion of how this place should be reformed ought always to start on the basis of what it is for rather than primarily the process by which its Members are chosen or how long they stay. As a member of the general public, before I came into the House I had little idea of what it was for, grouping it simply under the vague heading of representatives chosen to help govern this country.

In my time in your Lordships’ House it has become evident to me that our primary function is that of a revising Chamber—a place in which to amend and suggest improvements to laws produced by elected representatives in the House of Commons, whose primacy over this House is enshrined in conventions around the treatment of finance Bills, in the ability to force certain Bills through under certain conditions and through party manifestos, and in deciding what laws the Government of the day want to have debated in each parliamentary Session.

In a real sense, and bearing in mind our wider modern audience, we function as a kind of human Wikipedia for the laws of this country, suggesting changes and improvements to legislation that may, for whatever reason, have been created less than perfectly in a hurry to respond to some crisis, scandal or tragedy, or without real historic knowledge when similar laws were drafted many decades ago, or even without relevant life experience. In the main, we perform this Wikipedia function well, and for relatively little cost compared with other countries, drawing on the long expertise of our Members and their interests and activities in and beyond the House, both current and in the past.

That is not to say that there are not issues. We are perceived to be too big, at least for the start of each day’s Questions and major events. That brings a cost, although it should be noted that full-time senators and their staff would cost more per head. And some might argue that, given that our peerages are for life, we are not as accountable as Members in the other place, although that very much depends, I suppose, on how safe your seat is as an MP. All that provides ammunition for those who would like to abolish this House and replace it with an elected senate with fixed terms, even though the constitutional challenge of which House would ultimately then become the more powerful of the two over time as a result would have to be definitively addressed.

However, the question before us today is not whether this modern-day human legislative Wikipedia should have its contributors—or, rather, moderators—elected on the basis of popularity but how we address the size issue, which in turn has an impact on our costs, and potentially on how accountable we are, if not to an electorate then at least in terms of how much of a contribution we make while we are here. This in turn ultimately, for now, in my view comes down to how long Members remain in this House, whether legally or voluntarily, given that your Lordships’ House operates—in many ways like Wikipedia—largely on a voluntary and self-regulating basis.

So how should we reduce the number of those attending the Chamber? As the youngest Peer, one might feel tempted to argue for a cut-off based on age. However, I am fairly firmly opposed to this route. As a revising Chamber we need expertise in, and experience of, every activity in life, whether drawn from current or past endeavours in business, government and civil society, from people who would have been or were elected in the past, as well as from those experts who would never dare stand and would much prefer to devote their energy to their own field of science, art or the humanities or to other activities rather than be in the glaring limelight that is the staple of the modern-day elected representative. To force Members to leave simply because they are too old would cut us off from such expertise and would also, in my view, be unfair on those who enter this House later in life, having therefore only a few years in which to serve.

Another route is to go for fixed terms—say, of 15 years. Again, for similar reasons to those I have just given, I think that we would miss out arbitrarily on experience that can take a lifetime to build, not least of drafting legislation, since economies and policy often move in decades-long cycles. Nor am I convinced that fixed terms—nor, for that matter, an arbitrary age limit, which, given life expectancy, would have to be increased periodically—would help us to address the immediate question of reducing the number of Peers attending at peak times unless destabilising and drastic action were taken to implement such terms straight away or the age limit were set impractically low.

My proposal would be quite simply, and with possible small amendments, to invite Members of the House who had served the longest to voluntarily semi-retire by convention as active attendees of the Chamber and to become in effect honorary life Peers, retaining the ability at certain times of the year, such as post the Sovereign’s speech, to contribute if they wished—namely, to reduce the size of the House using tenure as the primary criteria. This proposal would be simple, objective —there can be no dispute about when someone entered—quick to implement and fair, since everyone would get a shot at sharing their experience. It would also, I believe, address to a large degree the concerns in general that exist around our size, our cost and even our accountability. In my view, knowing that your time will be up at some point makes you want to contribute fully while you have the opportunity. It is also a continuous solution. Unlike choosing based on attendance, it does not require periodic revisiting and the imposition every now and then of an arbitrary time window in which to assess attendance levels. Finally, it retains the idea that we remain Peers for life, with all the independence of thought that that brings, even if those who have been here longest voluntarily participate only at certain times of the year.

With the kind assistance of the Lords Library, I have run an analysis of average tenure. Through a voluntary reduction of the kind I have described, shrinking the House to 650 core Members—bearing in mind that not all of these would attend every day, so this would translate to a lower number of active Peers —would still give an average tenure of around 19 years. The raw data are available in the Library for those who want to run their own analysis. The average tenure would of course increase if the cap were higher than 650. With a lower cap, I fear that we would, sadly, lose a lot of experience, which is why I suggest that by convention certain debates, such as those post the Sovereign’s speech, be reserved for honorary life Peers to continue to contribute to. Such Peers, or retirees, would remain influential by continuing to be on the Estate, contributing informally as part of the wider activities that take place in Parliament.

I would very much welcome thoughts and feedback on this suggestion, and indeed I should like to ask the Leader of the House and fellow Peers what views they all might have of such a scheme. There remain issues that would need to be worked out, such as how this might apply to the hereditary Peers and what would happen if, theoretically, hundreds of Peers were brought in quickly over a five-year period, which would radically shorten the average tenure of the place. Then there is consideration of how such a move might affect the composition of Peers among the various political parties.

In my view, Bishops should be appointed on the same basis as operates today. For life Peers, leaving would be triggered whenever new life Peers were appointed. My initial thinking around hereditary Peers is for a similar tenure system to operate as with life Peers, but that when the longest-serving Peer due to leave upon the appointment of a new Peer is a hereditary Peer, the hereditary Peer is replaced using the same electoral system already in place but with the next longest-serving life Peer being invited to retire and to become honorary to allow the incoming life Peer to take their place. In effect, hereditary peerage elections would be triggered upon a particular hereditary becoming the longest serving Peer in the House overall and when a new Peer is appointed.

To address the issue of the House being flooded, which many argue rightly is the prime cause of our current size issue, it may be that we need to recommend a reasonable cap on how many can come in each year, although I suspect that this would need primary legislation and support from the Government of the day, which might not be politically feasible.

Much as it is difficult, we need to change as a House in order to safeguard what is special and effective about it. Change is difficult and I think that in addition to what I have suggested, and regardless of whatever method we ultimately choose to pursue, we need to support Peers in the big transitions both into and out of this Chamber, so that lives can be reconfigured and prepared for the changes that are involved. I have spoken about this on previous occasions and supporting transitions is an area in which we could do better generally so that it is less stressful not just for those of us in this House but for the increasing numbers in this country entering the period that we now call later life.

Reducing the size of this House through tenure remains the least worst of the options being explored currently. It may be that ultimately we need a combination of a very high age limit—if we must, although I would prefer to not have one—plus a tenure system with a high cap, and modifications to procedures of the House to arrive at a practical solution. As such, the suggestion of an options paper by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is most welcome. It could well be that such a process leads to a suggested age limit of, say, 85 or 90, with an average tenure of 25 to 30 years, with processes in place to ration suggested attendance at Questions and, on top of that, inviting fully non-attending Peers to become honorary life Peers straightaway. We might arrive at a steady-state number of 650 to 700 Members, of which 400 would attend almost every day. The key for me is that tenure is a key part of the mix and that the losses incurred in terms of experience to the House from other methods are minimised.

I ask the forgiveness of Peers who might object to my or other Peers’ suggestions in this area but, as others have mentioned already in this debate, if we do not act voluntarily now to address this in some effective way, legislation to force it feels sadly inevitable. Let us, come what may, act now so that change is not brutal and sudden for any of us, but that it is appropriate, in line with what we are here for, and effective. Let us, to borrow from Dylan Thomas, change now, so that we do not have to,

“go gentle into that good night”.