Retirement and Participation Committee Report

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, it feels strange to be addressing your Lordships’ House on the question of reform of the membership of the House of Lords while not being directly in the crosshairs of the process, as has occurred on every previous occasion. When I re-entered this House as Lord Hawkhurst after a few weeks in exile, I expected to be overwhelmed by a feeling of legitimacy, by virtue of my shiny new life peerage, in comparison with the rather aged and tattered viscountcy that had served me so well for 38 years or so. But I was disappointed. I very much enjoyed the remarks and wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who referred to PG Wodehouse. I had hoped to take the title of Lord Emsworth but, as we all know, that really should be reserved for an Earl, so I was disappointed again on that front.

I turn to the business of the day. The committee has done a thorough job in considering these intractable issues. It is no surprise that there is a considerable diversity of opinion around the House, but no one could argue that the committee has not discharged its function, approached this issue in an extraordinarily thorough way and come up with a solution that, in its mind, was designed to avoid the cliff edge that the noble Baroness referred to.

I was also very amused to hear the different views about election manifesto pledges that have come through. I find myself, as ever, in the same field as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in treating them merely as guidance, because there were other commitments in the manifesto around a more substantially reformed House about which we are not hearing too much. All election manifesto commitments are equal, but I suspect that some are more equal than others.

It is strange to debate retirement when we know that there are Peers over the age of 80 who make such fantastic contributions to your Lordships’ House. We have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has been referred to. I can tell your Lordships’ House that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is utterly unchanged, in every way and in capacity, since he had the misfortune of becoming my boss as Secretary of State for Transport nearly one-third of a century ago. We are talking in code, and what we are really talking about is capacity. We have made progress on that issue, and I feel that more can—and, I hope, will—be done by party managers and the convenor.

Of the changes that have been made, the allowance of voluntary retirement has been a positive development. Perhaps an expectation that we should self-regulate—in the great House of Lords tradition—our own retirement is a solution. Whatever the House decides, I feel that we are tilting at the wrong windmill with this report. The primary challenge to the credibility, reputation and, therefore, authority of this House is not around age and retirement; it is to do with the Executive’s ability to control the House’s numbers and make-up. We now have a situation where entry to this House is entirely at the disposal of the Prime Minister’s patronage, with no limits on numbers. The Executive of the day can, to a large extent, choose the new Members of one of the juries they face, and if they find themselves losing the argument they can just add some more. That method of controlling the composition of your Lordships’ House is ridiculous and is no more defensible than the situation we had in the pre-1999 House.

That should be the focus, and there should be much less on retirement. We need to control the numbers of people coming into this House. I suggest that whatever the merits—they are very considerable—of people arriving in the House, we go through a period of indigestion, and that does not help us do our job.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, like many who have spoken in the debate this afternoon, I was delighted to hear the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Brady and saddened to hear the valedictory speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin.

We are Peers; we are all Peers. The word means equal and that is how we speak, behave and vote, and that is how we are treated in this House. There is no rank; we are equals as Peers. That should be held at the front of our minds throughout this debate. I certainly do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Newby, down the line which he advanced in his speech, which I felt was uncharacteristically trying to be a little divisive between hereditary Peers and appointed life Peers. In fact, I think the reverse is true: in my third of a century or so in this House, I cannot think of a single instance where a Member’s rationale and motivation for the way that they speak or intervene has been questioned on the grounds of what type of Peer they are. They are a Peer; that is how they speak and that is how they behave, and I think that is how it should continue.

My second point is that our routes into this House—unless we seriously consider elections, and I think we should—are really, for the purposes of this debate, a giant red herring. The reality is that all Peers in this House are now de facto life Peers. The hereditary element has now gone. The hereditary principle, with the abolition of the by-elections, really is a non-issue. We have to look at numbers, composition and performance of the House, but I think to produce the hereditary issue as a great dragon that needs to be slain now is a very strange concept indeed and one that I do not think people outside Westminster would recognise as any sort of a priority.

Just take my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, for example, with his service as a Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Minister of State, Opposition Chief Whip, Opposition Leader, Leader of the House, and no doubt a whole lot of roles that I have forgotten about over that time of nearly 40 years or so. Would anyone in the Chamber this afternoon seriously say that their own experience was superior to his on the grounds that he came to this House through a hereditary peerage some 38 years ago and they came as a prime ministerial appointment? I am prepared to take an intervention if anyone feels that they should.

Why have we got this Bill? I am very tempted to say that we should join together the three measures that have taken up so much time in this House recently: the debate on farming—the attacks on farmers and the settlement there that we have heard so much about, and will do again tomorrow—VAT on private schools, and the attacks on hereditary peerages. They could all be bundled together as a unified blood-letting Bill. Let us be honest and transparent about why this is being done.

I was most taken by the powerful speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is not in his place at the moment. He has done so much in the field of constitutional reform and was ready to mount his charger and draw his trusty sword of truth to fight the non-existent battle with the forces of heredity. He concluded by saying that he preferred the patronage of the Prime Minister. I am not sure that that conclusion was more than a modest bombshell. Unless and until we tackle the frankly preposterous system whereby the Prime Minister appoints his own jurors with no binding numbers, we are just tinkering at the edges of this issue. In my view, we ought to have a serious debate and move ahead with full constitutional reform, and leave this Bill to one side.

Business of the House

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My noble friend is entirely right. I had started to say that there is a difference of opinion across the House, but surely that means that there should be an independent judgment on the propriety of this procedure. We in this House all accept the wisdom of our cross-party committees. Why should it not be put to the Constitution Committee whether this kind of procedure is conducive to the good operation of our constitution and parliamentary government?

I remember that when the European withdrawal Bill was going through, not so very long ago, my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who was then the Chief Whip of our party, was constantly put under pressure by some people on our side—I was not one of them because I detest the idea of a guillotine—to constrain proceedings. No one would say that certain Peers in this House were short of words during proceedings on that Act. However, my noble friend did not do that. He had the power but did not use it to constrain the House. Unfortunately, today we are seeing that the other side have a different view.

All my amendment asks is that an independent verdict be sought from the Constitution Committee on whether it is a good thing—

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, with regard to a referral to the Constitution Committee, of which my noble friend is a member, what would be the likely timing for how quickly the committee could meet, could take the evidence it requires and could produce a report? Timing clearly is one of the issues that is of significant concern to the House.

On the broader point, I urge the House to think very carefully before agreeing the precedent of introducing a guillotine. It is a major move. I have held my counsel during these debates but have been drawn to my feet by this issue and by the importance of the reference to the Constitution Committee. We should not nod this through, despite the lateness of the hour and despite the intensity of the political situation that is going on both here and in another place. I think the House would like to know how quickly the noble Lord, as a member of the Constitution Committee, believes that this could be done.

[Lord True]

The Constitution Committee meets weekly on Wednesdays. It would have been possible—