House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Viscount Hailsham and Earl of Dundee

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, in this grouping, there are two connected proposals in my name. Amendment 43 would not prevent political patronage creating non-parliamentary peerages.

Yet it would abolish the right of parliamentary political patronage to appoint Members to this House, replacing that practice, as advocated by Amendment 45, with a statutory appointments commission responsible for appointing 200 independent Cross-Benchers within a reformed House of 600 temporal Members, where the balance of 400 Members are political Members indirectly elected by an electoral college representative of the different parts of the United Kingdom.

These amendments also indicate three background considerations. The first is how thereby, in appointing 200 non-political independent Members, the new statutory commission appoints the largest group within a reformed House of 600. The second is the purpose of doing that and, thirdly, how membership, within a total of 20 appointment commissioners, reflects the proportions of different Benches sitting in a reformed House.

Among the 400 political and temporal Members, the Government and the Opposition would have exactly 150 each, while all other political parties, including the Liberal Democrats, would have 100. With 200, the independent Cross Benches, therefore, would have 50 more Members than either the Government or the Opposition.

The purpose of this is not House of Lords composition; instead, it is continuity of House of Lords quality function. So many of your Lordships have eloquently stressed that point today, including the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and my noble friends Lord Tugendhat and Lady Laing. This quality function is not just our current high standard of legislative scrutiny. As my noble friend Lord Attlee pointed out, it includes our achievements in revisions, and thus also the quality of that evidence. This quality of function would be undermined if the party of any Government having a majority in another place also had one here. That is why the Government and the Opposition ought to have equal numbers in a reformed House, while the non-political Cross-Benchers should be in the majority.

With a total of 20 commissioners appointing 200 non-political Members, subsection (5) of the new clause that would be inserted by Amendment 45 gives the ratios allocated to the different temporal Benches: five commissioners each for the Government and the Opposition; seven for the Cross-Benchers; and three for the Liberal Democrats as the third-largest temporal group. Amendment 46, referring to that subsection (5) in Amendment 45, proposes the additional words,

“or from a party-political group in the House of Lords not otherwise identified in this table”,

for which I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hailsham.

I also thank my noble friend for the qualification in his Amendment 44A, referring to Amendment 43, that with appointments to this House the statutory Appointments Commission can only select people who are properly reliable and independent-minded. In addition, I am grateful to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for their proposed Amendments 47 and 12 respectively, envisaging that, in the period of time before a statutory Appointments Commission has replaced political patronage, life peerages can still not be conferred against the recommendations of HOLAC or the present non-statutory Appointments Commission.

In Amendment 51, the strengthening of HOLAC is also urged by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who has just spoken to that, supported by myself and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. As outlined, the aim should be for HOLAC to become statutory, replacing political patronage and appointing one-third or 200 non-political Members of a reformed House, temporal membership being 600 of which 400 are political Members. As a revising Chamber, this arrangement is best able to protect our present very high standard of legislative scrutiny to the advantage of the United Kingdom democracy here and, by example, to that of national democracies elsewhere.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I very much endorse what my noble friend Lord Dundee has been saying, and what he has said has enabled me—your Lordships will be pleased to know—to abbreviate my remarks very significantly. I have put down four amendments, to which I want to say something briefly: namely, Amendments 43, 44A, 46 and 47. I shall also comment briefly on Amendment 45.

So far as Amendment 43 is concerned, I agree very much, for the reasons advanced by my noble friend Lord Dundee, that HOLAC should be the sole source of recommendations for appointments. In substance, there is too great a risk that individuals will be appointed by a party or Prime Minister in circumstances that will offend the public sense as to what is appropriate. Unfettered discretion on the part of a Prime Minister raises serious questions as to suitability and propriety of additional appointments. That risk will be diminished by giving the right of nomination to HOLAC.

In response to the point made by my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, the truth is that the decisions of Prime Ministers cannot always be trusted, and we have seen some pretty rum events over the last few years which give force to that conclusion. I prefer the approach set out in the amendment which my noble friend Lord Dundee has moved to the negative approach suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Newby—I think he himself would accept that his amendment does not go far enough.

That takes me to Amendment 45, which puts HOLAC on a statutory basis. I think that it is highly desirable that the existence, composition, role and powers of HOLAC should be enshrined in statute. I have come to this conclusion very much for the reasons advanced by the noble Earl and for the reasons that were advanced by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde in the debate of last Monday. It is very important that the powers and role of HOLAC should be statutory. There is a very good model for this. It is in a Bill which was introduced in the 2022-23 Session by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and it may well be that he is going to repeat those points in the debate on Friday when he has a Bill before your Lordships’ House.