House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Viscount Hailsham and Lord Swire

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on Amendments 95 and 96 to which I have put my name. In doing so, I have basically three concerns. First, I have a strong suspicion that the Government will bring no further proposal for the reform of the House of Lords during the lifetime of this Parliament. Secondly, related to that, a review would act as a spur, so there is just a chance that a review might encourage them to do so. Thirdly, I think the public should know that many of us in this House favour a much more radical solution to the composition and powers of this House. I am one of those: I believe in an elected Chamber.

That takes me to the point made by my noble friend Lord Hamilton. I entirely agree with him that fundamental to any debate should be the powers of this House, because from a decision on the powers stems the decision as to composition. If you are content with being but a revising Chamber, then a process very similar to what we now have is perfectly appropriate. But if, as I believe, you need to have a Chamber which has powers commensurate with the House of Commons and can face the House of Commons down in appropriate cases, then it has got to be elected. I have always believed that, to stand against the elective dictatorship of which my father wrote and spoke, we need an elected House with powers similar to those in the House of Commons.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, I very largely agree with the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom. My Amendment 101A is slightly more ambitious—perhaps too ambitious for the taste of your Lordships this evening. We have debated this Bill for four full days now. I do not wish to test the patience of noble Lords much further, but I do think we are missing an opportunity here.

I rather share the view that, as far as the Government are concerned, this will be it in relation to this House. I do not see them moving to any further stage, certainly not in this Parliament. All the evidence, for instance, on an age restriction in this House suggests that it is slightly eclipsed by the average age of the most recent appointments made by the Government to this House.

However, it is worth pausing to consider that, since two fundamental issues have arisen with implications for the constitution—those being devolution and Brexit—we have had no deep thought as to how we now wish this country to be governed. In fact, the last royal commission, which is what my amendment calls for, was instigated in 1969: Lord Crowther started it, and it was finished by Lord Kilbrandon in 1973. It was a contentious commission. Two people resiled from signing it, and people did not agree on it, but at least there was a debate about how we wished this country to be governed.

We have seen a lot of things happen without there being any thorough or clear thought as to whether they are the sort of things that we want to happen. We have seen an expansion in the Welsh Parliament; just recently, they have extended the number of Members. We have seen debates within the Scottish Parliament as to whether you can be a Member of Parliament as well as a Member of the Scottish Parliament. We have had debates about there being no English Parliament when all the component parts of the United Kingdom now have their own Assemblies.

We have heard how in Northern Ireland there has been paralysis over recent years. Do we want to look again at the d’Hondt process? Do we want to look again at how we select the First Minister in Northern Ireland? Do we want to look again at how political parties can self-designate in Northern Ireland?

We have seen recently moves to reorganise local government in England without much debate—a move to unitaries, getting rid of a lot of our district authorities. I personally support that in most cases, but we have had no consideration as to what that means for the representation of the voters in being represented properly.

In the House of Lords itself, in the last Parliament—my noble friend Lord Forsyth was very quick on this the whole time—we had Ministers in this Parliament who were unpaid. I would suggest that, in a democracy, when we have a bicameral system of legislation, to have unpaid Ministers performing the roles of Ministers in the other House is absolutely unacceptable. I very much hope that the Treasury Bench will confirm that there are no Ministers currently doing this unpaid. Incidentally, as we have heard, the majority of Ministers who were doing it unpaid when we on this side of the House were in Government were actually, yes, hereditary Peers.

When I first came to this House, which was not very long ago, the Lord Speaker told me that he thought the difference between the other place and this place was that in the other place you get up and you tell people, and in this place you get up and you ask people. In that spirit, I would ask whether your Lordships agree that what we are doing with this Bill is just spraying a bit of body paint on to a rotting carcass. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace: I think the British public are in a febrile state and do not feel that they are being properly represented. We need to do something about that as a matter of urgency, and what better way than to have a root and branch royal commission to look at how this country is governed and should be governed, how the balance of power is distributed around the country, and whether we need a bicameral system of government going forward?

If we do not need that, so be it; we will have to have some other check on the Executive. If we do, and I suspect that most of your Lordships would think that we do, then we need to decide what the powers of that second body—us, your Lordships’ House, whatever we want to call it—need to be.

I personally believe—I have changed my mind on this—that what we are seeing with this Bill is a move towards a completely different second Chamber. I would not be at all surprised if, in the next decade-plus, we do have an elected senate. Maybe that is a good thing; I do not know if it is a good thing or not. What I do know is that we need to have the debate, on all the issues that I have mentioned. I do not believe that this Bill should become an Act until we have thoroughly thought through the implications of what we are doing.