House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

The noble Baroness made a very passionate speech in favour of democratic accountability. Why then did she not stand for the House of Commons instead of coming here?

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I do not think the noble Baroness wishes to answer the noble Lord’s question, and she has every right to do that.

I rise very briefly to support my noble friend Lord Newby. This is a very straightforward and simple amendment that seeks to place a duty on the Government to do something after this Bill has passed.

Some of us have spent a great deal of time on Lords reform. I started in this place just under 30 years ago and had 27 years between the two places, and one of the things I have observed in that time is that chances to do something to reform this place do not come along too often, and legislation comes along very rarely.

I greatly enjoyed the eloquence and oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, although I have to say that he has once again convinced me that the more eloquent he is, the more incorrect his arguments are. I very much appreciated the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, with grace and gentleness, rebutted them.

The key point in all that—I am desperately trying not to give a history lesson—is that, when we did the draft Joint Committee of both Houses in 2011-2012, so ably chaired by the late Lord Richards, we came to a compromise position that addressed every single one of the points the noble Lord put forward, and they went into the draft Bill that went before the Commons. That Bill had a Second Reading and, had it had not been for a slightly sneaky operation by Jesse Norman on the programme Motion, it would have gone through and been discussed by both Houses.

So I support my noble friend simply because there needs to be reform. There needs to be reform because we need more legitimacy. In 1832, we were powerful and the Commons was not. From 1832 onwards, the power has moved to the Commons. We now need to regain some legitimacy so that we can again be a powerful part of a Parliament that holds the Executive to account. In asking for this amendment, my noble friend is simply saying, “Let’s hold our feet to the fire and get it done”.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on the eloquence of her speech. But she put forward a point of view about this House that I think is mistaken when she said that it is supposed to be representative of the people. It absolutely is not and it never has been. It has other purposes, for better or for worse, and we all sit here as representatives of nobody but ourselves. That is particularly true of Cross Benchers and the non-affiliated, but actually it is true of all party Members as well, and there are important reasons for that. We are well placed to bring to bear on the proceedings of Parliament as a whole a disinterested point of view, in the proper sense of “disinterested”: in other words, not representing an interest but trying to think as hard as we can about what is right.

The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, was very important here, because, if we think about the function of this House, we may come to realise that its current composition is not so idiotic. Its function is to scrutinise, and the type of people that want to scrutinise are not the type of people who want to get on in life. The people who want to get on in life are those in the other place who are, as was eloquently pointed out by the noble Lord and others, trying to get the next position, higher marks on social media, more likes and jobs. Most of us have gone beyond that stage of life. That is obviously not true of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, because she is very young, but she disinterestedly and kindly sits here in order to contribute her wisdom.

The trouble with the Bill is that we are not thinking about function but droning on about composition. As long as we think that it is a good thing to have a powerful House of Commons that forms most of the Government of the day, it is perfectly reasonable to have a not-very-strong House of Lords that tries to scrutinise. If we think that that is perfectly reasonable, we might consider that perhaps we should not be mucking around with our composition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, although, with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, it does not actually mention hereditary Peers. This debate has ranged much more widely. At some stage we will need to discuss the next steps for reform. I hope that we will not overlook the work of either the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, or the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who had some very sound proposals in his report that we somehow seem to have swept under the carpet.

I have been here for nearly 18 years and I have no wish to retire, but it is possible that, if I still have my marbles in another 12 years, I would be grateful for an honourable way to go. Most of us are appointed because we have expertise in a particular field, but it is quite possible that, after 15 years, our expertise is not quite as lively as it was when we first came in, so having this sort of term seems to make quite a lot of sense.

I cannot understand why noble Lords have not grouped more amendments in this debate. This seems an unnecessary waste of your Lordships’ time and, I fear, the sort of thing that brings this House into disrepute. I note that the ungrouped amendments all seem to come from the Conservative Benches. I wonder why.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, my Amendment 66 has been grouped with these amendments. I will briefly explain what the amendment does and then make a valiant, though likely unsuccessful, attempt to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that it would be worth accepting.

My amendment seeks to address the fact that there is broad agreement across the House that in some way, shape or form the length of time that people sit in the House should not be indefinite. The concept of a seat for life has no more validity than a seat for life that has been inherited. The report from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, suggested 15 years, as referred to in Amendment 13. I have chosen a term of 20 years precisely because 15 years sounds like something I can imagine, whereas 20 years sounds somewhat more gentle. The number has been chosen so as not to frighten the horses.

The amendment would amend the Life Peerages Act such that the right to receive a Writ of Summons would be limited to 20 years from the moment someone took their seat in the House. That would mean that if somebody happened to be just under the 20 years when an election was called, they would get a Writ of Summons and could get up to 24 years. If they were lucky—or unlucky, depending on your point of view—to have sat for 20 years when an election was called, that would be their lot. By referring to a Writ of Summons, the amendment has the merit of meaning that anyone who was limited would get to the end of the Parliament they were sitting in so that if they were chairing a committee or running a Bill, they would be able to complete their work.

The amendment is deliberately designed to affect peerages granted after the passage of this Bill. There is quite a lot of feeling, one way or another, about the concept of changing the terms of employment, as it were, for people who are already here. Therefore, people given a peerage in the future would know precisely what they would be doing and the length of time they would serve.

An alternative for terms of reference, which will be debated later, is a retirement age. I do not favour retirement ages because I have met people of considerable age with great faculties and abilities and some people of not very great age who do not have great faculties and abilities. I would rather have, as happens in the other place, a term limit based on moment of arrival and moment of departure, rather than an arbitrary one based on age.

The key difference between this amendment and virtually any other that will be tabled is that it does not affect anybody who is currently sitting in the House. Why, therefore, have I brought it forward? I hope to persuade the Leader of the House that it may be worth considering and possibly accepting.

As I mentioned in the debate on the last group, I have been around the houses on Lords reform for the best part of 30 years, across two Houses. Apart from the fact that anybody who engages in that requires a certain degree of stamina, I have noticed that progress has been remarkably small and often barely incremental. The amendment therefore seeks to put in a longstop. If it is accepted, it would change nothing at the moment. If the Government go ahead, as promised, and bring something forward in the remainder of this Parliament, nothing has changed; this is perfectly reversible and whatever changes might be thought appropriate by the Government can go ahead. It has no impact on anything that might be discussed. But if the circumstance arises—and the odds are probably in favour of this circumstance—that for one reason or another, such as international affairs or all sorts of different reasons, time is not found in this Parliament for any further reform, and the electoral maths changes so that the next term might be more difficult, we would be back to having another 10 or 15 years before something happens.

If, therefore, we are really interested in the size of the House coming down—I think we all wish to see that—and if some form of limited term is appropriate, the amendment puts this out into the distance. It is exactly like crown green bowls, where you put one ball right at the back, just in case. If nothing happens, there would be a longstop that would start to see a reduction in the numbers.

I would like to think that my amendment has been drafted in a way that has some elegance and grace and would solve a problem that I hope we will not have and therefore could be disregarded. But in case we do have the problem, it is a mechanism planted into the future that would have some control over the size of your Lordships’ House. For those reasons, I hope the Government might consider this amendment, or something very like it, as a workable proposition, and use the Bill for this tiny addition that would have no impact on the vast bulk of what they are seeking to achieve.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, instinctively, I like limited terms. It is like running a board: you know who is leaving, when they are leaving and what skills they have, and you recruit to replace them in an orderly way rather than relying on the grim reaper to do it for you. I often say about 15-year terms that it is five years to learn the job, five years to be effective and five years to go out of date. I fear that I may offend a few in the Chamber today by making that mathematical assertion.

In practice, there is one point that we need to consider with regard to limited terms: what then? If people have spent their peak career earning years in this House and then leave at 50 or 60—with no pension from this employer, by the way—are we in danger of putting people off from joining us because they have nothing to look forward to as a support beyond the time they spend here? I worry that your Lordships’ House would become more attractive to people of independent means and less attractive to people who are not in that lucky position.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

May I respond to the noble Lord briefly, as we are in Committee? If one looks at the average age at which people come into this House, it is at the end of their careers, just below or above 60. Therefore, 20 years takes most people who come into this House from mid-50s to mid-70s or early 60s to early 80s. Under the current arrangements, there are relatively few people who come into the House as a full-time occupation who are in their primary working years. I know that there are exceptions, and exceptions always prove the rule. However, if we wish to have some longstop, my amendment takes care of most of the points he has made. If people know in advance that they are being offered something for 20 years, they always have the choice of declining.

[Lord Desai (CB)]

My Lords, I have many things to declare. One is that I came here not as a hereditary Peer but was appointed by John Major, who conspired with Neil Kinnock—the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock—to get me here. Secondly, I have been here for 34 years, so I obviously do not qualify to be a sane, sensible person, because I am too old. I am 85, and after 34 years I am clearly not qualified to be here at all—so I have to fight for my life, because I actually like this place.

When I came here I did not swear an oath, not being a believer, but I affirmed one. I affirmed an oath to serve Her Majesty the Queen, her heirs and successors. I did not say “Till death do us part” but I definitely came on the promise that I was appointed for life. I was not appointed on whether I was qualified, whether I was sane, whether I was solvent, or anything like that. Okay—if I violate the rules of conduct, I may get thrown out. Apart from that, given the logic of your Lordships’ House, I do not see any reason whatever to have age limits and term limits retrospectively. Yes, have a Bill which is not to do with the hereditary Peers but with House of Lords reform. If you want to reform the House and reduce the number of people and so on, then say that normally at such and such an age you would qualify.