King’s Speech

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I much welcome our new Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer. He walks in the steps not only of Lord Williams of Mostyn, whom we all remember with great affection, but of my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, who was Attorney-General from 2001 to 2007 and of my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland, who was Attorney-General from 2007 to 2010. It is most welcome to have the Attorney-General back in our House.

From these Benches, I pledge support for our new Government. I do not agree with all the proposals in the manifesto but I am confident that my Government will listen with willing ears to my concerns and, better still, may abide by them.

This brings me to my confession. For that purpose, I have to take your Lordships to last Wednesday afternoon for the first round of speeches following the gracious Speech. Your Lordships who were present would have heard the most excellent speeches from my noble friends Lord Reid and Lady Hazarika. Your Lordships would also have heard in the middle of the speech of our new Lord Privy Seal a loud, “Hear, hear!” This was also clearly recorded at col. 23 of Hansard, which reads: “A noble Lord: Hear, hear!” That was me.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Thank you for a further, “Hear, hear!”

I made this noisy intervention because our new Lord Privy Seal had said:

“Ministers in our Government will not accept all changes but, when the House expresses a constructive view, the Government should treat that with respect”.—[Official Report, 17/7/24; col. 23.]


This will not always be easy. Under the last Government, the power of government—the power of the Executive against the legislature—became most powerful. Your Lordships will perhaps remember Report on the Illegal Migration Bill, when we passed no fewer than nine constructive amendments and they were all chucked out without even consideration by the Government of the day.

It is not only in this House that we suffered. I read from a report by my friend Jess Phillips in the New Statesman:

“Round and round and round we walked, voting on the House of Lords’ amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill. The first session took three and a half hours, the second two hours. It really is something to spend so much time losing votes … It feels to me like the very definition of madness that this is how our democracy works: hours wasted on a foregone conclusion that in the end will amount to no change … during these past few weeks … parliament”,


has felt to be a “farce”. On any view, that is most concerning.

It is interesting that the Leader of the Opposition, when he spoke in that debate—he spoke, as always, very well indeed—referred to the 409 government defeats in the last Parliament. I think his point was that there were too many Divisions, but it can also be said that on each of these 409 occasions the Government of the day were not listening to your Lordships’ House.

I finish by mentioning my own departure. I have always been under threat of expulsion from the moment I arrived in this House over 50 years ago. The first Wilson Government had proposed serious reforms of the House of Lords, which were defeated by an unholy alliance between Enoch Powell on the right and Michael Foot on the left. I have been under your sufferance for all these years, but it has been a great honour and an enriching experience to be here. Thank you. I am ready to be expelled for the second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, on an excellent maiden speech. The content was deeply refreshing and the tone was hugely appreciated. I heard him say he would be an active listener, and I look forward to both his listening and his speaking. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Khan, to the Front Bench, and I note the excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Booth, and the good valedictory of the noble Lord, Lord Warner.

There is a great deal in this King’s Speech that I warmly welcome. I think my colleagues on these Benches and I will find ourselves able to vote in favour of quite a lot of it, although I suspect that, in good Liberal fashion, we will find a number of points of detail that we feel need to be explored and that we are able to object to in one way or another. But we look forward to a period of stability and competence.

I start by saying a brief word about devolution, before going on to an area of the constitution. I was greatly encouraged by the word “reset” in looking at how the devolution settlement is conducted, particularly in respect of Scotland. The trench warfare that has sometimes characterised the relationship between Westminster and the devolved Parliaments over some recent years has been deeply unhelpful. As somebody who, in my first incarnation in this place, fought very hard for the Scotland Bill and took part in it, I am one who wants to see devolution flourish. It will flourish only when it is a system that allows for opposing Governments in the different parts of the constitution and allows them to work together in a workmanlike if not always amicable way, but with confidence in each other. I greatly welcome what the Government are doing there, and I hope that we will have a chance to speak more on that on a latter occasion.

Before preparing for this debate I took an educated guess that it would have a large number of speakers, and took a further educated guess that I would be very near the bottom of the list. I therefore came into this Chamber with nothing written down, but I spent the weekend reading Hansards, not simply from our debates on the composition of your Lordships’ House in this place but from the many debates in the other place that I took part in. There was one in 2003, and a wonderful one on 6 March 2007—and one or two other of those who took part in that debate are here now, in this Chamber.

I do not have the time or the will, frankly, to go through all the detailed arguments, but let me say that, through all that process, I have become more and more convinced that the upper Chamber needs to be elected. It needs to be elected because to have a strong Parliament you need a robust second House, and to have a robust second House you have to have moral authority. While in some ways and in some constitutions that may come from appointment, the history of this place means that the only way in which it will have true legitimacy will be through the ballot box. Therefore, throughout my many discussions on the subject, I have pushed that forward. The House is too large and it is composed by patronage and heredity. It does superb work, and I have huge respect for everybody in the House, but it does not command the respect of those in the other place, the media or people in the country.

The lack of aspiration in what the Government are proposing for the constitution is the lack of will to do something proper with this House. We need that strong Parliament, and we need a robust second Chamber, and it cannot be achieved without democratic selection. To me, it is unthinkable that we arrive at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century with a Chamber that is still left in the time warp of heredity and patronage. It really is time that we trust the people. If we want the people to trust us, we need to trust them, and the ballot box is the way to do it.