House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brady spoke very eloquently, but he did not refer to his Amendment 90C:

“A person can only be a member of the House of Lords if they are not a Minister of the Crown”.


I do not know why he did not refer to that, but it is a very bad idea.

One of the most striking features of politics in the more than 50 years since I was elected to the House of Commons is that as the diversity in gender and ethnicity has widened—which is a good thing—the diversity of life experience has narrowed considerably. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, there were people who had a lot of business experience, people who had been active in trade unions—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment that the noble Lord is speaking to is actually in group 18, whereas we are starting with group 1. We will debate Amendment 90C later.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

Then I will move to the other amendment which I wish to speak to and take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

Democracy is the central feature of our governing system, and the House of Commons must always be the superior House. However, precisely because MPs’ experience has narrowed to the extent that it has, we have seen that the House of Commons has given up on its scrutiny function over time. When I was first elected, guillotines were very rare. They are now very common. Bills come up to this House that have barely been scrutinised.

My question to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and those who support his amendment, is: would an elected House be interested in the scrutiny function? The House of Commons has its representative functions. It does a great deal of useful work in different areas, but in terms of scrutiny it has rather given up the ghost. That has been left increasingly to the House of Lords. That is not a desirable situation, but it is the situation that exists. Would an elected House have the interest in scrutiny that we need? If we did not have scrutiny in the second Chamber, we would not have enough scrutiny at all.

It would be wise to consider that a democratically elected second Chamber is not the only way forward. It may well be better to look at some alternatives and at the function first rather than the form. At the moment, we are all talking about the composition and the form of the House but not its function. If one looks at the function of the House, what system of election, selection, appointment—whatever—would be most appropriate?

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down—

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I apologise, my Lords. I think it might help everybody if I confirm the normal courtesies of the House. This is a debate and Members can take interventions, but they can also choose not to; that is in section 4.29 of the Companion.

[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?

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[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, will she join me in congratulating the Government Chief Whip on the brilliant management of business in the House this afternoon, whereby there is virtually nobody sitting on the Government Benches? Apart from the wonderful noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, representing the dinosaurs, I do not think a single Government Back-Bencher has spoken in support of the Government’s Bill today. They have now even brought in Ministers to sit behind the Front Bench so that everybody watching on screen thinks that the Government are being supported. This is not the sort of management of business that we expect to see in your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, what is so unfortunate is that I was about to welcome and celebrate the tone of the debate that we had just had. So I am going to move on with the tone of the debate and celebrate the contributions that noble Lords have made, which have been—in overwhelming number— thoughtful and considered. I am grateful for that. I think all noble Lords—as the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, highlighted—want the same thing for this House: colleagues who meet the highest standards of public service, who are dedicated to our country and who want to ensure that our legislation is fit for purpose.

The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, allow HOLAC to veto the Prime Minister’s and party leaders’ nominations to the House of Lords. The amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, also specifies HOLAC’s composition and purpose in statute. The Government are grateful for the discussion on these amendments today. We committed in our manifesto to reform the appointments process, but we cannot, unfortunately, accept these amendments, which fundamentally alter the roles and responsibilities in the appointments system.

Constitutionally, it is on the advice of the Prime Minister that the sovereign appoints new Peers, but it is not just the Prime Minister who makes these nominations. The Prime Minister, by convention, invites nominations from other political parties. After all, as was pointed out earlier in Committee, I was appointed by the former Prime Minister Truss. It is the responsibility of party leaders to consider who is best placed to represent their party in the House of Lords. This is an important principle. The Prime Minister and other party leaders are democratically elected and accountable to Parliament, and ultimately to the electorate, for the political nominations they make to the House of Lords.

The House of Lords Appointments Commission vets all nominations for life peerages to ensure the highest standards of propriety in this House. The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, would seek to make HOLAC’s advice defunct. If HOLAC recommended a nominee, the Prime Minister would be unable to proceed with their appointment. I hope it is obvious to your Lordships’ House why we cannot accept this, not least given the conversation we had earlier about People’s Peers. HOLAC’s proprietary advice is important to the Prime Minister as he discharges his duty to advise the sovereign on life peerages, and he of course considers it carefully. The Government are very grateful for the work that HOLAC, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, does to provide this advice.

This advice, however, forms part of a process that also ensures democratic accountability in the appointment process. Party leaders must accept responsibility for their appointment. We cannot and should not expect HOLAC to take on that responsibility. Handing HOLAC, an unelected body, the role of recommending new life peerages directly to the sovereign, or giving them the power to veto the Prime Minister’s recommendations, as in the amendment put forward today, would undermine that accountability.

The Government believe that nominating parties should be properly held to account for their nominations to the House of Lords. As my noble friend the Leader of the House set out on the first day of Committee, we have already taken a straightforward but important step to introduce a requirement on all nominating parties to provide public citations that clearly set out why individuals were nominated. I was pleased to see the first set of citations published on GOV.UK following the recent peerage list in December of last year.

The amendment from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, seeks to introduce a new oath for new Peers and requires HOLAC to be satisfied that new Peers will participate. This is a thoughtful suggestion, but, as a reminder, new Peers already sign our Code of Conduct when they take their seat. As we have said during the passage of the Bill, we are working on developing a participation requirement to ensure that we become a more active Chamber. It matters less what Peers say they will do than what they actually do when they come here. I am, however, grateful to noble Lords for their suggestions on how this could work and ways to take it forward.

More widely, the Prime Minister has made clear that he is committed to restoring trust in Parliament and takes the advice of all ethics bodies seriously. The Government are committed to keeping our ethics bodies under review and, where necessary, delivering reforms to ensure the highest standards in public life. Indeed, the Government have already demonstrated their willingness to strengthen the independent protections provided by the standards landscape. The Prime Minister has, for example, significantly strengthened the remit of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, ensuring they have the ability to initiate investigations into ministerial standards without requiring the Prime Minister’s consent. However, as I have made clear, the amendments proposed today would undermine the manifesto commitment to look at the current system and the democratic lines of accountability that currently exist in the appointments process.

I now turn to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, which would give HOLAC the power to recommend 20 individuals to the sovereign for non-party political life peerages over the next five years. The Cross-Benchers bring expertise and diverse perspectives to the House, which I welcome, and I thoroughly enjoy working with many of them. They make valuable contributions. Retirements and other departures mean that new Peers will always need to be appointed to ensure that the Lords has appropriate expertise, and I acknowledge that the Bill will have a particular impact on the number of Cross-Benchers. As my noble friend the Leader of the House said to the Committee last week, she has committed to discuss this with the relevant parties.

As it stands, new Peers can be appointed to the Cross Benches through nominations by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. HOLAC runs an open-application assessment process to identify and select new Cross-Bench Peers, and the Prime Minister passes HOLAC’s nominations to the sovereign. Many excellent Peers have come to your Lordships’ House this way. The number of Peers that HOLAC is able to nominate is decided by the Prime Minister, and in doing so he of course takes into account the political balance of your Lordships’ House. Prime Ministers can also recommend a limited number of additional Cross-Bench appointments over the course of the Parliament for those with a record of public service. As with all new Peers, they are subject to propriety vetting by HOLAC.

I note that the noble Lord’s amendment allows HOLAC, rather than the Prime Minister, the role of recommending 20 life Peers to the sovereign. As I addressed earlier, constitutionally it is for the Prime Minister, as principal adviser to the sovereign, to recommend new life Peers. I appreciate that the purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the Cross-Benchers remain a significant presence in your Lordships’ House. To give HOLAC, an unelected body, the role of providing advice to the sovereign, even in this limited way, would, however, be a clear break from our constitutional arrangements—one that would require careful thought, as today’s debate has demonstrated, and one that the Government do not support or think necessary.

As we have repeatedly stated, the Government committed in their manifesto to reform the process of appointments to this place, to ensure the quality of new appointments and to improve the representative balance of the second Chamber so that it better reflects the country that it serves. We have heard—and I am sure we will continue to hear—interesting proposals from across the House, and we welcome the discussion on appointments. However, it is right that we take time to properly consider how to take forward our manifesto commitment to reform in this area, as part of the wider standards landscape, in a way that reflects the importance of those lines of democratic accountability. It is also not a debate for this Bill. As has been stated, this is a focused Bill that delivers the Government’s manifesto commitment to bring about an immediate reform by removing the right of the remaining hereditary Peers to sit and vote in your Lordships’ House. It is not the vehicle to consider all reforms to the House of Lords. I therefore respectfully ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for a typically interesting debate. As I said at the outset, we were not seeking a fundamental reform of the way that HOLAC operates; we were seeking to do something uncontroversial that I thought nobody could possibly disagree with. I have been in your Lordships’ House for only 27 years, so what do I know?

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that our amendment does not break the link between the Prime Minister and the monarch. The Prime Minister would still make the recommendations. I am sure there are many other areas in which the Prime Minister gives advice to the monarch where that advice is constrained by various outside bodies, so I am not persuaded by the noble Lord’s argument.

In a way, the problem was set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, who said that the Prime Minister does not act alone. The truth is that he did act alone in this case. That is why we have the amendment. There was no constraint on the Prime Minister in making some proposals. HOLAC could not then do anything about it. I am not saying that it was a whim of the Prime Minister, or done without thought, but it was certainly his decision and his alone.

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I found myself struck by the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that we could do with a few more professors and a few fewer professional politicians. The trend he has identified of us becoming more a House of professional politicians is one that we have not taken consciously, but he is right to point out that we are sleepwalking into it. I am, however, pleased to say that we are not currently a House of professional politicians and I hope we do not become one. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s view on these amendments.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate to listen to. I was brought up properly and told that you are never to discuss a woman’s age, but, in the context of the debate today, it does feel slightly relevant given my own, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I believe we are currently in the prime of our economic earning, in the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.

The current average service of your Lordships’ House is 13.74 years, and the average age on appointment in the last Parliament was 56. I will be 57 if we get to 15 years of service, so I would be leaving very quickly and would still be a very young member of your Lordships’ House.

With regard to the substance of the debate today, these amendments concern the imposition of term limits, as we have discussed. It may be useful to summarise what the themes of the amendments in this group have been, not least because they demonstrate that there is not yet a consensus on next steps.

Amendment 13, tabled by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, provides for a 15-year term limit for life Peers. His proposal includes the possibility of applying to HOLAC for reappointment while providing that no Member can sit for more than 30 years in total. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has sought to further amend this by proposing that Members can apply for reappointment only during the Parliament in which this Bill passes and not beyond. His amendments also seek to limit the length of reappointment to five years, therefore reducing the original total limit proposed by the noble and right reverend Lord from 30 to 20 years.

Amendment 66, tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso—in an excellent speech—goes for a term limit of 20 years, but also for life peerages granted after the end of this year. Amendment 73, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a draft Bill with proposals for a term limit of up to 10 years.

The underlying intent of the majority of these amendments is to reduce the size of your Lordships’ House—an aspiration the Government share. Some noble Lords, including the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, made clear that they were motivated by the principle that no one should automatically be a Member of this place for life. Both he and I have experienced that at the other end, so making it happen here seems appropriate.

The smattering of amendments in this group demonstrate a range of different ways that term limits could be introduced. It is clear there is not a settled view among your Lordships on the arrangements of introducing a term limit. More importantly, however, the Bill before this House today is not the legislative vehicle for implementing these issues. The Bill is focused solely on removing the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in this House. These amendments, while both thoughtful and considered, are not the central issue of this Bill.

Furthermore, the Government’s view is that the introduction of retirement age, as promised in our manifesto, is a more effective way of reducing our numbers, rather than the introduction of a term limit. As your Lordships are aware, my noble friend the Leader of the House has been having an ongoing dialogue with the House on how the manifesto commitment of introducing a retirement age can best be implemented. The Leader has already had in excess of 60 meetings and she is keen for that dialogue to continue. With respect, these amendments would cut across those conversations. With this in mind, I respectfully ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment standing in my name.