House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we might think that we know what most of the consequences of this Bill will be for the British constitution, but they are far from clear to anyone who does not take a close interest in these matters, and they are not to be found in the Bill before us. This amendment aims to puts into the Bill what at least one consequence will be.

The membership of this second Chamber of Parliament is unique in the world in how it is constituted and for how long we serve. It is composed of a relatively small number of hereditary Peers, while the Lords spiritual are nominated and life Peers are appointed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister to the monarch. Except for the bishops, who must retire when aged 70, once one is a Member we have the right to a seat, place and voice here for our lifetimes.

The most similar appointment system is that of the Canadian Senate. Although there are no hereditary members there, all its members are appointed by their Prime Minister. There, the similarities end. There is a fixed size of 105 and a mandatory retirement age of 75. That means that a new senator can be appointed only when a vacancy arises. New appointments must also be made on a regional basis, with each province holding a fixed number of seats. We will come on to whether similar constraints should apply here; I make no further comment on that now.

As in Canada, there is considerable adverse comment in this country on how the appointment system works. However, this Bill is about to make the situation much worse. For the first time ever the Prime Minister, on his or her whim, will have an unprecedented power of control over all the appointments to the membership of this House. That is a very dangerous extension of prime ministerial power. It is such a fundamental change to our constitution that it needs careful consideration and justification. I firmly believe that it must be clearly spelled out in legislation.

Of course, our constitution can evolve to meet this new situation, but it has already been clearly demonstrated that Prime Ministers have a less rigorous appointment process than the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which Prime Ministers can and have overruled. A paper by the London School of Economics in November 2023 tells us:

“Party leaders sometimes appoint experts, but they regularly appoint loyalists”.


It goes on to say that

“about a quarter of appointees over the last decade”

to this House

“have been donors to political parties”.

I cannot but agree with the noble Lord, Lord McFall of Alcluith, our Lord Speaker, when he said in an interview that this House is in danger of becoming “out of sync” with its balance of legislators. He went on to say that this House, too full of politicians and former political aides rather than people with outside experience, risked jeopardising the Chamber’s crucial role in taking a broader view on legislation and wider national policy. Those criticisms should be taken seriously. They were made before this Bill could take effect; it hands the Prime Minister untrammelled power to appoint whom he likes, when he likes. Everyone in the country should know about this. Once us hereditaries are forced out, there will be no screen for the life Peers to hide behind when the criticism comes thick and fast. A system so open to abuse cannot last long.

My amendment has three merits: it is concise, it does not affect the Bill’s wording or intention, and the principle has already been accepted by the Labour Party. On 23 March 2018, I moved a similar amendment to the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which sought to abolish the hereditary Peer by-elections. The amendment was drafted to be inserted before Clause 1 and read:

“Overview


This Act amends section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 to end the process of by-elections for hereditary peers, thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.


The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, intervened early in the few words that I was going to say and told the House,

“I am happy to accept his amendment”.—[Official Report, 23/3/18; cols. 547-48.]

It was indeed accepted by the whole House, including the Labour Party’s Front Bench. I hope the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will now do the same. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I read this amendment with some surprise, because the noble Earl says that everybody is going to be nominated by the Prime Minister. I was not nominated by the Prime Minister and there remains, I think, 20% of this House who were not. As far as I know, this Government have no intention of getting rid of the way in which we are appointed. As I understand the noble Earl to have said, the wording of the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was different. Of course we are appointed, but the noble Earl has limited it to the Prime Minister. To that extent, I profoundly disagree and I hope noble Lords will at least support the Cross-Benchers.

I recognise the manifesto and that this Bill must go through. I regret that there are so many amendments to slow it down. There are a large number of issues that need to be dealt with. I am not at all sure that this is the best place for them to be discussed when there is really a single issue occupying the Committee.

I hope that the Government will look at those whom they are removing and compare them with the Members of this House—at least 200—who virtually never come. I can speak as someone who is not a hereditary Peer but has been here for quite a long time. I have observed the enormous work done by hereditary Peers, who have been of invaluable use to the legislation that has been passed. For us to lose them and keep those who do not come and do not work seems profoundly wrong.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to speak to the last amendment. I will say very quickly now that it needed a little bit inserted to say, “Also to remove the power of the Prime Minister to have total control over the membership of this House”.

I remember and was very involved in the whole debate in 1998-99. In fact I and a bunch of Cross-Benchers produced a report on it at the time. The real problem with the whole thing is that it put the Prime Minister in total control of everything. He is the Prime Minister of the Civil Service and therefore the supreme person there. He is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons and therefore controls that. The judges are also no longer separate and are now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice. There were a lot of promises about independence, but it is no longer a third pillar of our constitution in the way it was.