House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, like all other noble Lords, I express my admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Steel. I think he is getting a bit tired of all this admiration, but never mind—he may not get it very often, so I urge him to enjoy it today, because he deserves it.

I come from Maidenhead, and there are a number of places named “Grenfell”: Grenfell Road, Grenfell Park, Grenfell this and that. I was very sad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, that that he has no connection with Maidenhead and that those names have nothing to do with him. Would it not have been wonderful for me if they had? I wish him a very happy retirement.

I will make a few general points. On resignations and doing something special for the Peer who is resigning, we can decide that; it does not need to be enshrined in legislation. It is up to this House to decide what most of us feel about that and how to do it. We are quite good at those sorts of things, and I am sure that we will agree on the right way of saying goodbye to Peers who have served well and for a long time. Therefore we do not need to spend a long time discussing that.

I have no comment to make on non-attendance, but I have many comments to make on convictions for offences. I believe that that has been taken from House of Commons procedure, but it is not sufficient. As many noble Lords have said, we have to think about public perception and our reputation. People who have cheated on their expenses will still come and sit here, and that is an offence to all of us. Our reputation has been affected. When a number of Peers were found to have cheated on their expenses it got around the public, who started saying, “Look at those Peers. They do nothing, they don’t stand for election, and they’re taking public money”. That is an awful thing, because everything bad reflects on all of us. That is particularly true of a House such as ours, because we are all part of a whole. We are not individuals elected from different places, who represent different groups of people; we are part of a whole whether we are from this or that party. In people’s eyes we are a single group.

To go to prison for one year or over will be very rare. It will happen in occasional cases, but it is disgraceful even to go to prison for a week, or for three weeks, as happened to one Peer. Those Peers should not be here. If someone was in the job market and had a job, and did the things that some Peers have done here, would you still employ them in your firm? Would you just say, “It’s okay, you can stay on”? You would not. This is a public body, and we have higher standards than a person in employment. If we do not, we should have; we should have higher expectations of Members of this House. We should expect them to behave in a far better way than ordinary mortals; we are ordinary mortals, but as Members of this House we should not behave badly.

When I first came here, this House had a great reputation and great respect outside. People used to say, “I’m a Member of the House of Lords”. We almost never say that now. I never say it, or only if it is necessary and fits the occasion. The situation has changed a lot in my time. One of the difficulties was that when I first came, changes were not happening. The House had been stratified for a number of years, for various reasons, which is a very bad thing. The British way of doing things is evolutionary, not revolutionary. We have taken only the first step towards this evolution of changing some of the things which we need to change. We need to change more things; the suggestion that we should be given 25 years or an age limit has to happen. We cannot have people sitting here until something very drastic happens and they cannot be here. That is very important, and should be mentioned when the person is appointed, so that there is no surprise—“Oh! My time has come”. The House is far too big and there are far too many of us here.

A noble Lord mentioned the reform of the House of Commons. I believe it was Bagehot, a constitutional lawyer, who said that the second Chamber should be complementary to the first Chamber. We do not know whether we are complementary to the first Chamber. They would like to see us go completely, because they get irritated when we stop their amendments. However, it is very important that both Houses should be considered in such a way that they benefit from each other and benefit each other; otherwise, it will never get any better.

Let us therefore move on with this and be thankful that we have something before us. I just hope that sooner rather than later we will lower the bar for people being removed from this House. I do not want to sit with people who have cheated with their expenses because I feel that I am tainted by their presence.