Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to the fact that I am, along with Mr Ed Balls, the joint chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

I do not want to make the Minister blush, but I add my tribute to the way he has conducted the negotiations—I think we have arrived at a situation where we can see some progress—but I also associate myself with his words about the noble Lord, Lord Khan, who took this through its various stages with charm and considerable good temper, and we arrived at a better Bill because he was there. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott on my Front Bench for the way this has come about.

I have always been of the view that this memorial should also celebrate Jewish life and Jewish people, because—and I say this as a non-Jew—Jewish culture is a fundamental part of British identity. Without Jews, this country would be a lesser place. You only have visit a place like Poland to see that the very heart of that country has been ripped out by the removal of the Jews.

I supported the original amendment because this is not an academic exercise or a discussion over particular words. There is a real war going on—I do not think it is wrong to say that—which seeks to undermine and subvert the Holocaust and turn it on its head. We have seen two attempts in recent years to do this. First, there was an attempt within the academic board to extend the museum to cover slavery, which the board fought against solidly, leading to one member resigning. Secondly, we saw last year an attempt to equate the Holocaust with the false accusation of a genocide in Gaza. That awful attempt to invert the Holocaust is one of the reasons why fewer schools are commemorating the Holocaust this year than before. The reason for that is that the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust was not prepared to do “Holocaust-lite”. We are not prepared to dilute it.

But this continues. There is some criticism of Holocaust education. We see from Canada that the former attorney-general, Irwin Cotler, someone known to many Members of the House, regarded Holocaust education in this country as the gold standard. But it is only the gold standard if people attend the courses. Some evaluations from UCL and Visions Schools Scotland show that if people go through the course, things change for the good. But if you are a child of a parent who refuses to allow you to go, if you are on a school governing body that refuses co-operation, if teachers pressurise other teachers to prevent it, then those pupils lose out. That is why we see such bad scores on understanding of the Holocaust.

This is not just about the simple teaching of the past; it is about operating some support for our own liberal democracy. I am delighted to report that we are in advanced negotiations with the Shoah Foundation of the United States, which would like us to be one of the main centres for its database of Holocaust testimony. We already have its testimony for British survivors, but this means that we will be a main player on the scene. There is enthusiasm for this because we will get people to that learning centre—I am about to finish—who would normally not go to any other museum.

I welcome the unity. We should put the past behind us and now put our hands out firmly to opponents and those who are in favour, and work together to ensure that we build something we can be proud of.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, while the tributes are flowing, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who gave one of the best speeches the first time this amendment was discussed, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

It is truly important to have this discussion and debate, and not just to say that it does not matter. I also do not doubt the sincerity of the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Khan of Burnley, who have both been absolutely reassuring. My problem is that I am not reassured by reassurances. I still cannot understand why it is only reassurances, and not firmly fixed. It is not reassuring that this cannot be written down, so that we all know it is not going to be sold out. No disrespect, but a lot of sell-outs happen in politics; however, I do not doubt the integrity of the noble Lords I have mentioned.

I just wanted quickly to just note why this matters. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, made the point when he referred to the fight. I had written down, “The context of this is a fight”. I do a range of education work, although not this issue, but when I go to universities and schools I get into arguments—obviously enough—about all sorts of things. In a debate about whether there is a genocide in Gaza, because I said there is not, and tried to explain it rationally, I was accused of being a Holocaust denier. When I then tried to untangle why that was not the case and why you would use that term, one of the students said, “The problem is that Jews jealously guard the Holocaust. It is part of their colonial entitlement attitude”. That was quite a normal thing to say. I was shocked; nobody else was.

This is a learning centre. Look at the revelations that have come forth in relation to the MP from Labour Friends of Israel who was stopped from going into a school to teach, as well as the subsequent revelations—exposed by Nicole Lampert—about the goings-on in the National Education Union, a teaching union that is almost institutionally hostile to Israel and that has very strong and openly antisemitic elements to it. People who are worried about the Shoah being relativised or diffused are not being paranoid; this is happening.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thought I had made my response. This is what we are trying to do: where there are specific concerns, we can address them in the secondary legislation. We have said that a probationary period of nine months would ensure that those companies and businesses have three or six months and can extend that to ensure that issues of capability and competency are addressed. We are also ensuring that we look at all other opportunities. My noble friend made the point that every change we have made in the labour market to improve the conditions and the opportunities for workers and employees has been resisted, and resisted strongly, particularly by the party opposite. But we now have the situation—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Maybe the Minister could respond to this. There are more opponents to these parts of the Bill than just the party opposite, as the Minister described them. All the concerns that have been raised—across the House, but also outside this House—have come from a wide range of organisations and interests that are actually interested in workers’ rights. They are concerned that a lack of forethought about what day-one rights mean will impact some people, who will never get the chance to have workers’ rights because they will not be employed: it will lead to a risk-averse employer.

I think it is inappropriate for the Minister to constantly suggest that the only opposition to this comes from a particular, caricatured version of a Conservative, anti-workers’ rights view. That is misinformation and is not even reflected in the discussion we have had today. So will the Minister answer the concerns raised not just by the Resolution Foundation but by a wide range of employers and organisations that are worried that, just because it says on the tin that this is for workers, that does not mean that it is in the tin, and that the consultation afterwards will not help a Bill that is cemented into law?

This Government constantly tell us about the rule of law. We are worried that they are about to make a law that is unbreakable with any consultation afterwards and that that will be bad for workers. That is the driving factor of our concerns.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I would argue very strongly that the focus of our efforts is about what is good for this country, and what is good for this country is economic growth and what will stimulate that growth, for which creating a secure and flexible workforce is a key ingredient. I admire the noble Baroness’s ability to suggest that she supports workers’ rights while siding with people who oppose workers’ rights. The reality, I repeat, is this: where we have made progress in employment rights over the last 45 years, it has been resisted; many times, it has been resisted because people were fearful of where it may lead, but the reality—the proof of the pudding—has been in the eating. These rights have enabled people to prosper; they have enabled people to adapt to different workplace challenges; they have enabled women not to suffer discrimination and to demand equal pay. I am determined that we will stick to our manifesto commitment and deliver a progressive, forward-looking economy that protects workers’ rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Government and the Minister for their comments. When we debated this earlier, we talked about who was going to represent and who was not. I felt at the time that there was an undue feeling that we were trying to get at trade unions. That is not the case at all. Trade unions have a really relevant part in this, but not everybody belongs to a trade union. Many people and firms are not trade unionised, and they therefore use the other course available, which is to have a co-worker there. That works very nicely—you have a good pal who comes along and represents you, but they are not trained to do so. All the amendment was doing was finding that, when and if a trade union is not representing them and can well do so, a trained person accompanies the person at a tribunal. I gather from what the Minister has said that there is some merit seen in this proposal; that is what I have read, and I hope the Minister will confirm that when he finalises. If my understanding is correct, will the Minister and his department keep us updated on what is happening on this issue?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, on the Minister’s response, I positively welcome the Government’s commitment to this review of the right to be accompanied, and I thank the Government in this instance for listening to the concerns raised at Report and Committee stages. On Report, I put forward an amendment that would have allowed workers to have a companion of their own choosing at disciplinary or grievance hearings—I felt it should be that open. I was happy none the less to support the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, which, as has already been noted, was overwhelmingly supported. I would still like it to be a statutory right for workers—as this is a workers’ rights Bill, as we are constantly told—to be able to choose who represents them when they face grievance procedures, but I am really pleased that the Government will look at this. I hope that they look widely and think about the issue and that we can resolve it.

I want to respond very briefly to the way the Minister talked about the decision on keeping the issues internal and to draw attention to one of the problems with that. Over recent years, sometimes the grievances that workers have been involved in have been quite ideologically contentious, and issues have been very difficult, so simply to call upon fellow workmates to come with you into the grievance internally has been difficult because of a nervousness about guilt by association. It is also the case that not everyone is in a union, so, when the union might be representing someone, that is the opposite of keeping it internal and informal, because the person in that grievance procedure does not even know who they are with.

I also want to draw attention to just one thing: I wish it were not the case, but sometimes trade unions’ own policies can see them at odds with their own members. There have been a few instances of that recently—see the case of Sandie Peggie, who is suing the RCN around the issue of single-sex changing rooms for nurses. These things have been well documented, so I will not go into them, but it is not always as straightforward as saying that the trade unions will be the best people to represent a member of staff.

To finish, I stress that, historically, trade union representatives have very often protected and represented brilliantly, and been brilliant advocates for many people facing difficulties at work. I sat in many grievance procedures, representing members of my own union when I was a trade union rep. That is an ideal. Now that only a minority are represented by trade unionists, and based on the aspiration of the Bill to represent all workers and give them more rights, I hope this review will broaden the rights that workers have through representation so that they can choose who represents them. In general, however, I am very positive about the Government’s decision.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, on having introduced a really important issue. Undoubtedly, any appearance at a grievance or disciplinary hearing can be a huge setback for any individual and, as my noble friend Lady Barran pointed out, these individuals do need to be accompanied. I therefore thank the noble Lord for raising this, and I agree with his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I also agree with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the points that have been raised in this debate.

Motion M1 is in the name of my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom. I must express my disappointment in Brother Collins—the noble Lord, Lord Collins—and his whole attitude that we no longer need 50% to call a strike. What sort of message does that send?

It has been over one year since this Government came to power. In that time, they have proceeded and presided not over progress but over paralysis. They promised to reset industrial relations and said that a new partnership was on the horizon. However, what we have had instead is a Government in retreat, tearing up safeguards, buying off disputes and calling it “reform”. Their great idea is to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, removing the last protection that the public have when vital services grind to a halt.

They handed out no-strings-attached pay rises to members of the RMT and the BMA, with no plan, no reform and no responsibility. What happened then? It spectacularly backfired. Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health, admitted that the majority of BMA members did not even vote for strike action. Yet this Government’s answer to that embarrassment is not to rebuild trust but to lower the bar for future strikes. The removal of the strike action ballot threshold will invite permanent disruption: hospitals stalled, railways paralysed, classrooms dark and the very arteries of our public lives clogged by chaos.

It does not stop there. Under these new so-called union access rights, small businesses already struggling with costs, labour shortages and regulation will now face inspectors at their doors; refuse entry and they face thousands of pounds in fines. What a message to the entrepreneurs, builders and wealth creators who keep this country moving. I urge the Government to accept this amendment to protect our small businesses, entrepreneurs and public services.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend, whom I respect greatly and have worked with over many years, underestimates the calibre of many Members of Parliament. I take his point that many of the people who come forward in relation to an appointed House might not put their names forward for an elected second Chamber. But at the end of the day, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, it is very hard to justify a second Chamber of Parliament that does not have electoral legitimacy. My plea is that we make sure that that legitimacy is produced in a way that does not bring us to conflict.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very torn on this. I favour a unicameral approach and a lot of the arguments against the elected second Chamber have been made very well, even though I want a more democratic way of making decisions.

There is a crisis of democracy at present that expands far beyond this debate. What really struck me in the debate on assisted dying in the other place was the number of times that MPs effectively said, “Let’s leave it up to the House of Lords to sort out”. That is a disaster, because it is anti-democratic. It worries me, as we increasingly watch a certain implosion happening at the other end, that the House of Lords is given far too much credit for being able to sort that out. The unelected House being the ones who are trusted is the profound crisis of democratic accountability in this country. That is what we should be debating. I feel very self-conscious about being in an unelected House of Lords debating the survival of an unelected House of Lords—which people stay and which people go. It is so self-regarding.

As for the notion of a House full of experts—philosopher kings and all that—I cannot imagine anything more off-putting to the British public than us patting ourselves on the back and saying that we know more than anyone else. I appreciate that is fashionable, but it should not be something we embrace. That is not to undermine the expertise that is here, but please do not try to make it a virtue in terms of democratic decision-making.

However, to go back to the spirit of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, one problem with the discussion on hereditary Peers is that it is too limited. It suggests that it is revolutionary and reforming; in fact, it is just going for low-hanging fruit when we should be having a proper discussion about a democratic shake-up at both ends of this Westminster Palace. I feel that we are wasting an awful lot of time while Rome burns.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate, even if it started slightly predictably. If an all-appointed House is eventually created by this Bill, many—whatever some of us think—will contemplate the logical next step in reforming the House of Lords, which is to consider a democratic mandate. We must not get away from that. I heard talk earlier of “bringing the House into disrepute” by our debating the issues we were, but I am not sure that it helps to be seen laughing at the idea of election, which we did earlier, although it might have been that we were laughing at the Liberal Democrat obsession with proportional representation—one never knows.

As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, explained, it has been a long-held aspiration of the Liberal Democrats and, before them, the good old Liberal Party, which really was liberal, to replace your Lordships’ House with an elected Chamber. It is there in the preamble to the 1911 Act, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde always reminds us. There have been various attempts, often supported in this Chamber, to achieve a democratic second Chamber: in the 1960s, in the 1970s and most recently by the coalition in 2011. My colleagues are not unhappy with me at the moment, but I will upset them by saying that it was a proposal which I and many others in this House assented to. As we know, it could not be prosecuted because it was frustrated procedurally in the other place by a number of Conservative MPs and the Labour Party.

There is logic and consistency in the noble Lord’s position. I hugely respect the noble Lord, Lord Winston; he really is an expert, whatever others say. However, speaking humbly as someone who has fought seven elections in my ward and won them all, and twice fought elections to be leader of my council and won both—sorry—I hope your Lordships do not consider me to be a complete nincompoop. I do not claim to be an expert, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that some people who are elected can be good.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, it may be worth thinking about where this power for the Prime Minister to appoint Lords came from—I am thinking of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It derives from the fact that King John had his power to raise taxes taken away from him by the Magna Carta. He was left with the right to appoint Peers—to create Lords—to wage war and to write and sign treaties. Since then, the waging war and treaties have recently come under greater scrutiny. There are problems with that, and Parliament is certainly facing them at the moment in the treaties being written.

The one thing that no one seems to be questioning is that the Prime Minister has the right to advise the King, and constitutionally the King does not refuse the Prime Minister—because that is unconstitutional. Therefore, the Prime Minister has the ancient monarchical power to create Peers. If we think that this power is still right 800 or so years later, that is fine, but we should maybe be thinking, as our predecessors did all those centuries ago, about circumscribing this right and having more control over the unfettered power of the Prime Minister, who is also the head of the Civil Service—and the judiciary, which is now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice—and the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. I do not really like him having control over everything.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have long thought that the problem with the Bill is that we all become rather high-handed in talking about the hereditary Peers, as though they are the epitome of anti-democracy in this House. To be honest, we have all been appointed; none of us was elected. Therefore, it seems to me that this is a way of feeling good about ourselves by looking down on the hereditaries, when in fact none of us has a legitimate right to be here.

That to one side, I had a lot of regard for the spirit of the previous amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, looking for a democratic way of electing a second Chamber. The spirit of that, at least, was that the demos—the people—should decide, and I regarded that well. Yet the lead amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, seems to epitomise the opposite of that last amendment, because it is all about anti-democracy. It would give the ultimate power to an unelected committee answerable to no one. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, explained that very well, and there have been follow-on speeches expanding on it.

In moving the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked us to imagine that the Prime Minister—or indeed president, as he said—may not be a good chap or chapess. I wondered who would decide who and what is good. Would it be HOLAC, or the noble Lord, Lord Wallace? It is possible that he and I would not agree. The whole tone was that constitutional guard-rails would be set up by those who know better, who are more ethical or more virtuous, just in case the voters voted in the wrong way and voted in a wrong ’un. We all know that this is a nod to having a go at the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and that it is about President Trump, not President Biden. It has a partisan feel to it.

When it comes to legislation, I am very worried about how many Henry VIII powers are being used at present and about the number of statutory instruments contained in Bills. I argued that when they were put forward by the Conservative Government and agreed with many people in the Labour Party in opposition about that anti-democratic trend. I am sad to see that with Labour in government, there are even more Henry VIII powers and statutory instruments. In other words, we should be worried by an anti-democratic trend that we are witnessing. If we have to have a second Chamber, the Lords, and if we are going to appoint people, at least let us retain the notion that the Prime Minister—who has a democratic mandate—should be the person who decides, rather than an unelected committee.

As a note on the virtues of unelected expert committees, I am absolutely fine with them being advisory but not in charge. This morning, in relation to a discussion on the infamous door that has cost a fortune and does not work, and on that ugly fence that is an anti-social insult and looks like a barrier between this House and the public, we heard that it was all agreed by a very worthy committee. None of us even knew it was happening, because it was unanswerable. At the end of that discussion, I still could not work out who had made the decision. It was even more opaque than a Prime Minister deciding on who gets in this House. In other words, having a committee does not make it okay.

Finally, I will speak in favour of being partisan and taking sides. I am all for the virtues of the Cross Benches, but something seems to be wrong about the notion that the Cross Benches are full of the great and the good, who are experts, and that somehow they are superior to anyone who has an opinion, a passion or a principle, because they know more than the rest of us. I appreciate that I never joined the Cross Benches—somehow I did not get invited.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am just pointing it out.

They are apparently independent, but not that independent. There is a group of us who are sort of maverick; we are called non-affiliated—God knows what it means. It is very important that we defend the right to be political, to be partisan and to say, “I’m not an expert, but I absolutely believe in this”. If we are to exist in here at all, can we at least have some purpose beyond saying how many PhDs we have or how many charities we run?

The great and the good are great and good, but the writing of laws in this country—being legislators and being political—is not just about that. I am as frustrated as anyone about the way that party politics—the whipping process and so on—can damage political independence and courage on all sides of this House. We have witnessed it tonight and we have witnessed it in the other place over the last few days. That annoys me, because I want people to believe in something. On the other hand, the danger of saying that we are a House of experts, and that we will now have an expert HOLAC group that will decide on how many more experts it will bring in, is that we are kicking politics out of what should be an absolutely political place.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will not delay the House long. Many years ago, under a Conservative Government, I advocated that Nigel Farage should become a Member of your Lordships’ House. If we had recognised the role that he played in taking Britain out of the EU, people would have said that he does represent the majority in this country.

At the time, he was polling quite significantly—which is more than one could say for most Cross-Benchers in this House—and he was a very significant political player, whether you agreed with him or not. Neither of the political parties was going to nominate him, so it would have taken the Cross-Benchers to make him an offer to join them. At that time he might well have done so, because he thought he had finished his political career by taking us out of the EU, and he would have had a very valuable role to play in your Lordships’ House.

Think how different things would be today. It does not follow that he could not have led Reform from your Lordships’ House, but I suspect that it would have been rather more difficult. We would have been in a very different position today if he were a Member of your Lordships’ House. When we think about how representative our House is of British public opinion, we have to bear in mind that there are serious players out there who are not represented here, and I believe that they should be.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, thought of Animal Farm when he first read the Bill. I thought of one of those dread brainstorming sessions; I could hear some bright spark saying, “I know, let’s go after a bunch of pale, stale and male aristocratic toffs in the Lords. That’ll be popular with the masses”. It strikes me that this Bill may have gone through a similar policy wonk consultation as “Let’s go after those well-off pensioners taking advantage of our generous winter fuel allowance” or “Let’s go after those greedy, tax-dodging, land-owning farmers or those wealthy parents who can afford to send their special needs kids to posh private schools”. It feels a bit chippy and based on caricatures. At lunchtime, seeing that magnificent array of tractors driving past should be a salutary lesson for Ministers of what happens when lazily stereotyped villains bump into material reality—in this instance, working farmers cheered on by the public as they demonstrated against government policy.

The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Nick Thomas-Symonds, justified the Bill by saying that, allegedly, if the second Chamber reflects modern Britain then it can restore public trust in democratic institutions. Do the Government really believe that all it will take to tackle profound political alienation, and a yawning disconnect between millions of voters and mainstream institutions, is to erase 88 hereditary Peers? That seems just a tad complacent.

I understand the rationale that, in the 21st century, it is outdated and indefensible for those born into certain families to decide on the laws of the land. That is fair enough, but surely it is equally indefensible that any of us, with no mandate, should be sitting here at all. Okay, we are not here because of parentage, but, as other Peers have acknowledged, we are here due to another arcane form of top-down patronage. We should be careful to avoid any self-regarding discussion that imagines that the majority of us are here based on merit or our virtues. It is equally egregious to appoint those infamous cronies, donors, former MPs—many appointed after they were rejected by the electorate—and all the odds and sods who have been put here based on some prime-ministerial whim; yes, that includes me. I apologise to the great and the good, by the way, and to the Bishops, because I know that they are all blameless, but nonetheless, all of us, however virtuous, are unelected and represent an affront to democracy.

I say this not to be churlish. Many here are brilliant, hard-working scrutineers. There is an abundance of expert knowledge, and plenty of rhetorical and analytical accomplishment, which is often lacking in the other place. Regardless of all that, it is hard to argue that we are the epitome of democracy.

I am therefore still bemused that the Government have narrowed the scope of reform to hereditary Peers only. That seems like such a waste of parliamentary time and energy. For goodness’ sake, if you are going to do constitutional reform, do it with conviction and gusto. We should not be gaslit into accepting that this bitty, piecemeal approach is anywhere near the constitutional shake-up that was promised. I appreciate that to be radical would require courage, with a grown-up debate in both Chambers and a national conversation about how Parliament should enact the will of the people via lawmaking, and that it would encounter problems—yes, an elected upper Chamber would be a challenge to the primacy of the Commons, as was pointed out in the excellent maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham—but maybe looking at the Lords is the wrong focus.

When this Chamber is lauded for amending poorly drafted laws, spotting unintended consequences, and having the time to scrutinise legislation properly after laws are rushed through the other place, surely our focus should be on a proper democratic solution that bolsters the time available and the scrutinising powers of the Commons. The focus should be on the Commons, to improve the quality of the laws drafted; in other words, to abolish this second Chamber and adopt a truly unicameral model, to improve and upskill the Commons, and to concentrate on improving the most important relationship, which is not between the two Houses but between the elected and the electorate.

Finally, I believe that we have, at present, a problem of elitism in the UK. But in 2024 the culprits are not the gentry, lording it over the public; they are the new political and cultural overlords, who look down on ordinary people and think they know best about everything, from the public’s consumer habits to the virtues of mass migration, in defiance of popular disquiet. Forget the “to the manor born” types, correcting the P’s and Q’s of the hoi polloi; beware instead the patronising diversity and inclusion commissars who police everyday words and pronouns on pain of cancellation, and who, without irony, lecture others to, “Check your privilege”. Entitlement and elitism are alive and kicking. The hereditary principle is the least of democracy’s problems—and, by the way, victory to the farmers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, made her valedictory speech. If anyone is proof that 80 is an arbitrary, mad and ageist line at which to cut off somebody in their prime—I hope she has a wonderful retirement in Newcastle, which I love—she is a perfect example.