House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, my noble friend Lord Brady wants to reduce the House to the very small number of 200. That would fundamentally change the role of the House of Lords. It is clear that we would be unable to continue to do the kind of scrutiny work that is currently required, but I can see which way my noble friend is thinking, I think it should be taken seriously and I hope that it will be debated to an extent over the next short while.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have also signed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and I am surprised and delighted to say that I agreed with every word that he said. I think that there are some real problems with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I always enjoy his speeches, but he made an awful lot of assumptions in that speech. While it was very entertaining, I am not sure that it would hold up to close examination. Does the noble Lord want to say anything? No.

I am not against getting rid of hereditaries: I think it is a long overdue move. I am extremely fond of some of them—not all of them, but some—and they play the most incredible role in this House. Once they are gone, we will see some really big gaps in all our processes, so we will miss them. However, it is time. It is something that is way past its sell-by date. Quite honestly, my main objection to the Bill is that it is so timid. Why not be braver and think seriously about the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby? Why not do something that has really forward-thinking, constructive ideas, rather than just the rather mean-minded blunt instrument of kicking out the hereditaries? I am not defending privilege; I do not like it at all, but in this case, it just seems so petty.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brady—he has not even introduced his amendment yet, but we all have views on it—I agree that 200 is too small. If I could give my own short history lesson, back in 2013 my noble friend Lady Bennett and I tabled a Bill to redraw the whole House of Lords under PR, and I think that the figure we used was 350, essentially at least reducing this House by half, because we are a bloated, undemocratic, archaic, ridiculously old-fashioned House and it is time to move on.

I am trying not to make a Second Reading speech, but I am not sure I am succeeding. The Labour Government told us they were going to modernise the House, which is fair enough. If I could see that this was the first of many alterations and many different Bills, it would sit easier with me. We have heard that everyone over 80 is going to be kicked out; I personally do not mind that, but the Government have been bringing in new Peers who are over 80; they will not have a very long shelf life. I am curious about that.

I argue that this amendment is a very good one because it covers the crucial aspect of the House being more representative. Certainly, if we had it under PR there would be a lot more Greens, which I know would be very welcome to your Lordships’ House.

Finally, in the Bill I tabled, there was an element of Cross-Benchers—I forget exactly how many, but it might have been about 100—and we can do that under a different form of election. We all agree that Cross-Benchers, hereditary or not, are extremely valuable, and so to lose their skills and expertise would be a mistake. However, I think that one of the first things this Labour Government should do is to stop the ridiculous appointment system by the Prime Minister which brings in people who love having a title but really do not love the work.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, in the interests of institutional memory, I will add a footnote to that. I was very surprised to see the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, as I know his passion for democracy in this House and the way he has pursued it in the Delegated Powers Committee. His explanation was more than welcome.

It occurs to me that in the historical palimpsest that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, offered, the one thing he omitted was the report from the Joint Committee of both Houses in 2011-12 on the coalition Bill. Had the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, served on that Joint Committee, it would have taken two weeks rather than 18 months to write our report. We would have had infinitely more fun and would have come to conclusions that were infinitely crisper and more persuasive. In that report, we took exhaustive evidence from the authors of the Bill, from Ministers, from all the usual suspects and beyond, and—I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, takes some comfort from this—we came to exactly the same conclusions as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has about the dysfunctional relationship that would be set up automatically with the House of Commons.

As we worked through our list of Ministers giving evidence, it became perfectly clear that none of them had asked themselves those questions about the implications it would have for the House of Commons, its legitimacy, its effectiveness and its relationship with the House of Lords. They had not considered whether there would be constituents who had competing notions of what was right or what would happen if we had different parties in command in the two Houses. It was an exhaustive review and there were differences of opinion—the chair was Lord Richard—but it was conclusive in its recommendations: the House of Commons must think again about the Bill it had been presented. It was the last time that either House looked at this issue in depth with any sophistication.

My point is simply—just as the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Strathclyde, have said—that this is a constitutional issue of massive significance. It can hardly be dealt with through an amendment to such a narrow Bill on such a narrow point and where, frankly, these amendments have no place anyway. We should be addressing the substance of the Bill. Since the issue has been raised, however, we are right to remember that we had worked out our proper views on the implications of this subject separately in 2012. I wonder what happened to that Bill: why was it ever withdrawn? Unfortunately, the Prime Minister at the time is not in his place; otherwise, we might have been able to get an answer after all these years.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (CB)]

My Lords, there are many dimensions in which participation can be measured. We have two problems. As the noble Lord, Lord Swire, said, we do not know the quality of the participation but we know the quantity. These different dimensions are sort of related.

I was a statistician all my life—not a good one, but I was one. There are techniques to combine those dimensions in one single measure, and I urge the Government and the people in charge to use them. It is called principal component analysis—noble Lords can ask me, and I can find out more about it for them. That will give you a more or less objective way of measuring different people’s performance across a number of dimensions. This has been done many times; it is reliable. There is no doubt that quality is difficult to measure, but quantity can be measured, and I urge the decision-makers to use this to be able to sort out who is in and who is out. That would be helpful.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, given the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Swire, I will keep my comments short. Although I am reading from a piece of paper, I am reading from my scribbles, not a full text. I hope that is all right. I co-signed Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I do not think he needed any real encouragement, but I think it is very sensible. In fact, Amendment 63 from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has real value. If he took that to a vote, I would probably support it. I absolutely hate Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. It might as well say, in brackets afterwards, “Kick the Greens out”.

I suggest that we could have got around this debate—all these days, hours and repetitions. We could have just made all the hereditaries life Peers, which would have removed all this. I understand that there is an issue about kicking them out but, personally, I think we will miss them. Making them all life Peers would have just shut them up, and we would be free to go and have an early supper.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The rest of us are not blessed with the eloquence and wit that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, feels he has, but I think he has missed the point of my amendment and that, as a Committee, we are now trying to do all the detail on the Floor of the House. That is impossible. My amendment tries to establish that after this Bill a system is put in place to define these issues, to which we can all contribute usefully and sensibly—or foolishly, as we wish. That is the way to take this forward, not putting it into the Bill in detail. We need a system for the Government to show a bit of an ankle here and show us that they are really going to do this by putting this amendment into the Bill, not trying to work out the minutiae of percentages here. That is completely pointless.

--- Later in debate ---

Let me reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, especially as she is now sitting on the Conservative side—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The Opposition side!

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

—we would never dream of kicking her out of this place. She was absolutely right to say that all hereditary Peers should be given a life peerage. That would kill this nonsense stone dead.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has proposed an excellent amendment. As he said, we are all engaged here in trying to improve the effectiveness of the House. Asking new Peers to make a commitment for the future has merit, but we still have the genuine problem of the handful of Peers who come here, clock in and do nothing. I say again to my noble friend Lord Swire that I am not suggesting measuring the quality of speeches. If Peers are making speeches, then they are participating in the work of the House. The quality of their speeches is not something to be measured by this committee. My noble friend Lord Trenchard also supports participation level, but I would say to him that legislation is not necessary if we accept Amendment 32 when we come to it later.

As I am leading on all six groups of amendments today, I fear I have fallen foul of my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s exhortation not to speak too much. He quoted an incident that occurred years ago in the Commons, when I was a junior Whip and the marvellous Harold Walker was Speaker in the Chair. We were in government, and we had an agreement with the Opposition on a two-minute time limit for speeches on Commons consideration of Lords amendments. We were rocketing through our consideration of Lords amendments to yet another criminal justice Bill. We were getting on fine until our friend Sir Ivan Lawrence QC —I am not naming names, this is in Hansard—got up and said, “Everything that could possibly have been said on this Bill has been said, but not by those of us qualified to do so”. He spoke for 20 minutes, and the Labour Chief Whip said, “That’s it—the deal’s off!” We spent another two hours in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, whom I congratulate on his birthday, showed support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and a minimum level of participation. He also criticised those who, as he said, turn up for 20 minutes and then leave. I think those were my exact words, too, and we did not collaborate on that.

My noble friend Lord True, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that it is legitimate to discuss these issues, which were in the manifesto. He said that there is a widespread view in the House that we have to do something about the problem of those who do not participate. Peers contribute in myriad ways. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and I are suggesting setting up would take those myriad ways into account before establishing a minimum.

The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General said that agreement on doing something, having a metric and removing those who fall short of that level is important and that we should do something about it, but we are not setting it up here. All we are asking for is a committee to decide on the detail. The noble and learned Lord was justifying not doing anything because, he said, there were too many nuances. Of course there are nuances, dozens of them—there are hundreds of things to be taken into account—and that is the purpose of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. If we pass his amendment and set up the committee, it will do the consultation on all sides and spend a year or two figuring out the details.

I say to the noble and learned Lord that he reminded me of that wonderful “Yes Minister” attitude, where Sir Humphrey says, “Yes, Minister, that is a very good idea. We will set up an interdepartmental working group and consult the Cabinet committees and this, that and the other. Then we will publish a Green Paper first and then a White Paper. I am sure that we will be able to deliver on your promise—eventually”.

In conclusion, there is a mood in the House to take this participation problem seriously. Most noble Lords favour the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. He stressed that some noble Lords were fussing about the details. He suggests that could be done by the committee.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, that is an interesting concept, but I do not think there is a vested interest of mine in this set of amendments. I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said. I think this is a good direction to go down. Of course, I support the first two amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I was a supporter of Lord Diamond on those Benches in the days of John Major’s Government, when he tried twice to abolish the male exclusiveness of the hereditary peerage. I have promoted Bills to that effect, and it has never appealed to the Government of the day.

However, I rather like the noble Earl’s formulation, which puts a duty on the Privy Council to sort things out. I think leaving bits of sex discrimination lying around in prominent places matters. It is only a label, but I do not think it should be allowed to continue. It is not that hard to make a change, as the noble Earl shows, and I very much hope that the Government will feel inclined to consign one of the last bits of formal sex discrimination in our constitutional arrangements to the dustbin.

Amendment 62, like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is a device to get my proposed new subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) discussed. My interest in participating in the Bill is to make sure that, if we can, we use it to make sure that, going forward, the House without us will be in a better place and able to function better than it does now.

The first barrier that needs to be removed is that the Government should not only let us but positively encourage us to innovate and improve. We ought to have that motivation too. Things stay the same and change only slowly in this place, but we need to do better. We are sure of the effectiveness of our scrutiny when it comes to legislation, but I have never seen it really examined. Where are the research reports and the independent investigations? Where are the committees looking into this and proposing how things might be done better? We ought to be in a condition of constant improvement.

To my mind, the same applies to our interface with the public. For a long time, we have been limited by the fact that it is only us and that there are no staff. What we can do is throttled by that and by the need to work in this Chamber, but artificial intelligence is in the process of changing that and making it possible for someone in our position to engage with a great deal more information and conversation than was ever possible in the past. It also makes it much easier for people outside this Chamber to have a connection with and understanding of us and what we are doing, in a way we can join in with, without overwhelming ourselves. We ought as a House to be determined to give the public the benefit of these technological changes.

I am not particularly attached to the mechanism in my proposed new clause. It will take some rethinking before Report to produce something that gives the House the initiative, but also the duty, to improve, that allows it to push forward and that encourages the Government to support that. Obviously, big changes need a Commons veto, but we can move so that most of this goes via Standing Orders, while the bits that cannot should go via secondary legislation. We would need the approval of the Commons but would not need to go through the rigmarole of a Bill. House of Lords Bills happen very occasionally, but our process of improvement ought to be constant.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am standing up to speak before the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, because he is very fluent and I do not want to embarrass myself by following him. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I am not a hereditary Peer, but he knows that because I am a woman.

I wholeheartedly support Amendments 91 and 94 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. They make absolute sense and it would be a good move for the Government to take them forward as soon as they can, even if it is not in this Bill. In a sense, this are trivial—it does not affect many people—but, at the same time, it is an indicator of a lack of balance and equality in our society.

On the noble Earl’s Amendment 97, I really could not care less what we are, what we call ourselves and how we look. This whole architecture is Victorian kitsch. It is falling to pieces and it is time that we renovated. It is time that we sat not two sword lengths apart but in a circle like a modern second chamber. But I very much support Amendments 91 and 94.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendment 90F, which comes after this group, looks at increased representation from Northern Ireland. I am broadly supportive of that: however, I would like Peers from the whole of the UK to be properly heard in this place. I recognise that we are not representatives of where we come from—although in some debates you could be forgiven for thinking that we are on occasions—but having Peers from across the different parts of our country gives this place a different perspective. This amendment would allow party leaders and HOLAC to reflect that. I hope the House can support it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, on the face of it, it is utterly illogical and ridiculous for me to have signed this amendment. I want to get rid of the hereditaries and the Bishops—no offence. I want to make this House at least half the size. I agree, a little, on all sorts of things with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but let us deal with size in a different place.

Leaders already have quite a lot of power. We have tested these people. That is the whole point. We know the records of the Lords we are getting rid of—we have seen them and heard them. To suggest that they might not be a fit is also illogical. Of course, they do not need the title. I am sure that a lot of us just love being Lords and Ladies, but they do not, because they have been Lords all their lives, so for them it is not a promotion.

This Bill has an element of prejudice—I do not like it. As a working-class person, I loathe privilege and this sort of nonsense, but, at the same time, I also resent separating people into groups where you pick on them —we had an Oral Question on this today. So I very much support this.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, on putting together an eclectic mix of people to support her—all women. That is interesting, I am not sure she intended that. This has been a painful debate and this amendment would close it. It would be an elegant solution to what has been a terrible amount of drudgery for all of us.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I have spoken sparingly on this Bill, wishing to speak only if I had something useful to say—a self-discipline which I note has not been practised universally during the course of the Bill. To summarise my position, the principle of hereditary Peers is unsustainable in 2025; the Bill should not be opposed; but the Bill has consequences for the functionality of this House.

I provided evidence at Second Reading that a hard-working, regularly attending cohort of hereditary Peers was making a valued contribution to this House. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, confirmed the point eloquently in her contribution. My solution was to convert some of them into life Peers.

If I understand the position of the Government correctly, the valued contribution being made to the House by this hard-working core of hereditaries is not disputed. Nor do the Government seem to refute, in principle, the idea of a conversion to life Peers—according to Labour Back-Benchers, you achieve that by putting the names on a party list and submitting that for approval, as is current practice.

So, if we have agreement on the two main consequences of the Bill, what is the best way of finding a solution when it is this Bill that is creating the consequences? The “prepare a party list for conversion to life Peers” approach has, to me, two obvious failings. It takes no account of the Cross-Benchers, who are very valuable Members of this House precisely because they have no party-political affiliation and have to sign a statement to that effect. They cannot organise a party list. Secondly, surely we owe it to the hard-working hereditaries who have been turning up and doing their share of the heavy lifting to recognise that contribution as a House and offer a House solution to what is a one-off event? This abolition will not recur.

The sensible amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Mobarik provides just that. That her amendment has drawn support from the noble Baronesses, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, speaks volumes for the common-sense desire across the House to find that elegant solution.

I had hoped that by this point conversations would have been taking place through usual channels to progress this solution, but it seems that this process has become constipated. If my noble friend’s amendment, with the authoritative support it has garnered, administers the necessary dose of laxative, it has my unqualified support.

Even the dogs on the street know that we have to come up with a solution. I hope the Government will sense the momentum behind this amendment, will become positive in their reading of the mood of the Committee, and will be prepared to come forward with something constructive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, it is always difficult in this debate, which has been difficult for many, to justify some of the arguments on logic alone. The Leader of the House has presented some logical arguments, some of which are not really arguable against. She is right on logic: it is slightly absurd that 740 families provide Members of the legislature—but then, perhaps, is it logical that one family provides the monarchy?

The very small numbers that we have in this House seem fair and reasonable, and appropriate for a country that prides itself on its history and traditions. We have lots of idiosyncrasies in this country. Why do we not plan to knock down this crumbling building and replace it with a vast, super-efficient, open-plan glass and steel structure, with views across the Thames?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I am coming to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in a minute.

Of course, we would not do that. Likewise, I believe we can respect where we come from and recognise our rich fabric of community by allowing people who are proven to be good at their job and represent how democracy came to this country over centuries, as power was wrestled from the monarchy, to be allowed to continue to have a presence here.

As a meritocrat, I accept the argument that the best people should be appointed to this House, and it is not as if we would start from here by appointing new hereditaries—although my mum keeps telling me that she reckons I am up for an earldom, but I think that is unlikely. I hasten to add that, in my view, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, anyone in this House who does not contribute sufficiently and appropriately should be asked to leave forthwith. This amendment would allow people who are clearly capable, and who have the hugely valuable assets of institutional memory and years of experience, to remain.

I had in my script to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is right—it is not an expression I am used to, but she none the less makes the point that the hereditaries in this House fought to come in, through an election, because they wanted to serve.

If we are totally honest with ourselves, there is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, a certain randomness as to why any of us are here. The little that I know about the appointment process has shown me that it is perhaps more random than is generally recognised. I suggest to the Committee that to adopt the amendment is to do the right thing for people who have served us well and continue so to do.

We are told that poll after poll supports the abolition of hereditaries, and that might be true—I am not so sure. Even if it is, I think most people would accept that there is room for a very small percentage of Members of this House to come from a hereditary background and be allowed to serve their time. This amendment is in another fine British tradition: for a suitable compromise to be acceptable.