House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Baroness Mattinson Excerpts

Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mattinson (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a huge honour to follow the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and to speak here for the first time.

It has been a whirlwind few weeks and I am so very grateful to everyone who has helped and supported me: Black Rod and all the staff here for the incredibly thorough induction process and wonderful, warm welcome, as well as my noble friends Lord Dubs and Lady Hodge, both of whom have been so crucial in my career to date and have helped enormously in making my formal introduction a tiny bit less scary.

Having survived that a couple of weeks ago does not make it any less daunting to stand here, not least because I usually never speak without the prop of a full deck of PowerPoint slides. Frankly, I was disappointed to learn from my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lady Smith—who have been so helpful in every other way—that I would not be able to use slides here this morning, so please bear with me as I speak unadorned.

I am new here, but I am not new to politics. My first election was in 1987, when—along with the late, great Philip Gould—I worked on Labour’s campaign. Young Labour Party staffers I spoke to recently were amazed by this, as most had not even been born then, and pressed me for quaint stories about the olden days. I can see that many noble Lords here will not need any such briefing.

I have worked on almost every general election since, and often on what happened in between too. Overall, if my career has been about anything, it has been about keeping the organisations I have worked with—businesses, government, political parties and their leaders—in closer touch with those whom they serve. Focus groups and polling have been the tools of my trade. In my view these are not dark arts, as some characterise them, but an effective way of creating an open, sustained and positive connection. And politics—let us face it—needs that positive connection; it is very much a work in progress.

Disappointingly, we have been heading in the wrong direction. Trust in politics has plummeted to its lowest score for 40 years. This is not a party-political point. Fewer than one in 10 people trust politicians, of any hue, to tell the truth—although your Lordships might take heart from being slightly more trusted than estate agents or journalists. But the grim statistics speak for themselves: only 28% say they have any confidence in the House of Commons. In focus groups, Prime Minister’s Questions—the one set-piece debate that the public watch—is seen to epitomise everything that is bad about politics. It is shouty, it is point-scoring, it is partisan and, frankly, it is rude.

Here in this place, I gather we like to do things differently. Certainly, from what I have seen so far, noble Lords are nothing if not courteous. However, the same poll revealed that confidence in the Lords was 8% lower than in the Commons, at just 20%. This is not something any of us can afford to ignore. If people lose faith in our institutions, our democracy weakens, and a weak democracy loses legitimacy. A recent poll suggested that more than half of Gen Z voters—that is, very young people—would rather be led by a strong dictator who does not bother with elections. Even if that is only half right, it is pretty scary. Our democratic institutions are facing the biggest sustained attack since the Second World War. This is urgent. It is harder for us here than it is in the other place; there, they are accountable to an electorate every few years and that sure focuses the mind. We are going to have to work a lot harder on building that positive connection. Like my noble friend Lady Chapman, I am from Darlington. I often ask myself, “What on earth would Darlington think?”. We must all keep asking such a question and we must make it our duty to know the answer.

How we are appointed here and, crucially, how the public perceive how and why we are appointed here, really matter too. It is just one part of the wider package of reform that people voted for when they voted for change so resolutely last July. The most significant change we could make, by some distance, is removing hereditary Peers. Nearly 70% of the public strongly support this move. That must be our main focus in reform.

There is also a lot that we can do to shine a light on the excellent work that is done here every day—day in, day out. Two-thirds of people say they know little or nothing about what happens here, and that is on us. That is why we need to shake things up and transform our reputation and performance. There is a lot at stake, and I am very much looking forward to playing my own role here in the future.