House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to express my strong support for the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. In doing so, I emphasise that this is in no sense a comment on the abilities or contribution of individual hereditary Peers. I know as well as we all do that we have some excellent hereditary Peers. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, who I know extremely well, has been a very great support over the years and I greatly value his contribution to the House. This is not a personal statement; it is about principle, the reputation of the House and our ability to contribute effectively to the parliamentary process.

First, the principle of the continued membership of this House of 92 Members based on a set of rules developed in the Middle Ages is simply not tenable in the 21st century. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has said over the years, the hereditary principle ensures that every hereditary Peer, apart from the Countess of Mar while she was here, is male. We currently have the Black Lives Matter campaign beginning to change recruitment in industry, sport and all corners of the country. This House and the Government cannot justify turning their backs on it. I ask the Minister to take this point back to his colleagues.

Secondly, we cannot do our jobs effectively unless Ministers and the public take the House seriously. The cold reality is that they do not. The Government should regard the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as a top priority if they really want to be taken seriously on their levelling-up agenda. They cannot have these two situations continuing alongside each other.

If Ministers do not want to find time to deal with this issue on a permanent basis, then I ask the authorities of this House to grasp the nettle so we can do something about it ourselves. As others have said, we managed to suspend these elections during the pandemic. I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of man, or beyond our authorities, to find a way to suspend these elections on a permanent basis until the Government can find time for Parliament to deal with this matter formally. It is very important that the suspension should be permanent so that we can make clear to the public that this House wants reform and to see these elections ended, so that, over time, this House will be much more representative of the population. Of course, the ending of elections for hereditary Peers is an incredibly mild reform, but at least it would establish a 21st-century principle that every Member of this House, at least in principle, is selected for membership on the basis of merit. We know that this does not always happen, but at least this would be a start.

At the same time—I am sure this is much more controversial—this House also has to grasp the nettle of wearing robes, which were introduced surely in the Middle Ages. We have to make the point to the public that if the Government do not want to reform this House, we—this House—want to reform ourselves and bring ourselves into the 21st century. I do not think we can continue in a situation where most of the public frankly regard us with a degree of ridicule. The recent comment by Matthew Parris, which I shall not even repeat as it was so rude, says it all. He regards us as ludicrous and crazy; the sort of place that should be got rid of. We have to do something. The Government are not going to do something. Therefore, if we could get the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, through, it would be wonderful. I do not think any of us are very optimistic about that, so I ask for the basic point of the Bill to be put into effect in the way that I have suggested. I implore the Government, and if not the Government our House authorities, to act and to do so without any further delay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, being, I think, the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate presents certain challenges in finding something novel to say. I thought I would begin by giving your Lordships a view of the House from a relatively recent arrival, who still has, if I can put this without being offensive, one foot in the real world, or the outside world—just about—but who has developed a degree of affection for the House over the year that I have been here. I have two contradictory observations from many occasions over the last year when I have listened to your Lordships, but not participated, in what were essentially internal debates about the organisation of the House, its composition and so forth.

The first is that your Lordships are rightly proud of the very good work undertaken in this House: the work to improve legislation, which I have seen myself, and the work done by Select Committees—to mention just two examples of the justified pride that your Lordships take in the work that you do. At the same time, I notice the periodic tendency of noble Lords to beat themselves up about two issues in particular: the number of Peers in the House and its composition, which is principally to do with the hereditary Peers who are sitting here. It is undoubtedly the case that the latter is in some sense the cause of your Lordships’ frustration that the outside world is not giving proper recognition to that very good work, so I have a few words of assurance for you.

Outside this House, nobody cares how many Members the House has. Nobody cares about the composition and the role of hereditary Peers. There has been by-election campaigning over the past few weeks in Old Bexley and Sidcup, and I congratulate the new Member of Parliament; there is another by-election campaign taking place in Shropshire at the moment. I am absolutely certain that if all the politicians—those from this House and others—who have traipsed to those places in recent weeks and will continue doing so, were asked how many people on the doorstep voluntarily raised the composition or the numbers of this House, or even had a view on that if pressed, the answer would be negligible.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I understand the point that the public are not terrifically aware of the composition of the House and so on, but the journalists are and they are ruthless about this House. They ignore us and are rude about us; that is the reality.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

And they influence the wider public.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

They influence the wider public but they also influence MPs and Parliament. It makes it very difficult for this House to be as effective as we should be, bearing in mind the quality of the people in the House of Lords.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I really do not think that we are to be driven by a small number of journalists who have a particular view on the topic, which the public do not share. If we are accountable to anybody, it is to the public for whom we legislate. We do not legislate for journalists; we contribute to legislating for members of the public, and they do not have a particularly strong view.

One of the reasons for that is that the hereditary principle is embedded in our constitution, and the monarchy is a popular feature of our constitution. Although the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, whom I have always found in our work together on the Built Environment Select Committee to be extremely courteous —and, I would say, mildly conservative in his personal habits and conduct—would no doubt want to make a radical dissociation between his views on the hereditary Peers who sit in this House, not personally but as a concept, and the monarchy, the two are related. People understand that there is an element of traditional authority in the way in which this country is run, which they accept more easily and comfortably than they do new and innovative constitutional concepts.

But, even assuming that we were ridiculous in the minds of a small number of journalists and that this really mattered, I do not understand why we would be less ridiculous if the Bill were to pass. The majority—not all—of the Members of this House who are not hereditary Peers are here because of political appointment or because they have achieved a degree of eminence in the military or in their professions. I give all credit to those; I am not knocking life Peers—of whom I am one, of course—any more than I am hereditary Peers. But what is the rational basis or logic of that as a principle of composition of the House of Lords?

I note that the Bill provokes a great deal of excitement. I even heard the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, advocating that, as a House, we should contrive to find a way to break the law—not simply to go back on an agreement but to break the existing law—by finding devices by which we could subvert our legal obligation to hold these by-elections, to force a change in the law. That is a degree of radicalism that clearly shows how strongly people feel about this. But the fact is that this is a damaging and dangerous measure. Other, more modest, measures could well be followed. Amending the succession rules of peerages to include female and male heirs or widening the electorate for replacements of hereditary Peers to include the whole House would be genuinely incremental changes, but this is a radical change.

I entirely support the Government in thinking that radical change of that character should not be undertaken piecemeal but should await a comprehensive proposal, which may indeed include an elected House; I would be perfectly happy with that. It should not be undertaken on the basis that, I fear, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, knows is much more radical than he presents it in his modest way.