House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the issue before the House is not the merits of the hereditary Peers or the contribution they make, about which there can be no doubt. The issue is very simple: is it really acceptable in 2025 that, for decades to come, a House of the legislature should continue to consist of a large number of people who are here purely because of who their ancestors were? For me, that is unacceptable.

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Parkinson. “Peer” comes from the Latin word par, which means “equal”, and in this House, wherever we sit, we are all equal. We have a shared experience; we are here with a common purpose to scrutinise legislation and serve our country. There may be Peers with whom we disagree or Peers whom we admire, but in the brief time that I have been in this House, I have understood one thing: we are all in this together. Both hereditary and lifetime appointments form a constituent part of the legislative process within the framework of the constitution of the United Kingdom. To abolish the hereditary element is an attack on our constitution, but this has already happened, so I accept reluctantly that there should be no further elections for hereditary Peers.

What I find hard to accept is the spiteful ejection of the existing hard-working hereditary Peers, who across this House bring so much energy and expertise. The unique composition of the House of Lords does not seem rational, but it really works, as Ian Dunt wrote in his book How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t. He is a man of the left, and this was not what he thought he would discover when he began working on this book. But that was his conclusion: this is the one element in our system that works.

The hereditary colleagues in the last Parliament had overall a better attendance record than life Peers, and over half of them serve as members of Select Committees. I declare an interest as my father was a hereditary who was booted out in 1999. He was a retired general who brought all his military experience to the Defence Committee. One of the things I have noticed is that our hereditary colleagues have a greater humility—and perhaps, if I may put it this way, noblesse oblige—than those of us who think we have been placed here because of our wonderful achievements. I really believe that the removal of our colleagues will leave our House worse off, rather than better, and surely the principle of any reform should be improvement, not diminishment.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will not be surprised that I do not agree with this amendment, for the reasons so pithily put by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. There are a number of points with which I could take issue, but I will pick up a couple from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. He implied that those of us who supported the “Grocott Bills”, in their various guises, were almost being hypocritical by not voting for this today. The truth was—with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—that the Grocott Bills were second best. They were the best that was on offer, and we saw them as a way of making some progress while believing that what is in this Bill was preferable.