Retirement and Participation Committee Report

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a considered debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for the careful way in which she opened it. However, the fact that we have once again spent an entire day of precious parliamentary time debating our future as a House will be surprising for those outside this Chamber. Businesses and employers might have expected us to be debating national insurance, the job-killing Employment Rights Act and some of the highest energy costs in Europe. Farmers may have expected us to be focusing on food security and the family farm tax, and, most importantly, hard-working families might have expected us to debate energy bills, personal taxation, housing delivery and rising unemployment.

But the future of this House is important. Any change to the rules by which we govern ourselves, no matter how important the issue it seeks to resolve, must be weighed against the imperative that we must preserve our ability to do our duty as a House and hold any Government to account.

We have heard from across the House a number of themes begin to emerge in our debate today. We have heard how these proposals will have a disproportionate impact on the Cross Benches. If both rules were applied as of today then 30.5% of the House would be affected, but that rises to 46.6% of Cross-Benchers. My noble friend Lady Eaton raised the important issue of the effective running of this House and particularly about effective committees in the House, should many of our experienced Peers be expelled.

A number of Peers raised the lack of clarity about the problem that we are trying to solve with these proposals. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising reminded us just how many Peers are actually present in the average Division. By that measure, the House is clearly not too large.

Sadly, the Labour Party manifesto gave no evidence for its claim that the second Chamber of Parliament has become “too big”. It merely gave its unevidenced diagnosis and prescribed a mandatory retirement age. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne told the House that it is not for this House to obstruct the Government’s manifesto commitments but it is not incumbent on us to expediate the Government’s measures by amending our own rules in this House.

The bitter taste of discrimination has been remarked on by many noble Lords. In the last Session, Members of your Lordships’ House were expelled simply because they were the wrong sort of Peer. In this Session, we are being asked to expel noble Lords because they are the wrong age—not because they have a lack of capacity to do the job, as we have heard from so many noble Lords today. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, spoke eloquently on this point. I hope his noble friends will listen to him. Why can we not find a way to deal with capability? Why do we have to use age?

Two tests are proposed in this report—age and participation. The participation proposal is born of understandable concerns. The committee was right to reject a speaking requirement, which would serve only to encourage performative contributions. Mandatory attendance is not without its negative consequences either. Fundamentally, it is a good thing that noble Lords who are experts and still working at the top of their respective professions may come to the House when they have something to say without having to clock in to retain the right to do so in future. Equally, some Peers come to the House so infrequently that they make no real contribution to our public life. The principle of participation is not unsupportable, but its implementation must not weaken the House.

I turn to age. A mandatory age limit for sitting Members of your Lordships’ House was a commitment made in a discredited manifesto of a discredited Prime Minister who no longer holds high office. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us of how the manifesto was broken on the day the Chancellor moved to freeze the tax allowance. I wish Sir Keir Starmer well, of course, but his departure should give us pause for thought about how we go forward now.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I am slightly surprised to hear this from the party opposite, which went through rather a lot of Prime Ministers. Somehow I do not remember that party calling the manifesto discredited at that stage.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will ignore that comment.

We have not sought to agree a collective position across our Benches. It is for noble Lords to come to their own view. Of course the Front Bench has a view, but we must always respect the views of our Back-Benchers.

It is not for a single House of Parliament to expel parliamentarians. This is a proposal that has been brought forward by the Government. Let them bring forward a Bill. It is for Parliament to decide.

As my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition said earlier in our debate, Parliament may wish to implement grandfather rights without opposing the Government’s plans for a mandatory retirement age. That was the solution when the Irish representative Peers were expelled. It is what the House voted for during the progress of what is now the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026. We also know that a resolution of the House would not prevent Peers refusing to leave in line with the committee’s proposals. Peers may fairly argue that the test should be the competence, not the age, of the Peer. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred to earlier, age is being mistaken for capacity. Peers may also argue that the other place has no mandatory age limit, so why should their departure not be voluntary? All this is a recipe for a continuing, rumbling discord in this House. If we are to have a mandatory age, let the Government bring it forward and allow both Houses to scrutinise it thoroughly.

Perhaps the most painful part of the committee’s report is the proposal that Peers be expelled from the House mid-Session, once they reach the age of 80. Grandfather rights would avoid that. Transitional arrangements are proposed in this report, but these do not mitigate the real impact that mid-Session expulsion would have on the work of Peers. If a Peer knows that they are expected to leave the House in the middle of a Session, that will disincentivise them from being involved: from speaking at Second Reading and tabling amendments in Committee in those final months of their public service. Our most experienced Peers might step back sooner than they should, depriving the House of their wisdom and good judgment. We must carefully consider all these issues. In the case of previous expulsions, which themselves caused real acrimony and unpleasantness, Peers saw out the Session. We opposed those expulsions, but the House at least accepted that Peers must be given the opportunity to complete their current work before being forced to leave the House. Surely that is the least we can do.

We know that the average retirement age is not much over 80 at present, so why are we doing this? We must balance the negative effect that mid-Session expulsion will have on the scrutinising work of Peers against the reality that these measures are solving a problem that exists in theory but will have very little impact on average. The impact of this change will not merely affect an average; it is not just a question of numbers. Behind the statistics that we have heard today are noble Lords who have dedicated their lives to public service—noble Lords we have known, worked with, agreed and disagreed with—and they are the people alongside whom we have voted for many years. The moment of their expulsion marks the endpoint of a long and distinguished career in public service, and we must consider the individual impact of these proposals and how that affects our work as a House. They should be given the opportunity to complete their work as parliamentarians rather than being expelled suddenly as the guillotine falls. That would allow noble Lords to bring their contribution to public life to an end in the way that they wish, as they deserve, rather than being bound by an arbitrary date.

As we have heard, the Government’s plans mean the departure of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. We have heard how he won the House’s support for his amendment to the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill earlier this year. As my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising reminded us, the noble and gallant Lord was 96 when he won that Division. These plans will mean losing the expertise of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral from the Opposition Front Bench. We have benefited from his extensive ministerial experience, and he helped lead the House in challenging the most damaging elements of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill.

Under this proposal we will also lose distinguished noble Lords from the Government Benches, such as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, who were both singled out for special praise by the Prime Minister in his first speech as leader of the Labour Party in July. We will lose the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who has so ably demonstrated his reputation as a defender of parliamentary scrutiny in recent weeks. The loss of noble Lords across the House is not just a point of personal pain, although we on these Benches ask the Government what these friends of ours have done wrong. Their loss also has an impact on our work. Losing the expertise of long-serving noble Lords risks the quality of our scrutiny. It is this effect that we should put at the forefront of our minds.

My noble friend the Leader of the Opposition has set down four tests that we should consider in our deliberations. Will what we do improve the ability of the House to hold the Government to account? Will it enrich the experience of the House? Will it enhance the independence of the House from recent or present Governments? Lastly, will it enable the House and its committees to do their revising work better? Those are the tests we must apply before taking any decision on the future of our House, and we believe the proposals before us fail those tests.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton and all members of the committee who took part in the deliberations and carefully considered the issues. Many doubted that, in the time that was allocated, they could come back to this House with a proposal and some consensus on a workable way forward. It is only through the diligent work they have undertaken that this report is before us today, and we should be grateful to them—I think all noble Lords, bar one, did thank them for their work. They listened to a broad range of views, as I have done tonight. The Government welcome the approach they have taken and the spirit in which their report was produced. We have seen past attempts at reform of this place, and consensus often feels quite elusive. We should recognise that this report has found a way through that, and that all members of the committee agreed with it.

I have been very interested to listen to all the contributions that have been made. This is, of course, a valuable revising and scrutinising Chamber filled with expertise and dedication to public service. However, the expectations of our Members are not just about their experience and expertise but about their judgment borne from their life experience—we do not ask Members with experience to take part only in debates on the area they know the most about; we have them here for their judgment.

I referenced our manifesto. I think the Labour manifesto at the last election was the first manifesto of which I am aware that explicitly recognised the good work of many Peers who improve the quality of legislation passed in Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, asked me about form following function. We are not dealing with the function of the House of Lords; we are happy with it. The criticism comes from how we are perceived and the way we are constituted. Looking at these issues over the years, we have produced and debated numerous reports—the Wakeham report, the Cunningham report, the Burns report, and now the Taylor report—and each has brought a different perspective to these issues. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, alluded to eloquently, then the frustration starts about how so little progress has been made. I have spoken before about the track record of stagnation and stalled attempts at reform. I have been clear that we want to work with the House to get a better outcome, and on how incremental change can make a difference.

The committee, and many Members who have spoken, often acknowledged that change is needed. There is general, but not universal, agreement that the House is too big and that we need certainty on how we can replace departing Members and bring in new expertise and experience—a point made by many of the Cross-Benchers. We are also clear that we want an active contribution from all Members of this House. That is not to say that all Members have to be full-time—that would not serve the purposes of what we seek to achieve—but we want them to value their membership and contribute during their membership. That is why we committed to a mandatory retirement age and a participation requirement.

Some of the arguments against taking any action on this report sounded very similar to those we have heard before when debating other changes. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said that these proposals would affect 46% of the House.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I did not say that.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I cannot remember the exact percentage. These proposals would affect 100% of this House, because every current and future Member would be affected by them; they are completely non-discriminatory in that way. The other argument often used is that we should not make this reform until we have made lots of other reforms—

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

They are discriminatory because the people here now came in thinking they were staying for life, and those who come in from now on will know that they finish at 80. That is the difference.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is implying that there is no notice. To give notice is the very reason for these proposals. It sounds like they are going to happen tomorrow, but these proposals do not come into force, or start to come into force, until 2029, when there will be a retirement age of 85 which will go down each year to 80 by 2033 or 2034. I just make the point that every time a change is suggested, there are those who say, “We want change, but not this change, in this way, and not now”. I think that to survive and do our best work, we often have to embrace some kind of change. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, and others asked why I set up this committee. I think he attributed motives which I would dispute.

On Lords reform issues, our manifesto looked at certain stages, and there are number of issues there. When we were debating at one of its early stages the Bill on hereditary Peers, there were more amendments, more pages of amendments and more pages of Hansard about retirement age and participation—and a number of noble Lords on the other side spoke far more about it—than about hereditary Peers: “Why aren’t we doing anything about this?” So, that is why I set up the committee. I promised this House that rather than just bringing forward legislation, we would give this House the opportunity to examine and look at the issues, to give it the opportunity, as noble Lords asked for, to take some responsibility. No good deed goes unpunished, does it? But there is an opportunity for us to look at this. That is the first point.

Also, I thought we would have learned a lesson from the hereditary Peers legislation. Time and again, my noble friend Lord Grocott brought to this House proposed legislation to say, “We’ll end the by-elections, which means no new hereditary Peers come in and those who are here remain”. That was rejected time and again by the party opposite when it was in government. That would have been a much smoother transition. If the noble Lord wants to intervene on me, please do.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

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

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Collins. Back in 2014, I supported this Bill in the House of Commons. It had cross-party support—it is Parliament at its best when we all agree—and I am slightly surprised that, 12 years later, we are still having these debates. As my noble friend Lord Wolfson says, we really need to get on with it. I believe it is the right development in the right place, it is the right plan and it is at the right time.

However, I have a question for the Minister. We are talking about a visitor centre and noble Lords will see the number of schoolchildren that attend this place on a daily basis, so it is important that we get the content of that visitor centre right. What sort of content will it have? What relevance will it have and how will it come across to people of a younger generation? It will attract a broad spectrum of the population, but it is very important that we educate future citizens about the Holocaust, so I am interested specifically in school visits—how will the visitor centre cater for those?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we have had extensive debates on the Bill and I know there are strong views across the House on a whole range of issues relating to the delivery of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. We were right to debate this important Bill in full and scrutinise its every aspect, but now we have just one issue before us. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, on his success on Report and we were delighted to give him our support in that Division. We have worked closely with him and in discussions with the Government to secure the concession that the Government have made in response to his amendment.

It is very welcome that Ministers have confirmed that the learning centre will be focused exclusively on the Holocaust and antisemitism and that there will be no question of it drifting from that purpose. That commitment is an important step towards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. I am pleased that he and the Government have come to an agreement on this, and we will continue to support him.

I conclude by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, for the constructive way in which he has engaged with me and other noble Lords to get to this point. Like many other noble Lords, I give very big thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley. He was a joy to work with as we went through what was, in the early stages, a difficult—probably the most difficult —Bill I have ever been involved in, and I thank him for that.

Next week, on Tuesday, it is Holocaust Memorial Day. I believe it is fitting that tonight we take what I hope is one very big step forward in the delivery of this memorial to the 6 million men, women and children who perished in the Shoah.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank everyone for their contributions to this evening’s debate. I do not want to delay us too much, but I want to reflect on a number of comments, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who has been doing excellent work on Holocaust education, and I have followed him in many places, trying to make sure that his message was repeated. I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, earlier today and I mentioned that I went to Bratislava to attend a memorial event in a square, but it was not limited to that. We then went to the concentration camp, the transportation centre, and I saw at first hand where people, including children and babies, were kept. The impact of that will always live with me. A memorial is not enough, which is why the learning centre is so vital.

I also want to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. To answer the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, we cannot bind a future Government. We wanted to look at how we could ensure that the purpose was fully maintained. The Bill does not have all the governing structure or all the stuff that we need. I do not want to embarrass the noble Lord, but his advice about how we can enshrine the purpose in those trust agreements was essential.

The most important thing—and we have heard this today—is that we leave tonight united in one purpose: that we do not forget the 6 million who were murdered or the consequences of the Nazi crimes. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, he knows where I stand on the crimes of the Nazis. Of course, the very first people they imprisoned and murdered were trade unionists who were standing up for workers’ rights, and we need to understand that. I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said to me this morning: that antisemitism did not start with the Nazi crimes. It has been with us for 2,000 years. We need to ensure that we understand the impact, not only of the past but on the living, and I think she is right.

Why have we not put it in the Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said it all. In the narrow function of the Bill, adding a statutory provision along the lines envisaged could create difficulties and uncertainty in its enforceability, and I want to see us united on the way to do that. The noble Lords, Lord Verdirame and Lord Wolfson, have helped me in how we can deal with that.

I also reassure noble Lords that further consideration will be given to the different forms of governance which might be right for the memorial. As the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has asked me to do, we will give an assurance that those proposals will be published, including the governance documents that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, referred to.

I understand the points the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has made. He has made them fully in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Hanson is here, who can actually take these points up on how memorials are protected.