House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Lord Speaker for taking this initiative, following it through and keeping in touch with the committee so well. It was very interesting to work with the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who made us work very hard to consider every aspect of this issue. I am not telling tales when I say that the only real arguments we had was over whose turn it was to pay for the coffee. Strangely, everybody offered to do so every week, so the members of the committee worked together well.

The Leader of the House started off by saying that she wanted to hear the views of the House and get a proper feeling. I hope that she now understands the strength of feeling on all sides of the House that we need to move on this and make something happen. I noted that a few noble Lords said that there was no real problem, but it was a very few. I think that over 90% of noble Lords who have contributed to this debate are very clear that we need to act, and in the very near future.

Many noble Lords have accepted the general thrust of the report. It is important to realise that it constitutes a direction of travel and a package which we have put together and can be tweaked. Its proposals could be implemented more quickly—I think they may well be—and we considered all the other ideas and thoughts that have been raised in the debate today.

Several noble Lords have mentioned a retirement age of 80. It is true that the Labour Party group that we served on recommended that noble Lords retire at the end of the Parliament in which they reach the age of 80. I am still very sympathetic to that and I think that more noble Lords will consider their future and plan ahead a little more. However, two difficulties need to be addressed that are not resolved by retirement at 80. The first is that it would not affect each party equitably. That is a real difficulty. However, the other real difficulty is that the noble Baroness said that she wanted to encourage a culture of retirement. However, we are not going to get that if noble Lords thinking of retirement think that they are just going to be replaced by more and more people on the Prime Minister’s list. That is one of the other difficulties with simply having retirement at 80.

The real key to the process suggested by the Burns committee is that of the steady-state concept—namely, that we will hit a sustainable target which will solve these problems in the longer term. A cap has been talked about. Irrespective of whether the cap is 600 or 450, it is the principle of having a cap, and thereby having a sustainable state, that is key to all this.

I wish to say a few words about the 15-year period because it is difficult to get this right. I know that some noble Lords are concerned about younger Members. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is not in his place but the Clegg Bill that he supported suggested a period of 15 years, and only one term of 15 years. The average length of time served in the House of Commons is about 8.7 years at present, and there are plenty of young people willing to risk their careers to go into the Commons. I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, dealt with the other aspects of that.

Mention has been made of the hereditaries. I am a strong supporter of the Bill proposed by my noble friend Lord Grocott, who unfortunately cannot be here today. I think that there is increasing support for that in this House. This committee, however, was looking at what changes were achievable on a relatively short timescale, and we could not propose legislation that we knew—as the Minister has mentioned again today—would be blocked and would not get through.

I also want to pick up on what has been said about the need for better regional representation, be it a senate of the nations and regions or other types of approach. As a northerner, throughout my political life I have come down to London on a Monday and gone back on a Thursday. I recognise that there is a very serious imbalance, not just in those who are represented here, but in the attitude to those of us who choose to stay and live in the north. I was told on more than one occasion that I would never get on in politics if I did not move to London. That culture is still around, but the committee could not look at the structures and suggest the kind of senate that has been mentioned, because that would have required legislation. The problem there is with our political leaders, because they are the people who have nominated to this House people predominantly from London and the south-east. That is a very big problem that we have to overcome.

Time is against me, but I will just remind the House of what the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said earlier. This House and the Members in it often take pride in calling ourselves a self-regulatory House. This is our opportunity, regardless of what was said a few minutes ago. Unless we take action, this issue is going to slip away from us. There is no way, without a cap and without changes of this kind, that we will not see an increasing size of this House. There is no end unless we make some changes. My noble friend said that “the buck stops here”; others have said variations of that. We can make a difference, and the report gives us a very practical way forward that we can tweak as we go along if necessary. It is the first time that we have had a comprehensive solution to this problem, one that I am glad has been so welcome in this House today.