House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady D’Souza in supporting this excellent Bill. As others have said, the changes are incremental, but they are ones we need. For me, as for most noble Lords, it is a huge honour to be a Member of this House. We take the position and our responsibilities very seriously. At the moment, the scrutiny that this House can provide is certainly required and occasionally we win a great victory—too rarely, but it is worth trying. The scrutiny we provide certainly improves Bills and the work that goes on in committees undoubtedly serves the country well. It is an honour to be able to take part in that.

Nevertheless, the route by which I got here was a strange one. I got back from a holiday in 2010 and my younger son said to me, “By the way, some posh-sounding bloke called. He sounded like the Prime Minister.” Of course, he did not take a message. Nothing happened, but then a month later I was at a party and my mobile phone rang, and it was some posh bloke who sounded like the Prime Minister; it was David Cameron. He wanted to know whether I would be interested in joining the House of Lords. It was not something that had ever occurred to me, but we talked a bit. One did not know whether such an invitation would ever come again, and besides, at that stage, David Cameron had a mission to heal the broken society and I was up for that, so I said yes. Then we got cut off, so my change in status was sealed with a text message, which finished, “LOL, Dave”. It is an unusual route. Things moved on and of course HOLAC had to look at whether I fitted the propriety distinction. I like to think that I did—I certainly got here.

What I am saying may very well sound like pulling up the drawbridge to prevent others coming in through a similar route. Having said that, I think my route may be quite rare; I was not on very familiar terms with said Prime Minister and neither had I been a donor, although it was useful to see the Sunday Times survey in 2021 which found that everybody who had given more than £3 million to the Conservative Party was honoured with a peerage—it is always useful to know the price. However, I think it highly unlikely that, having got through the propriety test, I would have got through the “conspicuous merit” requirements proposed in Clause 7(2)(a). There would have been people who were quite prepared to argue that a journalist who had been very rude about quite a lot of people, including some in this House, was probably not of sufficient merit to come in, so in a way I am very grateful for the limited powers that HOLAC had on that occasion.

However, I think we can all see that the time has come and things have to change, not least because only 6% of the country feel that the way people are appointed to this House is appropriate. Putting HOLAC on a different footing would be a massive change, even if it sounds small. Giving it extra areas to bear in mind and the power to recommend more candidates would be a good thing. The Bill would make it much harder, if not impossible, for a Prime Minister to simply ride roughshod over what the commission said and appoint to this House people whom the commission felt would not act as proper Members. Surely that is something that everybody in this House would support. I support the Bill.