David Nuttall
Main Page: David Nuttall (Conservative - Bury North)Department Debates - View all David Nuttall's debates with the Cabinet Office
House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
David Nuttall Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As Lord Steel stated when he introduced the first of his five private Members’ Bills on this subject, some six years ago, the years of debate about the long-term reform of the House of Lords have obscured the need for effective, immediate, yet modest, reform. Today, I hope that we can all set aside any differences we may have on long-term, substantial reform of the House of Lords and instead focus on delivering the very modest reform that this Bill delivers—although modest, it is overdue and increasingly necessary. It is important, too, that the House notes that this Bill has broad cross-party support. It has broad support across both Houses of Parliament, in the media and across the country.
Over the past few months, I have engaged widely on this matter, doing my best to ensure that this Bill is not seen as frightening or sinister in any way. I hope that I have been successful, because it is not a stalking horse aimed at any group of peers and it is not certainly not an attempt to close off any potential future reform. I wish to tackle head on the issue of the debate over an elected House of Lords, because this Bill makes no contribution to that debate whatsoever. The Bill does not prevent or preclude further reform of the House of Lords, at any time or of any type. This Bill is simply irrelevant to the debate over election to the Lords, and I believe that any Member, regardless of their position on an elected Lords, should feel comfortable supporting this Bill.
It is fair to say that that Lord Steel’s Bills did contain some controversial features: the establishment of a statutory appointments commission and an end to the by-elections for hereditary peers. My Bill does not reintroduce those proposals, and instead contains three core elements, all of which have already been agreed by the House of Lords during the passage of Lord Steel’s most recent Bill. First, my Bill provides for the retirement or resignation of peers who are Members of the House of Lords; secondly, it provides that those peers who do not attend should be cease to be Members of the House; and, finally, it provides that those Members convicted of a serious offence should also cease to be Members.
Clause 1 provides that peers may retire or resign as a Member of the House of Lords by giving notice in writing to the Clerk of the Parliaments. It will, for the first time, provide peers with an honourable and dignified retirement mechanism. It has been suggested that, in some instances, the honour of serving in the Lords has become a life sentence, and it should not be so. As the Leader’s Group on Members Leaving the House observed in 2011:
“For a conscientious member who has played a full role in Parliament, and takes his or her commitment to the House seriously, an honourable release from obligation could be welcome.”
Currently, there is no mechanism by which a Member of the House of Lords can permanently conclude his or her membership.
A leave of absence system was introduced in 1958 to address growing concern regarding low or non-attendance, but it has failed to meet the objective outlined by the then Leader of the House, the Earl of Home. He said that
“the objective which all of us desire is that we should be, and should be seen to be, an efficient and workmanlike House of Parliament, playing a limited but a definite and valuable part in the Constitution of our country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 April 1958; Vol. 208, c. 1005.]
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Although my hon. Friend suggests that the leave of absence system is not working, the latest figures that were in last week’s The House magazine show that 43 Members of the other place are on leave of absence, and the Parliament website gives a list of them. So it does appear that at least some Members in the other place are making use of the system.
Dan Byles
Absolutely; in the absence of any method of leaving the other House, the leave of absence system does provide a compromise. However, it is far from a perfect compromise, because one could very well ask: how many peers do we currently have? The 43 peers currently on a permanent leave of absence have a very ambiguous status. Some of them could, in theory, continue to seek a rolling leave of absence each time for 10 or 15 years and then suddenly decide to come back and start voting again.
Dan Byles
Absolutely, and as I said, I understand that a number of noble Lords are in exactly that position. I repeat that the Lords have previously passed these measures and sent them to the House of Commons, but the system for private Members’ Bills from the Lords has meant that this House has not agreed them. Why should this House continue to stand in the way of extremely simple and modest reforms that the other House has requested?
Mr Nuttall
When these measures were considered in the other place, Lord Steel’s Bill had the short title House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill, but they are now in the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, whose title contains that dangerous word, “reform”. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on why he has not stuck with Lord Steel’s title?
Dan Byles
That is a good question. Lord Steel has made five attempts to bring in some degree of reform. His first four Bills were all called the House of Lords Bill. There is also a House of Lords Reform Bill before the other place in the name of Baroness Hayman. We would need to ask Lord Steel why he made the change for his last Bill, but one can speculate about why he felt the House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill might have sounded less contentious. My view is that we are all grown-up and whether the word “reform” is in the title is not really the point. The point is what is in the Bill.
Mr Blunkett
Yes, I do believe that, and I put forward a paper to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on how the House of Lords could have a different function, building on what it already achieves and is good at, if we took away, very carefully, the element of it being a legislature. That does not mean that it could not debate and put forward legislative propositions; I am talking about the constitutional role that it plays, which is what upsets people so much—people not being elected to it— even if, under the proposal of the Deputy Prime Minister, those people would not be responsible or accountable to the people who elected them, because they would never have to stand for election again; nor would they have held offices, or have had to report back to their multiple constituencies in any meaningful sense. It would be good to start with the question of what we want the House of Lords to do, and then go on to how it should be made up, and how we could make it function better.
Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, who opened this Second Reading debate, is always ready to acknowledge, the pressure on him was to minimise any suggestion of any proposition whatever. He cannot be blamed for bringing forward a Bill that moves—I was going to use the term “goalposts”, but I think that has been overdone in the past fortnight.
Mr Blunkett
I was thinking of pitches. Let me put it this way: it is a Bill that moves the sods very little at all. We should commend the Bill, ask ourselves whether we are serious in wanting reform, and put it to our respective parties that it would be quite useful to put in the manifestos commitments to finding solutions, rather than putting up propositions that we all know will meet their demise once the practicalities, sensitivities and realities are examined and voted on in this place. Then we might get commendation from the electorate for acting like grown-ups and adults, and for being prepared to move our constitution on a little bit, while the rest of world moves the constitution around us.
I give my support to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. Whatever heads of pins people may stand on, and while they might make sensible points in amendments to the Bill, it would be a great shame if so modest a measure was scuppered by people who wanted the perfect as an alternative to it.
Greg Clark
I was about to say that the Bill contains modest proposals that the Government are prepared to support. Obviously, it needs to be scrutinised closely in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has ventured into the Bermuda triangle himself on occasion—whether he was singed or not is for him to say, but I am pleased to see him in his place today and look forward to his contribution.
The changes that are set out, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said, are relatively straightforward and represent common sense. There are those who argue that no change should be made until the wider case for reform, or improvement, as the right hon. Gentleman had it, or change, as other people might have it, can be agreed, but there is a clear consensus, after five attempts in the House of Lords, on the need to describe some arrangements that constitute incremental but nevertheless practical changes. It is only right that this House should listen to that call and take time to scrutinise it.
Mr Nuttall
Bearing in mind that these proposals had already been considered on a number of occasions by the other place before the Government introduced the House of Lords Reform Bill, does the Minister agree that had these measures been introduced in this place at that time, they would now be on the statute book?
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is, as always, a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who made, as usual, a very illuminating speech on the matter of Lords reform. I was one of the 91 hon. Members to whom he referred. However, on this Bill I do not start from the same position as I started from on the gargantuan House of Lords Reform Bill, because although this Bill’s title contains the word “Reform”, anyone would have to accept that it is not in the same league as the previous Bill.
I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on his courage in dipping his toes into the deep and turbulent waters of House of Lords reform. As an adventurer of world-record-breaking renown, he is no man to shirk a challenge. It is certainly a challenge to try to steer any House of Lords measure through this House, but no one is more capable of doing so than him. He should be congratulated on his bravery in picking up this issue. When he announced that he was introducing this Bill, he wrote on his website:
“Lords reform has been a difficult and controversial subject”.
Few would dispute that statement. It is a topic that has caused problems for many before him. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Bill, he should be congratulated on introducing it.
Although the Bill’s short title is the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, it is fair to say that it is not in the same league as the Government’s own blockbuster House of Lords Reform Bill, which hit the rocks and then sank without trace in the previous Session. It is nevertheless a reforming measure. I would take slight issue with my hon. Friend when he said that there was a “slight hint of constitutionality” about it. I would venture to submit that, on any measure, it must be construed as a constitutional Bill, albeit, I accept, a modest one. I wonder whether the private Members’ Bill route is the correct one for bringing legislation of a constitutional nature before this House. This Bill is certainly not typical of a private Member’s Bill.
I urge the Government to consider the merits of putting the Bill over to a Committee of the whole House rather than sending it to be dealt with upstairs, as would be normal for a private Member’s Bill. As I said in my intervention on the Minister, had the Government introduced a House of Lords reform Bill along these lines instead of the leviathan they did introduce, there would be no need for my hon. Friend’s Bill. The matter could have been dealt with in the normal way as a Government Bill, and that would have gone some way towards assuaging the feelings of those who would like more far-reaching House of Lords reform measures. At least, for them, it would have been some measure of progress.
My own approach to constitutional reform, which is particularly appropriate in relation to reform of the House of Lords, is that if it is to be done at all, it should be done on the basis of evolution rather than revolution. I accept that the aims of this Bill are fairly modest, but let us recognise that they have the potential to have a fairly radical effect on the membership of the other place. Because of the nature of the Bill, one can only surmise what its true effect would be. For example, if a statutory retirement scheme were to be introduced, we would have no way of knowing whether there would be a sudden rush of Members of the other place wanting to take advantage of it.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that the number of people who might take up such a scheme would depend on what the incentives were? One of the proposals that I made in my modest Bill is that there should be an opportunity for those who seek to retire from the other place to exchange their life peerage for a hereditary one.
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion, which he says is contained in his Bill; obviously I have not yet reached that provision. That would be an innovative way forward. As the law stands, it would exclude people from membership of the House of Lords, but they would be entitled to stand in any by-election that arose among the hereditary peers and would thus have a potential route back, should they so desire.
According to last Friday’s edition of The House magazine, dated 11 October, the current membership of the House of Lords is as follows: 220 Labour peers, 219 Conservatives, 184 Cross Benchers, 98 Liberal Democrats, 22 bishops, 21 non-affiliated Members, two members of the Democratic Unionist party, two members of the Ulster Unionist party, two members of the United Kingdom Independence party, two members of Plaid Cymru, one Green party peer, and five others. I am not sure where those others come from after such a long list of other parties, but there are five of them. Eight peers are currently disqualified. I understand that disqualification comes through perhaps being a judge, which prevents people from being members of the other House. As has been said, 43 peers are on leave of absence.
That gives a total of 829 peers, or 786 if one excludes—which one usually does—those who have taken leave of absence. Of those 786, roughly two thirds—537 or 68.3%—come from the three major parties: Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats. The rest are the Cross Benchers, the Bishops and members of the various other smaller parties.
I understand that the average attendance is in the region of two thirds of the total, which means that it is a little over 500. That is not that dissimilar to this place. The argument for House of Lords reform is invariably made on the grounds that it is too large and unwieldy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has said, it is somewhat ironical that over the years Governments of all descriptions have rushed to appoint new peers. The previous Labour Government created 408 peerages when they were in power, which led to an enormous increase in the size of the House.
The Bill would not have much effect—except in the case of the occasional, perhaps forced, expulsion of a Member who committed a serious criminal offence—on the numbers turning up to take part in the day-to-day work of the other place. No one should kid themselves that the problems of overcrowding would be eased that much by the Bill.
The Bill essentially has three different aspects and I will consider each in turn. The first is the retirement or resignation of a peer, the second the removal of a peer for non-attendance, and the third the removal of a peer after conviction for committing a serious criminal offence. I am inclined to agree that it is absurd that a Member of the other place should be required to remain a Member if they no longer wish to do so, but there is already in place a procedure that enables them to take leave of absence. Last Friday, The House magazine stated that 43 noble Lords have taken such leave of absence. Roughly 5% have taken advantage of the process, so it must be fairly widely known and it seems to be working. There is a list on the Parliament website of those Lords who have taken a leave of absence. I will not read it out, but what I will say is that 10 Members of the other place applied for leave of absence and were granted it in the first month of this Parliament back in May 2010. Those 10 knew straight away what the situation was and that they would not be able to attend, so they applied for a leave of absence.
Although the mechanism set out in the Bill is one way of dealing with this—and perhaps we can consider it in more detail if the Bill gets to Committee—it might be better if, rather than starting up a new system, we built on the existing mechanism of a leave of absence and made a provision for something that might be called a permanent leave of absence, whereby peers could simply say that until they write again they do not wish to be bothered by receipt of the writ of summons.
Mr Chope
Is that not exactly the system that is in place? A permanent leave of absence system was established in 2011 and I think that three noble Lords have taken advantage of it. The only respect in which it is not permanent is that it entails at the beginning of a new Parliament that each peer, even when in receipt of a permanent leave of absence, receives a writ of summons.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am not aware of the minutiae of the two schemes, but perhaps the informal voluntary scheme, which was introduced in 2011 and which allows a Member to write to the Clerk of Parliaments indicating their wish permanently to retire, has not been given a chance to work. It has not even been in operation throughout an entire Parliament yet. As my hon. Friend says, in its first two years of operation the scheme has attracted only three Members to take advantage of it, two of whom had been non-attenders for several years.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee helpfully produced, only this week, its ninth report of Session 2013-14, “House of Lords reform: what next?” The Committee took evidence during its inquiry and the broad consensus in the written evidence it received was that the current voluntary retirement scheme has not been effective and that it has had no notable impact. That raises the question of the extent to which the scheme has been publicised to their noble lordships. How many of them are aware that it is in place?
I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said during his excellent opening remarks that, at present, six Members want permanently to retire. If that is the case, it would be interesting to know—perhaps we will find out as the Bill moves through its various stages—why they have not availed themselves of the present voluntary retirement scheme, which, as I have said, was introduced back in 2011. Do they know that the scheme exists? If they do, why have they not taken advantage of it?
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely concerned about the desire to offer an incentive scheme. The danger is that, far from this being a cost-saving measure, it could end up costing the taxpayer a great deal more than the present system.
I accept, as a ballpark figure, that the scheme might involve several dozen Members of the other place who, for whatever reason, are not regular attenders. However, because peers receive an attendance allowance only if they turn up, all those who have taken a leave of absence or who simply do not turn up are not costing the taxpayer anything. If we offer their noble lordships an incentive to retire, we will enter an arms race of incentives. Although some Lords might accept the incentive, others will say that it is not enough, so people will say that we ought to make the incentives more generous. There are dangers in going down that road.
I can understand why peers might want to retire. As I have often said, a peer who is appointed in middle age or at the end of many years in another career will want to spend 10, 15 or 20 years in the other place. However, many of them will feel obliged to keep soldiering on out of a sense of duty to the other place and to the country. Of course, many of them do so.
Dan Byles
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must not underestimate the power of the writ of summons. For somebody who has devoted a substantial portion of their life to the service of their country and to Parliament, receiving the writ of summons from the monarch is difficult to ignore, even if they have taken leave and are entitled not to attend. Some people really do feel that they are letting their country down by not attending or not playing a more active role. It seems to me that having a formal retirement mechanism, rather than the informal one that is in place, whereby they would no longer receive the writ of summons but a great thank you for their service and would be allowed to retire in peace, would be an important step.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes an important and worthwhile point. There will be noble Lords in the other place who feel that they have an obligation to continue. One suggestion is that there should be a formal retirement ceremony to mark the service of a peer. There is, after all, a formal ceremony to introduce new peers into the House of Lords. We saw that ceremony only yesterday, when two new peers were introduced. That demonstrates that the figures that I gave from last week’s The House magazine are already out of date because of the new peers who were announced over the summer.
It is reasonable that new peers are introduced from time to time. Inevitably, the numbers will fall over time by reason of death. When there is a diminution in the number of working peers—those who regularly attend and take part in proceedings—because peers have died, it is right that the party leaders should replace them. What is not right—we saw this all too often under the last Government—is the creation of new peers for party political purposes. Currently, the Conservative party has nowhere near a majority in the other place.
The 2011 Leader’s group report, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire mentioned in his opening speech, suggested that it should be considered whether a
“modest pension, or payment on retirement”
would provide peers with an incentive to take up voluntary retirement, while also providing an overall saving to the taxpayer. I am not sure that it would provide an overall saving to the taxpayer. To be fair, such a payment is not suggested in the Bill, but I hope that it is not the thin end of the wedge. We should make it clear that there will be no inducement for Members of the other place to retire.
Mr Nuttall
It would have been helpful if there had been explanatory notes to the Bill that dealt with that issue. I have not seen any explanatory notes.
Dan Byles
If it was felt that something of that sort was necessary, it could be considered in Committee. Originally, the Bill simply referred to “retirement” and I changed it to “retirement or resignation” because I felt that the word “retirement” on its own had a number of implications to do with age, pensions and so on. I made it “retirement or resignation” to make it clear that it was not linked to the end of somebody’s working life and the connotations that go with that.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is entirely conceivable that there will be peers who wish to leave the other place for reasons other than retirement. They might wish to pursue another avenue.
It is often said that the other place is full of retired politicians. The last figures that I saw showed that only about a quarter of the Members of the other place had previously been Members of this House. On that basis, it would be a little unfair to describe the other place as being full of retired politicians.
Sir Edward Leigh
I have something of a pub quiz question. Can my hon. Friend name a single former Liberal Democrat MP who is not in the other place?
Mr Nuttall
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Perhaps we can refrain from discussing individual Members of the other place, or even those who might be individual Members of the other place.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful for the helpful intervention from my hon. Friend, because I fear that I would not have got very many points for that particular question in the pub quiz.
If I may return to where I was—which was not with the Liberal Democrats—it is perhaps a little unfair to condemn all the Members of the other place as retired politicians, when only about a quarter are former Members of this House. Moreover, they are not retired politicians, because they are still taking part in the political process. That is the crucial point. They may be retired Members of the House of Commons, but it is an entirely noble—I use the word in its fullest sense—calling to be a Member of the other place and to devote one’s working life to the scrutiny of legislation, as they do so admirably.
All too often, certainly when House of Lords reform is being discussed, we look at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. I am not making that point about this Bill, which is modest in its aims, but generally we look at the mechanics of the Lords rather than whether it is doing a good job in its primary task of scrutinising the legislation that we send to it. The answer is invariably that it is doing a good job.
The 2011 Leader’s group report suggested that it would be worth while investigating whether a modest pension or payment on retirement should be provided. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took evidence on that point, and the evidence of the Clerk of the Parliaments confirmed that savings could be made. I have some doubts about that, but it is a cause for concern. There is merit in the suggestion that we should have some sort of retirement procedure, whether it is called retirement or resignation—perhaps we could call it a leaving party. If that idea took off, it could mean a boost to the economy with House of Lords retirement parties, and give all hon. Members a new diary engagement at the end of each Session, as various Members of the other place retired or resigned.
We have had considerable discussion about what sort of scheme should be in place, and what use retired Members could make of the facilities. It has been suggested, for example, that the retired or resigned Members could still be entitled to make use of the facilities, and it might be worth looking at that idea. It is not an idea that I would favour, because in my view if someone has left, they have left, but it would perhaps be one way to encourage people to resign or retire.
Clause 2 relates to non-attendance and provides that if someone does not attend during a Session, the Lord Speaker can certify that they
“did not attend at any time during the Session, having regard to attendance records kept by officials of the House, and…did not have leave of absence in respect of the Session, in accordance with Standing Orders of the House.”
My concern about that provision is that it is not entirely clear what “attend” means. For example, if someone attends the building, but does not take part in proceedings on the Floor of the House, does that count as attendance?
Mr Nuttall
I was coming on to that point, but it does not explain whether attending the proceedings of the House covers, for example, somebody who wishes to attend and listen to the debate, but then decides that they do not want to take part in the vote.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend will be aware that, because of the very large numbers in the House of Lords, the seating at the Bar of the House that is not technically within the Lords is now being used by peers. If a peer were to sit behind the Bar, hoping to attend but not actually be in the body of the House, would that count as attendance?
Mr Nuttall
As always, my hon. Friend makes a valuable and pertinent point. Have those peers attended the proceedings or not? What if they were to attend but had to witness the proceedings from the Gallery because of the lack of seats?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I can help my hon. Friend on that point. Certainly in this House, the Gallery counts as the House and, if the Chamber is full, it is possible to speak from the Gallery, which I hope at some point to do—although not today. [Laughter.]
Mr Nuttall
No, not today. Whether one is on the Floor of the House in the other place or in the Gallery, does merely attending and watching count as attendance, or would one be expected to vote? Many of the Cross Benchers, because of the nature of their appointment to the other place, often do not wish to vote on certain issues, so we need to be careful with that provision.
Clause 2 amounts to the compulsory exclusion of a peer from the other place, and in many ways it is therefore much more controversial than clause 1. Clause 1 has its problems, but we can deal with it. Clause 2 is more controversial, because someone would risk being excluded from the other place against their will. They might not be happy about being excluded and we should be careful in our consideration of the provision. It has been suggested that we should go even further and put in a minimum attendance level and link it to the number of votes a peer takes part in. For example, as a minimum, a peer should take part in at least 10% of votes to maintain their membership of the other place.
Sir Edward Leigh
That is quite dangerous. I can think of at least one former Prime Minister who would be disqualified from attendance of this place.
Mr Nuttall
I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be a dangerous precedent to adopt. We heard from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who suggested that voting should be used as a method of determining whether peers are non-attenders. In a written submission to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, he stated that peers who have not voted in more than 10% of Divisions for three Sessions out of the last five should be removed from having “a formal role”:
“They would of course remain Peers and could be allowed access to the restaurants and bars (but not offices, research and other working facilities). This would be commercially prudent.”
That may be prudent from a commercial point of view, but it would be the worst of all worlds. We would have Members of the other place effectively treating it is a social club: not taking part in proceedings, just having a drink in the bar. If anything were to bring the other place into disrepute, it would be such a mechanism.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Would it not also undermine the benefit of having a House of Lords of specialists? We want peers to intervene on subjects they know about, not to turn up for any old thing on which they have no expertise.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point that links in with my earlier point about Cross Benchers, who often feel that they only want to take part in debates on issues on which they have specialist knowledge. It may be that in one Session their area of expertise is not brought before the House, but that in the next Session it is and their expertise is desperately needed.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
While I do not wish to disagree with my hon. Friends, I find it extraordinary that people could be appointed to the House of Lords and contribute, in more than 10 years, to just one debate on one day. They could give evidence to Select Committees, if that is all they are worth.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful for that intervention. I think the vast majority of peers, as the figures demonstrate, take an active part in the proceedings of the other place. As with any large body, there will always be one or two Members who fall outside the general norm. The old adage says that difficult cases make bad law. We should not form our laws around one or two cases; we should look at the majority.
There are a lot of other things we could do to deal with non-attendance. Frankly, if peers are not attending, they are not causing any problems—they are not taking up any space and not making use of the facilities. I understand that there are one or two Members who, apparently, use the facilities but do not attend. Quite how that works needs to be considered, but I am sure there are other ways to do it. For example, it would be easy, even if the clause became law, for Members who wanted to retain their membership of the other place to take advantage of their membership without playing a full and active part. They could turn up on the first day of the Session, take part in a Division, thus ticking that box, continue to come and go as they please and not take part in anything else. Human nature being what it is, there will always be one or two who do that if such a provision is introduced. It would perhaps become known as “the Byles attendance”. They would do their Byles attendance day, get their mark and think, “Phew, that’s dealt with clause 2.”
Dan Byles
I would hate it for anybody to think that any measure in the Bill, with the possible exception of the references to criminality, is accusing any Member of the House of Lords of gaming the system. That is not the intention. The Bill does not suggest that people are trying to pull a fast one; it is simply that some people want to leave and should be allowed to leave, and that some people have no interest in attending and therefore should be moved on so they can be replaced by somebody else. Of course, my hon. Friend is right that there are always ways of gaming the system, but the Bill starts with the premise that we are all hon. Members and noble Lords and will probably not be gaming the system.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I need to make it absolutely clear that no one is suggesting, and I am sure that none of the hon. Members who have intervened is suggesting, that any noble Lord is taking advantage of the facilities of the other place without playing a full part in proceedings. What we are doing is looking at hypothetical cases that might happen, which is right and proper when we consider legislation of this nature.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is being too generous, if not naive. In his evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Lord Cormack said that
“it is difficult to say this but it has to be said. There are those who attend very regularly indeed and do precisely nothing. They do not speak; they do not take part in committees; they vote.”
Mr Nuttall
That is evidence straight from the other place. If that is the case—we have no reason to doubt that it is not correct—the situation we are discussing might not be as hypothetical as I have just ventured to suggest. I still express the hope and desire that it is not widespread. If it is happening, it raises questions about whether we need the provisions in clause 2. My point, which is that there will always be people who try to play the system, is applicable.
Finally on the non-attendance provision, what if someone was in a coma as a result of tragically being involved a road traffic accident, and so unable to apply for leave of absence or attend? I appreciate that it is up to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate, but I wonder whether someone suffering from ill health ought to be protected by being excluded from the clause.
Under clause 3, a Member could be excluded from the House of Lords if they were convicted of a serious offence and
“sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely or for more than one year.”
To get straight to the heart of my concern, human nature being what it is, there is a danger that those involved in sentencing, knowing the accused to be a Member of the House of Lords and knowing that were they to hand down a sentence of 12 months or more they would lose their membership of the other place, might think, “Well, we’d better not give them 12 months, because we don’t want them to lose their membership”, or, “Well, we’ll give them more than would otherwise be the case, because we think they ought to lose their membership.”
I do not know which of those two evils is the worst; they would both be equally unwelcome, so I wonder whether we would not be better to leave the matter to a committee on standards and privileges in the other place to consider each case on its merits. It could then weigh up the different aspects of each case and decide whether it would be appropriate to expel the Member. I entirely agree that there is a danger, if the other place does not have rules in line with those in this House, that people outside will rightly think that there is one rule for some and one rule for others; and they would not expect those who have broken the law in a serious manner also to sit in the legislature making the laws. All we have to do is come up with a mechanism for dealing with that.
I am concerned about sentences handed down by foreign courts. I suspect that such concerns are the reason clause 3(6) provides that if the other place resolves that there are special circumstances, a Member of the other place convicted of a serious offence could still remain a Member of the House of Lords, if the conviction was outside the United Kingdom. Obviously, there could be many jurisdictions in which an offence carries a much more serious penalty than in this country, which is why this provision is in the Bill, and rightly so. I wonder, though, whether anything would be lost by removing the phrase “outside the United Kingdom” and leaving it open to the Lords in any case, even if the sentence had been handed down by a court in this jurisdiction, to waive in certain circumstances the provisions in clause 3(1).
The final three clauses deal with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, the detailed rules about the issuing of a certificate by the Lord Speaker and the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill, all of which I have no comment to make on at the present time. Although this is a relatively modest measure, it could have enormous constitutional consequences for the other place. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on his bravery in bringing it forward and repeat my request that this matter is considered by a Committee of the whole House.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). His remarks should persuade anybody who has any doubts about the desirability of having this constitutional measure debated on the Floor of the House in a Committee of the whole House of the wisdom of that course of action, because this is a serious constitutional Bill. In the absence of a written constitution, it is this House and the other place that have to look after our constitution, and why should all Members of this House not be able to consider in detail the provisions and implications of this Bill, which could be done if there were a Committee of the whole House?
One of the advantages of the Government supporting any motion in relation to Standing Order No. 63 would be that the Committee of the whole House could meet to consider this not on a Friday, but on some other day of the week, so we could get an even higher attendance than we have been able to achieve today. We could then be sure that, if and when this Bill leaves this place and goes to the other place, it will have been properly thought through and all the constitutional implications will have been explored.
One of my roles in life at the moment is to be the representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Venice Commission, which looks at written constitutions. Last week in Venice we were looking at the proposed Tunisian constitution, and the time before we were looking at the amendments to the Hungarian constitution. One of the problems with those written constitutions is their rigidity. We are fortunate in having an unwritten constitution, which is inherently flexible. Long may that continue to be so. That is why it is essential that, before making changes to our constitution, which we can do by a bare majority in both Houses, those changes should have been properly thought through in the way my hon. Friend is encouraging us to do.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on introducing this Bill. It is a pity that he was not able to incorporate in it some of my ideas in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, which is also on today’s Order Paper. Some of my Bill’s provisions dealing with retirement are perfectly apposite to his Bill. If his Bill reaches a Committee of the whole House, some ideas from my Bill may well be taken forward by him in the form of new clauses or amendments. I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made specific reference to his view that we should have a maximum number of peers and that it should be 650, which is exactly what is contained in clause 1 of my Bill.
My Bill sets out a retirement process for peers on a different basis from that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, but it does, as I mentioned in an intervention, deal with the issue of incentives for retirement. Clause 5 of my Bill refers to the ability to convert, whereby the title of someone seeking to retire becomes a hereditary one on retirement. That would provide an incentive, not an expensive one, and it would address the issue of a lack of incentive and of compensation, which seems to be very much at the forefront of my hon. Friend’s Bill.
As has come out in the debate, clause 4 of the Bill, which deals with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, is silent on the issue of any costs. Would, for example, severance payments be made? Could we ensure that there was no guarantee of, or no entitlement to, severance payments? I imagine that the issue of whether money should be paid out of central funds to compensate people who cease to be Members would be a matter for the other place. However, that should be specifically excluded from the provisions of this Bill, so that in no circumstances could a Bill which made provision for retirement from the House of Lords be an additional and significant charge on public funds.
As we recall, the Prime Minister has been very hot on the issue of reducing the cost of politics, although he was not able to reduce the numbers in this House because of the duplicitous way in which the minority Government party and the Liberal Democrat leader behaved. Meanwhile, however, the Prime Minister has been increasing significantly the numbers in the other place, and that has added significantly to the cost of politics. So the cost of politics, far from being reduced, is going up substantially. On the way back to this House yesterday, I was looking at the Daily Mail, which was forecasting that yet another tranche of new peers is going to be appointed very soon—perhaps the Minister wishes to intervene on that point. That will increase their number even beyond what we have now.
I do not know whether one reason for the visits to China by the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London was to see the Chinese second Chamber, which is the world’s largest. Our House of Lords is exceeded in size only by the Parliament of the Chinese Republic. Having regard to the relatively modest population in this country compared with that of China, I am not sure that we should be pleased that we have a Chamber of Parliament that is second in size only to that in the Republic of China. The case for reducing the number of people in the House of Lords through having a maximum number is very strong. Having said that, I am not sure that the way that the Bill goes about it is right in its present form.
Clause 1 refers to the issue of retirement or resignation. Essentially, those words have the same meaning. The long title of the Bill makes provision for retirement from the House of Lords; it does not refer to resignation. Obviously, those who were looking at the drafting of the Bill realised that the term “resignation” effectively came within the concept of retirement. The use of the word “resignation” rather than “retirement” is an issue of semantics rather than of substance.
However, I am concerned that clause 1 does not make it clear whether, and if so how, it applies to their lordships spiritual and to hereditary peers. At the moment, it seems to apply to all peers, but I am not sure it would be appropriate for the Bill to introduce rules relating to the retirement or resignation of their lordships spiritual or to hereditary peers. However, that is not spelt out in the Bill.
I am concerned also, in clause 2, about the issue of non-attendance. There are many ways of defining non-attendance and the Bill sets out some of them, but as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made very clear, one may well be a Member of the other place but not choose to attend. For example, at the moment Baroness Ashton finds herself too preoccupied with trying to rule us from Brussels to be able to attend the other place. One might argue that, in that case, it would be a good idea if she was forced to resign, or indeed expelled, from that place, but that is a separate argument and it is not covered by the Bill. However, there is a wide range of reasons why someone might wish not to attend the other House.
Many of the witnesses who attended the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee discussions on these issues made the point that the relative number of people who would wish to retire at the moment is very modest, so because most of those who would wish to retire do not attend anyway, the provisions relating to retirement would have no significant impact on the numbers in the House of Lords. Those who are currently not attending would be faced under clause 2 with the threat that if they carried on not attending, they would be deprived of their membership, so those people might be given a perverse incentive to start attending. The Clerk of the Parliaments has said that the biggest problem with the other place is not the people who do not turn up, but the fact that so many people do turn up, with the pressure on resources.
Clause 2 is misconceived. It deals with a presentational point. Their lordships seem to think that if there is a suggestion that some people are not very regular attenders, that causes reputational damage to their lordships House. But as we have discussed, there may be any number of reasons why those people choose not to attend, and if, in any event, under the provisions of the Bill, they could receive a certificate from the Lord Speaker to the effect that, notwithstanding their lack of attendance, they could still carry on as Members of the other place, that undermines that provision of the Bill.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took all that evidence, and we produced a report. Some people—even the Minister on the Front Bench today—said that they were wholly in support of everything that is in the Bill. I think that is going a bit far. Sadly, I was not able to be present at the meeting at which the Committee examined the final report and considered possible amendments. If I had been able to contribute at that stage, I certainly would have tabled some amendments.
Having said that, the report accepts that there is a case for dealing with some of the issues covered in the Bill. The strongest case relates to clause 3, on people who have committed offences, because it would bring the Lords in line with what happens in this House to a greater extent. Even on that clause, however, I have some concerns.
As soon as somebody was convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a year or more of imprisonment, he would automatically cease to be a Member of the other place. That would apply even before any appeals process had been exhausted. Someone might be convicted in the Crown court and wish to appeal against the sentence, but before the appeal they would lose their position in the other place.
If one wants to go along with the idea of clause 3, it would be much fairer to provide that a person ceased to be Member of the other place after they had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in excess of one year, but also after all their rights of appeal had been exhausted. That would still not cover someone seeking an appeal in future through the administrative process by which people can have their convictions reviewed, but the provision in clause 3 should apply only after the right of immediate appeal against a sentence has been utilised and proved unsuccessful, or after the person in question has chosen not to use it.
I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about convictions having to be from courts in the United Kingdom. Criminal legal services operate in contrasting ways in different countries, and if we are to deprive people of the right to be Members of our legislature, we should say that a conviction by a court overseas has no effect. We should not leave it to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate on that issue.
As we heard in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the previous Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman, and some others of their lordships, are keen to extend the provisions of the Bill into the area of expulsion of Lords who are guilty of conduct that brings their House into disrepute. The previous Lord Speaker, along with the noble Lord Goodlad and one or two other witnesses, told us that that would be a good idea. However, the points that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made show that we must be extremely nervous about what the impact would be if their lordships tried to extend the range of conduct—misdemeanours as well as criminal law offences—that they considered sufficient to deprive somebody of being able to be a Member of the Lords. Even in this House, we do not have the power to expel Members who have not been convicted by the criminal courts, and it is not sensible to give such powers to the other place.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend think that clause 3(2) is unnecessary, and that the Bill could manage just as easily without any requirement for the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate? The Bill could simply say that if someone was convicted, they would cease to be a Member of the House of Lords, and still retain the provision in clause 3(6).
Mr Chope
Yes, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is another issue on which there might be amendments. I am concerned about how the Bill will proceed, assuming that it gets its Second Reading today, because if it does not go to a Committee of the whole House, it is quite likely that there will be so many amendments that people will want to move and debate that the Bill could end up taking up all the time available for discussion on Fridays; that is another good reason why it should go to a Committee of the whole House.
I should not sit down before commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about the potentially ageist nature of the reference to retirement in the legislation. I have the privilege of representing the constituency with the largest proportion of residents aged over 65; the proportion is just over 35%. Obviously, that means that a much higher proportion than that are able to vote in elections, because those under 18 are excluded from doing so. I therefore have a particular reason for saying that it is important that the older generation be properly represented in this House and the other place.
Quite a lot of people see it as their objective in life to try to bring in, directly or indirectly, a restriction on the age until which people can participate in our democracy in a representative capacity. We should be hostile to those moves. That is another reason why I have always been against the idea of a retirement scheme for their lordships that is based just on age. The proposal in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, to which I referred earlier, would not require people to retire based on their age; retirement would relate to the date when they first became Members, which can be a completely different kettle of fish.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, the Bill is, on any view, a modest measure, but many modest measures have been brought before the House. Some of the Bills in my name further down the Order Paper are very modest measures—two clauses at most—but that does not mean that they will find favour with the Government Front Benchers.