House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have not chosen to speak on any of the previous occasions that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has sought, with his usual skill and humour, to tempt the House with one of his many Bills. It is an honour to follow him, and what really worries me is that I enjoy listening to him and he often talks a lot of sense but, unfortunately, I cannot support his Bill. He has made his “the nation remained calm” joke several times before—again, with his usual skill.

First, I make it clear that I am not particularly keen to die in the ditch over by-elections. I am exceptionally keen to preserve the system of appointments, not elections, to a House whose role is to advise on legislation, be an additional check on the Executive and, perhaps most importantly in today’s context, to be a source of expertise. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, when he follows me, will have a slightly different view.

I fear that the Bill may be a catalyst for all sorts of undesirable and unpredictable outcomes. It is of course essential that the Government of the day can be defeated in Parliament, although, eventually, the elected House usually predominates. With the current leadership of this Government, I read my whip only out of curiosity. I can do that because, in respect of my position in this House, I owe nothing to anyone who is alive.

It seems to me that many want to consider the composition of this House without considering its role. If it is desired to dispense with an upper House with its existing role, it is essential to consider how the House of Commons could be rejigged to provide our current role within its system, but I do not think that is an easy challenge. We have only to look at the United States, where it appears that its abortion laws are determined in its Supreme Court and sensible gun control laws cannot get past that court.

I rather think that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in pursuing his Bill, is fiddling while Rome burns. Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010 have been stuffing this House so full of Peers that we are now being unhelpfully compared with the Chinese National Congress, and there is little that we can do about it. The current Prime Minister has made appointments against the advice of the Appointments Commission. Furthermore, the House is becoming hideously London-centric—although I take the point made by the noble Lord in respect of hereditary appointments and admit that I am slightly a part of the problem, because I live in southern Hampshire. Even if all the hereditary Peers left, without a statutory appointments commission, Prime Ministers would still soon fill up the available space. I accept that the noble Lord seeks to get rid of the by-elections, not necessarily to get rid of me—at least not now. We urgently need an appointments commission that has a duty to return to and maintain a House of a reasonable size and, most importantly—following his point—with regional and political balance.

I agree with the noble Lord that the issue of female hereditary Peers is clearly a problem. However, it is not insurmountable. We could legislate so that only peerages with letters patent that have been amended to allow equally for male or female succession were eligible in the by-election system. I think that would be a rather more profitable Bill.

I mentioned us as a source of expertise, and we have a wide range of expertise. About 18 months ago, the Daily Star claimed that no Member of this House had trade skills. This is obviously not correct, but nothing was done to correct it. There must be some noble Lords on the Benches opposite with trade skills. Speaking for myself, I have some engineering skills. I can operate a lathe and a milling machine; I can weld by several different processes; I can operate a heavy recovery vehicle and a tank transporter, and I am also a qualified HGV driving instructor. There is no one in either House who can match that experience. On Monday, my Motion on the HGV drivers’ hours SI will be informed by my practical experience of road transport operations. Yet I was also capable of being a Minister in the Government Whips’ Office for four years. This, of course, is a well-trodden path for hereditary Peers.

I think we should target our efforts against Prime Ministers who are ruining this House by appointing far too many Members.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, for a fourth time it is my pleasure to give a very warm welcome to my noble friend’s attempt—successfully this time, I hope—to get this measure through Parliament.

The last time I spoke in your Lordships’ House on an earlier version was in March last year. Before that, it was in March 2019 and on a Bill that had had its Second Reading 18 months earlier, in September 2017. As I said early last year, that was quite some foot-dragging, and still we make no progress while, as we have heard, the by-elections roll merrily along, bringing—this is the serious bit—this House and democracy into disrepute. This is all at a time when, rather than bringing in more white, male hereditary Peers, we need to reduce the size of the House and increase its diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity and background.

It is bad enough that we outnumber the democratically elected House next door, but to do so with 90 of our Members being here by virtue of their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers or, sometimes, their great-great-grandfathers is a source of shame to a 21st-century legislature. To those women who have approached some of us during our preparations for this debate and who, unbelievably, want to entrench inherited privilege further by adding an extra cohort of white hereditary people to this House—the daughters of hereditary Peers—I say this: that is no way to tackle gender inequality.

What they are asking is for a group of women who have not managed to be appointed here through their own skill, achievements or talents to become legislators in this great Parliament. They want women who have not managed to be appointed here on their own record to have the right to come here on the deeds not even of their grandmothers but of their grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers. It is hard to imagine what these people are thinking. This is not feminism, and it is nothing to do with equality. If those women object to male offspring being able to be catapulted into this House, surely they should join my noble friend Lord Grocott in his campaign to end the by-elections for male offspring. Of course I want to see more women in here, but on their own merit—that is, on where they have contributed to our society in public, political, artistic, medical, academic, charity or creative life. I want women here for what they have done, not for what their great-grandfathers did.

To those who support women inheriting seats here, I say this: if they have any interest in fairness, equality or democracy, how do they think this would look to ethnic-minority communities and others excluded from this VIP fast track? Indeed, I ask them, as I ask the men who support continuation: at a time when Black Lives Matter has made such a difference around the world to our thinking about representation in our communities, what does it look like that we continue with something that excludes a large part of society? Do they wonder what the press would make of some of their predecessors? In this period, when we look back at the creation of wealth in this country, we know that some of it was borne on practices that we would now, through today’s lens, look at with abhorrence. Some of those people are exactly the ones who were, in their time, ennobled and brought to this House. Today, I think that the press will look very closely at anyone coming in like that and the original awards with some embarrassment.

It is always the same band playing. Have noble Lords noticed how many of us are here again? I see my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Anderson, as well as other noble Lords who often speak on this issue. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord True, is frequently, though not always, here. Back in 2017, he was honest enough to admit that some of the resistance to change had been to further the Conservative interest. The figures bear that out, with 10 times as many Conservative than Labour Peers embroiled in this insular scheme. To the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, whose grandfather is of course still held in great regard, particularly on this side of the House, I say this: I doubt that his grandfather, when he accepted the title, expected to see his grandson sit as a Tory Minister as a result of it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

Perhaps Mr Tony Blair should have invited me when he was leader of the Opposition. He is so charming, he could have convinced me to join the noble Baroness’s Benches. Who knows what the outcome would have been?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

That is a question of public appointment, as we know, and there is some controversy about public appointments—but we have approaches to them. Making the committee on public appointments also a statutory body is perhaps also something that we need to do when we have a Prime Minister who is not, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, a “good chap”.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, we already have an Appointments Commission for the Cross Benches.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I thank the noble Earl. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that we should then move towards a partially elected House, at least, or perhaps even an indirectly elected House. That is the direction of travel in which we need to go.

We all know that the second Chamber does valuable work. I say to the Minister: yesterday, I was checking how long the House of Commons had spent scrutinising the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill. It was just under two hours for Committee, Report and Third Reading. We ought to give that a little more scrutiny, and that is what this House is here for and does very well, as we all know.

My plea to the Minister is: I hope that he will imitate the example of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and do his best to stretch his brief. We all know that it will say that the Government are opposed to piecemeal reform, the time is not ripe and this needs further consideration. It is clear that this debate has been quite different from that of some years ago. Even in this House, the mood is changing. We will come towards taking this step within the next five to 10 years, and perhaps he might even suggest that it could be in the next Conservative manifesto. Therefore, I look forward to what the Minister will say, and I hope that he will give us a little encouragement at the very least—as far as his brief will allow it—and that we take this forward.

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[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I can only assume from that that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, would have been in favour of a Prime Minister, with a clear manifesto promise and a huge majority in the Commons, creating 700 or 800 Peers in order to get his legislation through the Lords. He talks about respecting tradition and not upsetting the apple cart too much, but that is an outrageous suggestion and I think he knows it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister at the time did have another option of course, which was to have a general election. Peers versus the people—we know what the result would have been. We took full account of that, because I was there at the time.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Is the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, suggesting that a week or so after winning a majority of 150 in the House of Commons, on a manifesto commitment to get rid of all the hereditaries, it would have been a good idea to hold another election so quickly?

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, we knew that we had to comply with that manifesto commitment. The party opposite and the Prime Minister were out-negotiated by Lord Cranborne.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

It was not complied with, as he perfectly well knows. You do not need a second general election in order to validate the promises made at the first one a few weeks before. We are getting into the ludicrous weeds at the moment, I have to say.

The other thing that people simply have not given an answer to is the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and my noble friend Lord Anderson that Governments cannot bind their successors. This is line one, rule one of any course on the British constitution, which everyone seems to understand. I never thought I would need to explain that to Members of the House of Lords. Of course you cannot bind your successor. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, why would you bother having elections if that applied?

I thought I would check the figures. If we look at the people who were actually in either House in 1999 when this binding—we are told—agreement was made, which all of us must abide by, most people were not in the House of Commons or the House of Lords at that time. Some 75% of this House—590 of us, including me—arrived after the 1999 deal, or so-called deal, was struck. In the Commons, the figures are even greater: 90% of MPs in the Commons have come here since 1999; only 62 of the 650 Members of the House of Commons were here in 1999. Do eight or nine people in this Chamber today have the affront to say that those Members of the House of Commons and of this House must absolutely deliver to the letter the deal that was made, which in some cases was before they were born? It is an absurd argument. I feel as though I am dealing with a new class on the British constitution sometimes, when I am winding up these debates. Those are the figures.

I am obviously grateful to so many of my colleagues and Members on the other side; the strength of feeling on this is reflected right across the Chamber. I have to mention the noble Lord, Lord Young—I was not born yesterday; I knew that, when he was giving the answers from that Front Bench, he basically did not believe a word of it. I am not one to talk, because I have whipped a few Bills through that I did not believe a word of, but that is life.