House of Lords Reform

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the Leader of the House for introducing the debate. She and I have always had the most cordial of relations. I have been in this situation before, in the 1997 Parliament, but I survived it by becoming an elected hereditary Peer—although, of course, I had a plan B. Now, in the face of not just the Bill but a constant stream of very unfair comments about the House and its membership generally, all my motivation to undertake the role of Peer of the realm and Member of your Lordships’ House has been steadily corroded away, to the extent that I have now decided that I want to retire in the spring—and I am two years younger than the average age in your Lordships’ House. I need a lot of persuasion to do otherwise.

It is no good my friends around the House saying, “Don’t worry, you’ll pick up a life peerage”, as has been suggested in the debate. The chances of that happening to me are inversely proportional to the size of my independent streak and my lack of admiration of post-2016 Conservative Administrations—even though I think I am a proper Tory. As pointed out by many noble Lords, many outside comment on the composition of the House of Lords without considering its role, which is largely accepted to be to revise legislation, to be an additional check on the Executive and to be a source of expertise—that last part is extremely important.

When we read the post-US election analysis, we see that the Democrats failed to grasp that the US electorate were fed up with professional politicians who have limited experience of the real world and who inhabit only the Washington beltway. In the House of Commons, a minority of members of the Government, and perhaps even the House generally, have ever had a proper revenue-earning job.

The international security situation is dire—we now have state-on-state conflict in Europe. But research from your Lordships’ Library indicates that only about 17 Members of the House of Commons have any military experience, and only three have operational overseas aid experience. Only one MP, Alex Ballinger, has both. Of course, several of the current hereditary Peers have military experience, and one has both. No prizes, but it is sometimes said that Attlees are modest people with much to be modest about—but when the Bill comes into effect we will have no one in this House with both operational military and operational international aid experience.

It is curious to me that, in 32 years in your Lordships’ House, I have never been asked by the media what I am actually doing or working on. One current issue is prison reform, which, with the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is going rather well. The other is very niche, so far as Parliament is concerned. We have about 600,000 professional lorry drivers in the UK, and 400,000 heavy goods vehicles. The problem that I am dealing with is that a very few police forces are harassing the heavy haulage industry in circumstances where other police forces do no such thing. To do this work, I need to bring to bear practical experience of heavy road haulage operations—and this is important. It is something that no one else in Parliament possesses.

Once the remaining hereditary Peers are eliminated, the remaining life Peers will find themselves coming under increasing pressure in terms of composition of the House—a point raised by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others. This is because the political Benches will be filled largely with party apparatchiks with varying levels of experience, party donors, and MPs who have left the House of Commons in a variety of circumstances. Most importantly, they will all owe their position in the Lords to knowing someone in the Westminster bubble, something that is not necessary for a hereditary. No wonder the House of Lords has been described as being “hideously London-centric”.