Interim Report: Leader's Group on Members Leaving the House

Earl Ferrers Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Ferrers]

My Lords, having listened to the remarkable contribution of my noble friend Lord Alderdice, it made me realise how complicated this whole issue really is. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, who has shown today how conciliatory and understanding he is, has done a tremendous job with his committee to produce this interim report. However, I am not going to be very helpful for I am bound to say that I find the whole subject totally disagreeable.

We have all experienced some riveting debates in this House. I look back on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which always sticks in my mind. Contributions were made to it by, for instance, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, who I see is in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester. They have produced some of the most stimulating, intellectual and philosophical debates to which one could ever aspire to listen, everyone trying to find a way through a deeply difficult ethical subject. No other House, no other Chamber, in any other parliament in the world could produce that form of debate and one of that quality. Many people know this and acknowledge it.

But now what is going to happen? Reform of your Lordships’ House is being peddled around the political arena again, in an effort to find some so-called perfection. All that we have is going to be thrown to the birds if we are not careful. Now we are debating how your Lordships can leave your Lordships’ House when your Lordships have had enough—or, worse still, when others think that your Lordships have had enough. If I were not in this Chamber, I would suggest that we have all gone stark staring mad, but that might be considered to be somewhat inappropriate language for your Lordships so I will temper it by saying that I think that your Lordships may be misdirecting yourselves.

The fact is that anyone who is made a Peer is in receipt of a huge honour, one that is bestowed on them by the monarch. When your Lordships are made a Peer or inherit a peerage, the patent that each Peer receives says that he or she is elevated to,

“the state, degree, style, dignity and honour of Baron”—

or Earl—

“to have and to hold unto him for his life”.

Those are pretty clear and trenchant words. That is what the patent says, it is what the constitution says, and it is what each of your Lordships is bound by.

It is difficult to see how a Peer should henceforth be able to say, “I think I’ve had enough now. I should go off and do something else”. Frankly, I find the proposal little short of offensive. Even if we were—wrongly, in my mind—to allow Peers to go, how would you get them to go? The usual way, I suppose: offer them money. A thousand pounds? No, there would not be any takers there. Five thousand pounds? None there either. Fifty thousand pounds? Well, there might be a flicker of interest. But how can you be paid not to do that which you have not been paid to do in the first place? The public row would be something terrible. Can one imagine how the Daily Telegraph would love it, and would probably misdirect us all at the same time? Or would we have a Star Chamber, in which various Peers sat in judgment on their colleagues and said, “He’s past it, poor fellow. He’s over 80”? I suppose that at this point I should declare an interest. All I would say is that there is nothing wrong with being over 80.

If you say, “Get rid of those who don’t attend”, that is fine, but they are not the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said. If you say, “Get rid of those who don’t speak”, that is fine too—but they are not the problem either. It is the chattering classes who are the problem. Of course, there are too many people in the House; we have had to billow over to below the Bar. That is a pretty humiliating fact, but whose fault is it? It is the politicians’. That applies to the leaders of all the parties, including my own, and we have to live with that and realise that that is what has happened. They have made the absurd mistake of making too many Peers. That does not mean that we do not welcome each new Peer as he comes—of course we do—but it is a question of numbers.

They now say, “Help, help, we’ve got to do something about it”. People say, in that curiously absurd phrase, “Well, we are where we are and now we must proceed from here”. That is a way of saying, “We have made an appalling mess of things but let’s not refer to it. Let’s find a way out of the hole”. It seems pretty elementary: if your house is being flooded with water, first turn the hosepipe off. If you have too many Peers, the first thing to do is to stop making any more. But no—not under this arrangement. Another 50 or more are on their way, which will merely exacerbate the problem. I find that unbelievable. It is bringing your Lordships’ House into disrepute. Maybe it is the idea of some to make the House of Lords unworkable so that it has to be abolished and replaced with a senate. I do not know if that is what people intend, but let us be careful. If we are not careful, that is exactly what will happen.

As usual, it is the politicians who have mucked it up. You cannot continue to alter the constitution just because politicians have played fast and loose with the arrangements. I hesitate to say it but these absurdities never happened in the “good old days”. By the “good old days” I mean the very good “good old days”, before the Life Peerages Act 1958, which some of us remember, even though most of your Lordships were only in knee pants. Then there were arrangements such as the Salisbury/Addison rules, which enabled the House to get over the problems of the day. But along came a Labour Administration which got rid of practically all the hereditary Peers, the Law Lords and the Lord Chancellor. Some of us were ridiculed as silly old right-wingers when we said that if you start tinkering with the constitution in this way you do not know where it will end—and it is a fact.

There were around 1,200 Peers before the House of Lords Bill was passed. The number then dropped to 666; it has now got to 738 and rising. The result is that more than three-quarters of the Labour Peers who now sit in the House and more than half the whole House were made Peers under the Labour Administration. If we start messing around with the House again by inviting or allowing people to leave, with or without a cash handout, we will invite total ridicule. I am almost certain that we will also do so by allowing the House to be wholly elected. For reasons that we need not rehearse today, I am totally against that.

My noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach properly let the cat out of the bag last week. He was followed today by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. My noble friend Lord Taylor said that it was the coalition Government’s aim to have a mostly elected but partially appointed House. I find that an astonishing announcement. It was never what the Conservative Party wanted. I suppose it is the pound of flesh that the Liberal Democrats extracted as part of forming the coalition. The Liberal Democrats, bless their hearts, have some very funny ideas. We may be bound together with them but they are a pretty arm’s-length body—to remind noble Lords of a phrase used by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe last week about quangos.

We should remind ourselves that your Lordships’ House stands high in the opinion of people and organisations. We are part of that. Do not let us destroy it further by allowing people to choose to buzz off when they feel like it. After all, there is leave of absence. I am bound to tell your Lordships that I think it is wrong even to consider this. It would be a constitutional disaster.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, he referred during his very interesting speech to funny ideas. For the record, would he like to comment on the views that he held at the time of the Life Peerages Act about the role of women in your Lordships’ Chamber, and whether he has changed those views?

[Earl Ferrers]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has produced the old chestnut. I am bound to tell her that I was giving the views of a young man, and the views of young men are always wanted to be known, are they not? I gave the views that I held at that time, which is what I thought and what a number of other people thought. Of course, things have happened since then and I have changed my mind. Peers are allowed to change their mind; even coalition Governments can change their mind. I do not have any regrets about that and I do not have any regrets about saying it because, after all, the noble Baroness will remember that it is important to know what young people want; and I consider myself still to be in that category.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, has misunderstood me. I was suggesting that it would be wrong to pay them not to come in future, because they are not here anyway. That is all I am saying. I think that the noble Lord made a similar point earlier, and I am very sorry if he misunderstood me.

Why should we now recompense people who, frankly, turn up only to draw that allowance—who do not make a contribution, do not speak, do not ask Questions and perhaps only occasionally vote as the Whips tell them? That is not a real contribution to the work of your Lordships' House. Occasionally, I hear Peers say that we can take credit for being unsalaried. As has already been said, if you are not salaried, surely that precludes any redundancy payment or pension payment, by definition.

I was struck by the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. We should consider very carefully taking a leaf out of the Bishops’ book. The idea of one in, one out, is admirable. Whether the different party groups and the Cross-Benchers would find that acceptable I do not know. As I understand it, when those on the Bishops’ Bench take retirement on an orderly basis, they do not get any golden goodbyes.

Incidentally, it is important to think for a moment about why the Bishops are here. They are not here to be the conscience of the nation; they are here because their ecclesiastical ancestors had to be in the counsels of the monarch of the time because they were hugely important landowners—feudal barons. They were important at Magna Carta. It was important to have them on your side if you wanted to go to war because they had a lot of money.

I am told on good authority that in medieval, feudal times, there were more Lords Spiritual than Lords Temporal, including abbots and abbesses. The first women in the English Parliament were pre-Reformation abbesses. That was nothing to do with the conscience of the nation, and predated the established church. I may be misled; I am a historian rather than a politician really, underneath, but perhaps there is a Henry VIII lesson for us here. If there is a political and practical imperative, that will have to take precedence over every other consideration. That is why my noble friend is so right: we simply cannot wait to have a new solution imposed upon us.

I did not think that I would ever say this, but I have to echo the words of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers—that is something new for me. I thought he was absolutely right. If I were really devious—and, of course, I am not—I would support the most absurd, ludicrously generous retirement package for those who cannot be tempted to go otherwise because it would undoubtedly increase and harden the public’s support for reform of your Lordships' House, which I believe in. That seems to me to be the right answer. If we want to get this on the road, let us be ludicrously generous because that will increase the public’s support for real reforms, but I do not think that is what is here.

[Earl Ferrers]

My Lords, the noble Lord was kind enough to say that he agrees with something that I said, but he came to the most astonishing conclusion. Can he tell me how what I said made him come to that stupid conclusion?

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Earl should take credit for persuading me, as he has this afternoon. He said that the public would never wear a really generous package to persuade people to retire. That has been echoed by other noble Lords. I believe he is right, but my view is that if we were to go down that track, it would simply increase pressure for the real reform package that I hope will come in due course.

I come to my conclusion. I believe that we are living in a fool’s paradise if we really think there is a huge reservoir of public enthusiasm for your Lordships' House in its present form, just because the other place is so unpopular. Therefore, we have a risk ahead of us. If we were to introduce such a generous new regime to persuade people to retire in the interim period, it would damage the reputation of this House. If this issue is addressed with the usual mixture—which we have had this week—of self-satisfaction and isolation from public opinion by some Members, the public will say, “Roll on reform” and amen to that.