House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

Hear, hear to that—I could not agree more with the Leader of the House. We should not be debating this at this time at all, and we are in risk of rendering ourselves irrelevant and foolish by debating these matters when things of far greater importance are going on. But I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that he must accept that the composition of this House is very different from that of the time when he first introduced his Bill. Many of those who are now in this House would have supported it at that time. Surely it is only right that we have the ability to debate these matters, for the first time in many cases, now.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made reference to me. I want to put it on the record, because he has said it before, that the amount of time that I spoke during the debates on his Bill in 2018—a Bill which had six hours of debate—was under twice as long as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has spoken today. In those six hours of debate, I spoke for 16 minutes; that was all. It was not a prevarication at all.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is right for me to intervene. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who asked me for an apology, that I make no apology for carrying out the policy of my Government when I was a Government Minister. The policy of the Government was that we should not remove the 92 until a stage 2 reform came forward. Our Government, in coalition, in 2011-12, brought forward a Bill which would have led to the removal of hereditary Peers from your Lordships’ House. As was said earlier by others, that was frustrated by a group of Conservative Back-Benchers and the Labour Party in the other place. So, the Conservative Party did address that question, and I say to the noble Lord that I will never apologise for carrying out the policy of my Government.

So far as the noble Lord’s other remarks are concerned, there is a difference between this Bill and his Bill. We have another amendment on this later, so I do not want to protract this discussion now, but the difference was that his Bill allowed for the continuation of valued Members of this House—indeed, it was commended by a number of people who spoke on his Bill for that reason—while this Bill provides for the total expulsion of Peers who are here under the 1999 Act. There is a profound difference between those two Bills.

In the proposals I put forward to the Leader of the House—I am grateful to her for the manner in which she responded, and I hope we can return to that conduct of affairs—I said that part of the discussions we have will have to address what will be, in this moment when partisan zeal runs fairly high, a wound to the House—many people on the other side may accept what I say. If some of the very skilled, experienced and long-serving hereditary Peers whom we have among us are excluded, that will be a wound to the House, and it is right that the House should address that and consider it collectively. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, draws his own conclusion, but it certainly goes beyond horse-trading between parties as regards what the future of Members of this House should be. It is perfectly legitimate in Committee for us to consider the implications of legislation for the future of the House.

I was grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said. I do not agree with the noble Lord that consensus is impossible—indeed, the coalition agreement demonstrates that that is not the case—but I am grateful for his agreement with me that it is important. I think the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others said that it would be helpful as we go forward if we could have some understanding about the timing and nature of the Government’s proposals beyond the Bill, because they are material to the future of the House.

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Moved by

[The Earl of Caithness]

2: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“OverviewThis Act makes the House of Lords a second chamber whose membership is wholly nominated by the Prime Minister.”

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we might think that we know what most of the consequences of this Bill will be for the British constitution, but they are far from clear to anyone who does not take a close interest in these matters, and they are not to be found in the Bill before us. This amendment aims to puts into the Bill what at least one consequence will be.

The membership of this second Chamber of Parliament is unique in the world in how it is constituted and for how long we serve. It is composed of a relatively small number of hereditary Peers, while the Lords spiritual are nominated and life Peers are appointed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister to the monarch. Except for the bishops, who must retire when aged 70, once one is a Member we have the right to a seat, place and voice here for our lifetimes.

The most similar appointment system is that of the Canadian Senate. Although there are no hereditary members there, all its members are appointed by their Prime Minister. There, the similarities end. There is a fixed size of 105 and a mandatory retirement age of 75. That means that a new senator can be appointed only when a vacancy arises. New appointments must also be made on a regional basis, with each province holding a fixed number of seats. We will come on to whether similar constraints should apply here; I make no further comment on that now.

As in Canada, there is considerable adverse comment in this country on how the appointment system works. However, this Bill is about to make the situation much worse. For the first time ever the Prime Minister, on his or her whim, will have an unprecedented power of control over all the appointments to the membership of this House. That is a very dangerous extension of prime ministerial power. It is such a fundamental change to our constitution that it needs careful consideration and justification. I firmly believe that it must be clearly spelled out in legislation.

Of course, our constitution can evolve to meet this new situation, but it has already been clearly demonstrated that Prime Ministers have a less rigorous appointment process than the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which Prime Ministers can and have overruled. A paper by the London School of Economics in November 2023 tells us:

“Party leaders sometimes appoint experts, but they regularly appoint loyalists”.


It goes on to say that

“about a quarter of appointees over the last decade”

to this House

“have been donors to political parties”.

I cannot but agree with the noble Lord, Lord McFall of Alcluith, our Lord Speaker, when he said in an interview that this House is in danger of becoming “out of sync” with its balance of legislators. He went on to say that this House, too full of politicians and former political aides rather than people with outside experience, risked jeopardising the Chamber’s crucial role in taking a broader view on legislation and wider national policy. Those criticisms should be taken seriously. They were made before this Bill could take effect; it hands the Prime Minister untrammelled power to appoint whom he likes, when he likes. Everyone in the country should know about this. Once us hereditaries are forced out, there will be no screen for the life Peers to hide behind when the criticism comes thick and fast. A system so open to abuse cannot last long.

My amendment has three merits: it is concise, it does not affect the Bill’s wording or intention, and the principle has already been accepted by the Labour Party. On 23 March 2018, I moved a similar amendment to the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which sought to abolish the hereditary Peer by-elections. The amendment was drafted to be inserted before Clause 1 and read:

“Overview


This Act amends section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 to end the process of by-elections for hereditary peers, thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.


The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, intervened early in the few words that I was going to say and told the House,

“I am happy to accept his amendment”.—[Official Report, 23/3/18; cols. 547-48.]

It was indeed accepted by the whole House, including the Labour Party’s Front Bench. I hope the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will now do the same. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I read this amendment with some surprise, because the noble Earl says that everybody is going to be nominated by the Prime Minister. I was not nominated by the Prime Minister and there remains, I think, 20% of this House who were not. As far as I know, this Government have no intention of getting rid of the way in which we are appointed. As I understand the noble Earl to have said, the wording of the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was different. Of course we are appointed, but the noble Earl has limited it to the Prime Minister. To that extent, I profoundly disagree and I hope noble Lords will at least support the Cross-Benchers.

I recognise the manifesto and that this Bill must go through. I regret that there are so many amendments to slow it down. There are a large number of issues that need to be dealt with. I am not at all sure that this is the best place for them to be discussed when there is really a single issue occupying the Committee.

I hope that the Government will look at those whom they are removing and compare them with the Members of this House—at least 200—who virtually never come. I can speak as someone who is not a hereditary Peer but has been here for quite a long time. I have observed the enormous work done by hereditary Peers, who have been of invaluable use to the legislation that has been passed. For us to lose them and keep those who do not come and do not work seems profoundly wrong.

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is resisting that temptation but I say to him, as I say to all noble Lords, that I have always been open to discussions. But I need assurances, so when we see degroupings, filibustering and threats on different things, that does not give the confidence that allows me to have those kinds of discussions. To have them, I need some confidence that the Opposition want to do this in a proper way.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her reply. We have some useful additional information from her. However, I would take issue with her, just as she took issue with anybody who tried to misrepresent her in the debate. I did not in any way imply that the hereditaries were better than the life Peers or the life Peers better than the hereditaries. The purport of my amendment was solely that once you get rid of the hereditaries, there is increased power to the Prime Minister on appointments and nominations to this House, because the element of the hereditaries has gone.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I do not accept that at all. There is no change whatever in the powers of the Prime Minister at that point. I have explained the process. I think the noble Earl is saying that it is not everybody in the House. Currently 88 Members are here because of their ancestors being here, on the hereditary basis. The Prime Minister cannot appoint those now and there will not be those places in the future, but it does not increase his actual power at all.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

As a result of this Bill, there will be a greater percentage of the House appointed by the Prime Minister than now.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

Can I just finish? My point was that this could be abused. If I recall rightly the noble Baroness said, and I agree with her, that most Prime Ministers have behaved very responsibly, but on some occasions it has not been quite as we would have hoped. I am grateful for her support on that.

I am grateful for what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, did. As she will have noted, the amendment is carefully drafted to say nominations—nominated by the Prime Minister—rather than appointments. I focused on appointments rather than nominations, but I think I covered the point that she raised.

The memory of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, seems to have failed him a little, I fear. He said in response to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde that he had wanted to get on with his Bill and was in a hurry to proceed. That is slightly contradicted by the fact that a few minutes earlier he had taken the House to a Division and appointed Tellers for both the Contents and Not Contents, after the amendment had been withdrawn, and wasted a considerable amount of the House’s time. I think his memory is not quite as good as it used to be.

I am grateful to all those who took part in this debate and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.