House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to speak to the last amendment. I will say very quickly now that it needed a little bit inserted to say, “Also to remove the power of the Prime Minister to have total control over the membership of this House”.

I remember and was very involved in the whole debate in 1998-99. In fact I and a bunch of Cross-Benchers produced a report on it at the time. The real problem with the whole thing is that it put the Prime Minister in total control of everything. He is the Prime Minister of the Civil Service and therefore the supreme person there. He is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons and therefore controls that. The judges are also no longer separate and are now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice. There were a lot of promises about independence, but it is no longer a third pillar of our constitution in the way it was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to say that, as the royal representatives and great offices of state—the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshall—are being removed from the House, is it reasonable not to sever the Royal Family’s link entirely with the Floor of the House? I might draw the line at the Duke of York or the Duke of Sussex, but I could tolerate some others.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

I think the noble Lord is speaking to the amendment in the next group. While I am on my feet, I will say very quickly, because this has made me think of it, that if the King does get removed, we will end up with something very close to the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

As I have said in earlier debates, the 1999 agreement always envisaged that the House would, as stage 2 of that agreement, adopt proposals for introducing elected Members to the House of Lords. However, I am not sure that all were firmly agreed that the elected Members should be directly elected. I believe that some kind of indirect election system—perhaps one representing the new estates of the realm, such as the CBI, the TUC, the BMA, the Bar Association, et cetera—should also be considered as an alternative way to introduce a more democratic and representative element of the House’s composition. The difficulty would be in agreeing which organisations should be entitled to select or elect representatives, but the possibility should certainly be explored. An alternative way to select indirectly elected Members of your Lordships’ House might be by granting election or selection powers to devolved legislatures and principal councils.

After the Second World War, and under pressure from the American occupation forces, the Japanese Government introduced constitutional changes that replaced the House of Peers with the directly elected House of Councillors, to which elections from large multimember constituencies are held. This introduced an element of proportional representation. Japan has two elected houses and, while they sometimes clash, the new upper house’s powers are restricted in a similar fashion to those of its predecessor House of Peers, and so it more or less works most of the time. I am not supporting moving directly to an all-elected, alternative second Chamber, but the Japanese example should be closely looked at.

Although I support the outcome that could flow from this amendment, it is wrong to make changes to the membership of the House before shaking the sand out of the shoe. To let the Bill go through with this amendment alone will not guarantee that it would definitely lead to any enactment of a Bill laid before your Lordships’ House and another place.

It is clear that the 1999 agreement was that the 92 hereditary Peers would remain until the enactment of proposals incorporating a democratic element. Nevertheless, I will support this amendment, but I believe the House should also adopt something similar to Amendment 6, as previously debated. I will support my noble friend Lord Lucas if he brings back on Report an amendment that would retain an elected and independent element within your Lordships’ House, which would keep the sand in the shoe. A combination of Amendment 6 and this amendment could well be developed to a level where a programme of change would enjoy a broad level of support across your Lordships’ House.

I also support Amendments 11A and 11B in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, both of which seek to ensure that referenda will be held to make certain that proposals for an elected House really would be enacted with popular support. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, some sort of popular support should be sought in making a constitutional change of this nature.

I cannot support Amendment 70 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, because a review would most probably conclude that a House composed of only appointed Peers and Bishops would lack appropriateness—that is an understatement. Such a review would just be kicked into the long grass.

I like Amendment 72, but I think that the 92—or 88—should remain until the end of the Session prior to the new House being convened, following an election under a new electoral model.

I am not sure about Amendment 90D in the name of my noble friend Lord Brady, although I agree with much of what he said in his most thought-provoking speech. Clearly, a House comprising only 200 Members would have no room for people retaining activities outside the House and would lack the capacity to scrutinise legislation as it does at present, or to operate the number of Select Committees it does today. It would be a very different kind of House. However, I am certainly attracted by my noble friend’s proposal that elections should be held one year later than general elections. That should be considered as a part of any move to a partly elected House.

Lastly, Amendment 115 makes sense. The Bill should not be enacted without the adoption of at least a partial democratic mandate at the same time.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendment 11. People have tried picking holes in it, but it does not say that all have to be elected. It says:

“introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords”.

The proposals, which would be thought through and brought with a Bill within 18 months, could contain all sorts of different proposals, which I know everyone wants to debate in a moment. I will leave that to everybody else because there are some very good ideas in there.

The whole point about Amendment 11 is that it gives voice to that promise of Privy Council oath, given from the two Front Benches, that there would be further democratic reform of the House of Lords. That is what Amendment 11 states, and it puts a time limit on it. Therefore, the Secretary of State has to do something about it, not just kick it into the long grass. We will not be here, but those who follow us will be here to see proper further reform of the Lords, introducing a democratic bit to it. As I said before, without that democratic element, it will eventually have all its powers removed because it will have no democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brady spoke very eloquently, but he did not refer to his Amendment 90C:

“A person can only be a member of the House of Lords if they are not a Minister of the Crown”.


I do not know why he did not refer to that, but it is a very bad idea.

One of the most striking features of politics in the more than 50 years since I was elected to the House of Commons is that as the diversity in gender and ethnicity has widened—which is a good thing—the diversity of life experience has narrowed considerably. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, there were people who had a lot of business experience, people who had been active in trade unions—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

I am not saying that the Front Bench has accused anyone of filibustering, but we have been accused of filibustering when we have probed the reasoning behind some of these rather strange proposals.

To be honest, I am equally confused as to whether this Bill is about reducing the numbers in this House or whether it is about getting rid of the hereditaries. We have heard that the hereditaries contribute far more than some life Peers who do not attend this House. So is the Bill about getting rid of the hereditaries or about reducing numbers? It seems to me that it is not about both.

I have a real problem with this clause. We can argue until the cows come home about what “participation” means; some of the speeches have already conflated “attendance” and “participation”. I fully endorse what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said. During my early days in this Chamber, we listened to the electric exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I did not understand what they were talking about—and neither did my noble friend, so he confesses. As he said, I do not think that those in the Box understood a word of what they were talking about, and Hansard probably had to stay up overtime to work it out. It was on such a different level that only a fool would have intervened at that point. I was reminded of the adage, which has been attributed variously to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

That makes me think about “participation” as defined in subsection (3)(a), in the new clause proposed in Amendment 26, which refers to “speaking in the Chamber”. Will we really judge noble Lords by how often they speak in the Chamber? Without naming names, we all know that, among our goodly number, there are people who pop up on every occasion to speak. Are we to judge the validity of their existence by the fact that, like Zebedee, they bounce up and ask a question on every topic? Alternatively, will we be a little bit more circumspect in how we judge noble Lords’ contributions?

I heard what my noble friend Lord Bethell said about his forebears, but that is nothing compared to John Erle-Drax, the MP for Wareham in the mid-19th century, who was known as the “Silent MP”. He made only one statement in the House of Commons: on a particularly hot evening, he inquired of the Speaker whether it might be possible to open the window just a bit. He is not recorded as ever having said anything before or since. This ought to be a question of what noble Lords say, rather than how often they say it.

The other issue I have been going on about is the quality of noble Lords’ speeches. I know that not everybody has a background in public speaking, has served in the other place or has the natural fluency and eloquence that the gods vested on my noble friend Lord Hannan. But, increasingly in the Commons—and, I am afraid, here—speaker after speaker gets up and reads out a pre-prepared statement. That is not a debate. That just means that they want to publicise what they have decided; or, worse, what they have been handed by a foundation—very often the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I regret to say—or some PR outlet. I have sat in this Chamber and heard a speaker read out what was clearly provided to them by some kind of lobbying group, and they got their text muddled up between what “we want”, “they want” and “I want”; it was clear that they had not even previously read what they were reading out. We need to improve the quality of debate in this Chamber, and not judge people on how often they pop up and ask a question.

On

“serving on committees of the House”,

there are not enough committees for all Members to serve on. Are Members who are not fortunate enough to serve on a Select Committee going to be penalised because they do not?

On “asking oral questions”, that is perfectly good, but you do not always get in on an Oral Question session; you have to jump up and down very often, and you are lucky if your hit rate is high.

On “tabling written questions”, let us not look at the quantity of Written Questions; let us look at some of the Answers—let us try to get an Answer. I have noticed over the years that Answers are masterful in their evasiveness. They do not even attempt to answer the Question, and if the Question is too difficult, they say it is at disproportionate cost to gather the information. Why do we bother asking some of these Written Questions, particularly when they cost hundreds of pounds to the public to provide a non-Answer? But we can all do that, if we are going to be judged on asking Written Questions. We can do it remotely, lie in bed and table hundreds of Written Questions. Lo and behold, we will all be judged to be doing terribly well in terms of participation. I rather think not.

The amendment talks about

“any other activity which the Committee considers to be participation in the work of the House”.

What does that mean? That is an all-encompassing statement. What can it possibly mean? This is a terrible amendment.

We should concentrate far more on the quality of what and how we debate here, on the quality of the speeches and levels of engagement. To seek to prescribe and identify how each and every one of us—individuals here for completely different reasons—should behave in some hideous template way to be decided by a committee is not the way to improve what goes on in this place.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to quickly say something about participation—I think back to a long time ago when I was involved in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. What goes into the law does not happen in here; by the time a Bill gets into Parliament, it is already set in concrete—the anchor is in the ground. If you want to see what goes into legislation, you have got to influence the thinking behind it with the Civil Service. I, and many others, certainly spent some time on that.

The statutory instruments and regulations that come out of it are the real things that affect how it works and operates. You need to talk to the civil servants behind it, before those regulations appear, because we cannot amend them or do anything about them. It was on that Bill, or perhaps another one, where we said that they had to come back with regulations within a year and that was seen as revolutionary because it almost seems beyond our powers. We did not actually turn them down and it has always been a big problem here.

How do you measure participation in the all-party groups, the discussions behind it, the influencing you have done and what comes out? It happened with that Bill, and it happened again with identity cards—there was a huge amount of work behind the scenes on that, and on the Digital Economy Act, Part 3, and all the age verification stuff—I chaired the British standard on that. The Government had something which they totally ignored, but it has become an international standard. There is all the stuff we do which may not be on the Floor of the House, because, in general, it is too late by the time it gets to the Floor. You have to get to the people who are writing the stuff before it gets here, and that means participation in other groups, such as the all-party groups and other influential ones, which you do not have recorded.

I do a lot with entrepreneurship—in fact, I am on X today, encouraging MPs to support entrepreneurship in their local areas. There is a huge amount of other parliamentary stuff and influence you can do. How on earth do you measure that? Maybe you say that the only thing that counts is talking on this Floor. For many, it is the last thing that counts.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I intend to retire in the spring and would need a great deal of persuading not to do so.

I did not speak to the previous amendment. I had speaking notes, but I chose not to make a speech because I did not need to. I do use notes; I use them to regulate how long I speak and, actually, in my notes I have cut out several paragraphs because it was not necessary to use them. This is largely a presentation issue, and I agree with what my noble friend Lord Hannan said, but I would very strongly counsel against making any changes, especially strategy ones, because to do so could have perverse effects.

However, we are all grateful to the Guardian for its research, for pointing out that some Peers have been claiming large amounts of allowances while making little or no contribution to the work of your Lordships’ House. It will be obvious to the Committee that it is not just activity in the Chamber that should count as participation. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, made that point. However, it is what the public are encouraged to think. Some Peers are not so good in the Chamber but are invaluable in Select Committees.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have resisted so far the temptation to participate in the debate on the Bill. I shall keep to that, in the sense that I will resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on the byways of nomenclature for the House itself.

However, I urge the Government Front Bench to think seriously about and respond positively to two issues raised by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The first is the inappropriateness of this House in any way involving itself in the determination of peerage claims. This was an argument that I made, and lost, before the turn of the century, but I still agree with what I said then and I believe that it would be far better for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to take on that responsibility.

Secondly, we need to right the implicit wrong in the hereditary peerage: the sex discrimination against generations of women who should have inherited not only the title but the estate—which in many ways is much more important. I hope the Government will give us some hope that they will make progress on that.

I talked about inheriting the title. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out the other anomaly of the husbands and wives of baronesses and barons. We should not right that wrong by creating another anomaly of giving someone else a title because of their sexual relationship with another person who has a title. That does not seem to make a great deal of sense or to be progressive in any way. I would just stop anyone giving their partner a title because of something that they have inherited or achieved.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that while I am a hereditary Peer, I am not here to try to stay here; whatever happens, happens. The reason that I and the other 91—92 in all—stayed here was to ensure the further democratic and proper reform of the House of Lords. That was the promise given; not that we would be turfed out, 20 or 25 years later. The whole point is that the Government are trying to do one bit, and I bet we will not see more. That is why Amendment 55 is essential, to try to start putting a timetable on reform happening. Otherwise, after this, nothing will happen; we will end up with a House with no democratic legitimacy, and that will be a problem. I therefore very much support Amendment 55.

I am here because my mother was here before me. She was one of the first five Peeresses to sit here when they allowed Peeresses to sit; she was the Countess of Erroll, in her own right. It was quite amusing, as my mother and father used to have trouble getting tickets for the train. If they were travelling from Perth, where they were known, they could travel down in the same compartment as the Countess of Erroll and Captain Iain Moncreiffe, as he was when they were first married. If they booked from London, they had to go up as Mr and Mrs Moncreiffe, or otherwise that would not be allowed—they did not allow that sort of behaviour. In fact, Claridge’s would not give them a room on the night of their honeymoon for the same reason, so this has been a perpetual problem.

Interestingly, there was always that issue of equality. My mother was also Lord High Constable of Scotland, as that has been in the family since about 1314. As such, at the Coronation, when the Queen went up to receive the Honours of Scotland, my mother was not allowed to carry the sword, as it was not thought suitable for a woman to do that. The Earl of Home carried it as her deputy, but she stood next to the Queen as the Queen received the Honours of Scotland. She had to be there to supervise and to make sure that it was done properly. As a woman, there was no bar to her holding what was traditionally thought of as a male position, and there is no reason why there should be in the future.

I heavily support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Devon, which I think are very sensible. We have got to move forward. There comes a point when it gets too difficult.

I want to say a little about how things get taken over. My father always told me that the communists took over the colour red, not as the people’s blood but because the nobles in Russia, as everywhere, used red as their colour; it is the colour of nobility. What they were doing was usurping the nobles, and taking over their mantle and structure. That is why the communists wave a red flag.

Personally, I am looking forward to future reform of this House, to bring it forward into the 21st century and onwards, in a proper form, not just as a whole lot of people appointed by one person who may be so-called democratically elected but not necessarily by the majority of the country. It is wrong.

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I declare two interests: first, as a hereditary Peer, and, secondly, as having three daughters and no son.

I promoted the Succession to Peerages and Baronetcies Bill, which said that daughters should be able to inherit the title when there were no sons. This upset the House; the mood was that the eldest child should be enabled to inherit titles regardless of sex, as per the Royal Family. My concerns are over existing expectations, as mentioned by the noble Earl, and matters such as long-established family trusts. I am not sure about children born to unmarried parents—this might lead to some title-hunters. But I like his amendment on this, which gives some flexibility.

As regards the name of the House, I feel it should perhaps be called the Senate, and that we should go with the Wakeham commission’s idea of LPs—lords or ladies of Parliament—or senators.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Wolfson’s Amendment 93. I totally disagree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham on this. It is a matter of significant importance to families, whether it is about a peerage or about entitlement with regard to due process around issues such as inheritance and legitimate descent.

For my part, I exceeded the 100 days set out in the Tony Wedgwood Benn renouncement Act, which was passed in 1963. Post 1963, you could not renounce further than 100 days unless you had clarity within that 100 days about renouncing. I was a Minister in another place at the time. I therefore went through six years of process to satisfy my family, and indeed my grandfather and father, that the rightful inheritor of the title and a small estate was indeed one of three boys, I being the man at the time—there were two young boys. I say to my noble friend that I felt duty-bound to go through that process and, on behalf of the family, to come to the right conclusion. My experience lasted some six years of detailed work: it went through the Tunbridge Wells Magistrates’ Court and the Family Division and ultimately came here.

I think my noble friend is trying to seek clarity and find a Bill in which that clarity can be made available to disputes outside this Chamber as well as, as currently, to people within it. In many respects, the burden of proof is very significant. In my case it was the first use of DNA, to refute the paternity of my half-brother’s fourth wife’s child and then to finally render his son illegitimate from the fifth wife because of a bigamous marriage and forgery of the divorce papers. I simply put that in the context of the difficulties that some of these cases lead to.

The monarch’s role, while symbolic, still carries weight in recognising or confirming legitimacy of hereditary peerages and of a claim. Each case is unique. The process can be lengthy and complex, especially where controversy and legal disputes apply. I believe the Moynihan case underscores the intricate nature of peerage succession and the legal challenges that can arise concerning legitimacy and inheritance. As I say, that is not primarily because of a seat in the House of Lords: it is a matter of family. I think everybody here and their families want to make sure that they know who their parents are and that, especially if some great act has been done by a forebear, it is recognised in the family and there is due process. Given that peerages are granted ultimately through the symbolic role of the Crown, I think that the simple amendment that my noble friend has put forward, and the Lord Chancellor’s response, will be very helpful in this context.

The process outlined by my noble friend Lord Wolfson, drawing on the House of Lords Reform Bill in 2012, is right. My only concern is that the cost of the process should never deter to prove a legitimate case being heard. I represented myself in court at each stage of the process. That is not always possible for people who genuinely want to make sure that the right outcome is determined.

I am sure the Attorney-General will give us clarity as to the process to be followed. If there is the opportunity and necessity for an amendment to be made, it could well be made through this Bill in order to clarify the position moving forward, without any relevance whatever to a seat in the House of Lords.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I will say two things very quickly. The first is on Amendment 93A. The Lord Lyon is also a King of Arms, so that ought to be added after “the Lord Lyon”. He is in fact King of Arms for Scotland, whereas Garter is not. His jurisdiction is north of the border, over the Scottish titles.

The second thing is that I have a feeling that, sometime in the past, titles could be heritable property in Scotland and have come under some of those laws there, so if someone does something it probably has to be dealt with by law courts and not in the very casual way that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is talking about. I am afraid I disagree with him. This amendment, which may need to be modified, goes some way to clarifying the situation that it ought to go here—otherwise, I think we will have a mess in the courts later. I thoroughly approve of Amendment 93 and, with a slight caveat, of Amendment 93A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, before I begin my remarks in support of Amendment 4, I will comment on the announcement by the noble Baroness the Leader of the House earlier. I welcome the establishment of a Select Committee to look into retirement age and participation. Although, obviously, I would like to see it go much farther, it is a good first step: I accept that even small changes are progress, so I look forward to that Select Committee being formed.

I turn to Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to which I have added my name. In Committee, I tabled my own amendments on an elected House, but I am pleased that, since then, successful cross-party work has led to a single, unified amendment on an elected House being presented to the House today. I will not repeat remarks I made at Second Reading and in Committee, but I will speak to a new aspect of this amendment, in order to be helpful to the House. The new addition is the inclusion of citizens’ assemblies as a mechanism for deciding the second Chamber’s form and composition. We are at a dire time in our politics, when trust is at an all-time low. This is largely due to ordinary people not feeling that they have a voice that is listened to by decision-makers. Can we blame them? We can and must do so much better.

The British Social Attitudes survey, published by the National Centre for Social Research last month, found that 79% of those surveyed believe that the present system of governing Britain could be improved “quite a lot” or “a great deal”. I am not saying that there are not good things about this place; there are. There are many individuals here who bring expertise in their field, and that is invaluable. Our conduct through cross-party work could perhaps be learned by the other place and other Parliaments. However, its form, composition and procedures are not fit for the 21st century. It is clear that this Chamber needs reform. I believe that this work can begin only once we establish that those of us who scrutinise and draft new laws must be accountable to the people who live under those laws.

So what is a citizens’ assembly? It is a group of typically 50 to 150 randomly selected citizens, broadly representative of the population. Members are selected by a civic lottery and brought together to learn, deliberate and make recommendations on a specific policy issue. Governments around the world have used them to engage citizens in decisions on complex issues, such as constitutional reform, climate change, social care and electoral reform. I support using citizens’ assemblies as a mechanism for shaping a new elected House for two main reasons. First, trust in Parliament is at an all-time low. Secondly, I trust ordinary people to know what is best for them.

Citizens’ assemblies and similar deliberative forums are well established and used all around the world as a way of delivering informed and trusted decisions on complex issues. In Ireland, citizens’ assemblies were utilised in 2016 and 2018. The Irish Citizens’ Assembly involved 100 randomly selected citizen members who considered five important legal and policy issues. In France, the Citizens’ Convention on Climate took place in 2019-20. It was formed following the yellow vest protests and resulted in 149 policy recommendations, many of which were incorporated into national legislation. In Canada, the British Columbia citizens’ assembly took place in 2004 on electoral reform.

Here in the UK, citizens’ assemblies have been used across our nations and regions, covering a range of topics from climate change to constitutional reform. For example, in 2020, six House of Commons Select Committees commissioned Climate Assembly UK to examine how the UK should reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It was the first UK-wide citizens’ assembly on climate change and published its final report in September 2020. The process was well run, highly engaging and produced a highly impressive report that shows how seriously the participants took their responsibilities. Between October 2019 and December 2020, the Scottish Government commissioned the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland, which met regularly to deliberate on issues and challenges facing the people of Scotland. Closer to home—for me—in 2019, the National Assembly for Wales commissioned a national citizens’ assembly to examine how people in Wales can shape their future through the work of the National Assembly for Wales.

I turn back to the amendment at hand. It is not off-brand for the Labour Party to support this amendment as drafted. In fact, we have heard from senior members of the Labour Party who are supportive of citizen juries. The recent biography of the Prime Minister stated that Labour wanted to take a new approach to government by directly consulting voters on some of the most vexed questions on Britain’s future. It was suggested that citizens’ assemblies could be used to come up with positions on devolution, assisted dying and House of Lords reform, while recognising that Whitehall will not like this as it will not have control. Of course, we can pursue this option only with the political will of this Government. However, on something that they have history in supporting, why the delay? I ask them to join as supporters of this amendment and let us crack on with getting this done.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I shall say just a few words about Amendment 4, which I support wholeheartedly. It is a move in the right direction. The problem is that if this House does not have some democratic authority, it will lose the powers that it has left. In this modern day and age, we must have some democratic legitimacy, as has often been referred to, in particular on the previous amendments. To survive, we must have a democratic element. I am not here to talk about exactly what that should be. The whole point about this amendment is that it does not specify what it should look like, despite some comments from across the House that seem to presuppose what the outcome of this consultation would be. If moving in the right direction is starting to implement the promise given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, all those years ago then we might be moving in the right direction, but we have to get some democracy into this Chamber or it will not survive into the future.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend on the Front Bench and I very much echo the noble Earl’s thoughts. I have spent 30-something years, between this House’s first incarnation, the other place and this House’s second incarnation, arguing for a democratically elected upper Chamber. I do so because I believe wholeheartedly that we need and deserve a strong Parliament, which requires two Houses, both of which can exercise complementary authority to give parliamentary activities what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, described as legitimacy. This House as it is currently composed, even after we hereditaries have all gone, still lacks the legitimacy necessary for a strong Parliament.

My support for my noble friend is because this amendment offers a route map to getting consultation without prescribing the exact manner of how that democratic legitimacy can be achieved. I am not going to be tempted into a long speech on what I think: if anybody is remotely interested, they can find it in Hansard. What I will say is that the principle of a democratically elected second Chamber is essential for a legitimate Parliament. As I think I said at Second Reading, I am a parliamentarian first and foremost. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will seek the opinion of the House, and I will certainly support him.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

The Bill is sui generis. To add to it a bauble of formalising HOLAC’s statutory role is inappropriate and wrong.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, it may be worth thinking about where this power for the Prime Minister to appoint Lords came from—I am thinking of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It derives from the fact that King John had his power to raise taxes taken away from him by the Magna Carta. He was left with the right to appoint Peers—to create Lords—to wage war and to write and sign treaties. Since then, the waging war and treaties have recently come under greater scrutiny. There are problems with that, and Parliament is certainly facing them at the moment in the treaties being written.

The one thing that no one seems to be questioning is that the Prime Minister has the right to advise the King, and constitutionally the King does not refuse the Prime Minister—because that is unconstitutional. Therefore, the Prime Minister has the ancient monarchical power to create Peers. If we think that this power is still right 800 or so years later, that is fine, but we should maybe be thinking, as our predecessors did all those centuries ago, about circumscribing this right and having more control over the unfettered power of the Prime Minister, who is also the head of the Civil Service—and the judiciary, which is now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice—and the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. I do not really like him having control over everything.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have long thought that the problem with the Bill is that we all become rather high-handed in talking about the hereditary Peers, as though they are the epitome of anti-democracy in this House. To be honest, we have all been appointed; none of us was elected. Therefore, it seems to me that this is a way of feeling good about ourselves by looking down on the hereditaries, when in fact none of us has a legitimate right to be here.

That to one side, I had a lot of regard for the spirit of the previous amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, looking for a democratic way of electing a second Chamber. The spirit of that, at least, was that the demos—the people—should decide, and I regarded that well. Yet the lead amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, seems to epitomise the opposite of that last amendment, because it is all about anti-democracy. It would give the ultimate power to an unelected committee answerable to no one. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, explained that very well, and there have been follow-on speeches expanding on it.

In moving the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked us to imagine that the Prime Minister—or indeed president, as he said—may not be a good chap or chapess. I wondered who would decide who and what is good. Would it be HOLAC, or the noble Lord, Lord Wallace? It is possible that he and I would not agree. The whole tone was that constitutional guard-rails would be set up by those who know better, who are more ethical or more virtuous, just in case the voters voted in the wrong way and voted in a wrong ’un. We all know that this is a nod to having a go at the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and that it is about President Trump, not President Biden. It has a partisan feel to it.

When it comes to legislation, I am very worried about how many Henry VIII powers are being used at present and about the number of statutory instruments contained in Bills. I argued that when they were put forward by the Conservative Government and agreed with many people in the Labour Party in opposition about that anti-democratic trend. I am sad to see that with Labour in government, there are even more Henry VIII powers and statutory instruments. In other words, we should be worried by an anti-democratic trend that we are witnessing. If we have to have a second Chamber, the Lords, and if we are going to appoint people, at least let us retain the notion that the Prime Minister—who has a democratic mandate—should be the person who decides, rather than an unelected committee.

As a note on the virtues of unelected expert committees, I am absolutely fine with them being advisory but not in charge. This morning, in relation to a discussion on the infamous door that has cost a fortune and does not work, and on that ugly fence that is an anti-social insult and looks like a barrier between this House and the public, we heard that it was all agreed by a very worthy committee. None of us even knew it was happening, because it was unanswerable. At the end of that discussion, I still could not work out who had made the decision. It was even more opaque than a Prime Minister deciding on who gets in this House. In other words, having a committee does not make it okay.

Finally, I will speak in favour of being partisan and taking sides. I am all for the virtues of the Cross Benches, but something seems to be wrong about the notion that the Cross Benches are full of the great and the good, who are experts, and that somehow they are superior to anyone who has an opinion, a passion or a principle, because they know more than the rest of us. I appreciate that I never joined the Cross Benches—somehow I did not get invited.