House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Gareth Snell and Pete Wishart

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

There is a point of principle behind our position on the House of Lords, and it is a simple word: democracy. We refuse to have anybody in the House of Lords because we believe that people should have an electoral mandate—democratic backing from the people of this country—to serve in the legislature. That is something on which the hon. Lady and I will never agree. I believe she is quite happy and satisfied that unelected peers continue to inhabit the other place.

My party is hopeful that the House of Lords might sometimes challenge Governments, and perhaps make them think again, but it always backs down. Any attempt to get the House of Lords to agree to any sort of principle is a waste of time.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly very pleased with himself and his amendments. The only seat as secure as a seat in the House of Lords is a seat at the top of a regional list for proportional representation. He has tabled a well-meaning amendment to prohibit any Member who has served in this Parliament or the last from seeking a seat in the House of Lords. Would he apply that to his own party, so that any Member who has served in this Parliament or the last is not eligible to seek nomination or election to the Scottish Parliament?

[Pete Wishart]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, ever so gently, that he should leave bypassing devolution to his friends from Scottish Labour, because they are just a little bit better at it than him. It is their job to constantly speak about the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. To be fair to them, they have done a fantastic job—they barely even mention the UK Government. Every single contribution they make is about the Scottish Government, so maybe just leave it to them, shall we?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

We do not put people in the House of Lords. If people want to give us a million pounds, they can—please, if anyone is watching on TV, we could do with a million pounds. Sorry to disappoint anybody thinking about doing that, because we cannot give them a place in the House of Lords. I will give way one last time to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, who I have given way to once already.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I agree with him about the necessity for probity, ethics and transparency in politics, and I also enjoy his righteous speeches in this place. Obviously, he is a moral guiding compass for us all, so will he now make a clear and unambiguous declaration that not a single person who has ever donated to the Scottish National party or served as a Scottish National party Member of Parliament has ever been given a position in a publicly funded quango, or a publicly funded seat on a board, or been in receipt of any publicly funded donation? Obviously, I want to ensure that we aspire to the bar that the hon. Gentleman sets.

[Pete Wishart]

What I can say categorically to the hon. Gentleman is that there is nobody who has given one single penny to the Scottish National party— [Interruption.] Again, I appeal to people watching, if they want to give us money, please do so, but one thing we can never do—we never have and never will—is, in return, offer a place in our legislature or the ability to govern in this country. We do not do that, we cannot do that and we will never, ever do that.

Let me point to the scale of the difficulty of the problem when it comes to the donors. Some 68 out of 284 nominations from political parties between 2013 and 2023 were for political donors who had handed over £58 million to one of the three main parties. Over the course of that decade, some 12 of them gave £1 million. Now that might sound familiar to some Labour Members—£1 million is what people used to give to the Labour party under Tony Blair in the early 2000s to get a place in the House of Lords. Come on! Where is inflation when it comes to this? We would expect it to cost £1.5 million to get a place in the House of Lords now, but the going rate is seemingly still about £1 million.

Cash for honours was a disaster for Labour. It was absolutely awful. We saw the spectacle of a sitting Prime Minister being interviewed by the police about the donations that were being given to the Labour party. Those donations were interpreted as inducements to secure a place in the House of Lords. The Prime Minister was interviewed under caution and two of his personal staff were arrested. After that experience, we would be right to expect some sort of clarity in their thinking to take place. They could have decided never to get into that type of territory again—that they would do everything possible to ensure that money was taken out of politics, so that there would never be a whiff of suspicion that such a thing would happen again. But not a bit of it. Donors still go into the House of Lords, money still goes into the political party, and the public want it stopped.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Gareth Snell and Pete Wishart

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not agreeing with him. There is a lot of wisdom and experience in this place that can be used to improve our legislation. Even with the removal of the 92 hereditary peers, there will still be 650 peers, who have incredible insights and specialisms. The Bill removes a group of people whose only entitlement to be in the House of Lords comes from, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson said, a birthright many hundreds of years old, and from being selected by their friends to sit with them. The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) may not agree with me, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford pointed out, the election process in the other place is a farce. There are often more candidates than electors. It is almost akin to the Tory party leadership election.

[Pete Wishart]

The only other group that seems to reserve a place in the House of Lords is millionaires—party donors. Sixty-eight out of 284 political appointees between 2003 and 2013 gave £58 million to political parties. What will the hon. Gentleman do about them?