House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Graham Stringer and Oliver Dowden

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

The Paymaster General knows how much I respect conventions, but that is ultimately a matter for the other Chamber.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I will make some progress, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will give way.

We should not be surprised that the Labour Government have only introduced this short Bill because they have no clear plans for wider Lords reform. In 2022, the Prime Minister endorsed Gordon Brown’s plans for an assembly of the nations and regions, but now that has been kicked into the long grass. Labour grandees such as Lord Blunkett have warned it risks mirroring “gridlock” too often seen in the United States. Lord Mandelson described the plan as a

“multi-layered cake…barely been put in the oven yet, let alone fully baked.”

Lord Adonis observed that within Labour,

“there is no consensus on reform”

and that it will be “difficult and controversial.” Even the current leader of the Lords, Baroness Smith, admitted this year that an elected Chamber risked

“losing the primacy of the Commons.”

Therein lies the dilemma for the Labour party and its new-found Commons majority. Perhaps Labour Ministers are starting to realise that Lords reform is challenging and difficult.

[Graham Stringer]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I will make some more progress and then I will give way.

In 1999, the reforms recognised the challenge. In this July’s King’s Speech background brief, the Labour Government asserted that the continued presence of excepted peers is “by accident”. That is simply not true. In 1999, Labour’s Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, told the other House that the presence of hereditaries was an intentional anomaly; it would ensure a future Government undertook proper and considered reform of the Lords. His fellow architect, Viscount Cranborne, called that

“the sand in the shoe”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 June 1999; Vol. 602, c. 791.]

Now, this Labour Government want to declare war on the past without a clear target in sight. As they cannot agree on what to do, the Prime Minister has gone for this chipolata of a Bill, the mantra of change serving as a tiny fig leaf to cover his embarrassment. The emperor has no clothes—perhaps other than from Lord Alli.

[Graham Stringer]

The right hon. Member is making a case on shifting sand, which seems to boil down to one of people not having had time to consider the issue. First, this reform has been in two Labour manifestos, one in 1997 and one this year, and it had overwhelming support from the electorate. Secondly, the compromise reached between the Labour party and the Conservative party in 1999 was nothing to do with the good work done by many hereditaries; it was to stop logjam, because the House of Lords was threatening to hold up Labour’s programme and throw the Salisbury convention aside.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

The purpose of the 1999 compromise was to ensure that we did not remove hereditary peers without considering the wider consequences. That is precisely my concern with the approach being pursued by the Government. This meagre Bill is not motivated by considered and enlightened principle. Labour wants to remove the independent and experienced voices of excepted peers so that it can parachute in a wave of new Labour cronies. It is change in the name of an Executive power grab, not change to serve the British people.

The excepted peers are immune from the needs of political patronage. They work in the public interest for the good of the nation. Edmund Burke once described them as

“the great Oaks that shade a Country”.

The same, I am afraid, cannot be said of the saplings of the new Labour intake.