Jacob Rees-Mogg
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House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 2, page 1, line 2, after ‘peer’, insert
‘and has been a peer for 10 years’.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 3, page 1, line 2, after ‘peer’, insert
‘and has been a peer for 10 years and is over the age of 65’.
Amendment 4, page 1, line 7, leave out ‘a witness’ and insert
‘two witnesses, both of whom must be peers of the same degree’.
Amendment 6, page 1, line 10, at end insert
‘after the date specified in 2(a) above’.
Amendment 7, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
‘(5) This section does not apply to unelected hereditary peers who sit in the House of Lords’.
Amendment 8, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
‘( ) An hereditary peer who retires or otherwise resigns in accordance with this section shall be deemed to have died allowing any heir to be eligible to be elected.’.
Amendment 9, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
‘( ) A life peer who retires or otherwise resigns in accordance with this section will upon petition to the Queen be raised to the state degree style dignity title and honour of viscount.’.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
With hindsight, how fortunate it is that we are not sitting in private to discuss these important matters, which will be of interest to the nation at large, concerning retirement or resignation from the House of Lords.
Amendment 2 would simply add a line to clause 1 to the effect that a peer may not resign until they have been a peer for a minimum of 10 years. If somebody accepts a great honour from the Crown, it seems to me that they have an obligation to live up to that honour. Circumstances might change and require a different lifestyle that makes it impossible for them to attend the House, but to enter lightly into the receipt of a peerage—that great honour bestowed by our sovereign of being a legislator in the second House of Parliament—and then to give it up after a day or two or, conceivably, even after a minute, seems improper.
People enter into a life peerage, and understand that they have done so for life, hence the name. It is amazing how often an obvious point about something is made in its title. There is no obfuscation in the title “life peer”. It is not a temporary peerage, a Parliament peerage or a dated peerage, but a life peerage. One of the glories of the House of Lords is that it represents age. It is not full of scribbling youths, but has people of mature years, of wisdom, of grey beards, and even of grey flowing locks, which shows how much they have learnt and experienced over the years.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I was here for Second Reading, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and must recommend him to the BBC as a panellist on “Just a Minute”—he would be absolutely superb. In the light of his speech on Second Reading and his contribution this morning, which clearly will be enlightening, may I ask whether he opposes any kind of reform of the House of Lords?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The return of the hereditary peerage is the sort of reform that would improve the quality of the House considerably. I do think that there are opportunities for reform but, as I said on Second Reading—I had better not go through this all again, Mr Speaker—I have concerns about this process for reforming the second Chamber. I think that reform ought to have been proposed in a Government Bill and considered in a Committee of the whole House.
Although the Bill is simple, it would fundamentally change the nature of the House of Lords. Removing the absolute certainty that a peerage is for life would allow people appointed to the House to remain there for a term. That change in structure would allow Governments that are not necessarily as benign as this one—I will talk about this further in relation to some of my other amendments—to ensure that peers are in the House for only a certain period, and possibly to get them post-dated cheques for when they might resign. I think that that reform should have been handled differently, but there are certainly reforms that could be made to the House of Lords.
Amendment 2 ties in with amendment 3. The point of amendment 3 is to insert a minimum age for retirement, whereby no peer under 65 could retire. Being a peer—a legislator in the upper House—should not be a marker in somebody’s career. It should not be a point on their CV so that when they apply for jobs in merchant banks, or wherever, they can say “I was a peer for 10 years.” People who take it on should commit to do so for an extended period, so that if a peer is raised to that rank, style and dignity at the age of 40, there will be an expectation that the major part of their future life and career will be a commitment to serve the House—this country—in the second Chamber.
These two amendments, in essence, offer the House the choice of saying that there ought to be a minimum period and that it ought to be longer than a single Parliament. Ten years obviously equates to two Parliaments under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. That gets away from the risk that people might use the House of Lords as a means of advancing their political career in relation to the Commons, a point to which we will return in a subsequent group of amendments. The amendments are about expecting people to follow through on the commitment they have given, so that when their letters patent are issued they will be doing this for life.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
What is my hon. Friend’s preference between amendments 2 and 3?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. My preference is for amendment 3, as it would ensure that people retired from Parliament when they were coming to the end of their working career. It is wrong for people to use membership of the House of Lords as a point on their CV. It is not an internship that people do for a little while to get a bit of work experience before taking on another job. It is such an exciting and great honour to have—why would these people wish to give it up? I recall that when Disraeli went to the House of Lords, he said that he was not dead
“but in the Elysian fields.”
Who, having entered the Elysian fields, wants to come back down to earth? It seems extraordinary in the first place that anyone would want to leave those glorious red Benches and the gilt around the throne—the magnificence that the House of Lords shows to the world—and trot out into the humdrum life in front of them. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) asks whether this is a job application. I am by no means grand enough to enter their lordships’ House. I like representing the British people—vox populi, vox Dei—through this illustrious Chamber rather than in their lordships’ noble House. Given the question of why anybody would want to leave, they ought to live up to the commitment they have made. Ten years seems reasonable; I would have been happy with 15 or 20 years.
Moreover, crucially, when Ministers go into the House of Lords they may want to be there only while they are in ministerial office. That is not a proper way of treating the constitution. Ministers who go into the House of Lords ought to stay there for an extended period to show a commitment to the legislature, not just to being appointees of the Executive who are here today, gone tomorrow. These amendments are important and would improve the Bill. Had we been debating them in a Committee of the whole House, it is likely that some of these changes would have been made.
Amendment 4 is about the witnessing of the peer’s statement that he wishes to retire or resign. The statement may be witnessed by anybody, but I think that it should be witnessed by two people, both of whom must be peers of the same degree. Is that because I think that lots of fraudulent certificates will be issued by random people wandering around signing things and pretending to be witnesses to statements that peers have not made? No, I do not think that, but these resignations are essentially proceedings in Parliament, and they should be a formal parliamentary proceeding registered by people who are also Members of Parliament. This would be a safeguard to ensure that somebody did not resign in a light moment and then regret it, or have the statement signed in their office and send it in having been pushed into doing it by offers of who knows what—perhaps an offer of becoming a European commissioner or something grand and fancy such as that, although I know that there is a special way for such people to stay in the House of Lords with a formal leave of absence. We should ensure that the grave and important decision to leave the upper Chamber is made properly and thoughtfully and that there is a formal process by which to register that decision.
That ties in with amendment 6, which says:
“after the date specified in 2(a) above”.
The problem with reading out amendments without reading out the relevant part of the Bill is that they sound rather obscure, so it may be sensible to explain. The Bill says that if somebody signs a form resigning from the House of Lords, that notice is irrevocable from the point at which it has been signed, even if it is a long-post-dated cheque. So if a peer entered the House of Lords and said that he intended to resign in eight years’ time, the document would be irrevocable, even though all sorts of things may change. That person would then be ineligible to be a peer again in future. I think that that is a mistake. There should be an ability to withdraw the notice prior to its becoming effective; otherwise, appointments to the House of Lords are opened up to abuse.
I have heard former Leaders of the House of Lords—noble Lords themselves—talk about what happens when people ask for peerages. It may shock you, Mr Speaker, that people ask for peerages. I would have thought it was an enormous impertinence for anybody to say to the Prime Minister or to the Leader of the House of Lords that they would like a peerage, but people do. Apparently, they knock on their doors to ask to be given a peerage; they queue up outside their offices as though they were waiting for an omnibus. When they do so—I really have heard Leaders of the House of Lords make speeches along these lines—they say anything that the people dishing the peerage out may wish to hear. They say, “I’ll always vote with the Government line, I’ll never disobey, I’ll do what I’m told”, and so on and so forth.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Sadly, I have heard Leaders of the House of Lords talk only in general terms—they have not named names—so the hon. Gentleman cannot lead me down that route, and if I did I might be out of order because saying anything critical of a noble peer is against the forms of this House, and neither would I wish to do so.
There is the risk that peers, before they are appointed—therefore, of course, they are not yet peers—are in the position of asking for something that they want that is in the Government’s gift, and the Government want to have some leverage over them to ensure that they behave in the way the Government want when they are appointed. One of the glories of the House of Lords is that once people are there, they are independent because they are there for life. That preserves them from the terrors of the Whips. We in this House live in daily terror of the fierce power the Whips have whereby they may do all sorts of extraordinary things to us with any amount of instruments of torture that are maintained in the bowels of the Palace of Westminster, but in their lordships’ House those instruments are ineffective—they have rusted away because the peers are there for life. That is a great protection for them. If somebody could give a post-dated cheque—if someone could say, “I will leave the House a few years after going in”—that protection would begin to ebb away. But if they had the power to rescind the notice, whatever they said at the point at which they were grubbing round for the peerage, they would be able to withdraw it, and the independence of being a peer for life would be maintained.
This flexibility ought to be added to the Bill because it would allow peers to maintain that which is the essence of the success of our revising Chamber. What makes the House of Lords successful, and different from this House, is that because peers are not standing for re-election and do not need to be readopted by their parties, and because very few of them are Ministers, there are many fewer baubles that may be offered to them to maintain party discipline.
Party discipline is very important. It is important that a Government are able to get their business through, but party discipline in a revising Chamber is unhelpful, because instead of doing its job of revising it tends simply to go along with what is asked of it by the party managers. That is damaging both ways: it is damaging if Governments do it, because it means that they are not necessarily putting through Bills that have had the wisdom and benefit of the proper revising process, and it is equally bad when Oppositions do it simply to oppose what the Government are doing. We have seen that on a number of occasions in the House of Lords when, out of party loyalty, rather than according to the argument, the will of the House of Commons has been thwarted.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The Bill simply states that the notice must
“specify a date from which the resignation is to take effect”.
That could be any date in the future. There is no requirement that it be no more than a month or six months from the date of the notice being issued. That leaves a period in which it is perfectly reasonable to think that circumstances could change such that the notice might be withdrawn.
Dan Byles
I now understand my hon. Friend’s concern better, but I still disagree. For the reasons that he has given, I believe it is a serious step for a Member to take the decision to leave. One change that we made in Committee was to say that a Member who decides to retire or resign may not subsequently be reappointed to the House of Lords. We did that for the very reasons that he has given. Sitting in the House of Lords is a lifetime commitment and it should not be the norm to leave. One should not leave with the expectation that one may simply waltz back in later. When a Member decides to submit a notice stating that they wish to leave, it would not be helpful if they could think, “I can always change my mind before it comes into effect.” Perhaps my hon. Friend and I must agree to disagree on that issue.
Amendment 7 would exempt unelected hereditary peers from disqualification under the Bill. The two peers who would be exempted from disqualification, the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Marshal, undertake various ceremonial duties in the House of Lords. I do not believe that either officer should retain their seat in the House of Lords if they wish to resign or if they are convicted of a criminal offence. I am of the view that it would not be possible for those officers to undertake their duties in the House and elsewhere if they were in custody for more than a year. I am confident that if that situation arose, the Government, in conjunction with the Palace, would put in place appropriate and effective measures to ensure that the functions of the officer were executed properly while they were in custody. I do not believe that Members of the House of Lords should be able to retain their seats if they are safely convicted of a serious criminal offence. I certainly do not believe that peers should enjoy the privilege of being exempt from that. I therefore do not support amendment 7, although I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset felt the need to raise and discuss the issue.
Amendments 8 and 9 would allow the heir of a retiring hereditary peer to take part in the by-election caused by their parent’s retirement and elevate the retiring peer to the status of viscount. It would be entirely wrong for this Bill to change the current position whereby heirs are not given an automatic right to enter the House of Lords. I would not want to support such a controversial amendment, because the Bill seeks to make straightforward and sensible changes to the membership of the House of Lords. However, this is a fascinating debate that might take place in other circumstances. Under the Bill, departing peers will retain their peerage. I therefore do not agree that those who retire should be elevated automatically to viscount status, nor that they should be entitled to any additional honour simply because they have been a Member of the House of Lords, so I do not support amendments 8 and 9.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether my hon. Friend recalls the Agatha Christie book “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?”, in which the heart of the matter is who the witness was.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Without being able to find the witness and ascertain who they are, the existence of their signature is not much help to a court.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The amendment would merely exempt the officeholders from the ability to retire or resign. If they cannot resign as Lord Chamberlain and Earl Marshal, it makes no sense for them to be able to resign as Members of the House of Lords. I was trying to bring the two together.
Greg Clark
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but it is relevant that they should be subject to the same procedures as would apply under the Bill to every Member of the House of Lords, whether through resignation—and the same circumstances might apply to them in wishing to resign—or through being convicted of a serious criminal offence. The points that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire made in response to that capture the essence of the argument. It is not appropriate to permit peers on the basis on which they hold their seats to remain in the House if they are convicted of a serious criminal offence or if they want to exercise—they are under no obligation to do so—the opportunity to retire.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset raised a question about whether a writ of advancement should be available in the case of hereditary peers. There is no reason why a writ of advancement should not be available, but it is worth noting that if a hereditary peer disclaims his or her peerage under the Peerage Act 1963, there is no advancement for his or her heir while the disclaiming peer is still alive.
Amendments 8 and 9 would ensure that the heir of a retiring hereditary peer could participate in the by-election caused by his or her parent’s retirement. My hon. Friend’s ingenious suggestion of an improvement in social mobility by elevating a retiring peer to the status of a viscount is also contained in the amendments. I have some difficulty with the amendments, as I am sure my hon. Friend would imagine. The name of our venerable upper chamber is the House of Lords, not the house of heirs. It would be wrong to break with the tradition of hundreds of years to allow heirs to enter the Chamber just because their father or mother had retired from their role in the House.
My hon. Friend made it clear that he recognised the difference between attendance and membership of the House of Lords and the peerage. His amendment, however, would introduce a novel constitutional concept of the kind that he is generally inclined to view with a certain degree of scepticism. I think that, just like any hereditary peer who, extraordinarily, continues to enjoy a right to sit in the legislature, those heirs should wait until they have been elevated to the peerage as their forefathers did.
As for the question of the elevation of retiring peers to the status of viscount, I do not see the need to provide for such a possibility, given that we are talking about membership of the House of Lords rather than about the peerage itself. As I said earlier, my hon. Friend has advanced an ingenious argument for social mobility. He has anticipated the objection that the ratcheting up to the level of royal dukedoms might cause a problem for Her Majesty. In any event, I should have thought that before embarking on such an approach, one would need to be assured of the consent of Her Majesty, as the fount of all honour and dignity, and to have discussed the issues with Garter King of Arms. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has done those things.
I fully appreciate the attention that my hon. Friends have given to both the Bill and the amendments, but I do not think that any of the amendments is necessary to safeguard the purposes of the Bill from unintended consequences, and—as I hope I have been able to demonstrate—in many instances they would have unintended consequences of their own that would damage the Bill. I therefore urge my hon. Friend to withdraw his amendment.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I have listened enormously carefully to what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and my right hon. Friend the Minister. I have the impression that the mood of the House is against my proposals, and I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3
Conviction of serious offence
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 23, leave out ‘one year’ and insert ‘6 months’.
Thomas Docherty
I am in august company today. It is excellent to be in the presence of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), a fine example of the Conservative workers party if ever I saw one. However, I must chide him very gently about one matter, about which I have already spoken to him.
Both the hon. Gentleman and I serve on the Procedure Committee. The House recently resolved that, whenever reasonable, Members should publish explanatory statements. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) has published such a statement, but I have not, because, as the hon. Member for North East Somerset knows, the Procedure Committee said that it was not necessary to publish one when what a Member was trying to achieve was so blindingly obvious. However, I must gently tell the hon. Gentleman that it took me several attempts to understand exactly what his amendments would do, and that an explanatory statement would therefore have been useful.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am shocked that the hon. Gentleman is so slow on the uptake. I always thought that he was one of the faster thinkers on the Opposition Benches. If he waits for a few moments, however, and if you are kind enough to call me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will explain all.
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Let me begin by saying something about my amendment 1. The origin of the requirement—in this place, and, indeed, in the United Kingdom’s other Parliaments and Assemblies—for someone to have been given a jail sentence of more than a year to be disqualified is almost accidental. The hon. Member for North East Somerset will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that until the 1960s there were two classes of criminal acts, felonies and misdemeanours. I think that it was Roy Jenkins who, as Home Secretary, abolished the distinction. Until then, someone who was convicted of a felony would automatically be disqualified from serving in the House of Commons. Thankfully, it had been a long time since any Member had been sent to prison, so the rule had fallen into desuetude, and, at the time when the classes of felony and misdemeanour were scrapped, it did not occur to anyone to introduce a provision for that purpose.
Let us now fast-forward to 1981, and the election of Bobby Sands as a member of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. His election understandably prompted a great deal of public outrage, and the Government of day, Mrs Thatcher’s Government, introduced a law providing for the disqualification of anyone who had been given a sentence of more than a year. That would have caught Bobby Sands, and the other terrorists who were on hunger strike in the Maze prison. Again, no one really thought about it at the time. As far as I can ascertain after having consulted the records from the period, there was not a great deal of consideration about whether a year and a day was a particularly suitable target. The provision was designed to capture a very specific group of people; it met that test, and it was therefore passed.
As I think all Members know, there is a long and noble tradition of the right to protest, and, in particular, to engage in political protest. Anyone who visits the Tea Room will see a painting hanging at the Labour end of the room. If Government Members wish to pop down to our end to have a look at it, they are more than welcome to do so. It depicts one of the great protesters and pamphleteers of the 18th century, who was regularly incarcerated for speaking out against the Government. It is an important principle that we should maintain the right to speak against the Government, and that there should be protections against politically motivated arrests and imprisonments. We would not want someone who was simply sent to jail to be disqualified. Many of my constituents have talked to me about this issue, for reasons that I shall explain shortly.
While I strongly disagree with the views of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on fracking and, funnily enough, on many other issues, I respect her right to engage in political protest and to be arrested, and, if she were convicted and sentenced to a few days, it would be absolutely wrong for her then to be disqualified from serving in the House of Commons. The voters in Brighton, Pavilion should have the chance to do that in 14 months’ time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for being pedantic. Members of the House of Commons who are given prison sentences are not disqualified from serving; they are expelled from the House, but they can stand again in a by-election.
Thomas Docherty
As ever, the hon. Gentleman has shown that his knowledge is superior to mine. He is absolutely right. My point was that such people would be denied the right to be a Member of Parliament for a period.
There is, of course, a huge difference between the length of a sentence that would be received by someone who had engaged in political protest and the length of the sentences that have been received in some of the cases that we have—regrettably—seen in recent years, in this Parliament and in other United Kingdom Parliaments and Assemblies. There was, for instance, the outrageous case of Chris Huhne, who perjured himself, and Opposition Members in the House of Commons as well as Conservatives in the other place have been jailed in connection with expenses. I think that there was a great deal of genuine public revulsion at the idea that politicians in either House, or indeed in any House, would be convicted of serious crimes and go to prison, but would not necessarily have to resign their seats or be disqualified.
The case that made me such a champion of reform in this regard arose in the Scottish Parliament, in my own constituency of Dunfermline. The local nationalist MSP, Mr Bill Walker, was convicted last August of 22 accounts of domestic abuse and one charge of breaking a frying pan over his stepdaughter’s head—which serves to demonstrate the scale of the violence he was showing to a group of women over a 20 or 30-year period. I praise the Sunday Herald, which did so much to bring this story to light. Owing to the way in which the Scottish courts work, the maximum sentence that Bill Walker could receive—and did receive—was one year, so he was not automatically disqualified from serving in the Scottish Parliament, and if he had been a Member of the House of Commons, he would not have been automatically disqualified from serving in this House.
I welcome the recent statement from the Leader of the House that he is interested in starting a dialogue about the rules of the House of Commons and I hope the Minister will set out the Government’s broader thinking about the rules of disqualification and whether or not we need to look at this again.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
North East Somerset, in the great county of Somerset, is always ready. We are on alert for whatever might come. I am fortunate in that my constituency is not under water, so it is perhaps easier for me to be alert than those in the rest of the county at the moment.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I know that the hon. Gentleman has great knowledge of these matters. He will know that he is allowed to mention such people as long as they are not Members of the House of Lords.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am also rather troubled, because that means that I can be rude about hereditaries who are not in the House of Lords. That would be deeply upsetting, however, and I would be shocked if I did such a thing. Anyway, the point about Nevada was that a judgment made there was not considered to be authoritative.
Thomas Docherty
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that this would not apply to members of the royal family who had been sitting in the House of Lords as hereditary dukes?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think I can help the hon. Gentleman on that: we are not going to enter into a debate on the royal family. We are going to get back to the subject that Jacob Rees-Mogg has in hand.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is inconceivable that anyone would ever want to be rude about the royal family.
So, Nevada was not taken seriously and Earl Russell was found guilty of bigamy. My amendments distinguish between the jurisdictions of a variety of foreign countries, and with good reason. The reason for including Ireland along with the United Kingdom is that it matches the form used for exclusion from the House of Commons, and there seems to be a logic in maintaining that. It is also set down in statute that we recognise the unique relationship that the United Kingdom continues to have with Ireland. Irish citizens are the only ones other than Commonwealth citizens who are always allowed to vote in United Kingdom elections, and travel from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom does not require a passport. Ireland is not viewed as a foreign country in the same way as other countries are.
The Commonwealth realms are either serious nations such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada that have a legal form based on ours and that follow the legal traditions of the United Kingdom which they inherited from us, or they are smaller nations, nine of which have the Privy Council as their court of appeal. We can therefore say that any conviction within the Commonwealth realms will be of such standing that we can recognise it because it has been made in a nation with which we have the friendliest relations and the tightest of historical links.
Thomas Docherty
I am seeking enlightenment. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned “realms” a couple of times. If a Member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords were convicted of a crime in one of the Crown dependencies or the British overseas territories, would they automatically be disqualified? I truly do not know the answer to that question.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
They are not included in my amendment, although it would obviously be possible to amend the Bill to bring the Crown dependencies in. I am talking about the Commonwealth realms, which are the independent nations in the Commonwealth of which Her Majesty is still head of state. Nine of those nations have appeal to the Privy Council, which is their final court of appeal. They therefore have a standard of justice in which we can have confidence, because it is a standard that we ourselves implement.
Thomas Docherty
I am listening carefully. The hon. Gentleman has made an assertion a couple of times, both directly and in the round, that we have confidence in the Commonwealth judiciary. Without causing an incident by naming the countries, I am sure we can think of a number of Commonwealth countries where the judiciary, perhaps at a state level rather than at federal or national level, is less than it could be. Does he accept that is a concern?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. At the moment, I am talking about the Commonwealth realms and he himself said in his own speech that it would be peculiar if we did not trust the judicial system of Canada. I happen to share that view; there is no particular difficulty with Canadian justice. When we come to some of the smaller Commonwealth realms, they have appeal to the Privy Council and that is the safeguard—that it becomes essentially a British form of justice. In the end, a peer would be able to appeal to a court based in this country. It is actually based in the Middlesex Guildhall; if you have a good arm, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a stone’s throw away from this palace.
With the Commonwealth realms, it is reasonable that the House of Lords should be able to recognise a conviction in one of them and it would then be able, by an ordinary vote, to expel the peer from the Lords. That seems a perfectly reasonable approach, because one can have confidence in the justice that would be meted out in those realms. In relation to other Commonwealth countries, expulsion would require the unanimous agreement of the House of Lords. That is because there are certainly Commonwealth countries where one would have some concern about the standard of justice that applied and would worry that having an automatic acceptance, or even a simple majority acceptance, of their judgments would not necessarily be helpful.
That relates to my broader question about other foreign courts. There are some Commonwealth countries where one can be imprisoned for a year for some quite extraordinary things. I do not know whether you knew, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if you should go on your travels to Singapore representing the Houses of Parliament, which would be a worthy trip for you to make, although Singapore is a great and civilised country—I am one of Lee Kuan Yew’s foremost admirers—it is illegal to connect to an unsecured wi-fi hot spot. It is classed as
“unauthorised use of computer service”,
it is punishable, for both Singapore nationals and tourists, by a fine of up to 10,000 Singapore dollars and/or imprisonment for up to three years. In 2006, a man called Garyl Tan Jia Luo received 18 months’ probation, nine months’ curfew, 80 hours of community service and an 18-month internet ban for use of an unsecured wi-fi hot spot.
Let us think of some young peer who travels to Singapore and accidentally connects to the wi-fi because he wants to read Hansard to find out what has been going on in their lordships’ house or attend to other matters of public business. If he is caught by the Singaporean police and if we accept judgments of foreign courts he could get three years in prison and be disqualified from the House of Lords.
Thomas Docherty
I am slightly troubled by the hon. Gentleman’s argument, because he seems to be saying that we have a right to look at other countries’ laws and say, “We think that’s a silly law.” Quite a lot of the world’s people drive on the wrong side of the road, but we respect their right to do so when we go to their countries. Should not that young lord have respected the rights and laws of that land, and made himself familiar with them before he travelled there?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman visits Singapore; he will remember that people there drive on the correct side of the road. They know how to do things there. It is a wonderful country.
Breaking obscure laws that it is unreasonable to expect people to have knowledge of ought not to exclude people from the House of Lords. Uganda has been in the news recently for its stringent laws against homosexuality. Are we really to say that peers who end up in Uganda and get into trouble with the law there should be banned from the House of Lords? They could get a life sentence. Is that really a way of deciding who is in a legislature of the United Kingdom? What happens if a lord displays a flag in Kiribati? Someone who displays a flag in Kiribati or wears a uniform in connection with a political object can be sentenced to a year in prison. Lords would suddenly be excluded for doing all sorts of minor things that in this country would not be an offence.
Rather splendidly, in Swaziland it is illegal for any female under 19 to shake the hands of a man; I do not know what the punishment for that is. Under the Bill, a peer could be convicted, regardless of when the offence took place. A 90-year-old peeress, who as a 19-year-old girl had shaken hands with a gentleman in Swaziland, could suddenly be deported to Swaziland, put in jug for a year and excluded from the House of Lords.
There is a tremendously serious point in this. It is that around the world there are hundreds of countries. I have a list of them: Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; American Samoa; Andorra; Angola; Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Armenia; Aruba; Australia; Austria; and Azerbaijan. That just gets us to—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think we got the message after the first five. I do not want to hear the rest; I think we have a flavour, without a fully detailed world atlas.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Mr Deputy Speaker, I think you are a mind reader. I was going to read out only the As, so your intervention came at absolutely the right moment to help me to continue.
We know remarkably little about many of those countries. We have not carefully considered their legal systems. What is the law in American Samoa? What offences could lead to somebody being sentenced to a year in prison? If a peer went there on a parliamentary delegation, would they randomly find that they had committed some offence? What if somebody has a gin and tonic in Saudi Arabia? They may get lashed, but—
Thomas Docherty
One thing that I can point out to the hon. Gentleman that he probably should know about the “country” of Anguilla is that it is, in fact, an overseas territory and not a country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It is listed as a country. [Interruption.] But then Wales is a country and it is also part of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman’s pedantry is taking him down a blind alley, if I may say so.
There are also great countries—countries that we respect—that have a legal system about which we have doubts. I will mention two of the friendliest and most civilised countries that the United Kingdom has dealings with: the United States of America and Italy.
In the United States of America, the noble Lord Black was basically told that he could either plead guilty or face decades in prison if he was found guilty. There was a charge sheet against him as long as your arm, and there was a witness to give evidence against him. The witness was told, “If you plead guilty and turn the equivalent of Queen’s evidence, then we will give you a few weeks in a country club.” That approach to plea bargaining ought to raise serious concerns. In this country, it would not be allowed. There is not the possibility to say to somebody giving evidence, “We will give you something very cosy if you help us to find somebody guilty”, and guilty not just of an offence but a whole string of offences with huge sentences, and all in proportion to what was being alleged, so that people are bullied into pleading guilty. The reason that America does that is that it has so many constitutional safeguards to provide for a fair trial that it is consequently very difficult to get convictions. Plea bargaining is therefore used as a means of getting the result that was sought in the first place, but which the protections in place would have made it hard to get. That form of justice should not determine who sits in the House of Lords.
In the example of Italy, we see cases, and reports of cases come to us, of people being found guilty, not guilty and guilty again. In a British sense, that is not justice; it does not observe the requirements of double jeopardy. I know that in exceptional circumstances those requirements can be got round in this country, but as a general rule the oppressive state cannot charge and recharge somebody once they have been found not guilty. Many foreign countries are also willing to try people in absentia, so one does not even have the ability to defend oneself against the charge.
Therefore, it seems to me that when we in this country are deciding how our Houses of Parliament should be designed and who shall have entitlement to sit in them, foreign courts are not a valid place to determine membership. That is the right of our sovereign and of the British people; it is not the right of courts outside this country. Consequently, I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), which turns things round.
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman or the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) may correct me if I get this wrong, but where someone does not attend for a parliamentary Session—a whole year—they are deemed to have been disqualified from serving in the House of Lords. Someone who has been detained at the pleasure of the Italian Government for two or three years will not have been able to attend the House of Lords and will surely be disqualified on that basis.
Dan Byles
Let me clarify this. That was a flaw in the original drafting of the Bill, but in Committee we introduced a provision whereby the House of Lords has the right to vote to disregard the clause removing peers through being absent in certain circumstances, to deal with exactly the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Indeed, on Second Reading we discussed what would happen to a prisoner of war and whether they would automatically be disqualified—the answer is, obviously, no. It would almost certainly be possible for somebody held in a prison of a vaguely civilised nation to apply to take leave of absence. So, on both counts—either in the special circumstances or on the leave of absence issue—the peer would not be forced to resign.
We should protect our own constitutional rights zealously. We should not allow other places to interfere in how we run our business. The right way to go about it is set out in amendment 23, which achieves what I was aiming to achieve and is pithier. It does not give any special status to the Commonwealth realms, which I was giving not particularly out of a sentimental attachment to them, but more because of the ability to appeal to the Privy Council and the safeguards that builds in. It ought to be the right of the House of Lords to expel people—this House has that right and it is unfortunate that the House of Lords does not. It would be a good power for it to have as part of regulating its own affairs. It has the power to imprison peers but it does not have the power to expel them. However, it should use that expulsion power only if it wants to do so; it should not be forced to do it because a foreign court has told it that it has to.
I was discussing the systems in America and Italy, great nations with which we have the friendliest relations. However, we do not understand—we are not party to—their legal systems. A British person accused in a foreign country is often at a disadvantage to a national accused in that country because they are not in sympathy with the systems that will be used against them. Therefore, having this protection whereby it must be an active decision of the Lords to expel somebody convicted in a foreign country will protect the peer arrested in Kiribati for waving a flag or in Uganda for being homosexual or in Singapore for using the internet unlawfully. It is absolutely right that a judgment can be made as to whether in our terms, under our law and under our rules a peer has done something so serious and manifestly wrong that that right of peerage to sit in the House of Lords should be removed or curtailed. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire has introduced amendment 23, which has saved me from speaking at much greater length on this important subject.
Stephen Twigg
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on, and thank him for, discussing his concerns about this issue on Second Reading. We have subsequently had the opportunity to reflect on and consider the matter, and we see that he has made a powerful and persuasive case. I was going to mention the anti-gay laws in Uganda to which he referred. Tragically, similar laws have recently been passed in another Commonwealth country, Nigeria. So simply to rely upon the laws and legal systems of other countries is not sufficient and not proper in determining our own constitutional arrangements. As he says, even in countries that have advanced legal systems and are our close allies, such as the United States and Italy, there are concerns in certain cases. So he was absolutely right to raise this matter on Second Reading and I warmly welcome the fact that the promoter of the Bill has responded with amendment 23, which intelligently addresses the concerns that have been raised. It says that Parliament automatically will seek to protect peers but has the option of disqualifying. That reverses the original provision and it is an intelligent way of responding to the serious and proper concerns that the hon. Member for North East Somerset has raised, both on Second Reading and again today.
I wish briefly to comment on the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who also spoke about this issue in Committee. He rightly reminded the House today of the public revulsion at some of the crimes that have been committed, referring to the case of a particular MSP, the crimes of people from all sides of this House and also of some in the other place. He made an interesting argument about why there could be a disparity between the 12-month limit here and a lower six-month limit in the other place because Members in this place are subject to re-election. That argument interests me and it is food for thought as this debate moves forward. My instinct is the same as that of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), which is that if we are to look to a lower limit, it would be preferable if we had a lower limit across the board. Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the fact that the Leader of the House has said that we should open a dialogue on this issue as it relates to the rules of the House of Commons.
My immediate recollection is that even where Members of Parliament have been convicted of serious offences and sentenced for a period of less than 12 months they do, generally speaking, resign. That has certainly been the case in relation to recent issues that arose from the expenses scandal. The only case I can think of in recent history where MPs did resume their seats—I stand to be corrected on this by Members from either side of the House—was where they were briefly sent to prison for not paying the poll tax. I cannot think of any other recent cases where a Member of Parliament has been imprisoned for a period of less than 12 months and resumed their seat having come out of prison. There is a case for us to examine the matter, but I do not think that this Bill is the right vehicle for us to do so. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend, who has raised an important issue, will not press his amendment to a vote.
Greg Clark
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that this is a matter for the House. The Leader of the House has agreed that discussions can be initiated on this, and it is not for me to prescribe the content of those discussions. However, as the suggestion was that they should be cross-party, the hon. Gentleman has at least had the opportunity through his own party to raise that matter.
In amendments 12 to 14, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) proposes moving the words “It is irrelevant” from the start of subsection (3) to the body of the subsection. He always has an eye to elegance on paper as well as in verbal communication. I dare say that it was the aesthetics of the drafting that caught his eye.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Let me save my right hon. Friend some trouble. My amendments were merely to make sense of the changes to the Commonwealth realms and the Commonwealth to move the words from the introduction to the body of the subsection; otherwise, the subsequent amendment would not work.
Greg Clark
I understand the point now. I did think it was a rather more syntactical point, but I stand corrected. As I took it from my hon. Friend’s speech that he had been persuaded by the arguments put by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and that he was content with the simpler expression of the same intention, his amendments would not be required if my hon. Friend’s amendment were made. As my hon. Friend has indicated that he is content with the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, I hope that he will consider it reasonable not to discuss his proposed equivalents in great detail.
Amendment 17 on pardons adds a duty on the Lord Speaker to issue a further certificate if a Member is pardoned, following the conviction of a serious offence. The effect of a free pardon is that the person is cleared from all consequences of the offence, and from all statutory or other disqualifications following on from the conviction, although it does not remove the conviction itself. On that basis, if a peer who has been disqualified was then pardoned, the effect of the pardon would be the removal of the disqualification, and it would be odd if it were removed in the case of a successful appeal but not of a free pardon.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Part of the reason for adding “or is pardoned” was that the pardon might come from a foreign court, and I do not think that the pardon from a foreign court would have any automatic effect in British law in any other circumstances.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Is it not the case that we cannot allow an appeal when it refers to this House, because the vacancy has to be filled, whereas in the other House there is no limit on the numbers? We have to have every constituency represented, and we could not have two Members of Parliament, which could happen if someone who was excluded was brought back.
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is quite right to explain the differences between the two Houses. That is why it is right to focus on the fact that this is a Bill that proposes changes to the House of Lords. The Houses are not identical in every respect, but my hon. Friend has been careful in restricting his Bill to the House of Lords and to its procedures there.
It is right that their Lordships should review the circumstance in which a Member was convicted abroad in order to satisfy themselves that the offence is recognised as being serious in the United Kingdom and that the circumstances of the conviction are fair. I know that a number of Members raised this issue on Second Reading, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire for the diligent and sensible way he has managed to find an amendment that is elegant and to the point, and the Government are pleased to lend their support to it.
Thomas Docherty
I have listened carefully to the arguments, some of which have been most persuasive. Given the assurances that the Government are open to the whole issue and the fact that I do not want to hold up this Bill, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 23, page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (9) and insert—
‘(9) A certificate under subsection (2) in respect of a conviction outside the United Kingdom may be issued only if the House of Lords resolves that subsection (1) should apply; and where the House does so resolve the Lord Speaker must issue the certificate.’.—(Dan Byles.)
Clause 4
Effect of ceasing to be a member
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 21, page 3, line 44, at end insert—
‘(9) A person who ceases to be a member of the House of Lords in accordance with sections 1 and 2 of this Act may not be elected to the House of Commons during the course of the next two Parliaments.
(10) A person who ceases to be a member of the House of Lords in accordance with this Act remains entitled to all the other privileges state degree style title and honour of peerage.’.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Amendments 19 and 21 aim to deal with the issue of Members of the House of Lords going from the Lords to the Commons. As the Bill was initially drafted and as we debated it on Second Reading, it would have been possible to have a revolving door or ping-pong back and forth, depending which phrase is preferred. It would have been possible for someone to leave the Commons, go to the Lords, leave the Lords, come back to the Commons and go back to the Lords again. I am glad to say that that was amended in Committee, which has at least to some degree ameliorated the situation. But there is a problem with the House of Lords being changed into a place that can be used as a way of preparing people for political life before bringing them to the Commons. As more and more professional politicians come through—I know this is a matter of concern to the electorate—people can have the following career path: becoming special advisers, going to the Lords and then coming to the Commons, without any real pause in between. As the Bill stands, it would be possible to resign a seat in the Lords immediately before the close of nominations for the House of Commons at a general election—
Thomas Docherty: There is already some precedent for somebody leaving the House of Lords, going straight to the House of Commons and then back to the House of Lords. I think I am right in saying that Alec Douglas-Home did exactly that in 1963 and was elected in Scotland to a seat that he represented for a number years and then became a life peer.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. There is indeed a precedent, which I was well aware of, and it is not just the late Lord Home of the Hirsel; Lord Hailsham did exactly the same. Both of them resigned their peerage for the 1963 Conservative leadership contest, at which point Tory leaders emerged from the magic circle—a very satisfactory way of doing it, but it is now done in a more modern way, and I am glad to say that all Conservative Members have an equal vote in our leadership elections. I cannot quite remember how the trade unions sort it out in the Labour party, but I know that they have a lot of fun with it.
There is indeed a precedent, but the hon. Gentleman will remember that when the ability to disclaim peerages was introduced, a limited time was provided when all peers could disclaim their peerage, regardless of when they had received it. Thereafter, peers who disclaimed their peerage had a limited time in which to do so after inheriting their peerage. It was all done so that Tony Benn, the then Viscount Stansgate, could get back into the House of Commons to be elected for Bristol. That was done to provide for an extraordinary circumstance where people had no choice but to be peers. They had become peers by the wonderful accident of birth that had raised them to such a status, which took them into the House of Lords and forced them to leave the House of Commons, whereas the precedent had already been set in relation to Lord Curzon and George V that the Prime Minister had to come from the House of Commons. Therefore, to allow the widest choice of candidates for that leadership election, peers were able to resign their peerages and come into the Commons. However, people becoming leaders of the party in that way is very different from it becoming a standard part of the career progression of a politician to go to the Lords first and then come to the Commons. The first should not be seen as a stepping stone to the other.
It is also a problem in relation to our constituency work, because it would not be inconceivable that an election result in a marginal seat could see a Member of Parliament defeated, and that his party might so value his or her services that they put them into the House of Lords, from which he has the ability to campaign for the marginal seat for the next five years, before resigning his seat in the House of Lords to come back to the House of Commons.
Thomas Docherty
Again, that situation already exists. We have had a number of cases of Members of the House of Lords being elected to the Scottish Parliament, but it has not led to widespread problems.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The devolved Parliaments are different, because the simple logistics of needing to be in Edinburgh or Cardiff and also in the House of Lords make it much harder to work on that basis than between these two Houses, where the role, the position, the place of activity are so very similar. It is perfectly reasonable to foresee someone who has just lost a seat spending five years as a Lord preparing to campaign for it again. As it becomes clearer, and parties are well aware of this, that to win seats we have all modelled ourselves on the Liberal Democrats—I say that with not a single one present in the House now—we have worked out that to win marginal constituencies—[Interruption.] I was not aware that there was anyone that I could see in the Galleries.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that we make no mention of the Galleries, only this Chamber.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is why I did not see anybody in them, Mr Deputy Speaker. Although, there is, as you know, the right to speak from the Gallery in the event that the House is full. Sadly, it is not full today.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I think that that is something of the past, not of the present.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I can help the hon. Gentleman a little more. It is also up to the Chair to decide who speaks, and on this occasion I have decided to hear a little more from Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I will let you into a secret: one of my ambitions is to speak from the Galleries one day. I think that it was last done in the 1950s.
To return to my point, it has been established that the best way to win marginal seats is to select candidates early and have them working in the constituencies for a long time in the run-up to a general election. That presents difficulties, however, because candidates have to earn a living, need to find the resources to finance their campaign and have to put other parts of their life on hold. If they can do that from the House of Lords, that is an enormous advantage. It gives them an income of sorts and it gives them status, which they can use to intervene in constituency affairs—a local council or Government body will take a letter from a peer just as seriously as a letter from a Member of the House of Commons. There is the risk of setting up an MP and an unelected peer to fight for a constituency for five years, with the peer simply standing down before the election to put himself forward and conceivably take the seat and go back to being a Member of the House of Commons. That seems to me to be fundamentally undesirable.
Members may say that the risk is slim and that that will never happen, but we are becoming a more professional political class. There is certainly evidence that length of campaigning in constituencies helps. There is currently a very good proposal from “ConservativeHome” to provide candidates with funds to help them with that. How much easier it would be if there was a nice, cosy billet in the House of Lords from which it could be done. Admittedly, that could not be done again, because the peer would have burnt all his bridges in relation to returning to the House of Lords, but that is not too bad, because they would still have got 15 years out of the system: one Parliament as an MP, one as a peer and, if they are clever, another as an MP. It begins to look like a means of forming a political career.
If that system becomes a means of forming a political career, it also becomes—I return to what I said earlier—a means of the parties asserting more control over their lordships’ House. A key thing about being in their lordships’ House is that there really are no further baubles the Government can offer. There are very few carrots and no sticks. That encourages independence of mind. It encourages peers, once they get there, to be more rigorous in considering the merits of the issues before them and to act in the proper way of a revising Chamber. The more possible it is for Governments to encourage, coerce and persuade peers to stick tightly to the party line, the less use their lordships’ House will serve, because it will be unable to do its job as a revising Chamber effectively.
Even if the risk is relatively slim and the numbers involved will not necessarily be huge, it seems to me that some sort of stop ought to be placed on that and that people go to the Lords knowing that they have accepted it for life, as we have already discussed, and that it disbars them from the House of Commons. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people should face the consequences of decisions they have freely made. That is where it is different from hereditary peers and disclaiming, because a hereditary peerage is not a decision freely made; it is an accident of birth. However, any life peer has received a letter from the Prime Minister saying, “Do you want to be a life peer?”, has had letters patent issued by the sovereign and has had to pay Garter King of Arms to draw up the paperwork. They have had to do something to get that noble status. They know, because they have been told, that it excludes them from the House of Commons, by their voluntary choice.
Some argue that that is against their human rights, which is an absolutely ridiculous understanding of human rights. I know that it has been argued that it is against their human rights to stop them coming back to the House of Commons, but they are the ones who chose to be ineligible for the House of Commons. Surely with rights go responsibilities, and surely people must face the consequences of their actions.
I think that the failure to include that exclusion in the Bill is a mistake. It is something that ought to be remedied, because it could lead to problems in future. It could damage the standing of the House of Lords. It could easily be misused by a powerful political party, because obviously the party in government is more able to decide who the working peers will be, and therefore to use it for its marginal seats, to the detriment of opposition parties. No party is in government for ever, so it is always worth all sides bearing those difficulties in mind. It also fundamentally takes away from someone the consequences of their actions, which I think is wrong. I think that people should bear those consequences, and once they have been elevated they should not be allowed to sink back down, at least for a period.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The proposal would not put in an artificial bar but maintain the status quo, because currently a specific Act of Parliament would be required for a life peer to come into this House. Lord Young could not have been Margaret Thatcher’s successor without an Act of Parliament allowing him to disclaim his peerage.
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this door has been opened by the Bill, and I recognise that he is trying to shut it. That was my point in talking about putting in an artificial bar. I hope that the Minister will clearly set out how the Government intend to respond to this issue. I think that the hon. Gentleman is seeing a mischief where there is not one. I hope that when he responds he will reflect on what the two Front Benchers have said.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I have listened very carefully to the speeches in this debate. I am very reassured by the Minister’s commitment that the matter will be reviewed if it turns out to be a problem: if my fears turn out to be real, it will be looked at, and if they turn out not to be, it will not matter. I am also reassured that the honorifics that go with a peerage will clearly remain. I do not want to risk the Bill by pushing my amendments to a Division, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Third Reading
Queen’s consent signified.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, the rule has a caveat that the House must be full for someone to speak from the Galleries, and sadly that is not the case today.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) for her incredibly generous comments, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on piloting this Bill. I am surprised that I find myself supporting a reform Bill of any kind, as I am normally with Lord Palmerston: “Change? Change? Aren’t things bad enough already?” My hon. Friend has piloted this Bill with incredible courtesy, efficiency, and a willingness to listen to the points that have been raised. Although I think all its proceedings should have been on the Floor of the House, it is a rare event for a Back-Bench Member to pass a constitutional Bill and it requires a good deal of patience and perhaps responsiveness.
Thomas Docherty
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would agree that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) is much more successful at such things than the Deputy Prime Minister appears to be.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
For once, I will praise the Lord President of the Council, because to be fair to him—my right hon. Friend!—having not been able to get through a massive reform of the House of Lords that would have had enormous constitutional implications, he has shown good grace in not sulking in his den and trying to obstruct this reform. This Bill allows transitions to take place which, although minor in themselves, are actually quite fundamental. A life peerage is now no longer for life, the problem of peers committing offences is dealt with at last—which in some ways is long overdue—the House of Lords is now able to expel peers, and non-attendance has a sanction. I think those reforms make the upper House stronger. That is not to say that I do not have minor qualms about some of the detail, but my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire has been incredibly successful in piloting the Bill, and has done so in such a way that even those of us who are accused of being Neanderthal about constitutional matters are on his side.