House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

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

[The Minister without Portfolio (Ellie Reeves)]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, as I open this Committee of the whole House.

As I noted a number of times on Second Reading, this is a short and focused Bill. It delivers on the Government’s manifesto commitment to bring about an immediate reform by removing the rights of the remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. This Bill is a matter of principle. In the 21st century, it cannot be right for there to be places in our legislature reserved for those born into certain families. Having now seen all the amendments tabled by parties from across the House, it is clear that there is no principled objection to the aim of the Bill, which is to remove the right of people to sit and make laws in our legislature by virtue of an accident of birth. Therefore, I hope that all Members across the House can join Government Members in voting for this important and long-overdue legislation.

I look forward to hearing from hon. Members over the course of today’s debate, but I shall start with the detail of the Bill itself. Clause 1 is clear, straightforward and central to the overall purpose of the Bill. It removes membership of the House of Lords from the remaining hereditary peers. Specifically, clause 1 repeals section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999, which currently provides an exception to the general exclusion of hereditary peers from membership of the House in section 1 of the 1999 Act. Under that exception, 90 hereditary peers and those hereditary peers holding the office of Earl Marshal or performing the office of Lord Great Chamberlain continue to be Members of the other place.

The clause is a core part of the Bill and delivers the Government’s clear manifesto commitment to remove the right of the remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the other place. It will result in the removal of the 92 reserved places for hereditary peers. There are currently vacancies in the seats reserved for hereditary peers—at present, there are 88 hereditary peers in the other place. Such vacancies would usually be filled by a hereditary peer by-election, but such by-elections have been paused until January 2026 by changes to the Standing Orders agreed by the other place in July 2024.

The Government value the good work done by hereditary peers, and we have spoken on several occasions about the individuals who have served in Parliament with duty and dedication. These reforms are not personal, but they are long overdue and essential.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Government would find considerable sympathy for their position if they were to make provision for those hereditary peers currently in the House of Lords who have done good work and who have acquired a lot of experience by possibly introducing a phase-out or a generous allocation of life peerages to those who are considered worthy on the basis of their past record of participation.

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. There would of course be no bar on the Leader of the Opposition nominating any of those who have served as hereditary peers for life peerages in the normal way.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

That sounds reasonable, except for the fact that, unless there were a phasing of the process, it would not be possible within the numbers available to the Leader of the Opposition to nominate more than a small fraction. Can the Minister offer any more flexibility on that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is one step ahead of me. It is not that we seek a comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. It is that the Labour party promised that this would come. The Government promised that they would leave the remaining hereditary peers there until they had a plan for comprehensive reform, but that comprehensive plan is missing. Labour is throwing out the stone in the shoe of the accepted hereditary peers and dodging the hard, principled questions about how to ensure that the House of Lords functions most effectively.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

My hon. Friend made a passing reference to a fear that what is going here is a form of gerrymandering. Does he agree that if generous provision were to be made for really active remaining hereditary Members, of whom there are probably quite a few, to be given life peerages on a one-off basis, and on the basis of merit, that would dispose of the suspicion of gerrymandering?

[Alex Burghart]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He strikes at the critical failure of the legislation, which is that really the Government are seeking to remove Members of the upper House who happen not to take the Labour Whip. What we all agree on—or what I hope we all agree on—is that the role of the Lords is that of a chamber of scrutiny, and we must welcome more expert scrutiny. We have seen from the behaviour, attendance and work of hereditary peers that they are an intrinsic part of that scrutiny, so it is highly suspicious that the Labour party should seek to remove them. Indeed, if we set the precedent that the Government of the day can remove Members of one House because they do not agree with them, where will it end? Those Cross Bencher hereditary peers who will be axed by the measures have, as far as I can see, done an excellent job, yet they are not being given another way out such as that suggested by my right hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and to a degree, I agree. That is why we set out in our manifesto the package of reforms and changes that we hope to see made to the other place during this Parliament, in order to deliver on the promises we made in the election. He is absolutely right to say that constitutional reform is a delicate thing; that is why it is important that we make these reforms with consideration and in small steps, to make sure that the unintended consequences of large-scale reform are not felt.

The Conservative party made modest reforms during previous Parliaments, such as giving Members of the House of Lords the ability to retire from it. That was a small change, but one with consequential impacts—far more Members have left the House of Lords under that provision than will be impacted by the provisions in this Bill. That was done thoughtfully, carefully, slowly and, I think, consensually.

Similarly, I think that the principle of this Bill—that hereditary peers will no longer have the right to sit in the House of Lords—has already been established in this House. None of the amendments that have been tabled today seeks to overturn that; none of them seeks to make a case for the continuation of hereditary peers. As such, the consensus that the right hon. Gentleman rightly talks about exists in this Bill. The more we seek to tack on to the Bill—taking other elements of constitutional reform and adding them to the Bill—the more we risk that consensus falling apart. We risk this House not having a settled position, creating the opportunity for potential wrecking amendments. I do not suggest that Opposition Members are tabling wrecking amendments, but they could be tabled elsewhere to completely flatline what is a very modest and sensible reform.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very reasonable speech. Would it be fair to say that he means this is almost a case of going for the low-hanging fruit on which everybody has a measure of agreement, while recognising that future steps may be a lot more complex and potentially dangerous if we get them wrong?

There is one aspect that is not of itself an argument for keeping the hereditary peers, but is something that will be lost if and when they go. That is, the hereditary peers are one group of people who are not appointed subject to prime ministerial patronage. Without straying beyond the scope of today’s debate, could the hon. Gentleman give us an inkling of whether something like putting the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a statutory basis is a reform that the Government might consider, bearing in mind some of the controversial cases where people have been imposed on the House of Lords in defiance of the commission’s preferences?

[Gareth Snell]

I could not possibly begin to offer an opinion on the thoughts of the Government, but I know that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will have heard that question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s point about strengthening the House of Lords Appointments Commission, but at the risk of broadening the debate a little too far, can she explain why it would be a sensible idea to have a second Chamber of elected parliamentarians? It would be rather like more than doubling the size of this House, but with Members in two separate places, possibly elected by different electoral systems and at different times. It is impossible to imagine more of a recipe for deadlock and conflict.

[Sarah Olney]

I very much look forward to having that debate in a future Session of this Parliament and on a future piece of legislation. That is why I tabled new clause 7—to call on the Government to make a commitment to future legislation, so that we in this House can debate and support broader and further reforms to ensure the democratic legitimacy of the House of Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

New clause 4 clearly sets out an intention to deliver on what Labour’s manifesto wished to introduce, and I would be happy to work with Government Ministers and the Liberal Democrats spokesman to ensure that we get this legislation into the best possible shape.

Some of the attendance records in the upper House leave me a little shocked. In the 2019-24 Parliament, of the 966 Members eligible to attend at least some of the last Parliament, 28 did not attend at all—did not even bother to turn up—and 116 attended on less than 10% of the sitting days, which is not particularly active. I quite understand why Labour Front Benchers, when in opposition, alighted on that and felt that it needed to be included in their manifesto. That is why I tabled new clause 4. I firmly believe that there is support for it not only on the Labour Benches—Labour Members stood on their manifesto, so presumably they support that proposal—but on the Opposition Benches. During that same period, 158 Members of the upper House voted in less than 10% of the Divisions they were eligible to vote in.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I hate to strike a discordant note with my right hon. Friend as he and I have fought shoulder to shoulder in many battles, but is it not an illustration of the Pandora’s box one might be opening to consider what the situation would be if all these people turned up at the same time? I doubt very much that the upper Chamber would be capable of handling it, which then leads us to the question of how to reduce the numbers to a manageable proportion. So my right hon. Friend is getting into difficult waters with all of this; he had better be careful what he wishes for in getting all these people to converge on the House of Lords at once.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend and I agree on so many things, but perhaps I am just wanting to see this change happen. By adding new clause 4—introducing Labour’s manifesto commitment as part of this Bill—we can significantly reduce the size of the upper House and avoid the kind of intimate crush that he sets out.

--- Later in debate ---

Those two simple reforms could solve the problem. We have heard about constitutional conferences in the past. May I suggest to the Paymaster General, whom I respect greatly, that it might not be a bad idea for the political leaderships of all our parties to sit down together and organise such reform to reduce the size of the House of Lords to about 600? Do we want to appoint people for life? Why do we not just appoint them for 15 years, so that when they have done those 15 years they retire at the next general election? All those ideas are very moderate and sensible, and if we could secure consensus on them, we could reduce the size of the House of Lords, get rid of the bad apples, and achieve what we want to achieve.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Does the Father of the House agree that inevitably, given the nature of the Bill, we have been talking more about the process by which people become Members of the House of Lords than about the activity that it carries out? In particular, although not everyone in the House of Lords is an expert, a large number of them are: people who have reached the top of their respective professions, whether those professions be academia, the law, the arts or the judiciary.

Can the Father of the House cast his mind back to 1984, when he and I, having both fought the 1983 general election—he stood in Gainsborough and Horncastle, which is why he was in the House; and I stood in Swansea West, which is why I was not—co-operated on trying to have postal ballots for trade union elections? Does he remember that he introduced a Bill that got nowhere in this House, because of the strong whipping system of elected Members, but when we took it to the House of Lords we were able to persuade people on the arguments because of the light whipping? The amendment went through, and when the Bill came back to the Commons the then Government brought in their own measures to meet the point. Does he agree that, apart from creating gridlock, an elected second Chamber would not have the possibility of introducing fresh ideas that, once introduced, may be accepted by a Government in this place, but which would never get off the starting blocks if they were introduced in this place initially?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a very good point. I remember that rebellion very well—it was the start of my many rebellions. I suggest to Labour Members that they should not rebel if they want get on in this place. We had a rebellion and finally won on that issue, and my right hon. Friend makes a very good point about how we won the argument. That underlines how important it is to have a second Chamber that is not composed of elected politicians. I really do not see the point of electing politicians to a second Chamber, because it would just be like this place: full of people who want to become Ministers and who are completely subordinate to the Whips.

What is the point of having an elected second Chamber? The whole point of a second Chamber is that it should be independent-minded, and the Lords are independent-minded. They regularly defeat the Government, and they actually have better debates than we do. The House of Lords is full of people who have tremendous experience in the professions, business and charities. I just do not see the point of getting rid of them lock, stock and barrel, but there is a perfectly good consensual argument that the number should be reduced. There are some people in the Lords whom we should remove either because they have not been appointed in an entirely right way or because they do not turn up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It was not my original intention to speak but, given the nature of the debate, and in view of the signal I have received that I might be given a little latitude to go slightly wider than the narrow terms of the Bill, I will make a single point to elaborate slightly on the intervention I made upon the Father of the House a few minutes ago.

A lot has been said about how the public are deemed to regard the status of the upper House. I am not sure on what basis such sweeping statements have been made, although I can understand that when, from time to time, someone manifestly unfit or inappropriate to be ennobled is ennobled, it may cause a degree of public concern and disillusionment.

New Members on both sides of the Committee, but particularly on the Government side, should avail themselves of the opportunities to understand more closely what the House of Lords can do that the House of Commons cannot. In the first instance, peers can bring their expertise to bear. That is not to say that all peers are experts—they are not—but a lot of them are, because they have reached the top of their profession. They are not necessarily any brighter, more intelligent or more cultured than Members of this House, but as we chose to divert ourselves from whatever escalator we could have been on, in order to become full-time politicians, we do not reach the giddy heights of those in other professions, who are then able to bring their expertise to bear on the legislative process by being taken into the upper House.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is not a doctor, but could he explain the biological process by which someone inherits expertise?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am not aware that anything I have said this afternoon has been in favour of retaining the hereditaries. It has not. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my earlier interventions, he would have known that is the case. That is why I said I am going somewhat wider than this Bill, which focuses solely on the hereditaries.

The suggestion that the upper House stands in low repute is ill-conceived, and I urge the hon. Gentleman and other new Members to take advantage of the seminars that Labour and Liberal Democrat Members and I try to organise to enable new Members from all parties to be brought into contact with leading Members of the upper House, to see what they do. That would be a good use of his and other Members’ time.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend is making an important point about the subtlety of the relationship between the two Houses. I spoke earlier about the relationship between the Government and the Opposition. In an unwritten constitution, political culture prevails, and that political culture is informed by that subtlety and by those relationships. My right hon. Friend described an occasion when legislation emanated from an origin in the other place, but very often legislation is improved and perfected through that connection. That should not be lost as we rush headlong into a piecemeal reform of the House of Lords.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The elements that make up the House of Lords consist of different groups of people: some have got there by accident of birth and are now going to leave; some have got there as the result of political horse-trading of some sort, and perhaps should not have been put there in the first place; but a great many have got there, as I said earlier, by having reached the heights of their various professions and having proved themselves to be outstanding intellectuals who can bring a level of specialisation to the scrutiny of legislation. Even if we in this House were on exactly their same level of accumulated knowledge, we cannot bring that same level of scrutiny because of the demands we face on our time and in looking after our constituents, which inevitably works to the cost of the amount of attention we could give purely to focusing on improving legislation.

I wish to place on record that the reason why I became an ardent advocate of an unelected second Chamber—and why I would rather have no second Chamber at all than two elected Chambers—is precisely that it is impossible to whip such a Chamber to prevent people with good ideas from persuading peers of the virtue of those ideas. Members of an unelected second Chamber are able to have at least a sporting chance of amending legislation in good ways that would not get beyond first base in this House, because the elected Members, for the most part, almost all the time, obey the whipping.

Before I was an MP, when I was a political activist, I and my colleagues managed to get four pieces of legislation into law. Since I have been an MP, I have got only one, on the privacy of Members’ home addresses, on to the statute book, because, exceptionally, that was a free vote. How many free votes happen in this House? Hardly any. The equivalent of free votes in the upper House happen all the time.

We required postal ballots for trade union elections, which was incorporated into the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Employment Act 1988. We outlawed political indoctrination in schools, which was incorporated into the Education Act 1986 and carried forward in the Education Act 1996. We prohibited local councils from publishing material that

“promotes or opposes a point of view on a question of political controversy which is identifiable as the view of one political party and not of another”,

which was incorporated into section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988. Finally, we more strictly defined the concept of “due impartiality” in the coverage of politically contentious issues on television and radio, which was incorporated into the Broadcasting Act 1990.

Every one of those measures was got through the House of Lords first, and then either adopted in the House of Commons directly or brought forward by the Government in their alternative proposals. We do away with the expertise of the House of Lords at our peril. All we will be left with are machine politicians, whether they are in one elected House or two elected Houses, and that is to the detriment of our democracy, not to its enhancement.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Chair. I am honoured to serve under your chairmanship.

Before I begin my prepared remarks, I wish to commend and pay tribute to right hon. and hon. Members across the House for their skills of oratory and persuasion and their education and ability to entertain. It has been an absolute privilege to hear Members with such experience speak, so well-informed are they on such topics.

I also wish to speak to new Labour Members who, like me, are finding their feet and learning the ways of the world in this place. I am pleased to hear that they are passionate about pushing and challenging their party to implement the laws and changes that the constituents and the country demand. but I remind them of the consequences of that. Rebellion, as I have seen in this short time, is rewarded with sanction or suspension, so it is better to get as much as possible into this Bill now than to hope that they may ever get a chance to do so again.

The House has been made aware that faith in political parties and institutions is at a low ebb—perhaps the lowest in my lifetime. We have been told that only 12% of the British public say that they trust politicians; political parties are the least trusted of any UK public institution, and trust in Parliament is on the decline. Any measure that helps to rebuild that trust is to be supported, which is why I support this Government Bill to remove hereditary peers. The anachronistic nature of hereditary peerage contributes to the sense not only that the House of Lords is out of touch, but that all our political institutions are out of touch. It feeds a disconnect between the people and their systems of governance and reinforces a belief that politics is the preserve of another elite, the political elite, that lives in its own bubble in Westminster.

Given this urgency to rebuild faith in politics and the need for radical change to that end, it is disappointing that the Government have chosen to be so timid in their ambition. I understand that further changes could be introduced further down the road. Indeed, hon. Members have said that they will try to push for more changes. For instance, perhaps they could remove the over-80s from the Lords, or retire the 26 bishops who are automatically given a seat.

The Lords themselves have raised the idea of removing those Members who rarely, if ever, attend. But even these tame reforms appear to be too much for this Government at this stage. We need much bolder action.