Interim Report: Leader's Group on Members Leaving the House

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, I express on my own behalf—and, I am sure, on behalf of all Members of the House—our appreciation of the work that he and the small group of noble Lords mandated by the Leader of the House have already done, and the help that they have already tendered your Lordships’ House. Although he has indicated his optimism that a degree of consensus is arising, the very fact that we have this interim report and are having this debate suggests that we have not yet arrived at that consensus. I hope that after today his optimism will be fully justified, because it would be helpful. I have some doubt about it, not least because, in addressing this relatively limited issue of permanent retirement from your Lordships' House, another issue keeps getting folded in—the size of your Lordships' House.

There are a whole lot of contributory factors to the size of your Lordships' House. If we look at this proposal as the solution to the problem, we may be tempted not to move forward on something that is itself a reasonable proposition simply because it will not solve the wider problem—that being that a substantial number of new Peers continue to come in. Until we turn the tap down a little, if not off, simply working with the plug in at the other end will not necessarily provide a resolution.

I also have a certain scepticism, mirroring that of the Leader of the House, as to how far these changes in retirement will make a difference to the number of noble Lords who are active in the House. After all, if we simply ask those who are older or unable to be present or to participate in the work of the House to take retirement, it may reduce the overall numbers of the House, but it will make absolutely no difference to the number of noble Lords present at Question Time or to the crush that many noble Lords feel. Those who are not here then will still not be here. It will also make no difference in the main to the expense of running the House—although, in deference to the noble Baroness, I do not think that your Lordships' House, despite its size, is anything like the most expensive Second Chamber in the world. In fact, I suspect that it is substantially one of the cheapest. Dealing with the question of retirement will not make much difference to expense or to the number of noble Lords on the Benches during Question Time, but that does not mean that we should not move ahead with it for its own sake.

A lifetime commitment is increasingly unusual in today’s world. We heard an announcement today from the Leader of the House about what we very much look forward to and hope will be a lifetime commitment—that of the young prince and his belovèd. Lifetime commitments are a very rewarding thing when people can stick with them, but when I worked as a psychiatrist I became aware that there were an increasing number of divorces between elderly people, which had been rather unusual in the past. It became apparent that when couples had committed to each other when young, it was with the understanding—though not spoken at that early age—that they would not have to spend massive amounts of time with each other in the period of retirement. When they discovered that they would have 20, 30, 40 or more years together, all the time, undiluted in the course of retirement, it seemed a commitment that they had not intended to give in the first instance.

Similarly, with the improvements of medicine and all sorts of other things, there is an increased average life expectancy and an expectancy of productive, active years in your Lordships' House. But sadly, as will be an increasing problem for all of us in society, there is an increasing number of years that are not particularly productive. Those can be problem years for Members of your Lordships' House and their families as well as for commitments to loved ones and other sets of responsibilities. Many may, because of increasing physical or mental frailty, no longer feel able or be able to serve in your Lordships' House. It is appropriate to create a context in which it is possible for those who wish to, and in some cases perhaps should, for various reasons, to take permanent retirement from your Lordships' House. However, there is concern among some who would otherwise take retirement about some specific issues. First, there is sometimes a concern that if one left the House it would by a factor of one reduce the number of Members of one’s party. As the right reverend Prelate has observed, that may make an adverse difference, and colleagues may wish for a Member to stay when he or she may wish to go because it affects the number of votes—and sometimes these can be quite substantial. I therefore wonder whether there would be some value or assistance to your Lordships’ House if an understanding was reached, first, that there would be an overall broad limit on the number of its Members and, secondly, with due deference to the numbers in political parties relating to the votes in the last election, a principle previously enunciated, that when a Member took permanent retirement, it would in some way affect the number of nominations that came forward from the Prime Minister.

For a significant number of Peers—this is perhaps more true of some backgrounds rather than of others—the giving up of remunerative work for quite a number of years by Members of your Lordships’ House has left them substantially poorer than they might well otherwise have been. I will make one comparison, which I hope that noble Lords will kindly attribute to the strange background I come from rather than thinking it a proper comparison with your Lordships’ House. I remember discussing with a former member of the IRA the problems he was having after the ceasefire and the end of IRA activities. He said, “There is, you need to understand, no pension scheme for the IRA”. That is of course a wholly other circumstance, but there is no pension scheme for Members of your Lordships’ House and there are noble Lords who do not have substantial personal resources but who have, under command from Her Majesty and with a real and passionate commitment to their party and to the country, devoted themselves to your Lordships’ House. For some, the very modest expenses available are necessary for them or for their partner or family and they remain. It seems to me that that matter needs consideration.

The noble Lord the Leader of the House has said that no more money is available. However, I am not so sure that, in the country at large, the question of people who have given service having some modest recognition of that when they retire is quite such a difficult issue as some Members of your Lordships’ House think, particularly if it is linked to those who have had a certain minimum number of years of service and is related to the amount of service they have given in, perhaps, the last three years of their time. That may be an important issue. Mention has also been made of the considerable attachment that many noble Lords make to the House and to their colleagues. If there was some kind of arrangement allowing them to return to the House to engage with colleagues and use some of the facilities without being involved in any way with the process of legislation and scrutiny, that might well fulfil some of their own personal attachments but would leave a lower number of Members of the House.

There is and will be much more to say about this, but I simply caution, as I did earlier, that in considering this question we should not make the best the enemy of the good in the sense of trying to make this issue of retirement resolve all the other issues about the size of the House and the way it functions, then set it to the side because it simply does not accommodate all of those requirements. It has a purpose in itself and, if one made progress on that, there is nothing to say that the wider questions cannot be returned to at an early stage when we are clear about the proposals for your Lordships’ House, even before the end of this Parliament.