House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I support the Bill, and I support it because, along with others, I cannot accept that there should be a fast-track, reserved route into this House because of a person’s parentage. Despite the long history of the House, which I respect, it cannot be right that 10% of the seats in this House should continue to be filled in this way.

My first reservation is the implication that all excepted hereditary Peers should be required to retire once the Bill becomes law. Often, they have given up alternative careers to join this House and they make a valuable contribution. As a group, they attend and vote, if anything, more often than life Peers.

However, I am afraid that the blame for this potential cliff edge lies clearly with the previous Government. The Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, provided ample opportunity to abolish the by-elections and to allow this category of membership to disappear gradually. Not only did they refuse to support the noble Lord’s Bill, they made appointments to this House disproportionately to their own party. They tried to defend it using the opportunistic argument that they were underrepresented in this House compared with the House of Commons. The result, as we know, is that the present Government arrived in office with around 100 fewer seats than the present Opposition.

I accept the criticism that, if all we do is remove the excepted hereditary Peers, this will leave this House in a position where the number, affiliation and timing of future appointments are entirely at the behest of the Prime Minister of the day. As we have seen in the past, this is a mechanism for leapfrogging between the parties and increasing the size of the House.

However, there is a better answer to this criticism than the continuation of the hereditary principle. As proposed by the Lord Speaker’s Committee, this could be avoided by having a limit on the size of the House and having a fair allocation of appointments to political parties, with reference to their performance at previous general elections. In addition, all appointments could be required to be approved by HOLAC.

I support the Government’s proposal that in future the relevant party should publish a statement of the reasons for a proposed appointment, if it is successful; but I would go further and require the individuals concerned to make a statement to HOLAC about the time they would devote to the activities of the House, and the ways in which they would contribute. This could also be published if they were successful.

It follows from my earlier comments that I have a second reservation: the Bill does not take the opportunity to impose a ceiling on the size of the House. Without a ceiling, I fear that it will be possible to fill all the spaces created by the removal of the excepted hereditary Peers by appointments at the whim of the Prime Minister. I hope that the Government can be persuaded to include in this Bill—or at a later point—a ceiling on the size of the House, and a mechanism for a fair allocation of appointments.

The presence of Members through the hereditary route is undoubtedly a historical anomaly. However, the position whereby a Prime Minister can make whatever number of appointments they wish, and to whichever party they choose, is also an anomaly. I am not sure which of these is the most difficult to justify.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is of course absolutely correct on her point and I strongly support her.

The issue of fixed-term peerages or membership of the House is indeed closely related to the issue of age limits, so I have some sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said. I think that the overall answer to both issues is a retirement age that is agreed or understood at the time of appointment for new Peers. I hope that gives some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Desai.

Once the hereditary Peers have gone, the remaining Peers who are over 70 now will come under considerable media pressure. It is no use avoiding this point. To an even greater extent than younger Peers, such older Peers are, rightly, not very responsive to what the media think or what the media want them to do. Rather, they do what they believe is in the public interest and in accordance with the Nolan principles. I am not sure that that is what the media want. I think that having 80 year-old Peers will be made to seem just as indefensible as hereditaries are incorrectly claimed to be today.

I would not underestimate the value to the House of Lords of having some Peers whose experience goes back a very long way. For instance, I advised a noble Baroness on the Cross Benches who was faced with an assisted dying Bill. She erroneously believed that she could not try to kill the Bill at Second Reading; I advised her that she could and that I had seen it done some time before. Sure enough, she succeeded in her endeavours. Unfortunately, when drafting this speech, I could not avoid the words “kill”, “fatal” or “euthanise” or the phrase “put out of its misery” when talking about the procedure related to an assisted dying Bill.

I am not opposed to term limits, provided that those who propose them are clear about what they want the House to do. However, the Wakeham report identified a danger, in that term limits could deter potential new Members—a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I could comment on one or two of the points being made. The Lord Speaker’s Committee, which I chaired, did indeed make the proposal that there should be either 15-year or 20-year term limits. We looked at both of them and came down in the end marginally in favour of 15-year term limits.

That was against the background not of this Bill, of course, but of also promoting the idea of a ceiling on the size of the House of Lords. The great argument in favour of term limits is that it generates a predictable number and a predictable flow of levers, which can then work alongside a limit on the size of the House. It then provides the scope for both refreshment of the House and a change in the political balance over a period of time, which is also very important, and it all can be done in an orderly way. The proposal that we made was in this context of several other changes that were suggested, rather than something which was standing on its own.

The proposal we made was also to be applied only to new Peers. We said that it should begin then and was a long-term proposal. It was the only real mechanism we could find whereby you could stabilise the numbers over time and have the capacity to make changes. After all, there are term limits for most people in most legislatures. Most of them are determined by the electorate and by what happens to people when they meet the voter. There is nothing new about this: it is a very useful mechanism, but not really a mechanism for this Bill. I accept that it is for another day, but in the argument about a more balanced and wider group of changes being made, I would be very supportive of this important mechanism at that time.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, my Amendment 73 is included in this group and supported by my noble friend Lord Wigley and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I thank them for their support.

Most noble Lords will be aware by now that my goal is to see this place abolished and replaced with a democratic second Chamber. However, in the meantime, I am determined to push forward even small steps that can have a meaningful impact. Amendment 73 is a simple step towards achieving radical reform. I am asking His Majesty’s Government to implement a term limit for Members in this place, capped at no more than 10 years.

While I commend the tabling of several other amendments by noble Lords proposing term limits, the shortest among them is 15 years. By international standards, 15 years is extremely long for an appointed Chamber. In fact, it is three times longer than the most common term length of five years, with the next most common being just four years. Based on this evidence, we can also see that 10 years is extremely abnormal. However, I wish to note that my amendment seeks to establish a ceiling and not a target.

I have drafted Amendment 73 with a 10-year ceiling to allow His Majesty’s Government to investigate the various ranges of term limits before bringing forward a final proposal. I tabled the amendment because I firmly oppose the prospect that anyone should have a job for life. It is absurd in most settings, but completely inappropriate for an establishment that is supposed to be accountable to the people of these nations. We cannot honestly believe that someone can be forever representative of others.

Others have tabled amendments that would set a retirement age, which we will cover in the next group. Although this could be a good practice to introduce, I fear that setting a retirement age without a term limit would fail to address the imbalanced composition of this Chamber. This approach would not solve the issues that the Bill and these amendments aim to address—namely, the number of Members and the diversity of this Chamber.

Following my advocacy for term limits at Second Reading, I was asked by a Member of this House where I would get a job after my term was up. Would I not struggle with the loss of power and influence after being a Member of this place? I have reflected on this question, and I cannot escape the conclusion that it reveals a deeply flawed perception of what this institution should represent. It is precisely this kind of thinking that underscores the urgent need for term limits. No one in our position should see this role as a source of power. It is and must always be a responsibility, a duty to serve—not a privilege to cling to. If we ever lose sight of that, reform is not just desirable but essential. Therefore, I stand by my statement that term limits are the best way of addressing these issues. Implementing this amendment would guarantee that the Chamber undergoes regular renewal and revitalisation, with Members carrying out their duty with a strong sense of responsibility and commitment to their role, knowing that their time in office is limited and impactful.

Some argue that regular and continuous changes to the second Chamber might be disruptive. However, this amendment does not propose changes that would result in Members being unable to stand for re-election. I propose that we counter the supposed issue of turbulence by following the example of the Australian Senate. There, term limits are six years, with half the Senate elected every three years. This provides a staggered approach that ensures that at least a proportion of the upper Chamber is elected less recently than the lower Chamber. It means that membership is less affected by changes in the political mood. Implementing a term limit can also prove an effective way to ensure that Members of this Chamber do not exceed a certain number, and that representatives better reflect the voices of the public.

I would be grateful if the Minister could share with us some of her thinking about term limits. Does she see this as a possible reform that His Majesty’s Government would consider as part of this Bill or as a short new Bill? What is His Majesty’s Government’s view on life appointments?

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, as I intimated in the previous group, noble Lords who remain after the hereditaries have gone will come under increasing media pressure on the grounds that many are far too old and unelected. Even now, we often see colourful descriptions of noble Lord’s bios, especially when how they speak and vote is not to the particular medium’s liking.

In 2010, on my own initiative, I looked at a list of Peers in age order, expecting to find some age at which noble Lords became ineffective. I can assure the Committee that there is no such point, but over 33 years, what I have sadly seen time and again is Peers losing their mental faculties, alongside a relatively quick physical decline. Now that we have a system of retirement, there is not the moral drive to keep attending past the point of effectiveness, although a few do.

I think we can all agree that octogenarian Peers can be effective and add value. However, at 68, I am beginning to worry that I am out of touch and out of date with the things that I think, and I am experienced in, and that I am out of date with modern society. That is partially why I want to retire in the spring. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made the point about social media. I do not use social media; I have not got the foggiest clue how to use it. Wisdom and experience are valuable to the House, and I frequently seek the counsel of very old Peers.

The problem is this: the maximum practical limit of the size of the House is about 800. I suspect that is part of the reason why the Government want to get rid of hereditary Peers, despite our experience. What matters is the number of active Peers, not the size of the House, but we also have too many active Peers. My theory is that, after a certain size, the effectiveness of each individual Peer is inversely proportional to the number of active Peers—so each Peer has fewer opportunities. For instance, in Parliaments before 2010, if I got fed up with what the Government were doing, I could roll into the Minute Room and say “Right, Oral Question; I want the next available slot”. They would laugh at me if I did that now; you have to go into a ballot. We never used to have to do that.

The problem is not the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of older Peers; the problem is bed-blocking. We should have Peers on both the political Benches and the Cross Benches who have succeeded in their chosen careers, bought and paid for their house, and secured a decent occupational pension—that is to say, appointment at about the age of 55 to 63. There is no shortage of really good-quality people in this situation. The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, talked about precisely that. We cannot have them because we have around 200 octogenarian Peers.

I am not saying that we should not have much younger Peers. I am saying that the older Peers are bed-blocking younger potential Peers. I think the solution is to make it clear to new appointments how long their term will be. How long that should be is another matter, but I think we should make it absolutely clear how long new Peers are expected to be here. I do not think it would be fair to retire older life Peers, as they would have believed that they would be here for life. We hereditary Peers have known that we were on borrowed time since 1911.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make two comments on the figures of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. He has given us the figures on what the impact of various age limits would be; what he has not described, of course, is what the consequential effect in future years would be. My examination of these numbers suggests that the impact of an age limit is quite large to begin with, but after that the impact is really very small. I did an exercise of trying to look at the past and to judge, using one of these spreadsheets, what would have happened if we had had an age limit of 80 in the past. What would have been the effect on the size of the House and on what has happened through time?

The result is that the House would have been smaller, but if the same number of appointments had taken place, it would have still shown exactly the same upward trajectory over time. If we put in place an age limit of 80 that comes into effect in 2029, for the following few years only 20 or 30 people would fall into the bracket of hitting the age limit, which is not such a different figure from the number of retirees that we have in any case. So, I caution against thinking that this would solve the problems, in a sense, going forward over a longish period. There is no doubt that if one wants to bring down the size of the House quickly, an age limit is a very effective way of doing that. If one wants to make sure that one has a balanced profile going forward, so that leavers match new appointments, it will not help that much with regard to that.

That is why I also slightly take issue with the noble Baroness speaking for the Government when she said, just before dinner, that there is somehow a choice between term limits and age limits. To me, they have a very different purpose. An age limit is very effective in bringing down the size of the House, but it does not do very much to ease the challenge of keeping it down at that level. What term limits will do is create an onward larger flow of leavers at a time that we can predict in advance, which leaves scope for appointments and changes in the political balance in the House.

My other point is that, of course, if we are going to have an age limit, we do not have to choose between 80, 85 or 90 for ever. We could begin with an age limit of 85 and then, for the following Parliament, have an age limit of 80: we would get two bites at the process of bringing down the numbers. I support what my noble friend Lord Kinnoull says. I think the transition arrangements for this are just as important as they have been in the whole debate about hereditary Peers.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I feel I am again swimming against the current, but I am very much against having an age limit in this House. I feel it would leave us poorer, thinner and more meagre. I am delighted that Ministers appear determined to break their manifesto commitment on the subject, and I urge them to take the same wise, measured and judicious attitude to the stuff on the other side of the full stop which my noble friend Lord Dobbs was mentioning earlier. We would be deprived of a great deal in this House without the wisdom of the full range of our Members. He is not here at the moment, so I hope it will not embarrass him in his absence if I say that the best speech I heard in tonight’s debate came from the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, with his erudition and his experience, explaining the role of the Crown prerogative in appointing Members of this House. Again, I hope that he will not think this in any way impertinent, but he would fall on the wrong side of my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s age limit, and I think we would all be the poorer for it.

My noble friend Lord Parkinson spoke about a multigenerational Chamber; I think there is a real importance in having a multigenerational polity. It is important in an age when elected politicians are becoming younger, the 24-hour news cycle and social media are more exhausting and elected politics becomes more of a young man’s game to have a space in our national discourse for people from every generation. It is kind of a variant, if you like, of Burke’s point about a nation being a partnership between the dead, the unborn and the living.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hermer (Lab)]

Well, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for forgiving my rookie mistake.

We have already discussed during the course of the evening what I anticipate is an almost unanimous view of those of your Lordships who participate regularly in this House on the unacceptable situation of those who do not. There has been a fruitful discussion today, with insightful contributions from all sections of this House, reflecting a determination to address both that problem and the issue of participation. However, I respectfully say to the noble Lord that the very fact that there are Members of your Lordships’ House who do not participate but nevertheless continue to enjoy the benefits of the title is not an argument for creating yet another class of life peerage; it is an argument for the work that will, I hope, take place to address the problems that we face with participation.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

As was referred to earlier by the Leader of the Opposition, in the Lord Speaker’s Committee, we looked at this in some detail and had legal advice that it would be possible. However, on this narrow question, surely there is another group of people who are around: those who have retired and have kept their titles but no longer receive a Writ of Summons.

[Lord Hermer (Lab)]

Again, we need to remember what the amendment seeks to do, which is create yet another category. The question there is: how would this help and who would it serve? The Government’s position is that a further category would not help promote the image of your Lordships’ House in the public eye. It would lead to confusion and it would not add to utility. There is no suggestion that the honours system is somehow bereft of a further status that needs to be met by the creation of a further class of Peer.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Burns]

82: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Restriction on nominating new life peers (1) During any period in which the membership of the House of Lords exceeds the membership of the House of Commons, the number of recommendations made to His Majesty for the granting of new life peerages under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages) must not exceed one new peer for every two who leave the House through retirement or death.(2) Once the membership of the House of Lords is equal to or less than the membership of the House of Commons, recommendations made to His Majesty for the granting of new life peerages under section 1 of that Act must not be such that they would cause the membership of the House of Lords to exceed the membership of the House of Commons.”

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, we have spent many hours examining individual proposals for reform, including term limits, age limits, participation limits and the strengthening of HOLAC. I will bring together these threads and argue that none can be entirely effective in the long run unless we can establish a ceiling on the size of the House of Lords. For me, this is the keystone around which we can build the other elements of reform we have discussed. Without it, it will be difficult to stabilise the number of Members, and we will likely encounter the problem of increasing size again. I am less committed to the precise number for this ceiling and more to the principle of a ceiling.

My amendment proposes a limit on the size of the House of Lords, specifying that it shall not exceed the size of the House of Commons. Until we reach this limit, there would be only one appointment for every two leavers. I emphasise that this amendment is not intended to delay the passage of the Bill, which I support. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for joining in this seminar on the future reform of the House—possibly the longest seminar I have ever participated in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

It continues.

There have been some interesting discussions. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, used his amendment to refer back to the Lord Speaker’s Committee, when he looked at the size of the House and how related issues might be addressed. His amendment focuses on the idea of two out, one in, although he spoke more widely on the report, which was very helpful. I will come to that in a moment.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, wants to delay the commencement of the Bill, which is why he tabled his amendment. He seemed to think we should have a draft Bill first to implement the Burns committee’s report. I looked into his interest in the Burns committee, and I was surprised, given that he thought it so important to delay this Bill until there is a draft Bill on the Burns committee, that he did not speak on the Burns committee when it was debated in your Lordships’ House. I think he referred to it in debate on my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Bill. It is an interesting point but not one that we would be able to accept, because it would just delay this Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Burns, raised some interesting issues. When we debated the Burns committee report there was widespread support around the House for it. Looking back, I was not sure during the debate that every Member was fully signed up to every part of the report, but there was a real view that something had to be done and that this was going in the right direction of how we might address the issue.

The noble Baroness made a point about size and how we are not a full-time House. We are very much a full-time House. We sit longer and later than the other place, but we do not expect every Member of your Lordships’ House to be full-time. Members have outside interests, and we do not expect everybody to be here all day, every day—and neither should we. It would be unhelpful to the House if every Member was always here and we were all full-time politicians. We bring different experiences and different issues to the House.

I think we agree that the size of the House should come down. This is a bit about perception. We regularly read about the size and the bloat of the House, and how we are the second-largest assembly in the world, but we are not. If we look at the active membership—Members who attend reasonably regularly—then the House is not that size; it is much smaller. The two measures we are looking at, on retirement and participation, go a long way towards addressing some of the criticisms that are made. That is why I am so keen—and I have said that I will come back to the House on this—to have a mechanism that Members can input into so that we can see if the House can reach agreement on what that might look like in practice. We have had some discussions about that already.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, made some points about allocation. We discussed this before on the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Norton, which suggested that 20% of the House should be Cross-Benchers. Although that is a pretty fair figure for the Cross-Benchers, having a mechanism within your Lordships’ House that, in effect, determines what the size of one group should be does nothing about the relative size of other groups. One of the things I have looked at with some dismay over the years is how the government party has grown and grown. The noble Lord said his party had had only three new Members, most of them very recently. To come back to an earlier debate, at one point I think more new Ministers were appointed—in some cases for very short terms in office—to this side of the House than we had appointments in the whole of that time in opposition. We therefore need to get a better balance between the two parties.

The noble Lord, Lord Burns, is absolutely right. The House does some of its best work when we do not play the numbers game and say, “We’ve got more than you, we can win a vote”. We got into bad habits during some of the coalition years, when there was an automatic majority. We saw large numbers come in under Boris Johnson in particular: when the Government lost votes, their answer was to appoint more Peers. That did not have the effect that the Government wanted it to have. The House does its best work when there are roughly equal numbers between the Government and opposition parties, and when we are more deliberative in our approach rather than thinking that everything has to be resolved by voting. The House was designed to take that sort of approach. But the House is larger than it needs to be and it does not reflect the work we do or how we operate.

The noble Lord, Lord Burns, did the House a great service with his report; he focused minds. These are issues that we will return to, but he established an important principle that the House should look at dealing with some of these issues. It is very important that we do, because our views on how we should operate matter. This goes back to earlier debates about the skills and experience required, and about the make-up of the House that we want to see. We will have that debate in a moment, I am sure, on the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. This has been an important debate and I am grateful to both noble Lords for their amendments, but I would respectfully urge them not to press them.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for all the comments that have been made about the Lord Speaker’s Committee’s report and in response to the amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who been supportive throughout this process; that has been important to ensure that we did really have cross-party support.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, raised the allocation of places. I thought I mentioned this in my remarks, and it was certainly set out in some detail in the Lords Speaker’s Committee’s report. New appointments should be allocated according to the proportion of the votes in the previous general election. That would certainly be reflected in the number of Liberal Democrats. I appreciate there would be a problem if there was suddenly a very big shift in the voting behaviour in the country—for example, if a new party emerged. Then, of course, there would be some issues about balance.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, emphasised the whole question of whether it really matters what size the House is—it needs to come and go according to the rhythm of the place. But the reality is that without a ceiling on the House, the numbers have gone up and up over the whole period since there have been life peerages. There is no control mechanism with these arrangements. Whatever we do in the short term to bring down the numbers, if we do not have a commitment on what we want the size of the House to be and a mechanism for keeping it there, I can see nothing other than that the numbers will continue to rise.