House of Lords Reform

Lord Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, reflecting my role with the Lord Speaker’s committee, I will speak about controlling the size of the House. The Lord Speaker’s committee started by trying to understand why the size of the House had risen in the way that it has and the pressures that have emerged on membership to bring about this increase over time. It has sometimes been a quite rapid increase. The committee concluded that there are several features of our existing arrangements that generate this problem, leading, of course, to the adverse publicity the House often receives. To solve the problem, we need to identify the outcome we seek and implement a package of measures that addresses these features.

The first feature is the absence of a limit on the size of the House, which makes the House of Lords almost unique among legislative Chambers. The second, which has already been mentioned, is that Prime Ministers can make any number of appointments and to whichever party they choose. It is a quite astonishing situation. It is not surprising that appointments during a Parliament have tended to be predominantly to the Prime Minister’s own party, and that decisions on appointments are not always based on the likely contribution a Member will make to the business of the House. Thirdly, there is no retirement age or term limit. The number of leavers is not predictable and generally it is less than the number of appointments Prime Ministers wish to make.

The consequence of these three features is constant “leap-frogging” when there is a change of Government, as successive Governments seek to change the balance of the House in their favour. Over time, as this is repeated, we see an inevitable increase in overall numbers. Putting this right is likely to require changing each of these features. I do not believe that there is any single measure that would in isolation sustainably solve the problem we have identified. Simply getting the number down today is not enough; it is also about keeping them down.

For me, the most important change remains that there should be a limit on the size of the House. It should probably be no larger than the House of Commons. When the Lord Speaker’s committee undertook its work, it was proposed that the House of Commons would come down to 600 Members. Of course, it has remained at 650, so we have more generalised this to say that we are looking for a House that has a membership no larger than the House of Commons.

On that basis, and if we had a limit, appointments would be made only when there are vacancies. This would go a long way to providing incentives for sensible appointments and departures. To avoid leap-frogging, there needs to be a fair balance of appointments between the parties so that, when there is a change of government, the new Government do not need to make a rush of appointments to catch up. The committee recommended that this should be based on an average of the percentage of votes and seats at the most recent general election.

Finally, there should be a term limit, an age limit or some combination of the two. This would ensure a steady flow of leavers to make way for refreshment and adjustment to the composition when it is needed.

What does this mean in practice for our present situation? First we need an agreement on these principles, and then we need agreement on a transition from where we are today.

For the purposes of my remarks and thinking about this, I assume that the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill becomes law, although I recognise from listening to the debate that this remains a very contentious issue. Today, including those on leave of absence or disqualified, there are 716 life Peers. Getting the numbers down to 650 during this Parliament probably requires introducing an age limit. Again, rather like the leader of the Liberal Democrats, I am not averse to age or retirement limits. They apply in almost every other activity that I have been associated with and are an essential part of the refreshment of organisations.

However, the Government’s manifesto proposal is to introduce a retirement age of 80, which would mean some 300 of the present life Peers retiring by 2029, if the Parliament runs its full course. This goes further than needed to have a House smaller than the House of Commons or to create space for rebalancing the numbers between the parties. On its own, my fear is that without a cap on the size at the same time, we will be back in the same place before long, despite having gone through this process. A higher retirement age of, say, 84 or 85 coming in following any legislation and then every year afterwards would be a more gradual process and could get us close to 650 Members by the end of the Parliament.

At some point there will have to be legislation, or agreement between the parties, on a fair allocation of future appointments between them along with a continuing proportion to the Cross Benches. I hope that within these principles, identifying what the problem has been about size, the Government are able to come forward with the kind of co-ordinated action I have described today rather than this emphasis upon one or two measures.