House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Caine Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I commend the amendment brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Morrow, and commend the young people who have helped to provoke this debate. I agree with the previous speaker that we need to focus on the future. Looking to our young people and to what we can do for them is very much at the heart of that.

I support this amendment, but not because I believe that Northern Ireland is the best part of the United Kingdom, nor because I believe that the Peers that come from Northern Ireland bring the greatest level of sagacity to this House. Those two things are self-evidently true, but I support this amendment because it identifies two deficiencies within the Bill. It does not do violence to the Bill but points out two things that we need to consider for the future.

Many unkind critics of the Bill will see the removal of the hereditary Peers by the current Government as a party-political gesture: throwing red meat to the activists within the Labour Party. Perhaps even unkinder people may say that it is used to distract from some of the actions of the Government in the last number of months—over pensioners, the WASPI women, the farmers or, most recently, those on disability benefits. I am sure that the Government would very clearly deny that. However, that denial has a level of credibility only if the actions taken in this Bill move beyond that one simple action of the removal of the hereditary Peers towards a much wider reform of our democracy and of this House.

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, does that by starting to look towards the future. What should the composition of this House be in the future? Undoubtedly, in terms of composition, we have a much more diverse House than we had a number of years ago. I recently viewed one of the old episodes of “Yes, Minister”, in which Sir Humphrey was sitting around the table with eight or nine of his Permanent Secretary colleagues, every one of them male, every one of them middle-aged and every one of them middle-class. He concluded a discussion by saying, “Well, I don’t think we could get a more diverse group of individuals than us here”.

Thankfully, we have begun to move away from those days. We have a much more diverse group of people within the House of Lords, from a wide range of backgrounds. But that is not to suggest that we can rest on our laurels. One area where we are still lacking is in a level of regional diversity throughout the United Kingdom. This House should be the voice of all parts of the United Kingdom. When I talk about regional balance, I do not mean between competing boroughs in north London; I mean throughout the entire country. In future, we need to reflect that. The amendment makes specific reference to Northern Ireland, but it could be true of other elements. In debate on one of the earlier amendments, it was mentioned that only one of the hereditary Peers came from Yorkshire, for example. We need to have that wider reflection. Therefore, keeping an observance of the composition of this House as we move forward and recognising that there is widespread representation of the diversity of this country, particularly on a regional basis, is important.

My second reason for commending this amendment, and the second gap that has been identified, is that the supposed driving force behind this amendment was a step towards equality, a step towards greater democracy and a step towards accountability. A case may be made that this is a step in that direction, but it rings hollow when people from my part of the United Kingdom are denied that level of equality, that level of democracy and that level of accountability, because of the current arrangements in place in the post-Brexit situation.

Two things need to happen to rectify that. First, the frictions that are there in terms of the Irish Sea need to be removed completely. We need to see, as the first step, the Government honouring what has been pledged in the past. When the previous Government proposed changes, the current Government, then in opposition, were fully in support of those. Yet we are now a number of months into the new Government and have not seen the speed of action that needs to take place. That is not simply a political point coming from these Benches. Evidence is being given of the daily impact on the ground by retailers, some of the large supermarkets, the haulage companies and the freight companies. That evidence will tell you of the friction that is there. Actions that need to be taken.

Secondly, as has been highlighted, for Northern Ireland a deep democratic deficit has been left, which means that, uniquely, we are left in a situation in which, on a wide range of our laws, we are placed in a different position from the rest of the United Kingdom. Solutions can be pursued. My preferred solution would be mutual enforcement. However, we are told by the Government that they are going to do a reset with Europe. Nobody is quite clear what that means. I suspect that the parameters of any form of reset are probably changing on a relatively daily basis as the world changes. If the Prime Minister is to be genuine in what he means by a broader reset, we need to see a reset which treats all the United Kingdom on an exactly equal basis, with exactly the same rights, responsibilities and restrictions as any other part of the United Kingdom. We need to see a reset not simply with our wider external relations or indeed the internal unity of the United Kingdom. If this Bill and this amendment are to have value, we need to see a reset of our democracy, our sense of equality and our sense of accountability. This amendment has been very useful in provoking that debate.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, I can say without fear of contradiction that our former colleague the Countess of Mar would have been incredibly voluble over the past 35 minutes or so.

I rise to make my first contribution to proceedings on this Bill from the Opposition Front Bench. Speaking as somebody whose origins are in the city of Leeds, some 200 miles away from north London, I hasten to add that my origins are about as far removed from the world of hereditary Peers, stately homes and landed estates as it is possible to be. I put on record my strong opposition to the measures contained in this legislation, and indeed the motivations behind it. The Bill, should it go through unamended, will sweep away centuries of unique British heritage and tradition from Parliament and our national life. The House that remains will be a fundamentally different institution, and not for the better.

I intend to pay some lip service to the Standing Orders and actually speak to the terms of the amendment on the Order Paper before the House this evening. However, while preparing to speak to the amendment, I could not help but reflect on the role and representation of Northern Ireland Peers in your Lordships’ House and the contribution that Peers of Ireland over many centuries have made, which continues in a small way to this day. Some of these titles in the Peerage of Ireland predate the Act of Union. My noble friend Lord Courtown and the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, who was in his place a short while ago, are two examples. Their forebears would have been entitled to sit in the pre-union Irish House of Lords in Dublin. Incidentally, the Chamber of the Irish House of Lords is preserved intact inside the Bank of Ireland, the old Parliament House, opposite Trinity College on College Green, should noble Lords wish to visit it. I would very much recommend that they do; it is well worth it.

After 1801 and the union, the Peers of Ireland, around 100-strong, did not gain the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. Some, such as Lord Palmerston, spent their entire careers in the House of Commons. It might be argued by some that, under the union, when it came to the hereditary peerage, there was an Irish Sea border. Instead of the automatic right, as my noble friend Lord Northbrook reminded us, under Article 4 of the union, a fixed number of 28 Irish representative Peers were elected from among the peerage of Ireland to serve here for life. Some Peers of Ireland were also given peerages of Great Britain or the United Kingdom. This practice continued into the 20th century. For those who think that by-elections to your Lordships’ House are a recent innovation, they actually have a much longer pedigree.

As has been pointed out on a number of occasions during earlier debates on this Bill, the secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom in 1922 did not lead to the ejection of the 28 Irish representative Peers from this House. They were, wisely, allowed to stay, though their numbers were no longer replenished until the last one, the 4th Earl of Kilmorey, died in 1961, thus allowing the Irish representative Peers to disappear from this House gradually with good grace and dignity.