House of Lords Reform

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, we are promised a substantial reform of the House of Lords. It is most certainly needed, but I wonder whether we will get it. The age cap may end up in the long grass but, as a mere youth compared with the average age of the House, much less the possible cap at 80 years old, I leave it to others to suggest solutions—indeed, a number already have.

The participation basis may suffer the same fate, which I think would be very regrettable. It is easy to complicate this discussion—choosing what metric, triggering overparticipation for the sake of it and so on—but it is too easy to say that it is too difficult. This is a place of work, and I can think of no other line of work where it would be considered acceptable not to turn up or to turn up occasionally—in some cases just once per parliamentary Session, for lunch, and going away again, or turning up but not participating in the work of the Chamber, in committees or in other ways. Such Peers boost the apparent size of the House to levels that give a wholly false impression of the numbers engaged in the work here.

We claim to be a House of experts, yet we balk at the idea of developing a system that uses the data already collected on participation and following through by, courteously but firmly, saying goodbye to non-contributors. Removing Members across the House of any type who turn up and participate no more than 10% of the time—which I believe the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, referred to earlier—would reduce our numbers by more than 100. I hope that this Government will tackle the participation issue rather than it languishing in the “too difficult” box. If it does, we will drift into a membership of more than 1,000.

The way people get to this House is crying out for reform, as many have already expressed and as has been expressed on all sides of the House at one time or another. A great amount of the good work that this House delivers is getting lost in the drift to an ever-larger House packed by party leaders who appoint their mates. This has brought the House into disrepute and makes the often-mocked hereditary by-elections look like models of transparency. If the time has come to end the hereditary by-elections—and it has—it most certainly has also come to end the ability of leaders, like feudal kings, simply to appoint a list of their pals, donors and loyalists.

An elected House has its supporters but, on balance, I support an appointed House for all the usual reasons. But that brings the challenge of who does the appointing and the danger of the establishment simply appointing itself from among its own social and professional circles, and mainly in London. As a first step towards a thought-out appointments process, HOLAC should go on to a statutory footing and play a role beyond that of its currently advisory status, including nurturing a House that is socially and geographically inclusive, clear in its demands and made up of committed participants.

I also support the idea of 15-year terms and the two-out, one-in principle suggested in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. This would enable better forward planning for representation, numbers and specialist knowledge. I would be very interested to hear from the Leader of the House whether and when any of this is anticipated from the Government.

Finally, we know—and seem to have spent a lot of time today discussing—that the hereditary elections, which are already suspended, are over, and that the remaining so-called hereditary Members are on the cusp of being ejected. I have spoken on this before and will not tire the House with a detailed repetition. In short, it is a matter of babies and bath-water. Simply throwing the supposed toffs to the populist lions would ignore, at least on the Cross Benches, the fact that the so-called hereditaries are some of the most active and diligent Members giving service to the House. There are, of course, Peers of all types who are diligent and hard-working but, on the Cross Benches in particular, there is a strong service ethos, as we do not have any party position to advance, nor any prospect of, for example, ministerial positions.

While I believe most Members, and probably most people, agree that the hereditary tag, which is often forgotten in our day-to-day work, is well past its use- by date, I have been struck by the number of life Peers I speak to who think that the so-called hereditaries will simply be converted into life Peers. I have not seen any indication of that from the Government. My view —and I declare my obvious interest here—is that Peers who have a track record of contribution, have experience, expertise and energy to offer, and are committed to further public service in this House should be converted. That would end the hereditary issue once and for all, meeting the Government’s manifesto commitment—job done. Then we can get on to fuller reform and the other pressing matters before us.