House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to my own amendment, which I hope has been brought forward in a spirit of humility, suggesting that there be a cap on the number of special advisers that Prime Ministers can nominate. The reason I have tabled that amendment, and the one which I see did not find favour from my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean about former Members of Parliament, is that I worry that a Bill that empowers Prime Ministers to make the sole decision about who scrutinises them and the Government they lead in one of our Houses of Parliament ought not to give such an open-ended power to them.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, we started the debate today with a conciliatory and constructive tone from the Front Benches, which I found optimistic and encouraging. I fear that things have gone pretty steeply downhill since that time, and they have also gone way off track from the amendments under discussion. I have Amendment 63: I am beginning to wonder whether I will live long enough to ever reach it.

For all the shadow-boxing and enjoyable eloquence that we have had, this really seems to come down to a numbers question. That is the real horse-trading that is needed here. It is a number between 0 and 88, and I really wish we could lock the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, the Front-Bench leaders and our Convenor in a room, adjourn for the afternoon and see whether they can hammer out that number. If they could, I suspect that a lot of these amendments would fall away. If they could not, battle could recommence.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord. I think this is about more than numbers; it is about a constitutional principle. It is right, as my noble friend Lord Caithness has done, to point out the powers that the Bill will give to the Prime Minister in the interim, and for those of us who remember how long the interim was after the 1999 reforms to caution the House about accepting a promise that ends with a full stop and says no more. However, what the noble Lord says about the spirit of consensus is important and, in that spirit, I shall conclude my remarks there and allow the noble Baroness to respond to the debate.