House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 2A is not on the Marshalled List. I apologise; it was tabled rather late yesterday and I did not have an opportunity to discuss it with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I had a eureka moment in my bath yesterday morning, when I was thinking about the noble Lord and his Bill, and came to the conclusion that it was an appropriate way to deal with this legislation and solve a very serious lacuna at the heart of the Bill.

Before I go on, I join my noble friend Lord Cormack in saying how right it is that this House should stop at 11 am for one minute to mark the terrible attacks in New Zealand. I hope that my noble friend Lord Young will direct us at a suitable time so that we can honour that moment with appropriate dignity.

Given the sort of parliamentary chaos that has been going on over the past couple of weeks in another place, it is wonderfully reassuring for people to come to this House and find that we can have a straightforward debate—one we have held many times in the past 20 years—discussing in detail how to progress with reforming your Lordships’ House.

As the House knows, I have been involved in many such debates, as has the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but this is the first time I have spoken on this Bill during this Session. I have no idea how long this Session will last, but even if it lasts just another couple of months, I hope the noble Lord will agree that it is extremely unlikely that this legislation will get into law. I do not know whether we will finish Report today or when the Bill will receive its Third Reading. However, to be clear, I oppose the legislation because it would create a wholly appointed House. As the House knows, I am broadly in favour of politicians in the United Kingdom being elected, not appointed, but I know that that is not a popular view in this House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

If my noble friend is so certain that the Bill will not make it on to the statute book, why on earth is he moving this amendment?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I was just about to come to that. My amendment is small and humble but it deals with an important issue. As it is unlikely to become law, we now have time to study it in some detail—if the principle behind it is accepted today, as I hope it will be—before Third Reading, when we can add detail to it. I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to clarify that.

What is the most difficult part of this Bill? It is the third and fourth lines of Clause 1, which say,

“thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.

This is the central part of the legislation, to which I would like to add the words,

“and create a statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission”.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and for his integrity and tenacity in coming back time after time with this legislation. However, it is a profoundly political Bill. In Committee, my noble friend Lord True explained why that was. By doing this, we will remove the ability of 40-plus Conservative Members of this House to replace themselves without a guarantee that they would be replaced in any other shape. I wholly understand why the noble Lord thinks that is a desirable outcome, and I hope he will understand why I think it is an undesirable outcome. He certainly does not duck the issue. The noble Lord is completely up front about his objective.

The lacuna at the heart of the Bill is that it removes the ability to have hereditary by-elections but does absolutely nothing to improve the way others are appointed to this House. I want to put that right. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will agree with me that it is something we need to tackle, and why not tackle it in this Bill? It has been promised for more than 20 years by the party that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, supported so ably in government. It appeared in several White Papers in the early part of the century. Now is the opportunity to debate it further and, I hope, to put it in this Bill. I have said that it is a humble amendment but it deals with a big issue, and I hope very much that the House will accept at least the principle behind it.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, that is not a declarable interest, but I think all those who are interested enough to listen to this debate will know that I am a hereditary Peer, and it does not take much looking up on Google to decipher whether a Peer is a hereditary.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, also said that he did not want me to speak. It was not until, I think, the 42nd minute that I was allowed to get to my feet, so I have not been delaying the Bill.

The noble Lord also mentioned patronage, which is of great interest to my noble friend Lord Cormack. I am sorry that he has changed sides. He will recall that, on 10 November 1999, in the other place he said:

“I believe without equivocation … that the House of Lords will be better for the 92”.


He raised another point a little earlier in his speech:

“We are witnessing a crude exercise of patronage”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/1999; col. 1200.]


That was the patronage of the then Prime Minister Mr Blair, and I wonder what my noble friend thought of the patronage of Mr David Cameron in his Dissolution list when he ceased to be Prime Minister. That is why my noble friend Lord Strathclyde had one of his many eureka moments—this time it was in the bath yesterday morning, but he has had a number of them—and it is also why I tabled Amendment 58, which requires the setting up of a statutory appointments commission. I go into more detail than my noble friend Lord Strathclyde—I set out exactly what I want.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Does my noble friend not see the irony of a hereditary Peer arguing against patronage, given that all hereditary Peers are here as a result of patronage given some generations ago? As to the image of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde in his bath, does he not think that this matter requires rather longer consideration than the time he might have spent in his bath?

[The Earl of Caithness]

We are giving it consideration. It was that eureka moment in the bath that has prompted this debate. My noble friend Lord Forsyth knows full well my position on hereditary Peers. I do not think that they should be here, and I also think that this ought to be an elected House. However, in 1999 there was a binding-in-honour agreement that the hereditary Peers would stay here until stage 2 of House of Lords reform. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, never refers to that and I can quite understand why, but to us it was a fundamental part of the agreement. If I am being criticised for standing up for a binding agreement and principle, so be it, and I am very sad that other noble Lords do not take the same principled view on the matter.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, that is a completely absurd intervention from the Liberal Democrat Benches. Of course democracy comes with a cost. The question is whether we are prepared to meet it. That is the whole issue. Of course I recognise that my amendment is absurd, but this is the key point. We are talking about amendments that the noble Lord tells us have to be minor changes to the current Bill. It is less absurd than the status quo, which is that the only people who will have a say are these 40 hereditary Peers. It is significantly preferable that the people of the country should have a say.

What I wanted to do was move to a fully elected House in the Bill. I wanted to do what I think is actually Lib Dem policy. I was told by the clerks that was beyond the Long Title. That is why I tabled the amendment. The only amendment that was acceptable was one that would make the election of hereditary Peers subject to the whole electorate. I could not do the really radical thing that I wanted to do, which is to have the election of Members of this House by members of the public from among members of the public—a revolutionary idea, but one we should be implementing.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord has stolen my thunder by admitting that his amendment is absurd and part of an exercise to try to talk this legislation out, which is a disgrace. I wonder what Brenda from Bristol would think of his proposition that 40 million people should vote for the hereditaries.

[Lord Adonis]

I think Brenda from Bristol might be keen to take part in this election, because she currently has no say over any Member of this House. For the first time, Brenda from Bristol would have the opportunity to nominate and vote for somebody to sit alongside the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. She would give thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and to me for making it possible, because under the independent Appointments Commission that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is proposing, Brenda from Bristol might well be nominated, whereas she stands very little chance of Mrs May noticing her, which is the only way to get into this place at the moment.