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

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Bill, moved so ably and wittily by my noble friend Lord Grocott. I want to start by asking a question that many people outside this House are asking: what is the House of Lords for? What is our purpose? Some Members opposite, no doubt including the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, think that it is for wise men—particularly men, reluctantly accepting women now—to advise the Commons, to offer our wisdom, but ultimately to accept our impotence. I do not believe that is how the second Chamber of a bicameral system should operate. It is entirely ridiculous. We have no authority whatsoever. We have no legitimacy whatsoever. Ultimately, this place has to be reformed. I am glad that my party—the Labour Party—is in favour of an indirectly elected senate of the nations and regions. On other occasions I will argue the case in favour of that.

Meanwhile, as we acknowledge in the Labour group in the Lords, and indeed other people have acknowledged, there is a need for reforming our existing structure. We have set up a committee to look at the size of the House. I am not sure that it is the wisest thing to have as chair someone who, though a very distinguished former civil servant, is not one of the best attenders of the House, to see how we actually operate. But there we are; we have that.

Meanwhile, one of the things that I hope will be looked at is ending the participation of all the hereditary Peers, as well as ending the by-elections. Those who should legitimately sit here or who now have a place to offer some wisdom or advice in the House could become life Peers, on the clear understanding that they are, like most of us who have been appointed, working Peers. We should see the second Chamber as based on the concept of working Peers.

Working Peers, however, need some assistance. I was sitting in my office the other day in Millbank House, and the telephone rang. Naturally, I answered it, and someone from a large company asked, “Could I speak to Lord Foulkes’s diary secretary?”. I said, “Yes, you are speaking to Lord Foulkes’s diary secretary”, and I fixed myself an appointment. We do not have diary secretaries; most of us do not even have secretaries.

I had some correspondence with the Clerk of the Parliaments recently, just the other day, suggesting that he might second one of the members of his extensive staff to help me. He thought I was joking, but I am not. People outside this House genuinely believe that, like MPs, we have three or four people working for us: doing our research; making our appointments; dealing with correspondence—I said this in my letter—and emails and phone calls; dealing with invitations; arranging our travel; and dealing with our committee papers, for those of us who are active on committees.

Then there is dealing with the ever-increasing demands of Black Rod—who is not my favourite person in this House—for security. We have to inform security about every visit, which I can understand as far as security is concerned, but it does impose additional burdens on us. How do we deal with it? We have absolutely no one to help us. It is ridiculous in the 21st century.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Can he tell the House whether he would like to employ anybody to write his speeches?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I was going to refer to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as my noble friend, but I am not sure whether I should. The speeches would certainly be much better than they are at the moment. But he is right. I had two speeches yesterday in Grand Committee—one on St Helena and the other on Brexit—and here I am speaking today. If we want to participate we have to do research, do the work and try and think of—

[A noble Lord]

Something original?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Something original to say—

[A noble Lord]

Something witty?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Something witty to say in our speeches. My noble friend Lord Grocott has some help to do that, although most of it is his own work. Turning to the Bill—

[Noble Lords]

Five minutes!

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Previous speakers have gone on even longer. Turning to the Bill, I will just say that I strongly support it. It is a step—just the first step—towards reform. Indeed, it is the first step towards sanity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, there are two main premises to this Bill. The first is that the hereditary Peers’ by-election is a ludicrous and, to some, embarrassing measure that is past its sell-by date, and the second is that this is one small piece of incremental reform that your Lordships can enact without too much fuss, to modernise the House, and show the world how relevant we are. It is true that the by-elections are a bit odd, and may look even odder to outsiders, but they are no more half-baked than some of the other reforms that the Blair Government made such a mess of. There are lots of oddities in our constitution, but it is important to look at them not in isolation, but in the round, as a whole.

The more I look at your Lordships’ House in the whole, the more I have to conclude, reluctantly, because I am fond of it as it is, and even fonder of it as it was, that it does not work as well as it could. Sitting through our interminable debates on reform of this House, I have heard so many speakers tell the House and themselves what a very good job we do. Sadly, I am afraid that I do not agree. We do not do a bad job, but it is not as good a job as we could do or used to do. Our general and Back-Bench debates, which were often of such extraordinary quality and depth that they really were listened to around the world, and influenced thinking and policy-making at the other end of the Corridor and beyond, are now all too often pretty turgid stuff. Overlong speakers’ lists result in speeches so short that they are almost meaningless or, worse still, a series of individual statements, bearing little relation to previous speeches, and often followed by a ministerial wind-up on what often appears to be a completely different subject.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Does the noble Lord agree with me that it would be appropriate for Members to pay attention to the Companion, which states that speeches should not be read?

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his comments, as I always am. I will pass them on to all noble Lords who may be tempted to read. Sadly, I am so blind I cannot really read any of it at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is good to start this season of Private Members’ Bills with a traditional number—one that we are all familiar with. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for his rendition of it today. The noble Lord has consistently shown a passionate commitment to this issue which is admired, even by those who, as we have heard this morning, are in disagreement with him. Before the noble Lord sums up the debate, I will try to respond to some of the points made and questions raised from the Government’s perspective, and am grateful to all who have taken part.

The Government are committed to ensuring that this House continues to fulfil its constitutional role as a revising and scrutinising Chamber, a role that it carries out so effectively. As a newcomer to your Lordships’ House and a migrant from the other place—and therefore to be regarded with some suspicion by my noble friend Lord Mancroft—I am even more impressed than I was before at the way this House discharges its responsibilities, scrutinising legislation and holding Government to account, while respecting the primacy of the other place. As a departmental Minister answering questions in another place, I would reckon to know more about the subject in question than my interrogators. In your Lordships’ House, with its wealth of expertise, it is exactly the opposite, with a dramatic reversal of the terms of trade at the Dispatch Box. The Government’s position on Lords reform generally was set out in their manifesto. We do not consider comprehensive reform of this House to be a priority during this Parliament, and I will return in a moment to the question whether this Bill is comprehensive.

As noble Lords know only too well, the Bill before us today seeks to end the practice of hereditary by-elections which began under the Labour Government’s reforms of 1999, when the majority of the hereditary Peers were removed. Since then, as we have heard today, there have been numerous proposals to end this practice. Indeed, the Labour Government never intended any by-elections to occur. I recall, as shadow Leader in another place, being assured that elections to a reformed upper House with no hereditaries would take place before the 2001 election. The Wakeham commission, as part of its comprehensive package of reform, recommended that excepted hereditary Peers should cease to be Members of this House, and the Labour Government repeated that proposal in numerous White Papers.

As we have heard, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 tried, and failed, to remove by-elections. In the subsequent Parliament, I was the Minister in charge of the coalition Government’s House of Lords Reform Bill, which would also have removed hereditary Peers altogether, and which failed to make progress for the reasons set out by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. We also had the numerous efforts by noble Lords through Private Members’ Bills to end the by-elections, including Lord Weatherill, Lord Avebury, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and now, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. But thus far, none of these proposals has succeeded in achieving a consensus across this House. Against this background of collective failure of Governments and Back-Benchers, one can but admire the courage of the noble Lord in having another crack.

It is clear from today’s debate that many noble Lords here today wish to see the end of by-elections. Those who have been following the debate can see the balance of views. I was particularly struck by the point made by my noble friend Lady Berridge, and a consequence of the current arrangement is a system that is very difficult to defend in equality terms. As I think my noble friend explained, there is in fact an exemption from the Equality Act 2010 for this arrangement, but that does not make it any easier to defend. But while the balance of argument in terms of numbers has been in favour of the Bill, we have also heard some strongly held beliefs that while the issue of comprehensive reform remains unsettled, the excepted hereditary Peers should remain—an argument put forward by my noble friends Lord Trefgarne and Lord Caithness.

We continue to support incremental reforms that achieve this and command consensus across the House, and I shall return in a moment to the question of whether the Bill is incremental. For example, as evidence of our support for incremental reforms under the terms of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, 68 Members of your Lordships’ House have retired and a further six have ceased to be Members by virtue of their non-attendance. I had the privilege of steering through the other place the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015, which provides this House with a power to expel Members in cases of serious misconduct. Those changes have been important in gradually changing the culture of the House. Moreover, looking ahead, it is in that spirit that we should proceed.

The Bill before us today makes provision to stop any hereditary Peers from taking a seat in this House in the future, while the existing hereditaries will remain. Over time, as has been said by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, this House would de facto become an appointed Chamber save for the Lords Spiritual. Some noble Lords have argued that this is not incremental as we move to that position. My noble friend Lord True also pointed out that over time, the Bill would affect the party balance in the House as one party has significantly more hereditary Peers than the others. This consequence could be avoided, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth suggested, by appointing Peers to compensate, but that would negate one of the objectives of the Bill, which is to reduce our numbers.

I am most grateful, as I think are other noble Lords, for the intervention of my noble friend Lord Cope. He is absolutely right to point out that it is our Standing Orders rather than primary legislation which make provision for the by-elections, and that we do not need primary legislation to change them. A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, suggested that we might look at that depending on the progress of this Bill. The opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on the process of by-elections, could almost have come out of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, “Iolanthe”. However, some of the suggestions put forward during this debate for extending the franchise might overcome the size of the electorate.

In passing, perhaps I may touch on a point brought up by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and others about the role played by hereditary Peers in the work of the House. The vast majority attend regularly and participate in our proceedings. Today, nearly half of those who are Members of this House by virtue of hereditary peerage are active as Government Ministers or members of committees. Looking at my own party, the ministerial ranks are fortified both by the initial 92 hereditaries such as my noble friend Lord Courtown and by by-election victors such as my noble friend Lord Younger.

I was also struck by the argument put forward by a number of noble Lords that the 92 were the grit in the oyster, and that those who are elected feel an obligation to stay until the comprehensive reform that was part of the initial deal is secured. My noble friends Lord Trenchard, Lord Elton and Lord Mancroft, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, all made the point that they feel an obligation to honour the agreement that was entered into and which was discussed at some length during the debate.

Since we last debated this subject, there has been an important initiative which to my mind constitutes a decisive reason for pausing this Bill, regardless of one’s views as to whether it is incremental or comprehensive. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that I wrote that sentence myself; I did not take it out of a Civil Service file. But I was struck by a point made by my noble friend Lord Brabazon that I will come on to in a moment. During the last Parliament the Lord Speaker established a cross-party committee specifically to address the size of the Lords, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I would like to dissociate myself from the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who cast doubt on the suitability of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, as the chairman of that committee. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has already done a great service to this House by chairing a committee in which it has been difficult to come to a conclusion. Noble Lords may remember the Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding Committee which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. It enabled us to make progress with that legislation. I should say to the House that I would rather that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, was chairing this committee than the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

So would I.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The committee has been asked to examine practical and politically viable options for reducing the size of this House, so that progress might be made on the issue, and to provide advice to the Lord Speaker on the potential next steps. I am sure that within the remit was the issue of the hereditaries; it certainly was if the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, gave evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the committee have since worked tirelessly on this issue, looking at reform measures to reduce our size as a whole. My noble friend Lord Brabazon reminded us that this was a priority. The committee is going to report in October and the Government look forward to its recommendations. I have no idea what they are going to be, but it cannot be right, in advance of publication and debate on those proposals, to single out one possible element which may or may not be in the recommendations and launch it down the legislative slipway. Consideration of this Bill is therefore premature by singling out as it does one potential reform which does little to address the size of the House. We should await the findings of the committee rather than seeking to pre-empt them, and proceed on that basis.

On a more consensual note, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said in his peroration. We should sort this out ourselves before someone else sorts it out for us. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for pursuing this important constitutional matter and to those here today for their insightful contributions to the debate. Finally, I would urge noble Lords to engage with the work of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee to see if we can find a consensus on the best way forward, because ultimately it should be for this House, working in a spirit of partnership, to address the issue.