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

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd November 2018 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, we move to an important amendment which would not delay the implementation of the Bill in any way if it were accepted. It touches on a matter that we have briefly discussed: the appointment of life Peers to the House. When the 1999 Bill was debated in the House of Commons there was considerable discussion about patronage. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, then Sir George Young, said that the Bill would see,

“a quango House created by stealth”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; col. 1147.]

My noble friend Lord Cormack also criticised the patronage that could happen at that stage and recommended that the hereditary Peers be kept because of the undiluted patronage of the Prime Minister.

Since then, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has said, the House of Lords Appointments Commission has come into being, but it is not statutory. Whatever happens to this Bill, immense power and patronage will be in the hands of one person to appoint life Peers.

The purpose of Amendment 58A and the two other amendments that go with it is to establish a statutory appointments commission. I will not go into detail because noble Lords who have studied the 2012 Bill—which, sadly, fell in the House of Commons because of mishandling at that end—had it all in there. My words are taken from the 2012 Bill, of whom one of the proposers was none other than Sir George Young, so my noble friend the Minister will know the words intimately. I hope that because he designed and approved them, he will have no objection to them coming in.

This would be a good amendment for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, to accept. At the moment his Bill is destroying a part of the House. He has described it as a small Bill, but it is like lighting a match and putting it to a fuse that is going to Semtex because there will be substantial alterations to the British constitution as a result. He could go out with this Bill not only having destroyed something but having put something valuable in its place—a statutory appointments commission.

I will not weary your Lordships by taking you through all the points of detail because they were all made by parliamentary draughtsmen seven years ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, if I was still in another place and not here, I would ask the person chairing the Committee how this amendment is allowable. The purpose of the Bill is to:

“Amend the House of Lords Act 1999 so as to abolish the system of by-elections for hereditary peers”.


It does not go beyond that. However, this amendment goes way beyond that.

As I understand it, because of the crazy procedure in this place, the chair has almost no powers, so perhaps I may ask the Minister, who has been referred to on many occasions by the proposer of this amendment, how on earth these amendments are allowable. It is crazy. Is there no answer?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is right about the nature of this amendment. There is a simple test to compare an amendment as against a filibuster: this is a one-page Bill in total and yet the amendment runs to nine pages. A nine-page amendment to a one-page Bill is not an amendment to make a small change to improve the legislation but an attempt at a filibuster. A definition of a filibuster is:

“A filibuster is a political procedure where one or more members of parliament or congress debate a proposed piece of legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision being made on the proposal”.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord is right about filibuster—I like filibusters on occasions. I could put down an amendment within the terms of the House of Lords Act 1999 so as to abolish the system of by-elections for hereditary peers and I could filibuster on a perfectly proper amendment which changes a word or whatever. That is allowable. However, as I know the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is a constitutional expert, perhaps he can tell me how these amendments—which are clearly not within the terms of the title of the Bill—are allowable. I must have a word with the Clerk of the Parliaments—I am having a lot of words with him at the moment but I will have another one—to find out why on earth these things are allowed.

[Lord Rennard]

I ask exactly the same question as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I agree with the point that he is making. There is a strong case for putting the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a proper statutory basis. That was one of the four proposals in the House of Lords Reform Bill, which became known as the Steel Bill—one of the many sensible proposals—but it was effectively blocked because of a flurry of hundreds of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, tabled the day before that Bill was to be considered in the House of Lords. That is the reason it did not happen or make progress. Those people who prevented the House of Lords Appointments Commission being put on a statutory basis are now suggesting that we need to debate putting the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a statutory basis. The text is simply to prevent us making a sensible, modest reform to bring an end to the hereditary by-elections. We need to end those by-elections because if we do not make a contribution from the hereditary element towards a reduction in the size of the House, we will increase the proportion of Members of the House who will be here by virtue of the hereditary position, as opposed to at least being appointed by the Appointments Commission or by elected party leaders.