King’s Speech

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the Attorney-General and my noble friend Lord Khan, who has the unenviable task of replying to what I suppose we could describe as a diverse debate. The most difficult reply will be to the Front-Bench spokesman opposite, who seemed to spend his time putting forward a better case for getting rid of the bishops from the House of Lords than on the hereditary Peers. Incidentally, I agree with those who have advocated that some of the hereditary Peers are obvious candidates for life peerages. There are one or two very close to me now who might be candidates.

I was disappointed that the spokesman for the Opposition did not talk about devolution, something that he knows I am enthusiastic about. It worked really well when Scotland had two Governments and two Parliaments and there was a Lib Dem-Labour Parliament in Scotland. It is only in the last few years that the SNP has weaponised devolution and the Scottish Parliament. It has opened pretend embassies overseas, because it could use our high commissions and embassies and the people who are there, and it wants advocates for independence in its own offices. To be fair to the Conservative Government, they were beginning to get this, and I hope that my colleagues on the Front Bench here and next door will get it as well and come forward with a response.

One of the things about devolution has been the English democratic deficit. I am glad that the Government are starting to look at that and that the mayors are going to be involved. The thing is, if you involve only the mayors then there are huge areas of England that will not be included, particularly rural areas, so we need to ask the Government to make their plan more comprehensive and coherent so that the whole of England is involved.

I want to spend the remainder of my time on the composition of the House of Lords, because it is too large. I should declare an interest about this retirement at 80—no, not the one that your Lordships are thinking of. It is that I used to work for Age Concern and was chair of Age Scotland but I also have another interest, as most of us here have. There is a better way of reducing the size of the House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was touching on it and I want to make this my main point today.

There is a misunderstanding—a dichotomy—about appointment to this place. Some people treat it as an honour, one above a knighthood, so instead of getting a knighthood, cricketers, donors or whoever get a peerage, and then we never see them. Where is the noble Lord, Lord Botham? I have never seen him. Some of the rest of us treat it as a job. We are part of the second Chamber of the legislature and we want to work here. As someone said earlier, there are 400 people voting regularly. Why do we not make two separate kinds of peerages and have honorary and working peerages? Working Peers could get paid; they could turn up, vote and participate fully. Honorary Peers would not. They would have a title—maybe they could come in and have dinner to keep the catering going. Why can we not do that? These are two completely separate concepts: an honour and a legislator.

I have given a hint to my noble friend Lord Khan that I might raise this, and I know that the Government are looking at it. It would be relatively easy to legislate or might not even need legislation. I think getting honorary Peers and working Peers could be done by resolution of this House and the royal consent for it. Then we would not get this criticism that we are too large, because only the working Peers would be counted, or that people do not turn up, because we would not be expecting the honorary Peers to turn up. I hope everyone will look at that and am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is following me. If his committee is set up, I hope that he will have a look at it. That is one way forward and it gets rid of the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler—and he is one of the best examples of the fact that if we put in an arbitrary age limit, we will be losing some of the best people in this House.