House of Lords

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)]

My Lords, like other Peers, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Williams on securing this debate. I suppose it is also relevant to congratulate the Government on making time available for it. If I could recall exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, I know I would be much better off simply repeating it because it was a lot more elegant than giving vent to the slight vein of paranoia I have that there might be a conspiracy among the three major parties to create a stitch-up here to try to rush something through before the election. I agree with my noble friend Lord Clark. In this matter, any attempt to do something before the election would be doomed to failure.

Having congratulated my noble friend Lord Williams, I will say that I disagree with him on both his target of 400 and his methodology in reaching it. Why 400? It is quite interesting that he referred to the last time we had 400, which was in 2008-09. We had an average daily attendance of 400, but at that point we had an actual membership of 704. If we are going to achieve it with a membership of 400 this time, it implies having a different sort of Peer. It implies having full-time Peers who do not have the current experience that the noble Lord, Lord Blair, referred to but are full time, as politicians in the House of Commons have become, and the House of Lords would become a much poorer place. With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the committee chaired by Lord Grenfell, I also disagree with the Labour suggestion of 450. I see no logic whatever in the House of Lords being smaller than the House of Commons. There is nothing magic about it.

If the House of Lords is part-time, as in my view it should be, arguably it could be demonstrated mathematically that it should be a larger House than the House of Commons. There is a case for having active people rotating depending on their interest in the subject. My noble friend Lord Clark referred to medical debates. We do not see interested Members here every day. They would not have any medical experience if they were here every day, because in medicine as in everything else, the shelf life of knowledge is very short. I am fully aware that I am of less use to the House now than I was 10 years ago—not because I am 10 years older but because I am 10 years further on from having an active job where I had direct experience of some of the subjects I talk about. At that point, I came in here feeling that I had the answer to most of the world’s problems; now I am not even sure what the world’s problems are, let alone the answers.

The other point about a full-time requirement in any sense is that it will further restrict membership to those within the M25. Last time we debated this, I was inelegant enough to refer to the expenses system. I challenge anyone to defend a system where you pay somebody from Chelsea the same allowance that you pay somebody from Orkney. It is manifestly ludicrous and unfair, and I bitterly regret withdrawing an amendment I had at the time which would have made it £250 and £350, depending on residence, which I would now alter to £225 and £375 because of the cost of living in London. The fact, to which my noble friend Lord Clark alluded, is that people who come from outside London bear a huge personal expense, which is much less for people who live in London.

It is also important that all noble Lords have referred to a degree of urgency. The reason for that urgency is an increase in the intake, yet nobody has suggested that we do something about the intake. I am not suggesting that we freeze it; that would be unrealistic. However, surely even to reduce our numbers we need to know the maximum number of Peers which a Prime Minister of the day can appoint—otherwise, frankly, it is a recipe for the entire House to be wiped out and replaced in its entirety by new Peers. What Prime Minister would resist the temptation? Let us be quite clear: we have to do something about the intake. You cannot curb a Prime Minister’s power totally, but you could put some limit on it. I do not care how high the figure is, but we need to know what we are dealing with.

There is also another way around it—and again, one must acknowledge that some people accept a peerage for the title and regard coming to this House as an unfortunate concomitant duty, while others genuinely come for the job and wear the title rather lightly. We could easily distinguish between these two and create a class of Peers who are not entitled to sit in Parliament. They would not miss it because they do not want to do it. That would still leave the Prime Minister free to award peerages that did not carry implications for the size of this House.

Recognising, however, that you cannot do it all by controlling the intake, we have to achieve some kind of cull. I am tempted to say that perhaps those who do not believe in an appointed House should perhaps leave it. That would not produce a great stampede and reduce our numbers greatly, and it would also mean losing people such as my noble friend Lord Richard, which I do not want to happen. However, one could get rid of non-attendees. I accept the caution that it is not a simple question of attendance, and that that could be refined, but if we have to achieve some reduction in numbers—and most noble Lords seem to feel that we need that—let us at least try it. Let us get rid of noble Lords who do not come and do not want to come. I accept that it would not affect daily attendance, because they do not come here, but it would affect the numbers and would get rid of the jibes that we have a bigger membership than the Chinese National People’s Congress.

One of the reasons for my paranoia about the leadership of the three parties, whom I do not trust as far as I could throw them on this issue, is that quite a lot of press articles over the Christmas Recess were distinctly unhelpful to this House and came from absolutely nowhere. I begin to think that somebody is softening up the electorate before they say, “Let’s finally deal with the problem of the House of Lords—after all, we all had it in our manifestos”. The fact is that the electorate rejected the manifestos—but we do not pay any attention to that. If we put it in the manifestos, it must happen.

The attendance figure of 60%, which the Labour group under my noble friend Lady Taylor recommended, is a very high bar, particularly for people who come from outside London, which would reduce the number of people with practical, daily, hands-on experience and weaken the composition of the House. However, it is a reasonable figure. Fifty per cent would be more justifiable—but, if necessary, I would go along with 60%.

My final point—and I speak against my own interest in this, because I will reach this figure all too quickly—is that age is the least-bad cull mechanism we have. To go for retirement at the end of the Parliament at which you attain the age of 80 is not defensible logically—I accept all the criticisms of ageism—but it is better than the other schemes that have been suggested, and for that reason I commend it.