House of Lords: Appointments

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I explained the situation about the 33% share that troubled us on this side of the House. The noble Lord’s other question is highly speculative. In addition, one can look back at the past as to what changes must be made when Governments change; I have already referred to that. We must now make sure that we are refreshing the House with new people right across the House. There are opposition and government Peers on the list; I welcome that and look forward to working with the new Peers.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

The Minister should have had rather more statistics at her disposal when she was briefed for this Question, particularly on the balance between government and opposition Peers. I remind her that, in the 13 years of Labour Government, the biggest gap was that the Labour Government had 26 more Peers than the official Conservative Opposition. I will not go through the list of years, but I can certainly tell her that the Tories had more Peers than the Labour Party during most of the years of the last Labour Government. The current gap between this Government and the Opposition is that there are 83 more government Members than there are opposition Members. The Government still manage to lose a lot of votes, by the way, but that is not down to numbers. It is high time that the Appointments Commission saw, as part of its remit, the need to examine the effect of each list as it comes along on the balance of party strength in the House of Lords, because this Government, under successive Prime Ministers, have been abusing the appointments system.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I always enjoy the lessons in history from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but I am a simple person and the simple fact is that former Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed 374 Peers to this House. That is reflected in many of the people on the Benches opposite who contribute to debates in this House.