Hereditary Peers By-election

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Two hundred and twelve Lords submitted valid ballots. A notice detailing the results is in the Printed Paper Office and online. The successful candidate was Earl Russell.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

—as is traditional on these occasions, I thank the returning officer for his work; it was more complicated this time, because there were quite a few voters. I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Russell, as the winner; I am sure he will do a good job in this House. I must also congratulate the Liberal Democrats on successfully retaining this seat. I suppose I should explain to anyone who does not follow these things closely that they were greatly assisted in that endeavour by the fact that all three candidates were Liberal Democrats. It is an unusual system in western democracies.

The electorate was 777 Peers; all of us were able to vote. But, unlike in by-elections in the House of Commons or in local government, for example, in our case when we were about to vote, we were not required to present our driving licences or passports. We coped without voter ID.

This now brings to a total of 53—the figure is obviously going up all the time—the number of Peers who have been successful in by-elections since this temporary measure, as it was intended to be, was introduced quarter of a century ago. Of those 53, the vast majority are Conservatives and Cross Benchers; Lib Dem by-elections are very rare occurrences. For anyone who is relatively new to the House, the last occasion of a Lib Dem by-election was the mother and father of all of them, in that there were seven candidates and three voters—twice as many candidates as voters. At least turnout was 100%. I tried to calculate the turnout for this election from the figures that we have been given and I think it was about 25% or thereabouts.

As a final point, this by-election was done entirely online. I found that slightly restricted my powers as a democrat, because I did try to spoil the ballot paper. It was probably my technological incompetence but I found it impossible to spoil. You simply could not forward it without filling in an answer—so that is a bad development. But at least we can now say that, unlike in any other election, when we elect a hereditary Peer in this country, it is done entirely electronically—so who can accuse the House of Lords of not moving with the times?