House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for his intervention, and I very much hope there was such an understanding—but I am afraid I cannot find a trace of that agreement.

Turning to the answer given to a question put to Jack Straw on this question in January 2009, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, asked him about the future of the justices of the Supreme Court. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, noted that the Law Lords performed an important function in the legislative process and asked the then Lord Chancellor what the position would be once they had retired, along the lines outlined by my noble friend—thus suggesting that there was an informal agreement that this would be what would occur. The then Lord Chancellor’s answer was:

“Of course, that was one of the arguments against change and … I can see the case”.


He then said that

“it crucially depends on whether we continue with an all appointed House of Lords”.

So the answer was that they just parked the issue, saying that it was all dependent on what was going to happen in future to the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor goes on to say that

“if we go to a 20% appointed chamber”,

which was one of the things then being considered, the number of noble Lords would be “fewer”. That was why he refused to commit at that point in answer to that question.

The issue was raised again in July 2009 in a question from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and it was answered by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice. He said:

“My Lords, justices of the Supreme Court who are appointed after October 2009 will not automatically become Members of the second Chamber on retirement, but could be considered for appointment by the Appointments Commission. It is right to say that former Law Lords will be able to take up their places again … on retirement from the Supreme Court, and it is right that this House needs a lot of expertise, particularly in that field”.—[Official Report, 20/7/09; col. 1375.]


Of course, he was right in that respect. But the reality is that that has not happened. If one looks at the appointments that have been made by HOLAC, one sees that former justices of the Supreme Court have not numbered highly among the appointments. This has been a very significant omission and now is the moment, I suggest to your Lordships, to rectify that error.

At the very least, the Wolfson-Elie compromise of giving peerages to the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court should be strongly considered by the Government, but I would suggest it should go more widely than that: every member of the 12-member court should receive life peerages on appointment. That should be the convention. There would then be no need for these courtesy titles. When they retire, they would then hopefully become engaged and active Members of your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make one brief contribution to this debate, which is likely to go on for some time. I enjoyed listening to the contributions entirely from lawyers except for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. They had one thing clearly in common: none of them had any reference whatsoever to the subject of hereditary Peers being removed from this House. They are entitled to have made their amendments because of some ruling, which came from somewhere that I have not yet discovered, that under remote circumstances hereditary Peer membership could relate to other parts of the constitution. I accept that this might be the case in some remote circumstances. However, it is very difficult for me to understand, in any sensible conversation, what relevance adding, through these amendments, 25 protected places in the House of Lords has to the subject of this Bill.

I do not want to prolong it because I do not want to promote debate. However, with such a loose definition of what is included and what is not, on the same logic if you had a Bill to reduce class sizes in infant classes it would be entirely within the scope of the Bill to discuss university admissions processes—because, obviously, if you reduce class sizes, that gives an opportunity for children to develop more effectively and stand a better chance of getting into university. Lawyers can do that but, in the interests of common sense and as a general principle, if an amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the Bill, it would be a good idea to determine that it is out of order.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to my Amendments 58A and 59B. I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said. I tabled these amendments against a background of also aspiring to a wholly elected House, where appointments would not come into it.

What prompted my amendments was that Amendment 57 recommends that

“the Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls and Lord President of the Court of Session be granted a life peerage”.

In the interests of the union, we should not forget one part of the United Kingdom, and that is why I have sought to add the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. I do not know the present Lady Chief Justice, Dame Siobhan Keegan, but I know her predecessor, Sir Declan Morgan, who would make excellent contributions to your Lordships’ House—and may yet do so for all that I know. If we are passing legislation for some parts of the United Kingdom, there is no logic at all to why Northern Ireland should be omitted.