House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Grocott and Viscount Waverley

Friday 9th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, in April this year a by-election took place in Westminster. It was a by-election for a seat in Parliament so I suppose we should call it a parliamentary by-election. There were seven candidates contesting the seat; the electorate was three. On 18 April, the result was declared. There were no spoilt papers; the turnout was 100%. The figures were as follows: Lord Calverley, no votes; the Earl of Carlisle, no votes; Lord Kennet, no votes; Earl Lloyd-George, no votes; Earl Russell, no votes; Lord Somerleyton, no votes; Viscount Thurso, three. So it was declared that the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, was to be the new Member of Parliament. The total cost of the election was £300, which is £100 for each vote cast. To achieve 100% of the votes cast in an election is spectacular, even by North Korean standards, and to hold an election where there are more than twice as many candidates as voters deserves an entry in the Guinness book of records. I am not, of course, in any way criticising those who took part in the election, nor do I question their abilities. However, to have this procedure as a mechanism for electing a Member of Parliament is beyond ludicrous. It is, as I think I have demonstrated, laughable.

My short Bill has the simple objective of ending this by-election procedure once and for all. As the House will know, I am not the first person who has tried to address this problem. I pay particular tribute to Lord Avebury, who introduced a Bill in 2006 which tried to do precisely what I am trying to do today. It is deeply ironic that it was his sad death which led to the hereditary Peers by-election that I have just described. How have we arrived at a situation where we are obliged to hold by-elections to fill vacancies for hereditary Peers? The answer lies in the provisions of the House of Lords Act 1999. The Act was passed before the great majority of noble Lords in the House today—including me—had even become Members. It is therefore worth reminding ourselves of the details.

The Act’s principal objective could not have been clearer. Section 1 states that:

“No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”.

However, Section 2 provides for certain exemptions to the general principle of removing all the hereditaries: 92 are exempt; two of them, the holders of the offices of Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain, continue as before. Of the remaining 90, 75 were to be elected on a party-political basis. The electors for this are the hereditary Peers who are members of the party in which the vacancy has arisen. So, in the by-election referred to earlier, caused by the death of a Liberal Democrat, there being precisely three Liberal Democrat hereditary Peers, the electorate was three. You know it makes sense.

It may be asked why on earth there were any exemptions at all to the clearly enunciated objective—which virtually everyone now accepts—in Section 1 of the Act, which abolishes the hereditary principle as a qualification for Members of the Lords. There are two main explanations. The first was simple, practical political arithmetic. In 1997 the Labour Government had a clear manifesto commitment to remove all hereditaries from the Lords. The Government had a huge overall majority—418 Labour MPs, 165 Conservatives—of 186. Those were the days. In the Lords, the position was very different. There were 1,210 Peers, just 193 of whom were Government supporters taking the Labour Whip. The Official Opposition, the Conservatives, had 484 members. What is more, 750 Peers were hereditaries who, not surprisingly, were not for the most part too struck on the Bill. From the Government’s point of view there was real anxiety that, unless some concession was made to the overwhelming opposition to the Bill in the Lords, there would be total disruption of the Government’s legislative programme.

The second reason for retaining some hereditaries was that their presence would somehow put pressure on the Government to fulfil their commitment to wholesale reform of the second Chamber. As soon as this reform was achieved, the remaining hereditaries would be removed. So the 1999 Act was to be a forerunner to a much more comprehensive reform and the remaining hereditaries, and any consequential by-elections, would be a temporary expedient. As my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine, the then Lord Chancellor—who I am pleased to see is in his seat—said at the time,

“the Government with their great popular majority and their manifesto pledge would not tolerate 10 per cent. of the hereditary peerage remaining for long”.—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]

That pledge was made 17 years ago. A clause in the 1999 Act, which should have long ago become redundant, has to all intents and purposes become part of our constitution.

When Lord Avebury introduced his Bill to abolish by-elections in 2006, he noted with some incredulity that there had already been eight by-elections. I can update the House: there have now been 28. These have resulted in 30 Peers arriving by this method—two of the by-elections returned two members. So one-third of the hereditary Peers in this House have arrived, over a 17-year period, by a mechanism that was described as a temporary expedient. At this rate, it will not be long before a hereditary Peer is elected who was not even born when the original temporary measure was introduced.

There is one further characteristic of the by-election system as it has evolved in practice that makes it completely unacceptable in a modern Parliament. Following the 1999 Act, among the hereditary Peers who remained, just five were women. Since then, four have been replaced, all of them by men, leaving just one female hereditary Peer. That is one out of a grand total of 92. You might say that this may change in subsequent by-elections: no, it will not. In order to stand in by-elections, hereditary Peers who are not Members of the House have to be listed on the Register of Hereditary Peers. I have checked the most recent copy. The current list has 199 names; just one of them is a woman. Therefore, for the foreseeable future the overwhelming likelihood is that any vacancies will be filled by men. The 1999 Act, in its application over 17 years, has to all intents and purposes resulted in 92 positions in the House of Lords being designated men only. This cannot go on; it is indefensible. Who is to blame for a temporary expedient becoming in practice a permanent arrangement? Those who want to retain the present by-election system have an answer: they blame the Government—all Governments, successive Governments over a 17-year period—for failing to enact a fully comprehensive reform of the Lords. Surely the answer to that has to be that successive Governments have tried; my word, they have tried.

The Labour Government over a period of 11 years made numerous attempts at reform, including a royal commission—the Wakeham commission—a Green Paper, three White Papers and, finally, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which would have removed the hereditaries but the clauses were lost in the run-up to the 2010 general election.

Under the coalition Government, we had a White Paper with a draft Bill in 2011. This was followed by a Joint Committee of the two Houses. Then we had the House of Lords Reform Bill, which received its Second Reading before being withdrawn in 2012 because, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, there was no cross-party consensus on reform. There still is not. So we have failed attempts by Labour, then failed attempts by the coalition and now we have a Conservative Government who have repeatedly made plain that there will be no comprehensive Lords reform Bill in this Parliament. It is clear, therefore, that unless some action is taken the hereditary by-elections will continue at least until 2020, by which time a temporary measure will have been in operation for almost a quarter of a century.

To those, therefore, who argue that the by-elections must continue until there is comprehensive Lords reform, the answer is simple: successive Governments have tried and failed, but what also has failed is the argument that the remaining hereditary Peers would somehow guarantee swift movement towards a fully reformed House. To those who say that commitments to the by-elections made in 1999 must continue today, the answer is surely that one of our fundamental constitutional principles is that no Parliament can bind its successor. We have had three Prime Ministers since the original Act and four general elections. In the Commons today, no fewer than 528 Members had not been elected at the time of the 1999 Act. In the Lords, out of 839 Members, 519 of us were not here in 1999. To claim that a grand total of 1,047 people covering both Houses of our Parliament should be inexorably bound by a decision made before they were even Members not only defies a constitutional principle, it defies common sense.

My Bill deals with the problem of the by-elections but does not affect in any way whatever the rights of any hereditary Peer in this House today. Under my Bill, they would continue to play the important part that they do in exactly the same way life Peers do. Indeed, in most respects, hereditary Peers in this House are completely indistinguishable from any other Peer, apart from the absurd anomaly of their being able to pass on their peerage to another of their number when they die or retire.

The by-election system is way past its sell-by date. My Bill would scrap it in two simple clauses. For this House to take the lead and pass it would enhance our reputation and improve our Parliament. Its passage would hurt no one and cost nothing. I commend it to the House.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

For the record only and not necessarily as an all-encompassing defence, does the noble Lord wish to consider that the Cross Benches have a rigorous selection process to replace one of their own, representing quality, availability and specialists in their subject?

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I think that was more of a mini-speech than an intervention. Of course, I have tremendous respect for the Cross Benches, but the basic principle must remain—namely, that for a group of hereditary Peers to replicate themselves ad infinitum in a by-election situation which I hope I have described as being completely unacceptable, is no longer defensible.