House of Lords Appointments Commission

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, everyone likes the idea of a neutral expert. One of the most depressing things in politics is how easy it is when you are on “Question Time” or “Any Questions?” to get a round of applause by saying about virtually any subject: “This is too important to be a political football. Why can’t all those elected politicians back off and leave it to the professionals?” Yet I have to tell noble Lords that there is no such person as a disinterested patriot who can raise his eyes above the partisan scrum and describe the true national interest. No such person exists; we all have our assumptions and prejudices. The only distinction is that some of us have to test those in elections and others do not.

I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, just said. We have, at the moment, a system where the power of appointment is with one elected person, directly elected in a constituency and then indirectly elected in another place. You might make an argument, as he did, that we should go further and have an appointments body made up of the electorate as a whole. That is a good, consistent, coherent argument. But moving in the other direction and placing the oligarchic power of appointment in the hands of an unelected group that, by definition, will like to appoint people who share its own assumptions and opinions is a step away from accountable government and would be a retrograde step.