House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

That leads me on to my key point, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hailsham for the trailer that he has already provided. I have my Private Member’s Bill being discussed on Friday that addresses these very points and responds to the criticisms that we have heard, such as that from my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne. It addresses those problems and will establish the appointments commission on a statutory basis but not extend its powers extensively in the way that some of these amendments suggest—ultimately, it is a matter for the Prime Minister to make the nominations to the Crown. There may be some restraints and limits, but there is a case for complying and fulfilling—the very points that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has made. For those who wish to pursue the arguments or to understand the arguments against the points made by my noble friend Lord Howard and others, turn up on Friday.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain your Lordships long. I feel that I also have to swim rather against the current, as my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley was doing. Is there not something intrinsically wrong with a committee of the great and the good getting to appoint one of our two legislative Chambers? Why bother to get yourself elected to another place and be one among 651, when you can get yourself appointed to a committee which would then, in its turn, appoint a huge chunk of one of the two legislative Chambers? Is that not the very definition of oligarchy?

I am conscious that what I am saying is going to be unpopular here, because we are all, I suppose, to a greater or lesser extent, beneficiaries of the existing system, and I am also conscious that it is going to be unpopular beyond this place. In my years as an elected politician, I found that the most popular thing you could say about any subject was: “This is too important to be a political football. Why don’t we just get all the elected politicians out of the way and let the experts get on?” If you wanted a round of applause on “Question Time” or “Any Questions”, all you had to do was say, “Trust the professionals”, because on some level, everybody loves the idea of an expert. Everybody loves the idea of a disinterested patriot who can raise his eyes above the partisan scrum and descry the true national interest. However, I have to tell your Lordships that no such person exists. We all have our prejudices and assumptions—the expert more than anybody if, by expert, we mean somebody who has spent their entire career in one particular field. The idea of having such people appointing jolly good chaps like themselves is the antithesis of representative government.

I heard all the arguments that were made about what is wrong with concentrating this power solely in the hands of the Prime Minister, and I agree with that. If this were happening in Xi’s China or in Putin’s Russia, we would all say, “How terrible—imagine having the Executive filling one of the two legislative Chambers. What a travesty. What an affront to democracy”. I slightly fall back on saying that, if we are not happy having the Prime Minister doing it all, and we do not want a committee replicating itself like some Borg in “Star Trek”, we have to come up with an alternative. My own preference would be to keep something closer to what we have, where we would at least have some diversity, with some of our Members having been through some kind of election, albeit with a small enfranchised group.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I think we can all agree that we want the same thing: a House that serves with integrity, a Second Chamber that commands public trust, and an appointments process that preserves the best of our traditions while adapting to the demands of modern democracy.

The House of Lords Appointments Commission provides a non-statutory safeguard within the process for appointments to your Lordships’ House. It has a clear but limited role: to recommend non-party-political Members for the Cross Benches, ensuring that this House benefits, as many noble Lords have pointed out, from independent expertise; and to provide vetting advice on nominations for life peerages. Crucially, its recommendations are advisory and do not bind a Prime Minister.

Many of the amendments in this group seek to place the power of nomination to this unelected Chamber in the hands of an unelected committee, as my noble friend Lord Hannan emphasised. This includes proposing significant changes to the powers and operation of HOLAC, including making its recommendations binding, rendering it statutory or altering its remit entirely. While I deeply respect noble Lords’ intentions in tabling these amendments, I must express my concerns, which were echoed by several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley, about the direction of travel that most of these proposals suggest.

I appreciate my noble friend Lord Dundee’s Amendment 45 and the clarification that my noble friend Lord Hailsham has suggested in Amendment 46. These amendments would establish HOLAC on a statutory basis and establish a cross-party board to oversee its work. They received support from my noble friends Lord Attlee and Lord Norton of Louth, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. Their aim—to secure greater legitimacy and transparency for HOLAC—is honourable. Their effect, however, would be disastrous: a great mistake, as my noble friend Lord Howard pointed out.

Placing HOLAC on a statutory footing would not clarify its role; it would fundamentally alter it. Legislation would create a legal framework against which HOLAC’s decisions could be formally challenged in court, opening the door for the malicious and the litigious to claim it had failed to fulfil its legal duties. Candidates who were not recommended for appointment as Cross-Bench Peers could contest the basis on which they were excluded. Those who failed the propriety test, which is based on judgment rather than law, could argue it had been misapplied. Instead of providing independent advice to the Prime Minister, HOLAC would become a body subject to judicial review, forced to justify its reasoning in court, constrained by legal precedent and bound to operate based not on judgment, but within the narrow confines of justiciability. The Prime Minister’s discretion, exercised on HOLAC’s advice, would be second-guessed in not this House but the courts—a point made brilliantly by my noble friend Lord Howard. The process would become slower, more contested and more uncertain, exposing every appointment to challenge, delay and dysfunction. We should be under no illusion: making HOLAC statutory would not reinforce its authority but undermine it. It would not enhance trust but erode it, and it would not improve the system but entrench its weaknesses.