House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, when I was a Member of the European Parliament, I was canvassing one day, and I came across a man who had the simplest imaginable concern, which was to do with speed bumps. I said, “I tell you what I’m going to do; I’m going to get you the leader of your district council”. He said, “Oh yeah, that’ll be the day”. I said, “No, he’s just down the road”, I left the two of them together, and then the leader of the district council came back and said, “I’ve sorted him out”. I said, “That’s wonderful. What are you going to do about the traffic calming?”. He said, “I don’t mean that; I mean he’s voting for us”. I said, “That’s great, but what about the issue the poor fellow had about the speed bumps?”. He said, “Well, that’s not really to do with me; that’s county”. I said, “Hang on, wait a minute; you are a county councillor”—which he was, as well as being leader of his district council. He said, “Well, I say county; it’s really highways authority”. There we were, representing three of the four tiers of government under which this poor man was governed—and if the MP had been there, it would have been no different—and we could not begin to address the simplest concern he had about something that affected his life every day.

Now, is it any wonder that that man, and millions like him, have stopped voting? They no longer see any connection between where they mark their ballot and any consequential changes in their life. Power has been shifted from elected representatives to unelected officials. Where are we allowed to drill for oil? What sentences can courts impose? On what terms can disruptive children be excluded from class? On what terms can people who entered this country illegally be deported? These are no longer decisions made by people who are in any sense accountable to the rest of the country. We have this myth that somehow when people are appointed to these quangos and expert bodies, their prejudices and assumptions disappear and they become magically wise and disinterested simply by virtue of being appointed. But that is not true of other quangos, and it is not true of HOLAC.

I very much welcome what the Secretary of State for Health has just said about not just abolishing the large quangocracy at the top of the NHS but this being part of a broader democratisation process. I hope we all support the Government in that endeavour, but how can we then say that one of the two legislative Chambers should be appointed by a bunch of good chaps without any direct oversight by the population? By the way, who appoints HOLAC—quis custodiet ipsos custodes? At the moment it is appointed by the Prime Minister, but since the whole object—the purpose, if I understand it—of my noble friend Lord Norton’s Bill is to try to take away that power from the Executive, presumably there would have to be some different method of appointing it. How are we going to do that? It seems to me that the only fair way of ensuring an appointments mechanism that is genuinely answerable to the population would be to elect HOLAC. Hang on—if we are going to do that, why not go the whole hog, totus porcus, and elect your Lordships’ Chamber too?