House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I declare two interests: first, as a hereditary Peer, and, secondly, as having three daughters and no son.

I promoted the Succession to Peerages and Baronetcies Bill, which said that daughters should be able to inherit the title when there were no sons. This upset the House; the mood was that the eldest child should be enabled to inherit titles regardless of sex, as per the Royal Family. My concerns are over existing expectations, as mentioned by the noble Earl, and matters such as long-established family trusts. I am not sure about children born to unmarried parents—this might lead to some title-hunters. But I like his amendment on this, which gives some flexibility.

As regards the name of the House, I feel it should perhaps be called the Senate, and that we should go with the Wakeham commission’s idea of LPs—lords or ladies of Parliament—or senators.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I shall make one point about the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Until the Law Lords were removed from the House, these peerage claims were decided by a committee on which the Law Lords sat. Members of the House who were not Lords were not allowed to vote in those committees, so he would in effect be restoring the position to what it always used to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I was fishing for that compliment —and it does take a lot of effort. Anyhow, the other outrageous thing was my noble friend Lord Parkinson claiming that exceptionalism from lawyers was something to be criticised; I find that very distressing.

I will finish on this point. I cannot compete with my noble friends Lord Wolfson and Lord Banner, or indeed the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on the number of times I have appeared in the Supreme Court, and I am certainly not awaiting a judgment now, but the last time I appeared there was in 2019, when I had the joy and honour of being against my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie. He was acting for the Government and I was not. I had the advantage of being able to describe his client, the Prime Minister, very frequently as “the defendant”.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will forgive me for intervening. I certainly do not wish to prolong these proceedings, and I agree with a great deal of what he said about their irrelevance to the Bill, but I should say a word because, as it happens, I am a former holder of two of the offices referred to in these amendments—first as Lord President of the Court of Session, later as a Law Lord, and later still as a Justice of the Supreme Court—so I can say a little bit about what these amendments might mean for them and for the House.

As far as the Lord President is concerned, I think the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Anderson, will be alarmed to know that I received a peerage not when I was appointed as Lord President but after I had been serving as Lord President for about five years. It came to me as an honour in the New Year Honours List, for which I was, of course, extremely grateful.

A few years later, I became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, but I was already a Peer, so I did not have to become another form of Law Lord—that is, a Law Lord Lord—as I was already a life Peer. I thought that would see me through until retirement, but in 2003, when I was travelling home to Edinburgh and was in the lounge at Heathrow Airport, I was greeted by an announcement on the television set that the body to which I belonged—the Law Lords—was being abolished and that a new Supreme Court was to be created. So it was that, when the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 was enacted, I became disqualified as a result of Section 137. I never came here during that time, except possibly once to sit on the steps of the Throne to see what was going on. It was only after I retired that I was able to come back here because the disqualification was lifted.

I do not remember there being an agreement, as it were, that at some stage the Justices of the Supreme Court would be granted peerages. Certainly in 2003, when the whole issue blew up, there was very strong resistance to the judges being in the Lords at any time, whether serving or retired. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, knows where the bodies are buried, not I, but there certainly was that resistance. I do not recall any undertaking and nor was it buried under the sofa, because it was quite a strong feeling at the time. There it is—that is what the position was at that time.

So far as the amendments are concerned, I will say a word about the Lord President. The Lord President’s place of work is as a judge in Edinburgh. I found it an extremely demanding and time-consuming job. I came here to take the oath after I received my peerage and I came later on, for one day, to make my maiden speech, but I cannot remember coming at any other stage as Lord President. My predecessor, Lord Emsley, was in much the same position. He received a peerage after he had been serving as Lord President but he very rarely, if ever, came to speak.

Those were pre-devolution days. Now, the situation has changed markedly. The system over which the Lord President presides is devolved, and much of the law that he and his colleagues in the court look at is devolved, so the occasions for the Lord President feeling justified in taking time to come to London to sit and speak in the House of Lords will be very few and far between. The same would be true, with respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. It is a different matter after retirement, of course, but as serving judges their place here would be difficult to justify.

So far as the Supreme Court is concerned, of course, its place of work is not here—it is just across Parliament Square—but I can say, having worked there for four years, that it seems a very long way from this House. In the summer months you have to fight your way through the crowds to get here from there, and, of course, there are all the problems of finding a place and finding an occasion to speak. One thing we have lost, inevitably, is the connection with the House, which I felt very strongly as a serving Law Lord: I used to come here, not to take part very much but to listen to debates and understand what was going on. That connection and the wish to participate has been lost.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I think the best way forward would be for the government lawyers to talk with lawyers in the House with an interest, including the noble Lord, so that we can find a way forward. It is in the interests of the House to resolve this and for lawyers to talk to lawyers. I am not a lawyer and I have no intention of becoming a lawyer, although the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, once accused me of being a lawyer —I say that with some pride—but I think we are all in the same place and want to find a way forward.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness the Leader sits down, has any thought been given to the fact that the law of Scotland may not be precisely the same as England’s? I was not able to catch what she was saying in her original statement as to what the formula is she is using, but care has to be taken to see that the law of Scotland would be covered by whatever solution is being put forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, each of us receives, on appointment and at the start of each subsequent Parliament, a Writ of Summons. The writ says:

“We strictly enjoining command you upon the faith and allegiance by which you are bound to Us that considering the difficulty of the said affairs and dangers impending (waiving all excuses) you be personally present at Our aforesaid Parliament … to treat and give your counsel upon the affairs aforesaid”.


These words have a natural meaning, and everyone who is in the Chamber tonight is living up to their writ. I have observed in the various debates, starting in November last year, that those Peers who are in our House only very rarely are not living up to the words or the spirit of their Writ of Summons. Legally speaking, the minimum attendance is governed by Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. This provides that every Peer must attend at least once during a Session that lasts more than six months, or they cease to be a Member going forward.

There have been quite a lot of statistics on attendance during the passage of this Bill. I am, as I think many are, very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his work in this area. I have run a few fresh statistics for this current Session. Up to last Friday, 122 of our 834 Members had attended less than 10% of the time. Looking at how close people of the 122 are to the 10% line, at the whole-House level, it is entirely reasonable to think that, were this amendment to be enacted, 83 Peers, or 10% of the House, might choose a retirement option.

I have looked very carefully at the Cross-Bench position once again; the 10% hurdle is one that would allow a very important part of the Cross Benches to continue their valuable work in the House without threat. Examples of this cadre would be senior lawyers still in practice and senior academics. Having looked at the statistics for this session, which I did not have available in Committee when I made a similar point, I can say that nothing has changed. I feel the 10% hurdle is set with the interests of the House in mind. I believe this is the correct level to move participation to, from that set in 2014 of just one day.

I further note that, thanks to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we were able to debate this at some length in Committee. I am very sorry, I have the wrong draft in front of me, but I think my point is made. We have been able to debate this a number of times. I can say, having been present at every single one of the debates, that throughout the House there has been general agreement about people who do come and do not fulfil their obligations under the Writ of Summons, which is a very serious document. There was not a single person who did not feel that this was wrong. The only real debate was how high the bar should be set.

I made the point that, in the selfish interests of the Cross Benches, we have a number of people who are not able to come more than 10% of the time, or significantly more, and so, for us, we would want a lower bar. However, it is the case that we would have a haircut of a number of Members. A lot of us feel that there are too many Members of this House. Certainly, with the facilities that we enjoy—the number of offices and desks and the sheer cramming when I go to buy a sandwich in the River restaurant downstairs at lunchtime —that would be a benefit.

Anyway, I hope this will be a very interesting debate. The Leader and I have discussed this over many months, and I am very grateful. In fact, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and I have also discussed it, as well as various other interesting ways around. In the meantime, I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I tried to deal with this problem when I was convenor in 2018. In that year my noble friend Lord Burns produced his report, which received quite a lot of support across the House, and I was persuaded that it was one of my duties as convenor to see whether I could persuade some Members on the Cross Benches to retire so that we would achieve the balance that my noble friend was seeking. What I did—it was my own choice—was to choose a 10% level, which the noble Earl has chosen in his amendment. I was conscious that the only way I could deal with this was by writing letters to people who were below the 10% bar, suggesting to them that it might be better for them to retire if they were not really able to make use of their privilege of membership of the House.

I received a mixed response—I do not think I was particularly popular in making that suggestion. But some of them responded, and a number decided to retire. The result was that I was able to achieve the balance that my noble friend Lord Burns was proposing, and I was able to maintain it during the rest of my tenure as convenor into 2019. I was greatly helped by the fact that the Prime Minister at the time was the noble Baroness, Lady May, who had very little interest in proposing new Members of the House, certainly as far as the Cross Benches were concerned, so the balance was quite easy for me to achieve.

Looking back, I am conscious of two problems. The first was the lack of authority. I really had no authority whatever, particularly as convenor; the convenor is much respected, but he does not have any authority among the Cross-Benchers. Just because I said it was time to retire, that was not necessarily something that they should follow—it was merely advice. Therefore, if we are to follow this suggestion that attendance is to be a qualification, we need the backing of something to enable the proposal to be enforced. Whether that is by legislation or by standing order is a different matter, but some kind of backing is necessary if the noble Lord and his successors are to be able to maintain the idea that attendance below 10% is not acceptable any more, and therefore people should retire.

The other problem—I am anticipating what my noble friend Lord Burns will tell us in the debate on Amendment 23—is the balance being upset by new Peers coming in whose number exceeds that of those who are retiring. That is a different issue, which we will come back to on Amendment 23.

My main point in support of the noble Earl is, first, that the 10% figure was one that I had decided was the right one in my time—we may want to debate it, but it seemed a sensible one—and, secondly, that we need some kind of authority across all the Benches seeking to enforce the idea. I offer my support for that.

I have just one footnote. One of the people to whom I wrote and who decided to retire was an academic who did not live in London and had very good reasons for finding it very difficult to get here to attend. Looking back, I thought it was a shame that he retired because if he had been a little more active, he would have made a major contribution. His attendance was at only 1%, and I thought, “Well, okay, it’s not really a margin”. If he had been at 9%, I might have said, “Look, let’s just drop it and try a little harder”, but his attendance was so far below that I felt there was no chance. If we have a cliff edge at 10%, there is the question of some people dropping over the edge of the cliff who really should not do so, and the committee should probably discuss that quite carefully.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have sympathy for the amendment and I am happy with the percentage suggested, but there is a difficulty. I spent most of 1995 running an NGO in Rwanda. In the winter of 1997-98, I was engaged in military operations in Bosnia; fortunately, it was a peacekeeping operation and it was for only six months. In 2003, I was engaged in a war-fighting operation. Fortunately, because of our military success—initially, anyway—I did not need to spend very long there. There could be very good reasons why a noble Lord is unable to attend, and we will have to find some way of dealing with that, but I support the general principle of the amendment.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly add one argument in support of my noble friend’s amendment. There is widespread criticism of the competence and indeed the commitment of some of those who have been appointed to this House. Many of us think that some of those criticisms have been justified. If there is a limit on the size of the House, the leaders of the political parties will be concerned to ensure that the people whom they recommend for appointment will pull their weight in the House and do stuff for their party. That can be achieved only if there is a constraint on those appointments.

The criticisms of some of the appointments that have been made have been bad for the reputation of the House, as has been the concern about numbers. My noble friend’s amendment would deal with both these aspects, but the aspect of ensuring that party leaders want their appointments to be of good quality is another very important argument in favour of a constraint.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, it is quite clear that legislation is needed if we are to control people coming into the House. I support very much the line of thinking that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, outlined. There is just one point that troubles me, and perhaps I can dare to mention it. When this Government came in, the Prime Minister made a number of appointments to strengthen the Front Bench of the party, which was obviously going to have to deal with ministerial issues and represent the Government at various stages in both legislation and debates. It struck me that the appointments that were made—I will not mention names—were well chosen and that the Front Bench was strengthened, to the advantage of the House. The reason I say this is that there is great force in the point that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is making: that we need to discuss this in more detail.

I am very much in support of the principle that lies behind this, and I did my very best to make it work, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, did in his case. It was, of course, ultimately the Prime Minister’s patronage that made it impossible to continue to make it work—that is the real issue we have to deal with. That brings me right back to the flexibility to strengthen the Front Bench. I am not talking about broader appointments, but is it right that the Prime Minister should not be able to appoint somebody from outside who has particular expertise to enable the Front Bench to perform its function to the best of its ability?

I mention this simply as a pointer towards the point that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, made at the beginning: this really does deserve discussion, and it would be very helpful, since all these issues are intertwined, if the Select Committee could discuss it as well.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

I draw to the attention of the noble and learned Lord, whose interest in this matter is much appreciated, the fact that, when we considered this in the Burns committee, it was clear that there needed to be some way in which Ministers could be brought to the Front Bench—by being admitted to a peerage—and that that could be done out of the quota their party ought to have been getting in any case; that is, they should be taken from that number. The other possibility that could be considered, of course, is that, as some of those who may take such appointments do not really wish to remain here for the rest of their lives, it might be appropriate for them to be time limited as well.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 1 because it provides the best solution to a sensitive problem. There is, at present, uncertainty as to whether noble Lords who lack capacity can resign from the House. A legislative provision is required to remove this uncertainty, but the risk with legislation on this complex topic is that it may fail to capture all the relevant criteria and would then be very difficult to amend. The neat solution adopted by Amendment 1 is to provide statutory authority for Standing Orders of this House to regulate the matter. The complexity of the issue remains, but it can be addressed in detail in the drafting of the Standing Orders and with the assistance of the expertise in this House—you can never have too many lawyers. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for responding speedily and effectively, with the considerable assistance of the Bill team, on this important issue raised at earlier stages, as he has said, by the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for all the work that she and those in her office have been doing over many months to find a solution to this problem on behalf of the families of Peers who lack capacity. I know that it is the families that she has particularly in mind, and they certainly deserve our careful thought. The solution which has been adopted is an agile one, as has been said, which means that the House has ownership of the drafting of the Standing Orders and the mechanisms that are necessary. As it happens, it is exactly the kind of solution that the Supreme Court found for itself in 2009. It was provided with a set of rules which could be altered only by statutory instrument, and it decided instead to resort to practice directions of its own devising, which are flexible and can be changed as circumstances require. So, the mechanism is ideal and very much to be welcomed.

I particularly welcome Amendment 3, which characterises the thoughtfulness of the noble Baroness. It means that the measure will come into force on the passing of this Bill and we will not have to wait until the end of the Session, which is surely absolutely right. Our thanks go particularly to the noble Baroness for the work she did long before the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, brought forward his amendment.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in endorsing what the noble and learned Lord has just said, I think it would be remiss to allow my noble friend Lord Ashton to hide behind his natural diffidence. Without him, this would not have happened; we owe him a great debt, as do the families of those Peers who may wish to make use of this provision in future. Of course, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader for her assistance in this matter. It is regrettable that this looks as though it is the only amendment to this Bill which will survive to Royal Assent. However, at least it is a good amendment that we can all celebrate.