House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Bill. I will confine my remarks to Clause 1, as the other clauses were not addressed by the Leader’s Group, which I had the honour to chair. I am delighted to see that my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—if I may call him that—is going to sum up, because together we served on that Leader’s Group with the noble Baronesses, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, Lady Murphy and Lady Scott of Needham Market, and my noble friend Lady Sharples. I am very grateful to them because, in a way, we are at a key moment in the recommendations that we made, which were approved by this House on 28 June 2011.

However, first, I pay warm tribute to my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood for his perseverance. I remember that Walter Elliott said in The Spiritual Life: Doctrine and Practice of Christian Perfection:

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another”.

In many ways, he is an example to us all of how to maintain a good case and eventually succeed.

I want to refer to paragraphs 32 and 48 of our report. In referring to paragraph 32, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Grenfell. I have been with him for 17 out of his 18 years, and I thank him for the steady flow of wise advice that he has directed at me. I know that I speak for many others in this place in paying tribute to him. How right he was today to talk about incremental reform and to refer us to the necessity of a carefully thought-out mosaic. This Bill fits that scenario and it is very important that we get on with it as quickly as possible.

I want to refer to paragraph 32 because I have always felt strongly that there should be a better procedure for allowing Members of this House to retire with honour and dignity. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has just done that, but I and my colleagues argued in our report that there should be a little more than just an opportunity in this debate. As the Lord Speaker knows, we feel that the Lord Speaker could play a key part in making sure that there is a ceremony—we refer to the introduction ceremony, although that is very formal—or some other way of recognising good service.

Ernest Hemingway said:

“Retirement is the ugliest word in the language”,

but it is not if it is set in context. Honour and dignity are very persuasive words and perhaps we can build that context. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has demonstrated throughout his lifetime of service—although it is only 18 years, it perhaps feels like a lifetime of service—that, as Aristotle said:

“Dignity consists not in possessing honours but in deserving them”.

He deserves our grateful thanks for all that he has achieved. I hope that further thought will be given to a way in which we can continue to recognise substantial service to this House.

The other paragraph that I will refer to briefly is paragraph 48. My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood said that there should be no additional money, but there must be a way of ensuring that Peers who retire get support if they ever need it. We recommended in paragraph 48 that,

“a fund, resourced entirely by voluntary contributions from members and at no cost to public funds, should be established to assist retired members who might otherwise experience financial hardship”.

As I understand it, apart from individual actions and party contributions, no steps have been taken to implement that particular recommendation. I think that we should return to it now because, with the much called-for provision for statutory retirement, we anticipate that others will wish to call time on a lifetime of service to this House, and we owe it to them to make sure that, if anything occurs at any stage in the future to make them appeal for help, that help will be forthcoming.

I say to all noble Lords that this is a very important step—but only a step—in the right direction. There must be more action in the future, and I very much look forward to hearing the Leader of the House outline those steps. Let us get on with it.