House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Jones of Birmingham Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this Bill. It is for that reason that I oppose this amendment, not because I do not see powerful arguments for a statutory HOLAC but because they clearly will not prevail in the context of this Bill; as has already been amply pointed out, they can only destroy the limited but important effect of the Bill as proposed.

I have said in the past that I am a huge admirer of the contributions made by hereditaries, but I fundamentally object to the notion that they should be followed by other hereditaries through an assisted-places scheme. That is what it is, and we have called it so in the past. It is of course right to say that the present scheme is also gender and racially biased, but those considerations fall into insignificance compared to that fundamental objection: that it provides for a well-born group of people to be necessarily the only candidates to fill 90 slots. That is just not appropriate. For the reputation of the House, I urge that this Bill be not hampered by the accretion of a statutory HOLAC, but be accelerated through. The fact that this House is trying to modernise and promote its reputation should be foremost in all our minds.

The thought that, as the Burns report progresses and we diminish in numbers, an ever-larger proportion will be hereditaries is absurd. Besides the Prime Minister’s commitment to her reticence and the fact that we are now diminishing in number, the one response of relevance to the Burns report is that in future there is to be,

“no automatic entitlement to a peerage for any holder of high office in public life”.

If Cabinet Secretaries, CGSs, Chief Metropolitan Police Commissioners, Lord Chief Justices and the like will not be able to count on appointment in future, why on earth should future hereditaries?

[Lord Jones of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I do not think I need to remind noble Lords that, at this moment, all over the nation, the political class is seen to have failed the country. If ever there was a time when noble Lords could make a stand for connecting more with the people, it is now. I assure noble Lords that, in pubs from Cradley Heath to West Bromwich, to Kings Heath in my home town, they talk of nothing but reform of the hereditary peerage system.

I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in what he is trying to achieve. The time has come when, if we truly believe in making the political class that which I know this talented nation can provide for its people, this House must set an example. These amendments—every one of them—should be withdrawn, and after five days of debate over 240 words, we should push this through and stop the farce. We can then get on with not only running the country but reconnecting the political class with the people who have trusted us to look after them.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. It is not an irrelevant amendment and it does not distract from the purpose of the Bill. On the contrary, it is an essential accompaniment to the Bill if it is passed. If it is passed, this House becomes a wholly appointed House, and therefore the mode by which people are appointed to it is not a peripheral issue but one of central importance. I was extremely surprised to hear the noble Lord from the Liberal Democrat Benches, a party that is supposed to be committed to radical constitutional reform, going well beyond this Bill. He was not even prepared to support an acceptable process for people to be nominated to this House in the first place.

I understand the point from the noble Lord, Lord Jones; I would much rather we were not discussing this issue at all. I completely agree that we should be discussing the big issues facing the country, not the distraction that my noble friend Lord Grocott has imposed upon us day after day. However, since my noble friend has forced us to debate this issue, we should get it right. That is very important. The likelihood of having a wholly nominated House will be significantly reinforced by this Bill, because once it passes, you can wave goodbye to the prospect of any more fundamental reform of the House. Indeed, my noble friend does not want to see more fundamental reform of the House of Lords. He is patently honest about his intentions: he wants a nominated House in perpetuity and does not support an elected House. He has been extremely clear about that.

I support an elected House. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. We share a birthday; we have not had much else in common over the years, but we are united in House of Lords reform in our late 50s. It is very important that we do not imperil the urgent issue facing the country as far as parliamentary reform is concerned, which is connecting Parliament as a whole with the people far more effectively than we do at the moment.

Coming to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, the reason we are in the middle of the Brexit crisis gripping the country is in large part because Parliament has become so divorced from the people, particularly in the Midlands and the north of England, an area my noble friend Lord Grocott knows well. The sense of power being distant has become greater. The idea that a wholly nominated second Chamber will do anything to repair the connection between people and Parliament is farcical. Indeed, it may make it worse than the status quo, because it will put into abeyance any agenda for wider reform.

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, for whom I have the greatest respect, said that we should declare interests. I declare an interest: I am a life Peer appointed to this place by Tony Blair. If my only concern was to remain here as long as possible, I should have a big interest in the passage of this Bill. I am 56 and I hope I have a reasonable lifespan; indeed, there is research by reputable medics which shows that membership of the House of Lords adds 15 years to your life on average—I cannot begin to think why. On that span, I may well be here in 40 years’ time, if this Bill passes, because there will be precious little chance of reform hereafter.

The agenda for House of Lords reform we should pursue is not tinkering changes about whether it is somehow superior to be nominated rather than hereditary. We are equally illegitimate on any democratic principle; let us be very clear about that. As an appointee of Tony Blair, I have no more legitimacy than the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has as an appointee of Charles II—or however far back it goes. In this debate, there has been an air of superiority from life Peers, as against hereditary Peers, but we are equally illegitimate. The only justification for our being here is that this is the existing law of the land. It is a very unsatisfactory law. I was present and working at the heart of government when the reforms of 1999 passed. I can assure the House that it was very much a spatchcocked reform. Let me be completely frank that it was in part motivated by the desire of people my noble friend Lord Grocott not to have wider reform of the House. My noble friend has been anxious at every stage that there should not be a move towards elections and wider reform.

I have spent most of my career engaged in public service reform, infrastructure and now, alas, trying to stop Brexit. I have taken the view that House of Lords reform is not high on the list of either my priorities or, to be frank, the nation’s, but in this big Brexit crisis, where the whole issue of Parliament’s relationship with the people is at the centre, I do not believe it is now possible to duck this issue any further. I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde: we need a much wider reform of this House. My view is that we need to move towards—