House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Judge Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill as a first step on what will be a very long journey. My noble friend Lord McDonald of Salford said that it is long overdue and referred to 1999. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans talked about what happened 170 years ago. Will noble Lords please come back with me to the Petition of Right in 1628?

King Charles I was rather troubled about the Petition of Right and what the Lords would do with it; he wanted it chucked out. There were approximately 100 Members of the House of Lords in those days, and he created six new Peers—just like that. I looked very hard to see what marks of distinction I could find in any of them. I could find none in relation to three, but one of the six new Peers, the Duke of Buckingham’s nephew, happened to be married to the King’s favourite, so that was a gift to his favourite. Another of the Peers had given the King, who was very strapped for cash, £20,000—that was about £3 million, and he got a viscountcy for it. Nobody had ever envisaged the third becoming a Peer, but the new Queen from France had him as her favourite. She was very badly treated by the English but the future Lord Goring became a friend, and so was made a Peer.

Some noble Lords may ask what has changed—I think some are thinking that. What has changed is this: nothing very much except that, as a matter of reality, the powers that the anointed King was able to exercise in 1628 are now gifted to the office of whoever happens to be Prime Minister. If that is the best we can do, I think that is rather shocking.

The Prime Minister has ignored the efforts of my noble friend Lord Burns and his committee. The renewed efforts—the lament in 2021 that the Burns committee principles were not being applied—were ignored. PACAC, the public administration committee in the House of Commons—I will not go through its full title—warmly supported the proposals of the Burns committee, and, again, it has been ignored.

Perhaps like everybody else, Prime Ministers do not give up the powers that attach to their office any more than kings do. We had to have a civil war and cut off the King’s head; we had to have another civil war, more or less—except James II ran away—and import a new King from Holland. That is how our constitution was made to work then. The way our constitution works now is by legislation, and I welcome this legislation as a first step in the right direction.