House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on securing the Second Reading of his Bill. He has shown persistence in pushing forward this issue over the last few years and has led this debate with his customary thought and consideration. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Mattinson on a wonderful maiden speech. I have known and worked with her for many years and look forward to hearing from her many more times. She will make a great contribution to this House in our deliberations in the years to come.

As we have heard, this Bill would put arrangements for the House of Lords Appointments Commission in statute for the first time. The commission would maintain its role of nominating Cross-Bench Peers to the Prime Minister, but would also be able to set out new criteria against which it should judge and advise on political nominations to your Lordships’ House. This would require the Prime Minister to follow the commission’s advice. The Prime Minister would not be able to recommend Peers to the sovereign where the commission has deemed that they do not meet the suitability criteria. The Bill also stipulates considerations that the Prime Minister must make when recommending new Peers, relating to the size and composition of the House.

A similar Bill received support in this House back in 2022. However, the context this time is different from the context of the noble Lord’s previous Bills on this topic. The Government agree that we need to reform the appointments system and we remain committed to wider House of Lords reform—a pointed raised by the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin. We have an ambitious programme of reform for this House, which we have made an immediate start on. When the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said that he wanted to remind me of certain words, I was pleased that they were not my words. However, I do believe that there is a desire for reform across the House. We have made a start in line with our manifesto commitments.

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill is currently in Committee in this House. It will remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit and to vote in this place. I recognise the contribution that hereditary Peers have made to this House over many years—a point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. The Government have committed to reforming the process of appointments to the second Chamber, to ensure the quality of new appointments and improve the national and regional balance of your Lordships’ House. However, this Bill represents a fundamental shift in the roles and responsibilities of the appointments system. That, as I will outline, risks undermining the proper lines of accountability.

There has been much discussion about the Prime Minister’s role in appointments to this House, so I will first address the roles and responsibilities of the appointments system that the Bill seeks to change. Constitutionally, it is for the Prime Minister, as the sovereign’s principal adviser, to make recommendations on individuals appointed to this place. By convention, the Prime Minister invites nominations from other political parties, which decide who is best placed to represent their party in the second Chamber. The Prime Minister passes on the nominations of the party leaders without comment, provided that they meet the commission’s propriety checks. This is important. The Prime Minister passes them on to the sovereign without comment.

As my noble friend Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent made clear in Committee on the hereditary Peers Bill only this week, this is an important principle. The Prime Minister and other party leaders are democratically elected and accountable to Parliament and ultimately to the electorate, and they should be held to account for the political nominations that they make to your Lordships’ House. The House of Lords Appointments Commission advises the Prime Minister on the propriety of individuals nominated to the party Benches in this place. This propriety advice is important to the Prime Minister as he discharges his duty to recommend new life peerages to the sovereign. The commission also has an important role in nominating individuals to the Cross Benches. As with nominations from party leaders, the Prime Minister will pass these on to the sovereign.

The noble Lord’s Bill attempts to put in statute that the commission will judge political nominees not only on their propriety but their suitability, and that the Prime Minister must follow this advice. This would give the commission, an unelected body, the power to veto the Prime Minister’s and the party leaders’ nominations to this place. The noble Lords, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury and Lord Leigh of Hurley, and other noble Lords, made this point.

As I have set out, it is for party leaders to give due consideration to the quality and suitability of new Peers. Party leaders must accept responsibility for their nominations to this place. We cannot and should not expect the commission to take on this responsibility. In my nearly 15 years in this House, I have made many great friends on all Benches. We have wonderful Members who do great work in this House and did great work before they came to this House. They should be congratulated on that.

This Bill would represent a fundamental shift in the responsibility to make appointments to this House and would risk undermining the democratic lines of accountability that currently exist in the appointments process—another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne. The Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Norton, also requires that the Prime Minister, in considering recommendations for new peerages, should have regard to the fact that at least 20% of the membership of this place should be non-party political, that no party can have an absolute majority in the House of Lords and that the membership should be no larger than that of the House of Commons. It also gives the commission the ability to advise the Prime Minister on reducing the size of the House.

The House may be sympathetic to these principles that the noble Lord has set out. I note that in recent years no party has held an overall majority in this place. Indeed, since the removal of the majority of the hereditary Peers in 1999, no party has held more than 40% of the seats, nor has the proportion of the Cross-Benchers been below 20% in the Chamber during this time. But the Government share the concern regarding the size of the House: it has become too big. We have committed to reforming your Lordships’ House to achieve a smaller, more active Chamber that better reflects the country it serves. I note that noble Lords made this point, including the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza.

Our manifesto commitments set out how we intend to achieve that, by reforming the process of appointments to this place, as well as by introducing a mandatory retirement age, which will bring down the size of the House, and a participation requirement. As an immediate step in our reform, we have introduced the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which, as I said, will remove the right of the remaining hereditary Peers to sit and vote in this place, completing the work of the 1999 Act.

We are in a very different position from when the noble Lord first introduced his Bill. The Government of the day now have a clear manifesto commitment for reforms to this place and we have an ongoing dialogue to consider the options of how we can best implement these commitments. Setting in statute requirements around the size and composition of the House and giving the commission a role on advising on reducing its size would cut across the dialogue on the wider reforms to the House that the Government are proposing.

The Government have already taken the straightforward but important step to help shore up trust in the appointments process, introducing a requirement that political parties must, on nominating individuals, provide a citation explaining why individuals have been nominated, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, mentioned. These citations are published on the GOV.UK website following a nominee’s successful appointment, in order to provide greater clarity for the public about how and why party leaders chose their nominations to your Lordships’ House. This will encourage political parties to take greater responsibility for their nominations, which, as I said, are for party leaders to decide and to be held accountable for.

It is right that we should take the time to properly consider how we reform the appointment system and the commission’s role within it as part of the wider standards landscape. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he is committed to restoring trust in government. We are committed to keeping the ethics bodies under review and, where necessary, delivering reforms to ensure the highest standards in public life. Indeed, the Government have already demonstrated their willingness to strengthen the independent protections within the existing standards landscape. The Prime Minister has, for example, significantly strengthened the remit of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, giving them the ability to initiate an investigation into ministerial standards without requiring the Prime Minister’s consent. However, we do not think that this Bill’s proposals are right for the House of Lords Appointments Commission or the wider appointment system at this time.

In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for raising these important issues and provoking a discussion on reforms to the House of Lords appointments process. We know that there is work to be done to reform this House and we have an ambitious programme to do just that. We are eager to maintain the ongoing dialogue with your Lordships’ House about the reforms to this Chamber. We need to allow time to consider how best to implement our manifesto commitment to reform the appointment system as part of our wider programme of reform. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, so eloquently set out for us during the Committee stage of the Hereditary Peers Bill:

“The sovereign, the King, creates Members of your Lordships’ House. There must be somebody to advise him. It must be a democratically elected person and that has to be the Prime Minister”.—[Official Report, 10/3/25; col. 514.]


In the end, the Prime Minister has to take responsibility. The Bill would represent a fundamental shift in the roles and responsibilities of the appointment system that the Government cannot accept. The Government, therefore, have reservations about the Bill.

Finally, I should say that I have huge respect for the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. His contributions to this House are always thoughtful, challenging and considered. His role will help the Government in the further work that we want to bring to this House.