House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on introducing his Private Member’s Bill. I am afraid that I cannot support it as drafted and would be disappointed to see it pass in its current form. However, let me confirm that I support reform and wholly agree that it is totally unacceptable that people are introduced to this House and then frankly fail to serve it in a way that anyone would regard as reasonable, in terms of time or other contributions.

There is a problem at the moment, but it is not necessarily related to the size of the House. I discovered with the assistance of the Library, to which I am very grateful, that some 75 eligible Members have not spoken since December 2019 and 33 have not voted, with a core of 20 who have neither spoken nor voted in more than two years. This excludes those who are on leave of absence or disqualified, and of course the Lord Speaker. Figures I have obtained from the Library show that average participation in Divisions is only 42% of Members, with some consistency between participation and those taking a party Whip. It is as high as 65% for the Lib Dems, with the Conservatives at 56%. It goes down to 44% for Labour, with the Cross-Benchers achieving only 17% participation in Divisions in total. In arguing for more Cross-Benchers, one needs to understand the percentage of people attending on sitting days, which varies.

Perhaps the Bill goes to the heart of the misunderstanding of this House by so many, particularly those surveyed in polls. We are not meant to be full-time participants, nor were we ever intended to be. Unlike Commons Members, Peers are not full-time, salaried legislators. Only a portion of Peers attend on a full-time basis. One should perhaps focus on the number of Peers who attend and not just those eligible to sit. Restricting the number to the size of the Commons—now confirmed as 650, not 600—is to impose totally arbitrary limits on two very different Chambers with very different roles and duties. Yes, there are too many Peers who are effectively retired or too old to contribute properly, but the Bill does not address those points.

The Bill restricts the Prime Minister’s ability to appoint Peers with an effective size restriction, but it does not impose the same restraint on the commission, which could nominate unlimited numbers to the House, effectively restricting the Prime Minister’s capacity. Strangely, the Bill then excludes anyone from being nominated by the commission who has supported a party in the past two years. Why is that? Why is membership of a party an immediate block for someone whom the commission believes would otherwise be an excellent Member here?

Although I wholeheartedly approve of a mechanism to ensure that your Lordships’ House contains people who are committed to the House, I do not believe the Bill achieves that. All it requires is that nominees must show a “willingness and capacity” to contribute—as if anyone proposed would say, “I don’t have the willingness or capacity”. I would hope that Members do have other interests: we benefit from Members who are active elsewhere. That is not of itself an impediment. I am an employee of a financial services company, I chair a public company, I chair four charities, I am on the board of another five and I have served for 22 years as a senior treasurer of the party—so, under the Bill, I am sure I would be told that I do not have capacity, yet I have an 82% voting record. I did not get an LOL on my text.

I am also unhappy with the effective veto the commission would have over the PM’s choice—and, of course, nominees frequently come from opposition party leaders. There is one case which had been cited in the press which I happen to know more about than most and where, in my opinion, HOLAC was possibly ill-informed and possibly then gave an ill-judged view. I would feel very uncomfortable that a commission of unelected people, however eminent, could overrule the democratically elected Prime Minister of this country. Who are they to decide what is “conspicuous merit”? In principle, it is fine, but what does conspicuous merit mean? Then the Bill allows the commission itself to propose additional criteria without any approval from Parliament or government. This is a very dangerous open invitation to allow a private, secret, unelected group to determine who it thinks are the appropriate Members of this House, when clearly that should remain with our Prime Minister—and, of course, other political leaders.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, eloquently said, we should bear in mind that this route opens the door to judicial reviews, dragging the courts into a decision. I welcome reform, but I do not believe the Bill addresses the real issues we face in this House.