House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to agree largely with the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, and to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Mattinson, on her excellent maiden speech. As has been said, we are very aware of and respect her political expertise; we do not fear it. We welcome her to this House. I am quite sure she qualifies as having “conspicuous merit”.

I have some questions on this Bill, which restricts the Prime Minister’s ability to appoint Peers with an effective size restriction, but does not impose the same restraint on the commission, which could nominate unlimited numbers to this House, effectively restricting the Prime Minister’s capacity if we were to keep to the 650. There is a minimum size of 20% but not a maximum. Why is that? Strangely, the Bill then excludes people who have supported a party in the past two years from being four out of the nine nominated to the commission. Why is that? This is a political House, and politics determines our Members. Why should an unelected, opaque committee run by the elite to perpetuate the elite be allowed to veto a person the elected PM, who is elected by MPs to get to that position, wants to be part of the legislature? That is how it will be seen by the public.

Although I wholeheartedly approve of a mechanism to ensure that your Lordships’ House contains people who remain committed to work in the House, I do not believe the Bill achieves it. All it requires is that nominees must show

“a willingness and capacity to contribute”

at the time of being introduced—as if anyone would say, “Oh, I don’t have the willingness or the capacity”. I am an employee of a financial services company. I chair four charities. I am on the board of five others. I chair a public company. I am a treasurer of the party. If anyone looked at my record, they would say, “Well, he doesn’t have capacity”, but I have an 82% voting record.

I am also unhappy with the effective veto the commission would have over the PM’s choice. Nominations frequently come from opposition party leaders, thankfully. There is one case about which I happen to know more than most and in which, 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 determine what is “conspicuous merit”? That is fine, but what does “conspicuous merit” mean? As we discussed on the hereditaries Bill this week, is it people who just served well in their job, be it in the Commons, the judiciary, the civil service or business, who are entitled to be in this House? I argue not. Anyone who is to be elevated must show they have contributed to society over and above their paid, salaried day job. That does not seem to be envisaged in this Bill. Most importantly, they must show that they are able to contribute in areas where greater contribution is needed.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, indicated, 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 appropriate Members of this House, when clearly that should remain with our Prime Minister —and, of course, other political leaders. The issue of judicial review, as eloquently explained by the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, is still not determined. I welcome reform, but I do not believe this Bill addresses the real issues we face in this House.