House of Lords Reform

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make it clear what my attitude to this Bill is. In a race between the Grim Reaper and this Government to see the back of me, I hope that the Government win. In 1999, we stayed on to secure the further reform of the House of Lords; I believe that we should make a further attempt to do that.

The current arrangements, with the Prime Minister’s unfettered power of appointment, will not do. What the Leader of the House described as incremental change is no change at all: a few Members gone but the basic structure of the House staying the same. The dangers of that were very well illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

It is really not difficult to do stage two. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, set out one way of doing it and other Peers have set out others. They all focus on an element of quality control, but I do not think we need to create institutions to do that. As long as whoever brings in incoming Peers has to say why and how they will enhance the House, bringing in people who will not do that will reflect on the reputation of that party. One way or another, we will see fewer bad appointments.

If Peers who are still in the House have to commit, on our honour, to playing a proper part in this House and say that we have the capacity and intention to do that, then it will be quite easy to remove Peers who fail that test. We will have an ability under that sort of system to control our own quality. We can tie it back in to what my noble friend Lord Norton will doubtless refer to as being “assessed against purpose”. I am a follower of my noble friend and, after this evening, of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also. He was a superb Minister in his day. It was always a huge pleasure to find oneself opposite him because he listened. If he agreed with you, he would take it back to the department and you knew that he would be effective in his arguments there, even if he did not always win.

Another change we should make, as has been said a lot this evening, is to numbers. We need to agree how many Peers are in this House and what proportions should be linked to the Government, Opposition and Cross Benches. It is not a difficult change to make. If that causes problems around an election, when the basis for assessing the numbers changes, as has been suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Foulkes, we can de-link peerages and the right to sit in this House. It has been done for hereditary Peers and it can be done for life Peers also. That, in a way, might be a useful change so that the people who have really earned a peerage but do not want to serve in this House can be given that honour, and membership of this House can be confined to people who really want to make a contribution.

I add that I very much support what my noble friend Lord Astor said about self-evaluation and improvement. We need to become a more reflective House. I would like to see us publishing proper independent research on our effectiveness and looking at ways in which we can do better. I would very much like to see us covering secondary legislation better. As other Peers have said, we are seeing much more of it. We need to get more control of it.

Lastly, when it comes to retirement age, one of my early memories of being on the Government Bench as a Whip and taking a Bill through is being thoroughly defeated by three speeches, mostly from the Cross Benches, from Peers whose total age when added together was 286. I do not think age should be the criterion. We live in an ageing society. We have to make the best use of all the good years that we have, and we should not set the contrary example in this House.