House of Lords

Lord Luce Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, about the quality of this debate on the whole question of the size of the House of Lords. It has been outstanding, with very distinguished contributions, and we owe that to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for giving the lead in this.

I am also very glad that the House in general has made a distinction between the longer-term issues of what one might call radical reform of this House—the proposals for an elected House, for example, which will no doubt return in due course, or the implications of devolution in Scotland or of a European Union referendum, if we have one, which are longer-term issues—from what we have principally been debating today, which is the continuing current role of the House of Lords as a revising and scrutinising Chamber, which obviously involves more modest, incremental changes, perhaps against the background of Burke’s maxim:

“A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve”.

I would also like to reinforce the view that has been expressed today by some noble Lords that there should be a constitutional convention, I assume of a permanent nature, which will pick up all the strands of constitutional evolution as they develop—the big issues meshing in with the more daily issues and the pragmatic, incremental aspects of reform—so that we have a more cohesive picture as time goes on of how our constitution is evolving.

We have our role as a revising Chamber and I believe it works pretty well. That probably explains why the Prime Minister and the Government of the day on the whole do not awfully like the House of Lords, because we are doing our job pretty well. I believe that our effectiveness would be strengthened, however, by tackling this whole question of the size of the Chamber. Like many noble Lords, my preference is for a reformed appointed Chamber. The longer we fail to tackle this issue of size, the more the pressure will increase to introduce more radical reforms, which for my part I would not support or approve of.

The present size is, I think, an impediment to being an effective revising Chamber. I do not want to exaggerate it but the trend to increase the size of the Chamber is simply not tenable. Of course there are problems of space. There is less scope to contribute. There are cost problems. There is no great merit in being the largest second Chamber in the world. We know the figures—we have heard them time and again in the debate: we have nearly 800 Members who are eligible to sit; average attendance is the highest at just under 500; and the trend since 2000 has been an overall increase of 25%.

I agree with all those who said that this House needs new blood regularly. It is important for the House to have fresh expertise, fresh experience and, I might say, younger people as well. But if we continue with the current trend, it will not be long before we have more than 1,000 Members in this Chamber. That to my mind is totally unacceptable. We can all debate what would be an optimum size. I personally believe that somewhere in the region of 450 to 500 is about right for the job we are trying to do and that we would get the best value with that number. I very much commend the views that have been expressed by the group of Labour Party Peers led by Lord Grenfell and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, which has produced some very constructive ideas that have contributed very much to this debate.

The difficult issues, as we have already heard, are how to get the size of the House reduced. There is a very difficult balance to be struck. First, there is the whole question of the balance of the parties and the fact that the Cross-Benchers must make up at least 20% of the membership. That factor has all the time to be borne in mind when we are considering a reduction in the size of the House.

When we consider retirement, we look first at the voluntary aspect as well as, later on, at the mandatory aspect. I believe quite firmly that voluntary retirement on its own will not solve this problem. We have had a superb example set by Lord Jenkin of Roding, who has officially retired today, and I join other noble Peers who have already said that they plan to retire in due course. My decision is to retire in the next Parliament, during which time I shall reach the age of 80. I have a principle in life that you ought to go before you are asked to go, which probably explains why many of the jobs that I have held have been for a very short time. It is a matter of individual judgment, and I do not wish to be judgmental on anyone else’s decision as for when is the right time for them to go. It fits, however, with one of the Labour Party’s proposals in its very good paper.

I feel strongly that if we are to see a balanced reduction in the size of the House, it can be done only with some kind of a mandatory system. Today we have heard a wide range of ideas, such as retiring during the Parliament in which you become 80; ending your time after 15 years; having an electoral system for each group in the House as to who should retire; a cap on the size of the House; or retirement based on seniority. There is no shadow of doubt that whatever proposal comes forward, there will be large body of opinion against it—we have already heard that. There will objections to every single one of these proposals.

At the end of the day, my view is this: if there is a will in the House to reduce its size, then we will find a way. But there has to be a will to do that job; without that, we cannot succeed. I hope that the idea proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, of setting up a committee to examine this matter carefully will be taken forward. It will take time, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has implied—you cannot do this kind of thing overnight. It should not cut across longer-term considerations which will emerge in due course. However, it would be a serious mistake to let this matter drift. We would provide an even better service to the country as a revising Chamber if we were bold enough to tackle this issue of size.