House of Lords: Size

Lord Luce Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that we need to reduce the size of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is not here at the moment, had the most interesting proposal of all, which is that those who decide to retire should retain their title and those who stay here should lose it. On the basis of that, we would be a totally empty House.

I can hardly think of a more important time for the Lords to rise to the challenge and to take a lead on the question of size, particularly against a background of a growing mistrust of Governments and of Parliament as a whole. We can also acknowledge that Ministers in this Government have given us encouragement by saying that the Lords is too large but that it must be for the Lords themselves to lead the process of reform, provided that there was a consensus, and that they would be prepared to work with Peers to take reasonable measures which could be implemented in this Parliament.

This is a challenge and an opportunity for the House of Lords. I agree with those such as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that there is a sense of urgency about this. At the same time, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, that we are at our best when we are pragmatic and incremental in our approach. There are some who have said that other things should have priority, such as composition of the House—of course, that can be tackled pragmatically as well—but, generally speaking, we have worked on the assumption in this debate that we retain our role in this Chamber, which is to accept the supremacy of the House of Commons and to have a complementary role.

To my mind, the key question is what numbers we need in order to fulfil this role effectively. That needs some coherence. Many say that it is just a problem of perception. I suggest that it is a problem not only of perception but of reality. If we face the fact that this House is steadily getting larger and that, by 2020, on past projections, we would probably reach 1,000 Peers; if we accept the extraordinary imbalances between groups and parties in this House, where UKIP has hardly any representation, the Liberal Democrats are overrepresented and the SNP, of course by its own choice, is not here at all; if we accept that we are the only country with a bicameral Parliament where the second Chamber is larger than the first, that other second Chambers around the world contain fewer Members—Canada has only 105 and the United States Senate only 100—and that there is a growing disparity in size between the House of Commons and House of Lords, all this points to a serious problem that needs to be faced.

Now, I will not repeat the parameters suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others. They are there and they make absolute sense as the kind of framework to pursue. We clearly need a Select Committee to get into the practicalities and we must accept that whatever idea is pursued as to how to make the reductions—whether retirement at 80, a 15-year term or internal elections, the latter of which I tend to favour on balance—each of those arguments has strengths but also major flaws. This issue requires a will in this Parliament to do something about it, and that in turn requires give and take. If we have that will and the willingness to give and take, a Select Committee can achieve a result which will enable us to say that we have done something to restore public faith in our parliamentary system.

Chagos Islands

Lord Luce Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Luce]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to complete their policy review of resettlement in the Chagos Islands.

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s public consultation about a potential resettlement of the British Indian Ocean Territory concluded on 27 October. We are now examining the results and hope to take a decision on the way ahead soon. This 12-week consultation drew views from around 1,200 Chagossians and continues the conversation with Chagossian communities as part of our review of resettlement policy, which started in 2012. That included an independent feasibility study, which concluded at the end of January 2015.

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, this week is the 50th anniversary of the decision to provide a United States base in Diego Garcia, on British territory and in the Indian Ocean, which then led to the decision to deport 1,500 Chagossians, most of whom were indigenous inhabitants. As the KPMG report, commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has this year concluded that there is no reason why resettlement should not take place, will the Government make next year’s renewal of the agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom conditional on a commitment by both parties to facilitate and support resettlement of the Chagossians, thus rectifying a grave human rights injustice?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government regret the way the Chagossians were removed from the British Indian Ocean Territory in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Government, along with successive Governments before them, have said that what happened was clearly wrong. This is why substantial compensation was rightly paid. The noble Lord mentioned the renewal of the agreement with the American military for occupation of Diego Garcia and we will, no doubt, take these matters into account.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Luce Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, led a debate back on 6 January on the question of the size of the House of Lords. On that occasion, there was almost unanimous support for dealing with the question of size. Since then, I have been very struck by how far things have moved on. Today, after the general election, the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister have thrown down a challenge for us in this Chamber to take up to produce proposals for dealing with the size of the House of Lords. I am very struck today by the momentum—by the fact that there is enormous all-party support for this and a great desire to get on with it. That is certainly a change in the atmosphere. I think we are all pretty well agreed today, with one or two exceptions, that having too large a Chamber could well undermine the effectiveness of the work we do. Indeed, it is very interesting that in Canada, where the second Chamber has 105 appointed members, the Prime Minister has just called a moratorium on new appointments because he thinks it is getting too large. There is a serious point here that needs to be dealt with. We owe thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and Mr Byles for all the work they have done in laying some foundations for us. We have now got to move on.

We cannot insulate the questions of appointments and retirements from each other. The one depends on the other, and they have to be interrelated. As far as appointments are concerned, it is time in my view to introduce clearer criteria. Of course we need a continuing infusion of new blood—we cannot afford to stop that—but we need a cap. Again, I am struck today by the fact that there is a pretty strong view that we should limit ourselves, perhaps by the end of this Parliament, to being somewhere around the size of the House of Commons or even a little smaller. I totally agree with that, but it means that we have to agree the formula for the size of the parties, as well as accepting, as I think the House does, that the Cross-Benchers ought to make up at least 20% of the House. We also have to deal with the minority party situation that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, introduced and ought to acknowledge the point that he made.

However, the question then arises of who supervises these criteria that I hope we are going to devise. Here, the role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission comes into play, because it will be up to it to interpret the criteria that this House agrees for appointments. The Prime Minister has enormous powers of patronage, and it is not unreasonable to ask him to constrain those powers, to ask the Appointments Commission to say what the balance of the parties should be in the House, according to the cap that we require, and to then ask the leaders of the parties, including the Prime Minister, to nominate their own people for their own party. All of that seems to me to make sense, on top of the need for the Appointments Commission to take into account, as it already does, the balance of expertise that this Chamber needs.

We then get to the question of retirement, where the number of ideas is quite enormous. None is perfect, and every single one of the ideas that has been produced has a down side—we just have to accept that. I will start with the voluntary retirement system. It is of course good that we have 35 people who have volunteered to retire. Like the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I am committed to retiring during this Parliament, when I shall reach the age of 80. However, before everyone cheers very loudly at the news I have just disclosed to the Chamber, I would say that I do not wish to retire until I see real, concrete progress on the question of tackling the size of this House.

There so many other ideas: selecting active Peers to retire at the age of 80; a mandatory system of retirement after 15 or 20 years; an age of retirement of 75 or 80; or, following the precedent of the selection of Irish and Scottish Peers, a process of self-selection, electing our own groups according to the numbers that we require. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned that last idea, which I find attractive.

We must have a carefully balanced system. It will be difficult, but we must do it. We have to take into account the Leader’s point that it must be as simple as possible. That is the biggest challenge of all to those of us who are prepared to work on these issues. The body chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is already working on this. I welcome the fact that the Lord Speaker has an advisory group. All parties will have to be committed to this effort, with as much urgency as possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said, based on the experience of his commission 15 years ago, there has to be a will to make it work. If there is no will, we will not succeed. We must have an immense amount of give and take if we are to get consensus. In my view, each of us ought to be exercising not our rights in this Chamber but our responsibilities to this country.