House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, the ostensible purpose of the Bill is to dispense with what are called the ridiculous and embarrassing by-elections of hereditary Peers. If they are ridiculous, which is a subjective and therefore obviously biased view, they are embarrassing only to those who introduced them. There can be no embarrassment to the rest of us for something that we did not initiate. Indeed, I have always had a sneaking suspicion that some of those who support the ending of by-elections do so because they are worried that any criticism that the by-elections attract impacts the reputation of the whole House, and thus risks their own rather comfortable seats in it. I hope that is just me being cynical and is not actually right.

The reality is that nobody is particularly interested in the composition of this House except us. Most people know or care little about how we get here, and probably no one would ever notice if the Electoral Reform Society—a sort of Lib Dem fan club, and therefore very small and inconsequential—had not managed to wind the Sunday Times around its little finger. To put that in proportion, I say that only about 1% of the British people read the Sunday Times. We are not, therefore, debating what could be called a very hot topic.

It is important to remember that what we are being asked to do today is clear up the mess of another failed Labour policy. We are all used to Labour Governments destroying the economy—it goes with the territory—but the House of Lords Act 1999 was an unbelievably badly botched constitutional reform. All Governments legislate incompetently because that is the nature of Governments but, sadly, Labour Governments also legislate vindictively, which means against groups they perceive have done them wrong. Revenge is a very unpleasant and destructive trait in a political party.

The debates over Lords reforms have, as we all know, run into the ground over the vexed question of whether to have an elected or appointed House. That question was unresolved when Labour introduced its Bill in 1999, but it argued that, once the hereditary Peers had been expelled, the question that came to be called stage 2 would be relatively simple to resolve. We now know that this argument was a deception. We were all deliberately misled. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is sadly not in his place, has confirmed that there was never going to be a stage 2. We must therefore assume that the sole purpose of the Bill was to extract revenge on the hereditary peerage by expelling it from Parliament. It is pathetic, really.

No thought was given to whether it would be a good or bad thing; it just had to be done to satiate Labour’s class warriors. But the price they had to pay was to leave 100 hereditaries in place and the by-elections to replace those who die and now those who retire. Those 100 hereditaries act as an open sore in the side of old Labour, which is why we are here today. No one outside this House and the Westminster bubble is remotely interested. This Bill is not about improving the House of Lords; it is about clearing up Labour’s mess. For the old Labour dinosaurs, it is about completing unfinished business—another battle in the class war that is Labour’s obsession and is of no interest to anybody else in the country today. It is last-century stuff, and a poor reason to legislate.

It is important to focus on where we will be if this Bill passes. We will become a wholly appointed House by default, one of only 15 in the world—mostly small Caribbean islands and Canada, and most Canadians are not great fans of what they have. We will also become the only legislature in the world in which the leader of the party with the majority in the first Chamber has sole power of appointment to the second Chamber. That really would be ridiculous and very embarrassing for those who vote for it, particularly Liberal Democrats, who apparently favour an elected second Chamber—although, let us face it, they have always had rather flexible principles.

We will also become the only legislature in the world that is using its second Chamber as a retirement home for Members of its first Chamber. More than once the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is always the very model of courtesy, has made clear that we hereditaries should not take his Bill personally. I hear and understand that but, if it is not personal, I have to tell him that it sure as hell feels like it sometimes.

Similarly, I have many friends who are or have been MPs, for whom I have the greatest possible respect, so my concern about a preponderance of MPs in this House is not personal either. However, if the House ever becomes dominated by any one group, it will lose the diversity of views which is its strength, even more so if that group simply reflects the views of the current political establishment, which we saw during the Brexit debates.

The Bill is an indulgence. I imagine the House will give it a Second Reading, as is our habit, and after that, without government support, which it does not deserve and will not have, it will die and so it should. Your Lordships have better things to do than waste time on this nasty rubbish.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, on my way to the House this morning, I thought I would try to avoid any class warfare as far as my noble friend’s Bill is concerned. I know that it is customary in your Lordships’ House to compliment the previous speaker but, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, I find some difficulty in doing so. If there is a class warrior to be commended for his contributions so far, it would be him. I will come back to him in a moment, but I just say to my noble friend that, whatever the weakness of the system of the Prime Minister making appointments to your Lordships’ House, at least there are two sons of railwaymen on these Benches. I reflect on a recent Sunday Times article on hereditary Peers that pointed out that no fewer than 39 of their ranks went to the same school. I am not going to name the school, because we all know what it is. It certainly was not West Bromwich Grammar; I assure your Lordships of that.

I do not want to fight the class battle that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, just outlined, but we are not about to abolish him if my noble friend’s Bill gets on the statute book. We are about to abolish only this nonsensical system of election. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in all friendship, that we are offering not his abolition but a chance to join the human race. He can join us and become like the rest of us. I cannot claim that your Lordships’ Benches, even on this side, are a fair cross-section of society—

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

No. The noble Lord intervened on my last speech on this business, took a chunk of my time, then pointed to the clock when I tried to respond, so he is not getting away with it twice. I want to bring him into the fold to be the same as the rest of us, which is the key to his opposition. He does not want to be the same as the rest of us; the hereditary Peers like the elitism of hereditary peerages and do not want to be made “mere” life Peers. We would not lose the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, if we went ahead and abolished hereditary Peers, any more than we would lose the wit and oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who has kept us entertained over half a dozen attempts to abolish the system of hereditary Peers.

We are offering the hand of friendship. We want hereditary Peers to join us and be like the rest of us. Looking back at the education of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, I think that he ought to be embraced by the rest of us because of what he had to go through. I read the Sunday Times article to which I referred and looked at what happened at Eton. Imagine being plucked from the bosom of the family at an early age and being sent to that school. You get up at the crack of dawn, are given a 12-bore and go out and shoot your own breakfast before starting. You have to put up with beatings—and worse, according to the tabloids—of sadistic teachers. When you get to maturity, you dress up in a quasi-military uniform and are photographed for posterity, earning your honours battling your way through the wine lists of expensive restaurants, sorting out a few waiters while you are doing it. When you leave, at the end of this long, expensive and painful schooling, you end up in a dead-end job—a stockbroker, banker or hedge-fund operative, whatever that may be. There are no long-term prospects in jobs like that.

Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft—who after a previous debate assured me of his own grandfather the first Lord Mancroft’s humble background—ended up a master of fox-hounds. Again, there is no future in a job like that. It is one of the reasons why I want him and his colleagues who went to this particular school, all 39 of them, to join the rest of us. When he does, he can reflect on those of us who were elected into the other place. Last time we debated my noble friend’s Bill, he had a few harsh words about former MPs dominating, as he put it, your Lordships’ House. He said that they come up the corridor, make speeches and want to do things—how dare they? At least, if he becomes one of us, he can convince us that perhaps the way forward is not to do things and not to make speeches in your Lordships’ House. We can mix together and become equals. That way, perhaps we can learn from him how better to conduct ourselves while we are in this House.

There are no advantages in the present system. It brings your Lordships’ House into disrepute. I do not know whether my noble friend’s Bill will reach the statute book on this occasion; I strongly suspect it will not, because of a lack of time. I hope he will persist and stop the nonsense of hereditary Peers being elected. He has amply outlined the paucity of the electorate for the future. No noble Lord who wants a proper future for this House, however it is organised or reorganised, would pretend that the present system is ideal, but all the alternatives present various difficulties. I do not envy any future Prime Minister who decides to embark on a wholescale reorganisation, but at least we can move forward in a small way if we accept my noble friend’s sensible proposals today. I give them my wholehearted support.