House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have long supported the abolition of the right of hereditary Peers to sit in your Lordships’ House. I have said it in the House before and I meant it. There were two reasons why I did not like the legislation previously brought forward. The first is that they were Private Members’ Bills. A reform of this nature should be a government Bill, and it is quite right that the Government have got their way on it.

The second reason is that I am disappointed that we hereditaries have failed in one respect. In 1999, the then Lord Chancellor the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said to me, “One of the reasons we’ve kept you is to ensure that the Labour Party fulfil their manifesto commitment to reform the House of Lords”. Well, we know that that manifesto commitment was not fulfilled, and it must have been quite hard for some noble Lords to have taken part in and listened to some of the excellent speeches and debates we have had on the Bill. I mention just two: my noble friends Lady Mobarik and Lord Shinkwin, who gave speeches about prejudice at Second Reading.

I thank noble Lords opposite for their kind words to me about how sad they will be to see the hereditaries go. I enjoyed those conversations until they petered out when I said, “Well, you could have done something about it”.

I should also thank the noble Lords opposite, particularly the influx of Labour Peers who came here in 1999. When I first took my seat here, I could claim a maximum daily allowance of £4.73, which is worth £105.14 in today’s money. In 2000-01, after numerous attempts to improve our expenses, they suddenly increased hugely. Our maximum daily claimable allowance went up 50% within a year, and the amount that we could claim—we cannot anymore—for our office, secretarial and research costs for non-sitting days nearly doubled. That was a bonus for me. Like many Peers who took their seat on their Front Bench, I took a substantial reduction in my salary, so the increase in expenses was welcome. I am extremely grateful to the Labour Peers who enabled that.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, when I made a short intervention at an earlier stage in the Bill, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, in reply, questioned—not seriously, I hope—whether or not I still liked her. The answer is that of course I do. I hold the noble Baroness in the greatest respect and indeed affection, as does the whole House, and that respect and affection is unaltered by the passage of the Bill. We on this side of the House do not bear personal grudges against political opponents merely because they are enacting decisions with which we may disagree. I accept, as do my noble friends, that the Government are fully entitled to get their business through and pass their manifesto legislation, even if I do not like it. The Bill removes the process by which new Peers can join the House by further by-elections. We accept that, albeit reluctantly.

But nowhere in the Labour manifesto did it state that currently sitting Members of the House would be summarily removed, which is an additional measure and sets a bad and, in my view, dangerous precedent whereby the Executive can simply remove Members of the second Chamber by dint of their majority in the first—an unheard-of provision that exists in no other modern democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that it would be absurd to suggest that this precedent would ever be repeated, but I suspect he is wrong, as he and his noble friends may well find out to their discomfort and cost in the not-too-distant future.

As this Bill enters its final stages, I ask the noble Baroness the Leader in turn whether she still likes me, or whether there something I have done that so deeply offends her that I and my noble friends should be thrown out of this House like discarded rubbish? We often talk of the dignity of the House, but I cannot think of anything less dignified for the House than what the Government are now doing in this Bill.

I would like to think that I have done my duty over the past almost 40 years. I certainly believe we have stuck to our side of the deal that we made 25 years ago with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, on behalf of the Labour Party—not a deal that tied the hands of a future Government, as has been claimed, but on which, to their shame, this Government are now reneging.

The House is currently wrestling with the provisions of the Employment Rights Bill. The Government are concerned with the rights of those on short-term contracts but at the same time apparently care little for those of us who have worked here with no formal contract. Although none of us in this House is technically employed to serve as Members of the House, it would be difficult to argue that this is not a place of work, or even part-time work. I suppose one could argue that our Letters Patent and Writs of Summons, taken together, constitute at least some form of agreement. Either way, we are now to be treated in a way that no one else in employment or in any workplace in Britain can be treated. It is rightly illegal to sack anyone on the basis of their birth, except here in the upper House of this Mother of Parliaments.

Before I go, I would be very grateful if the noble Baroness the Leader could tell me exactly what it is that we have done that is so wrong as to deserve being treated in this way. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has repeatedly gone out of his way to say that this is not personal, but he is wrong, because it is very personal to each and every one of us to be treated like this by those we considered our friends and colleagues. It is also deeply offensive. I would simply like to know why. Is that really too much to ask?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not intended to respond at length, and I will not, given that this debate on Third Reading has been quite a long one. I was reminded earlier that yesterday was the anniversary of the moon landing. Apollo 11 took eight days, three hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds to complete its mission. I think that is just slightly short of the time we have spent debating this Bill throughout its passage.

A number of issues were raised. Yes, I still have a soft spot for the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and of course this feels personal to those departing hereditary Peers. It felt very personal to me when I lost my seat as a Member of Parliament, with far less notice. He said that this Bill was not in the Labour Party manifesto. It was. He may recall that, when we debated the Grocott Bill, I said, and I wrote in the House magazine, that we should accept it and that we would help to get it through, otherwise we would be in a position where all hereditary Peers would be removed under a Labour Government. So, he was given some notice of that; he may not have listened to me or read anything that I wrote, but it was said and it was in the Labour Party manifesto.

Nothing about the legislation says that we do not value the work of hereditary Peers, or that of any other Member of your Lordships’ House. That has always been the case, but we were quite clear that the hereditary route is not the route into your Lordships’ House that the country or the Labour Party expects.

I will look again at what the noble Lord, Lord True, said, but I think he said that, if we were not to proceed with the Bill in the way it has been drafted, it would unleash a spirit of good will. I hope that was not an indication that carrying out a Bill that is in our manifesto would unleash a spirit of something opposite to good will. I hope that is not what he intended, but that is certainly how it came across.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was concerned that this Bill opens the gates to further reform or change. I have also heard from other noble Lords that, if we finish with this Bill, nothing will ever happen again. Both cannot be true, but I think this House should take more responsibility for what we can do. If we had taken responsibility for the Grocott Bill and managed to get it through, we probably would not be here today.

On the issue about Select Committees, I know the noble Lord would like to go further and faster. I am a great believer in bite-sized chunks and the House taking responsibility. If we can make progress on those two issues and, by implication, the impact on the size of the House, I think good progress can be made. If we show we can take responsibility for the work of our House as a House, cross-party, we can do so again in the future. So I do understand the views that have been expressed. This is a matter of principle. It was flagged for some time. It was a clear manifesto commitment.