House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I did not intend to support the debate on this particular amendment. However, having listened to the debate thus far, I think it is probably quite important that I say just one thing.

I did not get the letter to which the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, have referred—I am not quite sure why I did not get it as a Northern Ireland Peer, but I did not. I want to speak because it is important to reassure young people in Northern Ireland that they are not being disenfranchised, that they do have the right to stand for election in the United Kingdom and that, equally, they have the right to apply for admission here through the House of Lords Appointments Commission, as I did.

I work with Learn with the Lords, and most recently I attended Banbridge Academy in Northern Ireland. Some weeks ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, once a pupil at Banbridge Academy, was introduced into your Lordships’ House. When I presented to those young people in Banbridge Academy, I showed them the video of the introduction of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and said to them, as I always say to the students to whom I speak, “You too can do this. The House of Lords is a place to which you can apply, but before you get there you are going to have to work very, very hard and build yourself a reputation”. So that is my first point. I want to reassure the young people of Northern Ireland that nothing in the Bill or indeed in the Windsor Framework disenfranchises them.

I want to say a brief word about the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member. There are issues, and the scrutiny committee is working on those issues and will take evidence tomorrow from the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. But, apart from that, there is a recognition in Northern Ireland of advantage in the Windsor Framework. Businesses have given evidence to the predecessor Windsor Framework committee, to the effect that they had gained significant advantages from the existence of the Windsor Framework.

I just wanted to introduce a note of balance, to reassure young people and to say that all is not gloom and doom in Northern Ireland.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lady Hoey and Lord Morrow, having similarly been in receipt of representations from young people in Northern Ireland.

What the Minister for the Constitution, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said is worthy of repeating:

“I want young people growing up in … my constituency, and … every part of the country, to feel that they have the same chance as anyone else to play a part in making the laws of the land”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/10/24; col. 719.]


That is very thoughtful of him, yet at the very same time that Minister would have fully known that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was less than three weeks away from sending a Motion to Stormont, on 31 October, asking MLAs to agree to the disfranchisement of their constituents, in relation to not just one law but a staggering 300 areas of law, as has been outlined by my noble friends.

For the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, to suggest to this Committee that young people are not being denied rights that others throughout the United Kingdom are receiving is not factual. The rights of young people—in fact, of the people of Northern Ireland—are not the same as those throughout the United Kingdom, and I will give the reason why.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

I have to point out to the noble Lord that a young person who applies from Scotland, Wales, England or Northern Ireland has equal rights to make law here in Westminster and in the devolved Assemblies. There is no difference. There is a different situation in Northern Ireland with regard to the framework, but the noble Lord is not correct in what he says.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

There are 300 areas of law that apply to people in Northern Ireland over which no elected representative, either here or in the Northern Ireland Assembly, has any control. That has not happened for England, Scotland, or Wales. I cannot understand how the noble Baroness, who has a bright past and certainly tremendous knowledge, would not understand the difference. There are 300 areas of law over which they have no control whatever. No matter how many elected representatives they send to either Westminster or the Assembly, they have no power over those areas of law.

It is bad enough to pressure MLAs to vote to disfranchise their constituents in 300 areas of law, but to do so while the Minister was trying to pretend that the Government are so committed to opening up lawmaking to all that they feel bound to do away with hereditary Peers generates an overall progressive impression that they are so divorced from the impact of their actions and delivers a message that serves only to greatly compound the underlying sense of injustice.

Moreover, I believe that it is an insult to hereditary Peers to suggest that it is a government priority to remove them while at the same time pressing changes on British citizens in Northern Ireland that impact on their lives in 300 areas of law over which they have no say, nor any democratic input.

On 1 March 2023, my colleague and noble friend Lord Morrow read out a submission from an 18 year- old student, Jack Steele. I wish to remind the Committee of something of what he said:

“As I have mentioned, I would like to see the importance of my rights restored to an equal footing with that of other members of the United Kingdom. I would like to see the rights which my parents enjoyed for 25 years, delegated to me. I would like to see the continuity of peace and civility rather than violence and disorder. I would like to see the restoration of democracy in Northern Ireland. I am young and I have a life to live. It’s my desire to see Northern Ireland work and to make a difference. However, I cannot make a difference as the right to elect people to legislate … has been stripped from my generation”


in 300 areas of law.

Two years later, we are no further along, and a generation of young people are disfranchised. That is why they are asking us today to raise our voices in this Committee and demand that they are made subject only to the laws which their elected representatives have decided and can therefore be held accountable for at the ballot box, and to stop the continual imposition of EU legislation on the people of Northern Ireland. They simply ask that they be treated on equal footing with the young people of England, Scotland and Wales.

Is it too much to ask that we not direct our focus and energies on removing hereditary Peers, which would make little difference to the lives of our young people in Northern Ireland, and instead divert our resources to stop the denial of democracy in Northern Ireland and rightfully restore the democratic rights of these young people?