House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might impose for just a few moments on this matter. I think it is relevant to remark on a very significant anniversary for the Labour Party this month. I am not talking about the first anniversary of this Government; I am talking about the 80th anniversary of that remarkable Labour Government of 1945, led by Clement Attlee. Captain Clement Attlee, South Lancashire Regiment, fought nobly and gallantly at Gallipoli, that tragic military adventure—disaster. He was the last but one man to withdraw from the beach at Suvla Bay—a tragic adventure which nearly cost Winston Churchill his entire political career. The clock moved on; the names of the beaches changed. In the Second World War, they were Dunkirk, Omaha and Gold. Yet, throughout the Second World War, Clement Attlee formed a very special relationship with Winston Churchill. Of course, they hated each other, they loathed each other’s politics and they fought hard about it, but it was a relationship based on personal respect and tolerance. That relationship changed history. It changed the history of our country and of the entire world.

That relationship has something to tell us about today. It is an example of tolerance that drives democracy. Democracy is not simply about the heavy hand of numbers, votes, and the clenched fists of manifestos and mandates. It is about getting things done. Tolerance and respect are the lifeblood of democracy, which enables those great tectonic plates of politics, when they meet, to slide past each other and to survive, rather than meet head on and create chaos around us.

One thing we can say about our noble hereditaries, whom we are just about to say goodbye to, is that they did not come here for a title—most of them have several. They came here for public service. They came here to do their duty, as so many generations of their families before them had done. I wish to pay my respect and offer my gratitude to them and, indeed, to express my deep personal affection for so many of them who have served. They are an example to the rest of us in that, and I hope that the Government will take the example of that great Labour leader, Clement Attlee, and, in the way that they implement this Bill, show the respect and the tolerance for which he set an example. Our hereditary Peers deserve it. They should go with our good will, our blessing and, indeed, our friendship.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have attended all stages of this Bill and collected a strong sense that the Government have seen it as something which it is not. They have regarded it as a tidying-up exercise, but it is a constitutional reform and therefore serious. I try to imagine how future historians may look upon what has happened. I do not think that they will see this as part of a series of measures like those which gradually extended the franchise, for example. There will not be a common emancipating thread running through it all. Instead, historians will see it as a measure which finally ended the main principle upon which the British second Chamber was constructed and replaced it with nothing—but nothing will come of nothing.