House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Well, let us agree to differ on that.

The Gordon Brown proposals are out there, and there are a range of other matters that we could begin to pull together very quickly; we do not need to start again. I find the reference to the Council of the Nations and Regions interesting. In two or three weeks I have a Question on how precisely the new Council of the Nations and Regions will fit in to our constitutional arrangements, because I am not at all sure that I or the Government yet understand how it will fit in.

We need to level up the way our politics are done. I have spent most of my political life in Yorkshire. We now have a situation in which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some voice in London, but the English regions and the English principal councils do not. I am not entirely sure that mayors elected on perhaps 29% or 30% of the vote on a 25% turnout will have that much legitimacy to represent their areas to the central Government. The question of how far the second Chamber should be constituted so as to strengthen the representation of areas outside London in the centralised governance of this country is very important, so we need to move on to that.

We shall say from these Benches to the Government Front Bench, several times, that before we clear this Bill we need some assurance as to where we go from here and when we might start to move from here. This is an interesting, slightly idiosyncratic set of proposals, but one could perhaps throw it into the mix.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that this is an ingenious, but perhaps at points impractical, solution. But it does address one of the more eccentric features of the by-election procedure, not least the use of single transferable vote. Of course, the only Members of the UK Parliament elected by single transferable vote are the hereditary Peers elected in by-elections. I am not sure whether that is the proposal for the by-elections in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment, but I am speaking of the nature of the electorate—or selectorate—for the by-elections. The 92 under the present reforms are largely elected by the hereditary Peers of each party and group, save for the 15 places that were occupied by Deputy Speakers in 1999, when the vote was by all Members of the House. As I understand the proposal from my noble friend Lord Lucas, the Deputy Speaker solution is proposed for these by-elections.

I must say, as a sideline, that I particularly enjoyed voting in one of those by-elections, when the House had to choose between the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and Earl Lloyd-George. I do not think I am breaking any confidences by saying that I voted for Earl Lloyd-George because he demonstrated a particular fondness for the creation of hereditary peerages, although perhaps not always for the best reasons.

Be that as it may, this amendment highlights the core of the mischief of this Bill, in that it means that one of the few avenues of getting into this House that is not controlled by the selection of the Prime Minister—whereby everybody in this House has to be sharp-elbowed enough to catch the eye of the Prime Minister pro tem —is being closed. I commend my noble friend Lord Lucas on proposing a solution that keeps open another avenue into this House.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to parts of this debate, and I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was saying: this takes this debate down a different course. We are now discussing the “what ifs” and what could happen. It shows something quite serious about the Government’s thinking. Not in this Bill but in the manifesto, they talk about other things that are planned for the future. Yet there is no White Paper, or even any Green Paper, on the Government’s thoughts on the nature of the House of Lords that they want.

All we are being offered is what is in the Bill—that is it. There is no promise of anything in the future, no careful thought, no publication of a White Paper and not even a timetable for those things. There is no promise that anything will be published before the next general election. We could go through the whole of this Parliament—those noble Lords who will still be here—wondering when the next stage of reform is going to take place. There does not need to be anything because the Leader of the House has not yet convinced her colleagues that they should explore their thoughts and study the bookshelves of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, to look at what has happened in the past and come forward with those proposals.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has tried valiantly to build on the existing by-elections, if I can continue to call them that, by having them filled by members of the public. My noble friends Lord Trenchard and Lord Lucas have thought about alternatives. I do not expect the noble Baroness to accept any of these amendments in any shape or form. When it comes to democracy, I know that we have an amendment later on in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, which I am supporting, so I will keep back my more general comments about a more democratic mandate. This follows the preamble to the 1911 Act, which the Government, for the time being, seem to have turned their face against, which I very much regret.