House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Parkinson. “Peer” comes from the Latin word par, which means “equal”, and in this House, wherever we sit, we are all equal. We have a shared experience; we are here with a common purpose to scrutinise legislation and serve our country. There may be Peers with whom we disagree or Peers whom we admire, but in the brief time that I have been in this House, I have understood one thing: we are all in this together. Both hereditary and lifetime appointments form a constituent part of the legislative process within the framework of the constitution of the United Kingdom. To abolish the hereditary element is an attack on our constitution, but this has already happened, so I accept reluctantly that there should be no further elections for hereditary Peers.

What I find hard to accept is the spiteful ejection of the existing hard-working hereditary Peers, who across this House bring so much energy and expertise. The unique composition of the House of Lords does not seem rational, but it really works, as Ian Dunt wrote in his book How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t. He is a man of the left, and this was not what he thought he would discover when he began working on this book. But that was his conclusion: this is the one element in our system that works.

The hereditary colleagues in the last Parliament had overall a better attendance record than life Peers, and over half of them serve as members of Select Committees. I declare an interest as my father was a hereditary who was booted out in 1999. He was a retired general who brought all his military experience to the Defence Committee. One of the things I have noticed is that our hereditary colleagues have a greater humility—and perhaps, if I may put it this way, noblesse oblige—than those of us who think we have been placed here because of our wonderful achievements. I really believe that the removal of our colleagues will leave our House worse off, rather than better, and surely the principle of any reform should be improvement, not diminishment.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will not be surprised that I do not agree with this amendment, for the reasons so pithily put by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. There are a number of points with which I could take issue, but I will pick up a couple from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. He implied that those of us who supported the “Grocott Bills”, in their various guises, were almost being hypocritical by not voting for this today. The truth was—with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—that the Grocott Bills were second best. They were the best that was on offer, and we saw them as a way of making some progress while believing that what is in this Bill was preferable.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

How can the noble Lord possibly argue that it was second best when the Leader of the House has told us that, had we accepted Grocott in the last Parliament, this would not have been necessary?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am explaining to the House what I thought at the time, not what anybody else might think.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said that the system of by-elections should not be thought to have been eccentric. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was very eloquent in pointing out just how eccentric they were, particularly in respect of by-elections for the Liberal Democrats. On one notable occasion, there were seven candidates and three electors, and nobody in the Liberal Democrats knew who half the candidates were. They were truly eccentric. They brought the House into disrepute, certainly in respect of those by-elections, and they were simply not sustainable in any way.

I strongly agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in pointing out that one consequence of this amendment would be to maintain over a considerable number of years—unless there was a great increase in the size of the House—a significant Conservative plurality over the Labour Benches. That seems me to be a bad thing, because the inevitable consequence would be that the Government would increase their numbers, and we would have a bloated House. Apparently, everybody agrees that the House is too big, yet this amendment, if agreed, would have that consequence for decades to come.

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Moved by

[Lord Newby]

4: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to take forward proposals for democratic mandate for House of Lords(1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords.(2) In pursuance of the duty under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must carry out the steps set out in subsections (3), (4), (5) and (6).(3) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords.(4) After laying the consultation paper under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must seek the views on the matters covered by that paper of—(a) each party and group in the House of Lords,(b) each political party represented in the House of Commons,(c) the Scottish Government,(d) the Welsh Government,(e) the Northern Ireland Executive,(f) local authorities in the United Kingdom,(g) representative organisations for local authorities in the United Kingdom,(h) the general public, which may include citizens’ assemblies, and(j) such other persons and bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(5) Within 16 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on responses to the consultation.(6) Within 18 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a draft Bill containing legislative proposals on the matter mentioned in subsection (3).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause imposes a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords through introduction of directly elected members.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, excuse me while I find my notes; I am not used to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, being so reticent. Before I begin, following the injunction of the noble Lord, Lord True, I feel I must declare the interest that I am a life Peer.

I rise to move Amendment 4 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Wallace, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The question of whether to elect the second Chamber is one of the longest-standing unresolved issues in British politics. Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, helpfully reminds us of the wording of the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, which says that the Lords should be elected but at a more convenient time than the present. For 124 years, no convenient time has presented itself, and we on these Benches think that at long last we should put that right.

Our amendment sets out a timetable for doing so. It would require the Government, within a year of the passage of the Bill, to publish a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected Members to the House of Lords. This would contain a number of options and could, for example, include the option of retaining an element of non-party Members of your Lordships’ House.

Having produced this paper, the Government should then have an intensive period of consultation involving the groups set out in proposed new subsection (4). Importantly, and having taken account of comments made in Committee, the consultees would include members of the general public, possibly involving citizens’ assemblies. I strongly favour the use of the citizen assembly mechanism on an issue such as this; ordinary citizens should have a direct say on how they are governed, and the citizens’ assembly route has proved itself very effective in a number of countries for deliberating on contentious public policy issues. At the conclusion of the consultation period, the Government would then be required in short order to produce a report on the conclusions of the consultation and to come forward with a Bill for introducing direct representation into your Lordships’ House.

This issue was debated at great length in Committee. As the arguments have not changed since then—indeed, some of them have not changed for over a century— I will not belabour them all. In short, we believe that the Lords should be elected on the basis that, in a democracy, laws should be passed by people chosen by the people to act on their behalf. It should be elected because the unelected House has a strong geographical imbalance in which London and the south-east are greatly overrepresented and the north, Scotland and Wales are underrepresented, and because it would almost certainly be more representative of the ethnic and party-political diversity of the country.

I will not elaborate on all these arguments, but I would like to say something about geographic representation. It is unfortunate that we do not even know the geographic breakdown of the complete membership of your Lordships’ House, but on partial evidence collected by the Library we find that, between them, London and the south-east provide 45% of our membership, compared with 32% of the population. By contrast, the north-west, with 13% of the population of the UK, provides only 4% of Peers. All other northern regions, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales lag behind. This severe imbalance is reflected in our debates. At a time when the cohesion of the country is under threat, this is clearly unsatisfactory.

In Committee, noble Lords across the House argued that the Prime Minister had too much power over appointments, and I strongly agree. I think that if people realised quite how much power the Prime Minister already has, they would be appalled. The Prime Minister decides not only how many of his own party should be in the Lords but its balance. There are no rules. Opposition parties have to play the role of Oliver, pleading with the Prime Minister for more. Sometimes they get it; more often, they do not. Either way, this sort of horse-trading over the composition of your Lordships’ House is demeaning to our democracy and should be brought to an end.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I note what the noble Lord says about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Brady, and the risk of first past the post in two Chambers. Although I agree with the principle of what he is arguing, why does his amendment say nothing about how the powers of the two Houses are to be resolved in the event of both being elected? Does he accept that one of the great failures of the Clegg Bill was the fact that Mr Clegg refused to have any debate at all about what the respective powers should be?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, this is the main argument that has been used consistently by people who do not want this place elected. It is based on a false premise, which is that, if both Houses are completely or largely elected, it will lead to persistent and irresolvable conflict. If the noble Lord looks at the work that the convener has instituted, which compares second chambers around the world, he will find that there are many that are wholly or partially elected, in countries that have mature democracies, in which there is not persistent stasis because they cannot agree. There may be arguments about the relative powers of the House, but I simply do not believe that having the sorts of elections that I am talking about will lead to the complexities that many noble Lords raised and that, in many cases, are raised as a basis for opposing a principle to which they object.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord accept that most of those countries, which I have looked at as well, have a written constitution? We do not. That is the thing that would make it incredibly difficult to resolve disputes between the two Houses. There has to be another formula for that.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

I am not sure the noble Lord is right about that. We do not have a written constitution now, but we have conventions that enable us to deal with difference—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but this is a really important point. We have conventions. We voluntarily decide not to exercise all the powers that are given to us. Why on earth would an elected second Chamber keep to those conventions?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches have argued consistently for a written constitution, which has been opposed by the rest of the political establishment. We would definitely support a written constitution, but, in the absence of a written constitution, Parliament operates in a manner based on conventions. If the rest of Parliament—the other parties—will not have a written constitution, there is no reason why a new basis of election here should lead to the tearing up of all the conventions.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

The noble Lord would surely agree that, if we were going to have an elected second Chamber, which I strongly support, it would require legislation. In the course of the debate regarding that legislation, we would have to put in anti-deadlock procedures.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Of course, that would be debated as part of that process; I accept that.

If I could proceed, I was saying that I believe that, under our proposals, people should be elected on a regional basis, so that they could look to the common interests of a wider area than a single constituency. They should be elected by proportional representation, so that we can avoid the dramatic swings in membership that we have seen in the Commons.

After the 2015 general election, I was mocked—very effectively, if I may say so—by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, because we did very badly in that election yet retained significant numbers here. After the last election, the Tory party finds itself in the position we found ourselves in. If we had the system that the noble Lord, Lord Brady, is proposing, a future Conservative Party in the House of Lords could be decimated in the way it has been in the Commons. What I am proposing here is a more balanced system that means that these wild swings, which you see through first past the post, do not persist. That would bring an element of stability to Parliament that would be extremely sensible.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Lord would stand for election under this system. I am thinking about how it would operate: I knock on someone’s door and they say, “I’m worried about the health service”, “I’m worried about housing”, or whatever, and I say, “Actually, that’s for the House of Commons, but I’m very good at revising legislation”. There might be a reaction on the doorstep that is even more hostile than we are used to—certainly those of us who were in the House of Commons. How does the noble Lord expect the voters to take us seriously if we are not able to say that we will absolutely fight for whatever it is? This division of powers will mean that we are second-order operators. I suspect that the noble Lord’s answer is that he would not stand for election, and that is probably true of most of the Members of this House. So what we will get is a whole load of party-list B-team people.

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[Lord Newby (LD)]

If we had succeeded with the Clegg Bill and I had been summarily evicted from your Lordships’ House, nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to knock on doors across Europe—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Doors across Yorkshire—and Europe; I am quite ambitious, really. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to knock on doors across Europe—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Across Yorkshire, and to say to people, “I am standing for election here to fight for the things that I believe in on the economy, the health service and so on; and I am doing so because I think there should be a group of people who represent the whole of my region, not just a small proportion of it”. I believe—indeed, I know—that there is a raft of issues being dealt with at the moment at a regional rather than constituency level, for which there is no accountability. I would have been extremely confident in standing and making that argument anywhere in Yorkshire. I am only sorry that the delay in getting a democratic basis for the House of Lords means that I will be far too old to exercise that opportunity if and when it comes.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Brady, that I have not been able to do it in a coherent manner because of the interruptions, but I was attempting to say that his suggestion of holding elections metronomically, two years after the Commons, would not work. We could have in future, as we have seen in the past decade, periods of instability or situations such as we found ourselves in in 1964 and 1974 when the Government had a slim majority and called a second election soon after the first. In these circumstances, having a second Chamber that is elected independently from events in the Commons would give a degree of stability, rather than adding to the level of instability. The noble Lord, Lord Brady, is right to want this Chamber to be elected but wrong in his recipe for how to do it. Our amendment sets out a clear process to consult and then decide upon a method of electing the House of Lords, and I commend it to the House.

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is right to want to see an elected upper House but completely wrong in the way that he wants to see it enacted. However, the reason I want to speak briefly to my Amendment 22 and, I think, also to support his Amendment 4 is that the principle is correct that we should have an elected House. The kind of process that he suggests in Amendment 4 would be valuable and important, but it is also important to make it clear that there is a very wide divergence of views, both about the appropriate powers of the two Houses and indeed the way in which they should be elected and put together. I favour geographical constituencies—not as big as the whole of Europe, which he appeared to want to represent—but that is obviously very different from party list systems and the PR system of election that the Liberal Democrats want to see.

I am delighted to speak here with my noble friend Lord Hailsham sitting in front of me because one of the great authorities on this issue who is always cited is of course his ancestor—his father—who famously talked about an “elective dictatorship”. My concern, having spent 27 years as a Member of the House of Commons, is precisely grounded in that worry that a Government with a significant majority in the House of Commons—unless it has completely lost control—can get its legislation through with almost no impediment. It is also free to ignore amendments sent from this House, precisely because we do not have the legitimacy that an elected House would have.

I discussed this a little while ago with the great constitutionalist, Professor Sir Vernon Bogdanor. He said to me, “I completely disagree with you. It would be quite wrong to have an elected upper House”. But his next comment made, for me, the argument as eloquently as anybody could for an elected upper House. He said, “I’ve written many times that what we have achieved in Britain is the perfect unicameral Parliament, just with two Chambers”. I am afraid that, all too often, that is how our Parliament operates. For this House to have effect, we depend entirely on a Government with a large majority in the House of Commons deciding whether they will accept or take an interest in amendments and improvements that come from the often excellent revising work done by the House of Lords.

I do not want to detain the House for long, but I do think that, in principle, it is right to move to an elected House. I completely disagree with the prescription from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for how to go about it—and I am greatly reassured to find that he disagrees so profoundly with me. This is a debate that has been going on for over a century, as he said. It will continue, but it is important that we engage with it in the spirit of accepting that it is not a given that the House of Commons operates so well as a democratic assembly that it automatically deserves unquestioned precedence. My time in the House of Commons tells me that it works very poorly in most ways. Its principal function is to select a Government and, most of the time, it then then lets the Government get on with pretty much what they want to do. More challenge in our Parliament, which comes with democracy, is the way forward.

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[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a genuinely interesting debate, and I thank the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Brady, for tabling their amendments. First, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that I am one of the minority: a West Midlands-based Peer.

My noble friend Lord Winston as always makes a pertinent and interesting point with regard to experts. He is someone I regularly reference when I talk about our House of experts. I usually say that I doubt he, like many of us, would ever have put his name forward for an election—but we are lucky to have him.

Amendments 4 and 30, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, are similar to his Amendments 11 and 115 in Committee. They seek to place a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to introduce a democratically elected element to the House of Lords. In bringing forward proposals, the Government would be required to consult with a number of groups—I am glad the noble Lord remembered to add the public to his list this time around.

Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, is similar to his Amendment 90D in Committee. The amendment seeks to place a duty on the Government to produce a Bill which makes provisions to limit the size of the House and provide that all its Members be elected.

We had a spirited debate on similar amendments on the second day in Committee, when your Lordships made a number of insightful and intriguing points about the fundamental nature of this House and its place in our constitution. That debate and this one underscored the importance of considering the potential benefits of reform, alongside the implications for the balance of power within Parliament. Like then, I note that the debate today has demonstrated that the House has yet to settle on a particular side of this issue. This remains a fundamental issue with all the amendments.

Put simply, amendments of this kind are not for this focused Bill. This legislation is the first step in reforming the House. As stated at the beginning of Report, once the Bill receives Royal Assent, the Leader of the House will set out in more detail how we plan to approach the next stage of our reforms.

The longer-term aim is that the Government will consult on proposals for more fundamental reform through the establishment of an alternative second Chamber that is more representative of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. There will be an opportunity for the public to provide their views on how to ensure that this alternative Chamber best serves them. Amendment 22 in particular cuts across this aspect of the Government’s manifesto commitment as it does not make any provision for consultation with the public.

It is clear that there is an appetite for reform and that there are ongoing conversations that we will need to have, but it is also clear that we are not yet ready to have a settled position within your Lordships’ House. With that in mind, I respectfully ask that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, withdraws his amendment.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It is normally the case that at this point, one says that it has been an extremely interesting debate. Despite us having debated this many times, it has been a very interesting debate because it has illuminated the central issue that a democratically elected Lords would raise. Are we to be a mere adjunct of the Commons—and, at the end of the day, a totally powerless one—or not, and are we to be part of a more effective parliamentary system in which the Government are challenged effectively?

The truth is that under the current system, the Government are challenged effectively in the Commons only when they have a rebellion in their own ranks. The Opposition cannot challenge them because, at the end of the day, they always win. We cannot challenge them, because at the end of all the ping-pong, we have no legitimacy to stand firm. I do not think anybody who has followed recent decades of British parliamentary activity would claim that the Government have been challenged effectively and that nonsenses have been called out effectively by Parliament, so I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brady, and the noble Viscounts, Lord Hailsham and Lord Thurso, for making that point.

Obviously, as noble Lords have pointed out, there will be tensions between two elected Houses, but I believe that—as in many other countries which have this—it is possible to resolve them. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said he opposed having the House of Lords elected under PR because it would give us more legitimacy in some senses than the Commons elected under first past the post. Of course, there is a very easy answer to that, which is to elect the House of Commons by PR as well. That would clearly be a great advantage.

The Government’s approach is an Augustinian one of “We want to reform, but not yet”. We ought to be putting a bit of pressure on them, nudging them towards the goal which they claim to espouse. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.