King’s Speech

Lord Northbrook Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, to the Government Front Bench. In the limited time available, I can focus on only one aspect of the gracious Speech, the plan to remove the remaining 92 hereditary Peers from the House, eliminating many centuries of tradition and generational wisdom and thus a golden thread going back to the 13th century—although I note that the Labour Front Bench has a hereditary Peer among their number, albeit restored as a life Peer.

On 30 March 1999, in front of a packed House of Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, stood at the Dispatch Box and said that the 1999 Bill to abolish the majority of hereditary Peers reflected

“a compromise negotiated between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent”.

The noble and learned Lord continued, in the most carefully worded statement, saying that

“the 10 per cent. will go only when stage two has taken place. So it is a guarantee that it will take place”.—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]

The words could not have been more unequivocal.

It is the responsibility of the 92, and those colleagues who believe that the former Lord Chancellor’s promise should be adhered to, to help the Government make sure that proposed legislation includes provision to move to the stage 2 promise, and I will highlight areas that need to be discussed further.

First, there should be measures to restrict the size of the House. It cannot be right that the number of Peers keeps increasing so that only the National People’s Congress of China has more members. The correct number should reflect the voting turnout in recent years, and the political balance should be adjusted according to the percentage of votes for each party at the general election.

There should be a retirement age of 80, as has been proposed. However, this should not be mandatory; it would be fairer to have a secret ballot of the whole House once a year to decide whether a Peer over 80 should continue. The current retirement procedure works well, but unfortunately its effect is totally negated by the more-than-compensating appointment of new Peers. Slightly confusingly, the Prime Minister has already authorised the appointment of an 81 year-old Baroness. The only Prime Minister to limit appointments was Theresa May. More should follow her example. The Appointments Commission should be put on a statutory basis and firmly applied to all new appointments—political ones included—thus controlling the quality of prime ministerial patronage.

In addition, amendments should be considered on the composition of the membership of the House. First, we should debate whether the House should be elected. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, opined in the interesting TV programme “The Lady and the Lords”, this is what the general public would expect. Do we need to rebalance the 26 Bishops of the religious element of the House to insert representatives of all faiths? Should the name of the House change to “the Senate”, as it will not allow hereditary Peers to be Members?

Another issue to be looked at is the powers of the House. Should we not be able to amend the reams of secondary legislation that come before us rather than just having the stark choice of agreeing or throwing it out? Also, I firmly believe that we should have the power to amend badly drafted finance Bills, particularly where, due to the guillotine procedure, the clauses are not even discussed in the other place.

Finally, how will some business mechanics work when the hereditaries are gone? Can there be an exemption for shadow Ministers and Whips on the Front Bench? Will there be enough noble Lords to sit on the Woolsack?

I understand that a key reason for the proposed Bill is to remove a number of Conservative Peers from the House, which means that the Government will not have to create the equivalent number of new Labour Peers. However, the Cross-Bench hereditaries have been caught in the cross-fire unnecessarily. Very often during the last Administration they supported Labour and Lib Dem amendments, so they are no major threat to the Government getting their business through. In particular, the convenor should be spared abolition.

What will happen to the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain? Are they also to be excluded from the House? This would seem to be a huge change of tradition to ceremonial offices of state.

I am sure that the proposed legislation will need thorough scrutiny so that it honours the promise made by the then Lord Chancellor in 1999. I am sure that the 92 would be less unhappy to leave when this has been fulfilled.