House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Northbrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say a few words on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.

When Ireland and Scotland had representative Peers, there were 28 Irish and 16 Scottish representative Peers. Now, I believe there are 22 Irish Peers born in Ireland and 61 Scottish Peers born in Scotland. Recent population figures for Scotland showed a population of about 5.5 million, and for Ireland about 2 million. But as the Irish representative Peers represented the whole of Ireland, overall the Northern Irish are fairly represented in the House of Lords, with 22 Peers against 28 representatives for the whole of Ireland before the Republic came into existence. Perhaps Scotland has too many Peers now, compared with its former representative Peers.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. This is no surprise, as I have my name attached to it. I can think of no more eloquent a way of doing so than commending to noble Lords, and the right honourable Member for Torfaen in the other place, the social media video made by young people in Northern Ireland in response to the Cabinet Office video introducing the Bill. It is regrettable that the Cabinet Office put out that particular video.

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Moved by

[Lord Northbrook]

93A: At end insert—
“(7) The Judicial Committee must seek the advice of and evidence from Garter King of Arms (for England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and the Lord Lyon (for Scotland) when determining peerage claims under this section.”

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, my probing Amendment 93A would safeguard the current process of proving succession to a peerage. According to the College of Arms:

“The Royal Warrant of 2004 requires that a person wishing to be recognised as a Peer prove succession to the relevant dignity, to the satisfaction of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Garter King of Arms provides a ruling to the Crown on whether each claim has been satisfactorily made out”.


For more complex claims, the current process is that

“advice should be sought from an officer of the College of Arms in London, the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh (for Peerages of Scotland), or a solicitor”.

As my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar said, claims are currently made

“by submission of a formal Petition to the House of Lords and Statutory Declaration to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice via the Crown Office, made on behalf of the claimant by a suitable person”.

According to the Ministry of Justice guidance notes, the current situation is that the Lord Chancellor is charged with keeping a Roll of the Peerage to ensure that, as far as possible, records of successions of peerages are kept in good order. The point of my amendment is to ensure that, when the House of Lords is removed from any role in determining new peerages, the existing roles of the College of Arms and the Lord Lyon are fully taken into account, as well as the procedures for proving succession to a peerage. As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, this Bill is about hereditary Peers. My worry is that if the Ministry of Justice is to be in sole charge of approving hereditary peerage claims, further legislation could be brought in to abolish hereditary peerages in their entirety.

Finally, as a non-lawyer, may I ask the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General how contested peerage claims are going to be dealt with in detail? Do they go to the lower courts first and up through that process? Why is the final Court of Appeal going to be the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council? From my layman’s understanding, the committee mainly handles cases from our overseas territories and certain Commonwealth countries. Why is it not to be the Supreme Court? I have read that judgments of the Judicial Committee are not binding on UK courts, having only persuasive authority. Does this not add an unnecessary extra layer of complexity to this issue, and could this not be resolved by just replacing the Judicial Committee with the Supreme Court?

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I really think we are giving these matters a significance they do not deserve. I absolutely do not think that the Privy Council should be made responsible for the adjudication. That might have been the case in 1833 and while we had hereditary Peers dominant in this House, but the truth is that the possession of a hereditary peerage will confer no right to sit in this House of Lords. That being so, what is the purpose of this amendment? There is often dispute between prospective Peers: one says that they are entitled and the other says that they are. Well, that is a matter for them. It is a sort of boundary dispute. It would perhaps be a proper matter for a county court—or if, for that matter, there was a financial settlement of some substance, maybe for the High Court—but the idea that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council or the Supreme Court should be involved in a quarrel between two people claiming to be a hereditary Peer is complete nonsense.

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[The Attorney-General (Lord Hermer) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Northbrook, for their amendments, and all noble Lords for their contributions. These amendments seek to provide how peerage claims in the future will be dealt with. As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, pointed out, from his own personal experience, there is a need for clarity. In the Government’s view, with respect, that will not be achieved through these amendments, but I hope that this address to your Lordships can provide the clarity that is sought.

I start by providing a brief overview of the Government’s intention for peerage claims, starting with the process as it currently is, as was set out by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. As many of your Lordships will know, a peerage claim is when a person seeks to be formally recognised as the holder of a title of a hereditary peerage. Usually, it is the case that the claimant of a peerage is the undisputed heir and is entered on to the Roll of the Peerage following an application to the Lord Chancellor. However, as the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, illustrates, if the Lord Chancellor refuses—for example, if the claim to title is not immediately made out or the claim is disputed or complex—a person can pursue it by way of petition to the Crown.

Currently, these petitions are referred to the House of Lords to advise the Crown on how to determine the claim. As a matter of high principle, since the Bill removes the final link between hereditary peerages and membership of your Lordships’ House, the Government consider that it is no longer appropriate for hereditary peerage claims to be considered by your Lordships’ House. Clause 2 therefore removes such jurisdiction from this House.

In future, the intention is that any complex or disputed peerage claims, which would have been referred by the Crown to this House, will instead be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Judicial Committee’s constitutional role is to advise the sovereign, so it is ideally placed to consider these matters. In answer to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, the position will be precisely the same in respect of disputed Irish peerages.

With those principles in mind, I turn to the amendments. Amendment 93, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, seeks to set out a new process for making claims for hereditary peerages by replicating the provisions of the House of Lords Reform Bill of 2012, which, your Lordships will remember, did not proceed. There are two reasons why we do not consider it appropriate.

The first reason is that it seeks to provide an express power to refer claims to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. However, that power already exists in Section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833, which provides that His Majesty may refer matters to the Judicial Committee for consideration and advice. I am sure noble Lords would agree that, where it is unnecessary to duplicate legislative provisions, we should avoid doing so.

The second reason is that the amendment is based on disproportionality, as it would require all peerage claims to be made to His Majesty in Council, rather than through the filter of a first application to the Lord Chancellor, as the royal warrant provides for. It would place a duty on the Judicial Committee to deal with all peerage claims, including straightforward claims that are not currently considered by your Lordships House.

The amendment would therefore result in a significant increase in claims already considered beyond the stage of consideration by the Lord Chancellor to be entered on the Roll of the Peerage. It would lead to an increase in work of the already hard-working—indeed, overworked —Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Based on recent figures, the amendment would result in the Judicial Committee having to consider an average of 12 claims per year. By contrast, the House of Lords has considered only seven complex claims over the course of the last 50 years. It would be a very considerable increase in business for the Judicial Committee, and, with respect, it would be disproportionate to place that burden upon it.

Amendment 93A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, seeks to place a duty on the Judicial Committee to

“seek the advice of and evidence from Garter King of Arms … and the Lord Lyon … when determining peerage claims”.

The royal warrant of 2004 established the Roll of the Peerage, which is prepared in consultation with Garter and the Lord Lyon. The warrant also outlines the first stage in the peerage claims process, which is an application to the Lord Chancellor to be entered on the Roll of the Peerage, which the Lord Chancellor may refuse or accept. Following such an application, advice is sought from the Garter King of Arms or the Lord Lyon, who prepare a report on the claim and make a recommendation to the Lord Chancellor. The noble Lord’s amendment would place a statutory requirement on Garter or the Lord Lyon to advise the Judicial Committee. However, that is not necessary, because the Judicial Committee will already have access to the reports of the Kings of Arms during any consideration of the claim. For those reasons, the amendment would place what we consider to be an unnecessary and duplicate burden on the Kings of Arms.

I hope that I have answered already the noble Lord’s question as to why it would be appropriate for these matters, where they are disputed, to go to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council rather than to the Supreme Court. In essence, it is because the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is, constitutionally, the appropriate place for the monarch to refer disputed claims. Therefore, we consider it to be the appropriate body, not the Supreme Court.

In answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, as to when the last hereditary Peer will be able to sit in your Lordships’ House, as your Lordships will know, the aim of the Bill is that that will happen at the end of the Session after Royal Assent.

Grateful as we are for the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, we respectfully ask that they consider withdrawing them.

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General for his detailed and considered reply. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 93A (to Amendment 93) withdrawn.