House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay]

87: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Former Members of the House of Commons and special advisersThe Prime Minister must not make a recommendation to His Majesty for the granting of a life peerage under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages) to any former Members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, or to special advisers to the Government of the United Kingdom, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, or the Northern Irish Executive, until at least two years have passed since the end of their service.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to delay the appointment of former MPs and special advisers to the House of Lords until at least two years have passed.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 87 I will also speak to my Amendments 88 and 89. These amendments have elicited a lot of attention from my noble friends since I tabled them. My noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean singled them out during our debate on Amendment 1, when he promised that he would not speak on them. It is good to see him in his place to fulfil that promise this evening.

I make it clear from the outset that I have nothing against Members of Parliament. Some of my best friends are Members of Parliament. For a long time, I wanted to be a Member of Parliament, and I tried—with conspicuous lack of success. However, the role of a Member of your Lordships’ House is different. This House is calmer, quieter and more consensual than the other place. It respects the primacy of the elected House and recognises that with nobody in the majority here, the way to get things done is by constructive debate and compromise.

Some of the best advice that I received when I took my place in your Lordships’ House was to hold off making a maiden speech and to spend some time in the Chamber learning not only the rules of the House but its ways and its tone. It is very easy for those who have watched too many of the proceedings of the House of Commons to assume that that is how we behave here as well, but it is not. We are less partisan, less pointed and less pugnacious, although it is very easy to slip into those habits. I have done so myself on too many occasions. Those habits are even harder to give up for noble Lords who have served for many years with distinction in another place, as are the more innocuous but still alien habits such as repeatedly intervening on each other, thanking the Lord Speaker for calling us or referring to “honourable Members” rather than “noble Lords”.

We are a self-regulating House. Our ways and procedures are set and policed by how we choose to behave. Even in my short time here, I have seen those ways evolving. A great deal was lost during the challenging months of the pandemic, when we had to do things differently. Some, but not all, of that has been clawed back. We are in a constant state of flux, with new Members arriving all the time, bringing new perspectives and new ways of doing things. As a self-regulating House, it falls to all of us to protect those courtesies and conventions that we think important. That is why I lament the way that this Bill will expel so many long-standing Members who know how important those conventions are, and many more recent arrivals who learned by watching them as apprentices before they were elected.

I overlapped here only briefly with the Countess of Mar, but it was long enough to know how valuable a role she played, keeping us all on the straight and narrow. Lady Mar was a Deputy Speaker of your Lordships’ House for many years, and of the two dozen Deputy Speakers we have today, five are hereditary Peers drawn from the Labour, Tory and Cross Benches. Many others have served on the Woolsack previously. If they are to go, as this Bill proposes, we will have to work even harder to hold on to some of those subtle traditions that make this House such a pleasant and productive place to legislate.

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[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

—although I may be slightly too young for the retirement home for ex-Members that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, referred to.

Since I joined your Lordships’ House, I have had an unusual aspiration: to get “chutzpah” into Hansard—I look forward to seeing its spelling. I believe that the noble Lord’s amendments have given me such an opportunity. We are very lucky in your Lordships’ House to draw on a range of expertise from across public life, law, science, academia and the arts and cultural sector. We have former Permanent Secretaries of government departments, former or current vice-chancellors of universities, news editors and a number of former presidents of esteemed institutions, as outlined in the last group, and we even have BAFTA winners among us.

It is true that a significant proportion in this Chamber are former Members of Parliament: at the last count, it was 21%. We also have a number of former special advisers in this place—some are sitting on the Benches opposite me. I should declare at this point that I have many friends who are current and former special and political advisers. I do not think that is such a bad thing. Your Lordships’ House is predominantly a political house. The Prime Minister invites party leaders to nominate individuals to this place, and party leaders choose who should best represent them. It is likely that many of the people they nominate have a political background as special advisers or former Members of Parliament, Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd or the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Both Houses work most effectively when we understand the day-to-day workings of the other. As a former MP, I have certainly found the experience of the other place very useful as we consider how this House can work best—and how much more effective we can be than some of my former colleagues in the other place. In addition, a number of noble Lords who have been Members of Parliament have also been Ministers. They have a deep understanding of departments and how the work we do here affects government and the delivery of public services.

Former special advisers, recent or otherwise, too have valuable experience to bring to your Lordships’ House. For some Peers, their time as a special adviser or political adviser was one role among many that have led to their appointment to your Lordships’ House and is not necessarily the reason they were appointed. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is an obvious example. He was a special adviser before he became an MP, but I do not believe that that is the reason he was appointed to your Lordships’ House. The same could be said on my Benches for my noble friend Lord Reid, who was also an adviser but held many posts in government.

There are many other former special advisers from across the House who bring valuable insights to our work, both from their days as special advisers but also often from outside this experience. Such perspectives are incredibly valuable in this place. They deepen and enrich our ability to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account. As someone who regularly signs off a significant number of Written Parliamentary Questions, I often reflect—to my genuine concern—on the insight held by former Ministers and special advisers about the mechanisms of government. They bring a genuine level of scrutiny and insight.

It is, of course, important that we maintain a non-party political element to the House of Lords. The Cross-Benchers especially provide specialist expertise and insights that we would not always find on the political Benches. As the Government have said repeatedly during these debates, it is just as much about what Peers bring to this House and their willingness to contribute to proceedings as about their experiences and achievements before they came to this place. After all, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is truly proving his worth with his extensive contributions throughout Committee.

It is up to party leaders, including the Prime Minister, to decide who best represents their political parties in the House of Lords. It is right that they are able to choose who is most suitable. Restricting party leaders’ ability to choose knowledgeable, experienced figures to sit in this House just because they have a political background would be a disservice to us all. I respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and for the most generous defence of special advisers that I have heard outside of the Thursday evening drinks we used to have at the Two Chairmen pub when I was in government, when the special advisers used to get together for a chinwag. I accept all the points she made, not just about special advisers but about Members of Parliament and the great contribution they bring, as I acknowledged in my speech. I see that as well.

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[A noble Baroness]

There is still time.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I note that I did not hear an answer to my question about the Government’s view on the ideal number of former special advisers and Members of Parliament. As we pass this Bill, which gives such unbridled powers to the Prime Minister to appoint whomever he wishes to your Lordships’ House, we should be mindful of the growing and accelerating trend to put former Members of Parliament and special advisers here. With that, and with thanks to the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 87 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay]

90: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Unsalaried MinistersNo one who is a Minister of the Crown shall be eligible for membership of the House of Lords unless they are in receipt of, or have been offered, a salary under the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would mean that unpaid Ministers would not be eligible for membership of the House.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, after what I acknowledge was not a popular measure, I hope that this one will find more support on both principal Benches of your Lordships’ House.

My Amendment 90 seeks to address the long-running problem we all acknowledge of the number of Ministers serving in this House who are not salaried. When I had the privilege of being a Minister in the previous Conservative Government, I was lucky enough to be in receipt of a salary that was important, principally, for the pension contributions and the national insurance contributions it allowed me to pay. But some 40% of my colleagues on the Front Bench in the previous Conservative Government were unsalaried. That meant that not only were they not taking home a salary cheque at the end of the month, they were also not paying into their pension, their national insurance contributions were not being made and, in some cases, because of this and because of their age, they were not in receipt of severance pay when the general election put an end to their time as Ministers.

This is a problem that affects both the major parties when they are in government. It dates from the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act of 1975, which was written with a noble aim to ensure that the Executive does not grow too large by comparison to the legislature and that the cost to the public purse should be limited, but it was drawn in an age when Ministers in the House of Lords were assumed to be drawn from the landed gentry. We are not anymore, and, in the absence of baronial lands in Whitley Bay being granted to me, I was very grateful for the salary that allowed me to carry out my work as a Minister.

This is a problem that my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and many others have raised in previous Parliaments and in this one. I know that it is one that draws the attention of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House. I hope that, much as in the debate on power of attorney, this may be an opportunity for us to solve a long-running problem that causes problems for Governments’ ability to find Front-Benchers and to draw people from all walks of life, from modest backgrounds, to serve their country in government. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend, who is absolutely right. If I have got my figures correct this time, this Labour Government are abusing only four Lords Ministers, while the last Conservative Government, disgracefully, abused 11 Lords Ministers, by not paying them. That is simply not right.

Part of the problem is that Prime Ministers like to stuff their departments full of paid MPs and, of course, they have their PPSs as well to help them. The larger the payroll of MPs in the Commons, the less likely there is to be a rebellion. So it pays for any Government to have as many paid Members of Parliament as possible, and their PPSs.

About 35 years ago, as a junior Whip, I encountered a colleague who was very concerned that that he was not fully involved in policy development in his department. He said to his Secretary of State that he would like to be more fully involved. The Secretary of state told him, “You’re just a PUS. Your job is to reply to all the letters from people whingeing about not getting their bypass”. That rather put him in his place.

My noble friend is right: there has been a large expansion of the roles of PUSs and others. I personally think that that is wrong. There is also a view that Peers can afford to do it for free: “Let’s have as many paid MPs as we can within the ceiling of the allowance, and then get Peers to do it for free”. That is utterly wrong. Many of them cannot do it for free. Noble Lords in this House who have been doing it for free have been doing it out of a sense of duty, not because they can afford it.

On that note, I see my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie in his place. He and my noble friend Earl Howe were Ministers for 30 or 40 years between them. I doubt if they got paid for two or three years of that. There were those who did job after job unpaid. It is not right that any Government, whether Conservative or Labour, should abuse Peers in that way.

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: if there was agreement across both Houses—if he could persuade the leader of the Opposition to support this in the other place as well—I would certainly talk to the Prime Minister. But this is something that has to be done cross-party and not with party-political capital made out of it. We also need to say a bit more about the work that our Lords Ministers do. There is nobody in this House who does not hold Lords Ministers in the highest regard. Perhaps we ought to be saying that to our colleagues in the other place as well.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the final words of the Leader of the House and what she says about Ministers. I see how hard-working her team of Lords Ministers are. When they go into their departments tomorrow bleary-eyed after these long debates, they will have diaries full of meetings and boxes full of papers—prepared without the expectation that they should have been here at nearly 11 pm the evening before, so I very much agree with her.

I particularly welcome the noble Baroness’s willingness to look at this issue on a cross-party basis. I know that there is never a good time to legislate to pay politicians more, but this is a problem that has been kicked down the path for half a century. It is causing problems to the social composition and the sense of fairness about Governments. I hope we might be able to act on it. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord True for his candour about the efforts that he made as Leader of your Lordships’ House, and the sense of shame and frustration he feels that he was not able to persuade our colleagues in government to do it.

With this Bill there is an opportunity to right this wrong. I hope the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord True will take this away and continue those discussions. If not, I see there is an employment Bill coming down the line and we will be able to assert our trade union rights in the future. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 90 withdrawn.