House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, on his maiden speech. I will be very sad to lose my noble friend Lady Quin although, both as a Minister and as a private citizen, I have done my Newcastle visitor trips. I almost had a lump in my throat, as a former engineer before I came into Parliament, when I saw the first factory where a railway engine was built. It was an amazing operation.

I made my general views on reform clear in the November debate, so I will not go over those now, but the Bill is a clear manifesto commitment within the conventions. Everyone has quoted page 108 of the Labour manifesto, but I will start off with Conventions of the UK Parliament, the report of the Joint Committee of both Lords and Commons, which is still valid today. After that report was done in 2006, both Houses voted to support it. In its conclusions, in paragraph 99, it says:

“The Convention which has evolved is that: In the House of Lords: A manifesto Bill is accorded a Second Reading; A manifesto Bill is not subject to ‘wrecking amendments’ which change the Government’s … intention as proposed in the Bill”.


Any of the amendments about reforming the Lords that have been hinted at today would therefore be, in those terms, wrecking amendments because they change the Government’s proposal that was in their manifesto and its operation. My view is simple: both Houses need to agree the Bill and send it back, not get it mixed up with other matters.

This will be my negative bit for the Government, as I do not want to be a toady now that we are in government. The other bit that has been quoted a lot today, again on page 108, is the part about Labour being

“committed to replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber”.

That is quite distinct from the other promise, and it cannot operate as a commitment under the conventions. The words in the manifesto are vague; they are not at all specific and therefore it cannot be covered. I say to my Front Bench that, if that commitment is based on the report of the so-called commission headed by Gordon Brown, I will vote against it. I would not give an O-level to that report and the Labour Peer on the commission voted against it. To be clear about this, I sent the establishment’s House magazine a note on it in the summer, but I was not establishment enough to get it published. That report was all about Scotland. It was not about genuine reform of a revising second Chamber, but I will not go over that anymore.

The Bill has got to go back to the Commons without any amendment. That way, we can get down to putting pressure on the Government, because I want reform. The issues raised by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, were all positive ideas. We cannot carry on just as we are, but I have seen and heard of plans by some of my new colleagues who want to amend it to include the Bishops. That will be a big mistake. It is a fundamental change to the Bill. It would amount to a wrecking amendment, because it is not consistent with it, and it would take the Bill outside the conventions that I have just quoted. At some time in another Session—if I am still here, being over the age limit—I would vote to remove the clerics from lawmaking. I do not want more of them in here; they have a job outside, which is not making laws, although I would make an exception for the Bishop of Newcastle, who has proved to be a Bishop of substance.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

I am not convinced that this amendment will be agreed tonight and I discourage the noble Lord, Lord Newby, from putting it to a vote. The other aspect, as I look around the House, is that many of my noble friends and many Labour Peers do not favour an elected House. The hallmark of this debate that has run for the last 100 years is that the differences exist within the parties more so than between them. The only way that there will ever be any kind of long-term, sustainable reform of this House is to do it on a cross-party basis, which is why I return to the royal commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham in 2000, which was promoted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Even that, 25 years on, has seen no further progress whatever.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, when I am at a college in the Midlands this Friday morning with the Learn with the Lords programme, the first thing I will say is that the House of Lords is nothing more than a large sub-committee of the House of Commons with the power to ask it to think again. That being so, it does not matter how its composition is arrived at.

The legislation that would be required by the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, must by definition reduce the powers of this House. It would have to remove the right to chuck out a Bill. We have the right but do not use it, for self-evident reasons, but what is to stop a troublesome elected second Chamber throwing out a Bill before it even revises it? That would be chaos. That would have to be put in the legislation before the new Chamber arrives. Would the Prime Minister down the other end appoint the leader of this new Chamber? Of course not. Self-evidently, that could not happen. So would there be Ministers in the second Chamber? There do not have to be; Ministers can be summoned by this Chamber from the other place to Select Committees and to explain Bills.

There are a few issues to be raised here that are not being talked about, which is why this idea is a bit more complicated than people think. I fully accept that the Chamber should be half the size of the Commons and should not have any Ministers. I have formed that view since I first came here. Noble Lords talk about the House of Commons as it is now, but I can tell them that between 1974 and 1979 we Back-Benchers had a lot more power, because the Government did not have it. The Lib-Lab pact was there. We have the problem of the current situation; we should not form ourselves on the basis that it will always be the same. There are a few more questions to be asked of the noble Lord, Lord Newby—which I do not expect him to answer—than have been asked so far today.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is nothing if not consistent on this issue. We voted together on the seven options that your Lordships’ House was presented with in February 2003 following the royal commission. The noble Lord will recall that, in the Commons, none of the options got a majority and the whole thing failed.

If I am to be critical of what happened with the original proposals put forward by the Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, the royal commission and the various proposals put forward since, including Mr Clegg’s Bill, the proponents of an elected House—of which I am one—need to do the work on the powers and relationship. You cannot get away with simply saying, “We should have an elected House”. I absolutely agree with this, but my noble friend is right that, to make it work, you would have to constrain the current powers of the Lords to make the relationship work effectively.

You would also have to tackle secondary legislation. You could not leave an elected second Chamber with a veto power—which we have used six or seven times in our whole history—particularly if it was elected under proportional representation. Clearly, a second Chamber elected under proportional representation is bound to claim greater legitimacy in the end than the Commons; the claim would always be that we represent the voters much more accurately than a first past the post system.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, may not realise this, but I am very sympathetic to what he seeks to do. But, for goodness’ sake, let us do the work on what the relationship between two elected Houses should be.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

However, it is not done, because some people say the power does not really exist, that it is not clear and it has not been done for a long time, except in the case of the present Duke of Edinburgh. While it may then be legitimately argued that the power to create the type of peerage I suggest already exists, the purpose of this amendment is to put it absolutely beyond doubt and, frankly, encourage its potential use. Why should we not have life Peers who are not required to attend this House by Writ of Summons?

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I have just a practical question, really. There is a Peer who came into this House and did not make a maiden speech for 10 years because he considered the peerage an honour. Then, one day, the Prime Minister said to that person, “By the way, with your experience, I’ve got a bit of a job I want you to do”. That Peer came in and made his maiden speech and worked inside the Government. That would not be possible with this kind of amendment.

[Lord True (Con)]

It would. If such a rare case applied, a second, life peerage under the 1958 Act could be conferred—it would be very simple.

Like much constructive reform, this may not be a great innovation. It is an extension of a principle that exists under the royal prerogative, an extension to the 1958 Act so that non-sitting life Peers may be created through a statutory process as well. This would be helpful to Prime Ministers who wish to honour distinguished men and women but not necessarily to swell the ranks of this House.

There are many Peers who currently do not have the right to sit in your Lordships’ House, and I found the arguments put against this proposition in Committee faintly risible. A clear and unequivocal reform, enabling the creation of non-sitting life Peers under the 1958 Act, would be no more or less confusing than the current position, but it would relieve us of the potential difficulties both for individual Peers and for the House, to which I have referred. It might save some future Peers, and indeed your Lordships’ House, from the unnecessary embarrassment of including people who do not want to be here or to stay here for very long. I cannot think for the life of me why any Government would wish to resist it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, on a debate such as this, the House really misses the Countess of Mar—if only she was still here. I can recall her one day bringing a delegation to a department where I was a Minister, and after she left, I told the civil servants, “One day, I will be a Back-Bencher and she is my model”. That is what I have tried to do. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, spoke, I thought back to the one-woman awkward squad in this House—the Countess of Mar. She is much missed in a debate like this.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, if I could share my recollection of the Countess of Mar, I was Agriculture spokesman for the last Government, and she had some strong opinions. Whenever I received my brief in answer to her questions, I would sit with her and she would point out where the brief was wrong, and then I could get it right before I had to answer. That made it much easier. She was a great power.

I honour the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for bringing these amendments forward. Lord Diamond was in the lists on the Labour Benches when I first joined the House. I took my turn at it. My noble friend Lord Northbrook has done the same. We have been trying for a long time to get this dealt with, never with any success. I do not share the noble Earl’s opinion that we are the upper reaches of society. None the less, I do not think that this kind of gender discrimination should be allowed to persist anywhere. That it is a tiresome, small, insignificant but none the less continually noticed bit of gender discrimination ought to allow the Government to give the issue some time to get rid of it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, on Second Reading of this Bill, many, many months ago now—indeed, more than a year ago—I said that this was a nasty little Bill. I thought that, over the next few months, it would be improved. Sadly, it is still a nasty little Bill. History will relate that this was a wasted opportunity. There is no substantial reform and no clear thought about the role of your Lordships’ House. It has all been for no purpose—no real reform and no promise of even a nod towards a democratic House, which many of us have wanted to see over many years. In fact, the Bill offers no improvement whatever in the governance of our country. It does, though, suit those, particularly on the other side of the House and in another place, who simply wanted to see a purge.

Like my noble friend, Lord True, I wholly accept the mandate given at the last election to end the ability of hereditary Peers to sit in this House, but that did not give the Government an excuse simply to remove people who have served this House over many years simply by the whim and the shake of a manifesto. Expelling the hereditary Peers, who could not be replaced by a by-election, is vicious and unnecessary.

I very much welcome the appointment of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on the Liberal Benches. We have heard nothing about the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. Many of us who hold him in very high regard hope soon to do so. I welcome the compromise that has been done so that Members from the Conservative Party and the Cross Benches will still be able to serve, although I understand that some of the finer details of that still need to be done. I very much welcome, therefore, what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said on that, but I hope, like many others have done tonight, that we will pause for a moment at this extraordinary moment when, after nearly 800 years in which hereditary Peers have served in this House, that process today comes to an end, if we pass this law, which assuredly we will do. They came here purely by chance—an accident of birth—to choose to serve and to do that duty. I regret that they have had little thanks for that tonight.

In 1999, at the last Blairite purge, I called the then Bill a scar on the face of history. I am afraid to say that that scar has not healed, and I fear that, as a result of this Bill, it never will.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I think our language should be quite moderate tonight. There is no crowing from this side of the House and no attack on the hereditaries. I wholly agree with everything that has been said. I have worked with the hereditaries, having been here 24 years now, after 27 years in the other place.

One of our Members is missing—someone who really should be here tonight—and that is my noble friend Lord Grocott. He is indisposed at the moment; he is probably watching this from his hospital bed. He hopes to be home soon. He sends his regards, and one or two people have spoken to him. I have been told that I cannot read another Member’s notes into the record, but I want to use a few points issued by my noble friend, including on what he did after he ceased to be Chief Whip.

My noble friend is sorry that he cannot be here today to see the completion of this process. He says that the Bill will mean a fine farewell to our wondrous system of hereditary Peer by-elections—something that, of course, many of my new colleagues have not experienced. The process in place over the last quarter of a century gave amusement to many, employment to my noble friend Lord Grocott and complete bewilderment to the public. He told me that, for him, the standout moment came during the 2016 by-election, when there were seven candidates and an electorate of three—twice as many candidates as voters. The winning candidate received all three votes on a 100% turnout.

After that, my noble friend Lord Grocott thought— I shared a room with him, so I have lived a bit of this; your Lordships should see his files—that a Private Member’s Bill might be the solution to the whole system. He thought it would be a doddle. He thought that no one in the House would want to defend hereditary Peers by-elections but, as he admits, he got that wrong. After five attempts, his simple two-clause Bill never got further than Committee, because there were a few people here on a Friday who knew how to speak—without filibustering. At last, he says, the end is in sight. He told me this morning that he will be able to hand over his files to some unsuspecting PhD student, who will have the unenviable task of trying to work out what on earth it was all about.

Finally, my noble friend has a message for anyone who is thinking of introducing a Bill to reform any part of this House: keep it short, keep it simple, keep it focused and, above all, be patient. “Who knows”, he said: “One day, you might end up as a footnote in Erskine May”. It is very sad that he is not here. Of course, he will get to see Hansard pretty quickly, if he is not watching us from his hospital bed, but I thought that we should at least recognise the perseverance he showed and how he entertained us.

I will make one final point. When the clerk read out the results of the ballots for hereditary Peer by-elections, they never gave us any figures. They just said that so-and-so has been elected. We got no information. I would go round the corner to get some figures because we were interested in them. Occasionally, in some of those elections, all of us could participate. I join with my noble friend. I will be sad to see noble Lords leaving. It is hanging over me now. I was born in 1941, so I am with the group that is next in line. With that, I will sit down.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, given that this is the final time we will consider this Bill, I offer some concluding words as a departing hereditary—as a defender of the indefensible who has long championed our presence in this House and has sought to shine a light on the value of our long period of public service. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that that is approaching 900 years for some of us.

The passage of this Bill is regrettable. I believe that this House, Parliament and the country more widely will miss us, not as individuals but as an essential, ancient thread in the complex and fragile constitutional fabric that supports our nation. It is ironic that a Government who pride themselves on improving employee rights and enhancing the security of those who work should choose to offer the longer-serving Members of our constitutional workforce a mere seven weeks’ formal notice of termination—notably less than the statutory minimum. His Majesty’s Government will argue that we have been on notice for 27—or, perhaps, over 100 —years. Yet, as every employment lawyer knows, it is one thing to work under threat of redundancy but quite another for that threat to be formalised, as when this Bill receives its Royal Assent.

However, this is not a matter of employment law. If it were, there would be discriminatory concerns, given the regrettable commonality of protected characteristics among our hereditary Peers. Instead, we serve at His Majesty’s pleasure, summoned pursuant to a writ by which we are commanded to attend this Parliament in Westminster and provide counsel. I am concerned that His Majesty, in losing his longest-serving constitutional counsellors, will be left considerably exposed at a vulnerable time for our hereditary monarchy. I repeat my very real worry that his institution may be next, given the treatment meted out to us, his hereditary partners.

I do not wish to be negative. His Majesty’s Government are to be congratulated on the satisfaction of their manifesto commitment. I was never a fan of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, that was sent back to the other place, which would have converted all hereditary Peers into life Peers, so I am glad we are not seeking to urge that again. I believe we should be proud to sit here as embodiments of the hereditary principle that has served our nation for over a millennium. I also believe we should not use that hereditary privilege to secure for ourselves as individuals life peerages that could and should go to people of a more diverse background who may serve the nation somewhat better.

I do not begrudge the many devoted public servants among us who honourably wish to continue to serve in your Lordships’ House after our hereditary right is abolished. The expertise among many hereditary Members will be sorely missed, but there should have been a better way to determine who remains and who goes than the political arm-wrestling that has taken place behind closed doors, and through the Orwellian usual channels, over the past 18 months. Indeed, is it not yet a further irony that the most transparently selected cohort amongst your Lordships, the elected excepted hereditaries, each of whom has been through a publicly scrutinised albeit idiosyncratic by-election process, will be subsumed into the ever-spreading stain of political patronage that, regrettably, characterises the vast majority of appointments to your Lordships’ House? At a time when the composition of this venerable institution is under scrutiny like never before—as a member of the Conduct Committee, I can vouch for the intensity of the brickbats being deployed—are we right to add yet more opacity to our operations?

As many hereditaries have said throughout the passage of the Bill, we hoped that the promise of the 1999 Weatherill amendment would be fulfilled and that the remaining hereditary Peers would depart this House leaving it better constituted than we found it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We are being removed out of political expedience, with only the loose promise of a modest further reform through the Retirement and Participation Committee in exchange. I fear that will not be enough to satisfy the critics, but I wish the House well in this vital process.

In closing, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her courtesy and patience in dealing with a matter that I know she has found challenging. However, in the week of International Women’s Day, I put in one final plea: that female succession to our hereditary peerages remains on her agenda when we are gone. I note that, when His Majesty’s Government are doing such important work fighting the scourge of violence against women and girls, it is anathema that we reserve roles anywhere within our society solely to men, particularly roles with some cultural prominence. I am sorry to have failed in ridding us of this misogyny, but I hope your Lordships will be willing to take the matter forward once we are gone.

I will miss this place and would of course love to return, but only on merit, not by dint of my hereditary privilege. Your Lordships might think you have heard quite enough of that, and of Devon.