House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 3rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I suppose that I should say that I am among my Peers but I am not quite sure why I am here. It all happened one day when I was working in Brussels and someone came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “My Lord, could I have a word?” I said, “I’m not my Lord, I’m just me”. He said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some news for you. Your father died off the Azores this morning at sea and has been buried. You are now Lord Selsdon”. It was quite a shock. I was young, I had not met many Lords and I did not know what they did. I waited, thinking that someone would write to me—but no. But then I was grabbed one day by the Leader of the House, who said, “You haven’t taken your seat”. I did not know what taking my seat was, because I had never been trained; there was no briefing. So it was into that rather nervous background that I came to your Lordships’ House.

I have been drip-fed by geriatrics over a long period of time—30 years—and the knowledge that I have gained is enormous. I cannot determine, because I have never been able to vote—I was too young to vote. All I can say is, “You get the Government that you deserve”. So here we are now with people looking at the great reform.

Something that I thought I would do was to see how one could learn about the House and the quality of the people in it. So we set up a programme with students to ask if people would like copies of their speeches bound up in red vellum to show to their children and grandchildren thereafter. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people took that up; during the summer season we took young students, shoved them in the Library and gave them a laptop and said, “Will you do the search for this?”. What I realised was that the House did not know very much about itself, let alone very much about the individuals—unless they had been together in the Commons. So we did these analyses and then it was suggested that people might like copies of their speeches, if we could get students to come in the summer and put them together. That took place—we called it Excalibur, like getting a sword out of a stone.

All this time I have been extremely grateful for the knowledge that I have gained. I have been treated kindly by even the most extreme people from Governments around the world, because in the world in which I worked I was young enough to be expendable and therefore spent an awful lot of my time in countries that nobody thought you should ever go to, such as different parts of the Middle East or Africa.

As I sit—or rather stand—here in my later years, I have been looking to see who the key players are, and I have suddenly realised that the problem that we are facing is that someone has shoved an awful lot more people into this place and into the other place than one would have thought was suitable when they are untrained. I am not objecting to the power of the Prime Minister to be able to nominate people, but it would be nice if we knew who they were, and the reasons behind it.

As I sit down, I say that I think we have got somewhere today. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am not sure that I can put names to faces any more. We never used Christian names—or given names, as they are sometimes called—in order that you did not have to know whether the father was dead or not. I do not want to waste noble Lords’ time. I am shoved at the bottom because I am expendable—but I thought that we would finish easily before 1 pm so that everyone could have their lunch.

House of Lords Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I have been here for only 50 years or so. We have six Members who have been here for more than 50 years. It is a remarkable institution that I thoroughly enjoy. The question here is about age and length of service. I have details of every single Peer who has served in this House, and our weakness at the moment lies in the number of new entrants who are untrained and inexperienced. As I say, six of us have been here for more than 50 years, 23 for between 40 and 50 years and 30 for 40 to 45 years; those are long years of service and they mean that we have quite a remarkable knowledge base.

I am an elected hereditary Peer who was one of those who fought hard to be elected when my noble friend Lord Strathclyde was trying to do something else at that point. Since then we have found that the elected hereditary Peers have the highest level of attendance and the greatest amount of participation in the House. The problem above all others is that we do not know each other. I have before me details of the length of service and details of every Peer. For fun we had an exercise whereby it might be nice to reward people for their service by binding up copies of their speeches in red vellum as memorial gifts for their long service. My noble friend Lord Carrington is our longest-serving Member, followed by my noble friend Lord Denham, and this great expertise and knowledge, if we can call them that, need to be understood. However, we do not know who we are. It is extraordinarily difficult to put names to the faces one sees in the House. I was sitting quietly and looking to see who I knew as several Peers came through the door. I found that the only way to get to know anybody these days is to ask the doorkeepers. How they have that ability to remember everyone, I do not know.

The question, therefore, is: if we look at length of service, do we ask people to retire because of age, or do we ask that they should retire because they have not performed? Performance is probably one issue to look at. I have all the figures for those who have not attended at all and for those who have attended only once or twice. But whoever people are, and whether they attend or not, they cost money and organisation.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I did not intend to intervene again in this debate if I could avoid it, but I would like my noble friend to tell us, rather than for me to hear afterwards, how much somebody who never attends costs the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I am afraid that is beyond my pay grade.

The facilities of the House are designed to accommodate a whole range of people. If one wants to see attendances, we have figures for them. It is not just attendance in the sense of walking in and out of the door and claiming one’s allowance that counts, it is people’s participation. There should perhaps be a requirement to invite people to participate. Having been in the research world for many years, I can say that I have learned more by being drip-fed in this place than in any other institution that I have come across. The difficulty I find is that I am not very good at putting names to faces. Therefore, when I look at someone, I am not sure who they are or what their background is. However, we now have quite a good internet facility for everybody and if anybody would like details or information, I would be happy to provide them. I have in my hand figures for the length of service of everybody. I have great respect for this and for the noble Lord, Lord Elton.

So my simple question is: what do we do next? I am not sure, but if your Lordships would like to share some of the data that I have, I would willingly pass them on. They are quite interesting and provide confirmation that we have probably the greatest institution in terms of concentration of knowledge and experience in the world.