House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

The problem this House has is that we have had hereditary by-elections ever since his Bill failed and now have a number of very young and active hereditary Peers who are doing a fantastic job in holding the Government to account. They are the ones we want to preserve. Therefore, his argument that we should have passed his legislation and been left with 35 hereditaries does not hold any water at all because they are the ones who are oldest and likely to go anyway. We want to preserve the younger ones who are doing such a valuable job in acting very professionally in this House and holding the Government to account.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and do so scarcely able to believe either the damage that we are doing to ourselves as a House through this divisive, hurtful Bill, or the attitudes underpinning it.

On my way to the House in my chair, I brace myself for sneers, smirks, laughter and even derogatory comments on account of my disability. Sticks and stones may break my bones—and they do—but words will always hurt more. They hurt because they are informed by discrimination against difference—how I look and how I sound, in my case, because of my disability. I am not saying that I experience discrimination in your Lordships’ House, at least not directly, but that I am a reluctant expert on discrimination. My life experience tells me. I know what discrimination looks like and what it feels like to be invalidated and devalued.

I see discrimination in this Bill. I support this amendment because it would go some way to mitigating it. Without this amendment, hereditary Members are effectively being told, contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, has said, that their contributions are invalid and valueless by virtue of their being the wrong type of Peer. If their contributions are valid and valuable today, why not tomorrow? Why not, as this amendment implies, for the rest of their lives, which is the basis on which the vast majority of us were appointed? This amendment provides a middle way, as we have already heard, whereby the Government can honour part of their manifesto while we acknowledge, respect and honour what are in many cases huge, selfless contributions from noble Lords who happen to be hereditary Peers.

That is not to detract from the equally important service, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, has reminded us, of non-hereditary Members of your Lordships’ House. But it is to state a fact that the contribution of hereditary Peers adds value, rather than undermines your Lordships’ House, as the Bill implies.

One of the principles of this House, which made a really big impression on me from day one of my joining it almost 10 years ago, was the sense of equality among its Members. I come from a modest background. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I was born with a broken leg and spent much of my childhood in hospital. I say this not for sympathy but to demonstrate that there is no innate reason why I should support this amendment. However, I do so in terms of privilege versus prejudice. I see prejudice at work in the Bill, to the detriment of your Lordships’ House and its crucial ability to carry out its heavy responsibility of holding the Government of the day to account.

By contrast, what unites rather than divides us is that sense of privilege. I doubt any of us can recall a single maiden speech that did not refer to the sense of privilege that all of us feel when we first speak in this Chamber. The overwhelming feeling is common to us all: hereditary and non-hereditary. Speaking for myself, it has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve with our amazing hereditary Peers of all parties.

This amendment would go some way to recognising the extraordinary debt that we owe to our hereditary Members and the enduring values that I think we all associate with this unique place: courtesy, decency and, crucially, mutual respect and equality. As a self-regulated House, surely we have a duty to defend those timeless values. I hope that we can come together as one House, united in those values, and give this amendment the support that it deserves, if and when the option arises.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, when I spoke to Amendment 5, I dealt with a number of issues which I thought were common to that amendment and this amendment, and I will not repeat them.

I begin by saying how much I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord True. For years, we have listened to him with great passion denouncing the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and everything in his Bill. Tonight, with equal passion, we have heard him advocating it. It was truly a bravura performance.

I have two questions for the noble Lord and one for the Government. The first question is: could the noble Lord explain how he believes that, if we end by-elections, there will be another point at which groups in your Lordships’ House will be excluded en bloc? It is a rather chilling suggestion that this will happen. Is he suggesting that the Conservatives might do it, and who does he have in mind? I feel slightly worried as a Liberal Democrat; he has not always been my greatest supporter. Is he suggesting that the Labour Party will somehow cut a huge swathe at random through other parties? If not, just what does he have in mind? This is a legitimate process via a Bill, and it is very difficult for me to imagine the circumstances that he was putting forward. I am sorry if my understanding is lacking.

Secondly, I suggested when I spoke earlier that the logical way of dealing with Peers who are hereditary but who have an outstanding record of service is that they should return to your Lordships’ House as life Peers. I mentioned that this had happened in 1999 with people like my noble friend Lord Redesdale on my Benches, who came back as a life Peer. The noble Lord, Lord True, said that he rejected the idea of bringing people back as life Peers. That seems strange to me. If the Minister were to suggest to him, in the negotiations which everybody seems keen to have, that additional places might be brought forward for the Conservatives—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, a great and very wise public servant once said that the House of Lords is a disgrace and the enemy of good government. He explained why: it is filled, he said, with people who know what they are talking about. That great servant of the state was, of course, Sir Humphrey.

Our hereditaries have not scratched and scrabbled their way into this House simply for a title. They have already got one—in some cases, several. I doubt that most of them have come here for the occasional 300 quid. By and large, like the rest of us, they have come here to do what they see as their public duty, because they have something to offer—something unique and special. In the words of Sir Humphrey, they do know what they are talking about. I hope that Sir Keir will listen to Sir Humphrey. Sir Keir wants to get his legislation through, and he must, but there is no need to rip this place apart to do so.

My noble friend Lady Mobarik’s amendment is one of many that have been put forward that could bring about a happy solution—the indisputable rights of the Labour Government in harmony with the indubitable duties of this House of Lords. Our hereditary system is coming to an end. That is not in doubt. But our individual hereditary colleagues—our noble friends the Howes, the Kinnoulls, the Strathclydes, the Stansgates and the Addingtons—are not the enemy. They have been, and they are, exceptional public servants.

A very clear mood has emerged around this House this afternoon in almost every speech. I hope that we and the Government will take that into account. There will come a day when we all will have to leave this place. May we go with grace and may we go with the gratitude of our colleagues ringing in our ears. Hereditary Peers deserve no less.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 90E in the names of my noble friend Lady Mobarik and her eclectic range of cross-party sponsors. I congratulate her on the eloquent and powerful conviction with which she moved her amendment. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, for her principled and courageous cross-party stance.

As a disabled person, I am quite used to people feeling sorry for me. Today, the people I feel sorry for are the Government, because of the unenviable quandary they find themselves in. There they are with an overwhelming majority in the other place—yet the effect of this Bill will be to undermine your Lordships’ House as the only remaining check within Parliament on their untrammelled power.

That is why I welcome this amendment: because it would help the Government out of their quandary by giving them, and indeed us all, the opportunity to consider the question of our hereditary colleagues from a different, non-discriminatory perspective, one that draws on what unites us and makes us strong as a House of disparate lived experiences, social backgrounds and beliefs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, reminded us. I hope today’s debate will help us all view the question under consideration through the prism of the one theme that I feel has emerged so far and that binds us together: our common commitment to service.

I asked our excellent Library for a few statistics, and I thank it for enabling me to give the numbers a human face—something that is so absent from this clinical Bill. I would like to put the numbers in the context of our hereditary colleagues’ loyal service to your Lordships’ House and to the country. Some 48 of our 87 hereditary colleagues serve as committee members, two as committee chairs. Six of our hereditary colleagues serve as Lord Deputy Speakers: one non-affiliated, one Conservative, three Cross-Bench and one Labour. Eleven of our hereditary colleagues serve on the Opposition or Liberal Democrat Front Benches, or, in the case of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, as Convenor of the Cross Benches.

If we look at attendance, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, reminded us, we can all agree that it is a really useful and important indicator of commitment to your Lordships’ House. In the 2019-24 Parliament, life Peers attended 47% of the time; our hereditary colleagues attended 49%.

Finally, I will mention length of service and dedication to duty. The average length of service of our hereditary colleagues is 23 years, and the longest length of service is 62 years. That alone is impressive.

There is one figure the significance of which puts the whole concept of loyal dedication and service to your Lordships’ House in perspective: 2,080. That is the total years of service given to your Lordships’ House by our 88—now 87—hereditary colleagues, if we include those who were re-elected following the 1999 reforms. The tragedy of this Bill is that it implies that that counts for nothing. Instead, our cherished, dedicated hereditary colleagues are to be cast out. Look at them, my Lords: they sit among us today, continuing to serve loyally while we debate their fate and they languish—politically at least—on death row, awaiting a summary execution. Is this really how they deserve to be treated?