House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Strathcarron Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lucas on introducing his Amendment 6. Today of all days it is an immense privilege to be able to speak in your Lordships’ Committee. Like other noble Lords have said, I feel a little bit diffident about talking about ourselves when so many more important international affairs demand our attention. But this is the way the business has been tabled and so I am following that.

I remind noble Lords that the acceptance of the Weatherill amendment to allow 92 hereditary Peers to remain was described by Viscount Cranborne, as he was at the time, as the “sand in the shoe” to ensure that the Government really would move to stage 2, which would involve a move to a wholly or partially elected House. Indeed, the Parliament Act 1911 envisaged the eventual replacement of the House of Lords, as then constituted, with a House elected on a popular instead of a hereditary basis. I stress that, although I fully accept that many life Peers are extremely popular, the Act clearly meant the introduction of at least a significant elected element.

I would remind the Lord Privy Seal that not only the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irving of Lairg, but many other Ministers at the time made clear their commitment that stage 2 really would happen. I understand that the by-elections which have been held for 26 years cannot in any sense be regarded as democratic, but they have certainly been competitive. I was evicted from this place in 1999 and had to contest a by-election against 36 candidates in 2004, which was certainly competitive.

The Weatherill amendment was successful in avoiding what many noble Lords on all sides of the House thought at the time would be a most undesirable outcome—the establishment of a wholly appointed House. However much noble Lords on other Benches have ridiculed the system for replacing hereditary Peers through by-elections, the existence of any kind of elected part of your Lordships’ House has been valuable because it has maintained 92 independent Peers who do not owe their membership to appointment almost entirely by a Prime Minister.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has demonstrated a stroke of genius by tabling Amendment 6, which seeks to retain this valuable independent element but removes the connection to hereditary peerages. The valuable independent element would be made much more open. The Lord Privy Seal should welcome his amendment because it would end the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords but retains an independent section of Peers who would be elected by Members of your Lordships’ House.

Many might say that the Lucas Peers, if I may call them that, would be no more democratic than the Weatherill Peers. However, we recognise that in 2025 there are many who believe that possession of a hereditary peerage should no longer have a connection with becoming a Member of the House of Lords, as acknowledged by my noble friend Lord True in his Amendment 1, which I also strongly support.

However, the Lucas Peers would be equally independent of the Government of the day, and under Amendment 6 any member of the public may stand. There is a possibility that a very large number of members of the public would stand for election, and it is unlikely that the electorate—the current Members of your Lordships’ House—would have any reliable criteria on which to make a judgment. Therefore, it would be sensible to incorporate a bar to restrict the number who would stand as candidates to a manageable number.

My noble friend Lord Lucas, in his Amendment 7, suggests that this restriction should depend on procedures proposed

“by a member of the Council of the Nations and the Regions”.

I am not as confident as my noble friend that the council will become an appropriate body to determine such procedures. As of today, the House of Commons website states:

“It’s not yet clear how the Council of the Nations and Regions will fit into the existing system of intergovernmental relations, which was established in 2022”.


As an alternative and perhaps a better way to restrict the number of would-be Lucas Peers to a manageable number, my Amendment 8 restricts applicants to those who have three years’ or more experience of serving as a

“member of either House of Parliament, or as a member of any of the devolved legislatures, or of a Principal Council”.

This would provide an opportunity for those threatened with exclusion by the Bill but who wish to continue the work they do in this place to seek all noble Lords’ endorsements to enable some of them to do so. The eligibility of members of the devolved legislatures and councils would also encourage the continuation of a less metropolitan section of the membership of your Lordships’ House, but in a more democratic way than the present hereditary Peers alone provide.

As drafted, Amendment 6 provides that the Weatherill Peers are gradually replaced by the Lucas Peers. It is also possible to replace them all in on big bag, perhaps at the end of the parliamentary Session. In either case, suitable Standing Orders could be drawn up which could ensure that the proportion of the Lucas Peers representing each party would eventually be determined by the average of the number of votes cast in the last three general elections, while retaining 20% for the Cross Benches—in a similar manner as proposed by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde in his Amendment 90A, which will be debated later.

The existence of the Lucas Peers should continue until and unless real constitutional reform takes place, as envisaged in the Parliament Act 1911 and in the House of Lords Act 1999. This is stage 1a of the House of Lords Act 1999. It does not qualify as stage 2, but it satisfies those who wish the heredity principle to end while retaining an independent section of Peers to continue to act as the sand in the shoe to ensure that, one day, the House will change into one with at least a significant directly or indirectly elected element.

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 6, which seeks to open up the by-elections to registered voters—and, in fact, take it even further than that—to correct the wrong impression of by-elections held by many noble Lords who have never had first-hand experience of them.

The concept of by-elections to your Lordships’ House has been dismissed because of the singular nature of the candidates, but if the candidature is broadened, as envisaged by this amendment, the idea suddenly becomes much more attractive. To succeed in a by-election is no easy task; to have succeeded proves the candidate worthy to the selectorate involved in choosing him or, in the future, her.

The candidates must first a show real determination to sit in your Lordships’ House. Library research shows that, on average, an hereditary stands for election four times before being successful. As elections are held on average once a year, on the death or retirement of an existing Member, this typically means committing to a four-year election campaign to succeed. On average, there are 14 candidates for each vacancy and only one successful candidate each time—so one a year. There is no reason to suggest that the by-election process for registered voters, as imagined in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 6, would be any less rigorous than the hereditary by-election process that has existed until very recently. First, there are hustings, where candidates hone their skills in political public speaking, followed by some very pointed and topical questions by members of the selectorate, who want only the brightest and the best to join them. Then, the voting process itself could hardly be more democratic, being a secret ballot conducted under proportional representation.

There is a lot to be said for scaling this up, not just for vacancies filled by registered voters, as in this amendment, but as a form of appointment to the whole House. Many amendments have called for a democratically elected House, but the reality is that this would mean the House of Commons agreeing to lose primacy, something to which it will never agree. I contend that that is simply never going to happen. On the other hand, we could have a democratically elected House if new Peers were elected by Members of this House. This is, after all, how political parties elect their leaders in the other place—at least partially. As ever, there is some devil in the detail, but it cannot be beyond the wit of sitting Peers to devise an election process based on the one that has worked so well, selecting only the very best hereditaries standing for election.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment. I say as a preliminary that I was somewhat horrified to hear, from his remarks, that there is an aversion, on the Cross Benches, to hairdressers. I have not heard that before. I cannot imagine why there would be an aversion to hairdressers among Members of your Lordships’ House, on the Cross Benches or elsewhere, and I hope that there will be opportunity before this short debate concludes for at least one Member of the Cross Benches to put my noble friend right about that and give us all a proper, egalitarian assurance.

Turning to the amendment, I remind noble Lords of my general position. I said at Second Reading that in any 21st-century democracy, there will always be a case that the legislature should be elected. That must surely be the default position, and it must apply to both Houses. All those who say that you cannot have two elected Houses are ignorant of the vast majority of functioning democracies which do have two elected Houses, although they are often different in their composition and method of election. Of course, it is perfectly possible to have two elected Houses that work together to generate effective legislation. That is what I find so frustrating about a large part of the debate, and I have sat in for much of the debate today.

My noble friend makes a sally. I do not intend to go into the details of whether it should be an open candidates list, a closed candidates list, a vetted candidates list or any of the other tunes that could be played on this theme; I simply say that he put his finger on something in saying that a House that is entirely appointed in a 21st-century democracy—with the exception of the Bishops—is mildly ludicrous and is indefensible as a long-term proposition. That is presumably why the Labour Party put forward in its manifesto a package of reforms to be delivered at different times; some immediately and some for consultation or enactment later—that is a clear distinction in the manifesto—and why it is such a frustration. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal seems to be frustrated that there is some sort of filibustering going on. If there were a filibuster, I wish somebody had told me about it: I would like to have taken part.