House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Trefgarne Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Trefgarne]

At end insert “but regrets that the bill has not been brought forward by the Government, in the light of its constitutional importance; and that the bill proposes piecemeal, rather than wholesale, reform of the membership of the House”.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few moments. I am not opposed to House of Lords reform as a matter of principle. Indeed, back in 2012, when the Government introduced a reform Bill in the other place, I sat on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee and was not opposed to that in principle at all, but it did not get very far and failed in the House of Commons. Since then, here in your Lordships’ House, we have listened to the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to which I am not opposed either, but none of these considerations is taken into account in the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which contravenes the undertakings given in 1999. Against that background, I beg to move the amendment.

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for having been unable to take part in Second Reading and the first day of Committee. I declare an interest as a hereditary Peer.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Trefgarne that important constitutional legislation should be brought forward by the Government rather than by a Private Member’s Bill. In June 1999, my noble friend Lord Denham asked the following Question of the Lord Chancellor:

“Just suppose that that House goes on for a very long time and the party opposite get fed up with it. If it wanted to get rid of those 92 before stage two came, and it hit on the idea of getting rid of them by giving them all life peerages … I believe that it would be a breach of the Weatherill agreement. Does the noble and learned Lord agree?”


The Labour Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said in reply that,

“I say quite clearly that … the position of the excepted Peers shall be addressed in phase two reform legislation”.—[Official Report, 22/6/1999; cols. 798-800.]

Nothing could be clearer than that. That is why I believe that this Bill indeed breaches the Weatherill agreement and the House of Lords Act 1999.

I remind the Committee of the importance of the Labour Lord Chancellor’s words in March 1999, when he said:

“The amendment reflects a compromise … between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent”.—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]


As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was Tony Blair’s Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time, he must have been well aware of this. To the hereditary peerage, it was a vital part of the 1999 Act and a condition for letting it have satisfactory progress through the House.

I cannot understand why this area of the House needs reform when the by-elections have produced such capable replacements for the 90 such as the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord De Mauley, the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, all of whom are or have been on the Front Bench of their respective parties. It would seem more urgent to reform the life Peers system, which the Burns report proposes. The hereditary Peers are a strong link with the past, a thread that goes back to the 14th century. Until relatively recently, in House of Lords terms, the House was entirely hereditary. By-elections provide a way into this House that is not dependent on prime ministerial patronage.

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[Lord Grocott]

He has tried to improve the Bill, my Lords? All I can say is: it is the way he tells them. I hope the House will come to a conclusion on this now. If there is a Division I hope that all noble Lords who want progress will vote against it.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have had a certain amount of support for the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Trefgarne]

11: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out subsections (2) and (3) and insert—
“(2) In section 2, after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) Standing Orders must provide that vacancies amongst the 90 excepted hereditary peers are filled by a method which ensures that the excepted hereditary peer is younger than the average age of members of the House of Lords at the time the vacancy occurs.””

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have already covered much of the substance of this amendment. I beg to move.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, I should inform the Committee that if Amendment 11 is agreed to, I am unable to call Amendments 17 to 33A by reason of pre-emption.

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[The Earl of Erroll]

I wish to say—very quickly, because we have just had a history lecture—that, under the Peerage Act 1963, hereditary Peeresses, Peers in their own right, could sit for the first time in the House of Lords. My mother was one of the 16 elected Scottish representative Peers to sit, and one of the first five hereditary Peeresses to sit in the House of Lords—so we did get a bit of female representation. The answer to the Wales question is that of course it was not a kingdom. The issue of the Scots Peers was around the merging of two kingdoms under a Scottish king.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, to refer to the point made in my noble friend Lord Northbrook’s amendment, the question of the Scottish Peers was of course addressed when what became the 1999 Act went through your Lordships’ House. As I recall, although it is now a long time ago, the Scottish Peers petitioned the House for exclusion from the provisions of the 1999 Act. They were represented by none other than the then Mr Richard Keen—now none other than my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie himself. His petition did not succeed.

[Lord Snape]

Will the noble Lord answer the point I put to him and tell us the thinking behind his own amendment—otherwise we might think that he has tabled it somewhat mischievously?

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have nothing to add to the remarks I made earlier.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

What does the noble Lord wish to do with his amendment?

[Lord Trefgarne]

I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Lord Trefgarne]

12: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out subsections (2) and (3) and insert—
“(2) In section 2, after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) Standing Orders must provide that future vacancies must be filled using a method which ensures that over time excepted hereditary peers are elected on a basis which provides for the equitable representation of each country and region of the United Kingdom.””

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Caithness has spoken at some length to this matter. I beg to move.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees decided on a show of voices that Amendment 12 was disagreed.

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Tabled by

[Lord Trefgarne]

14: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out subsections (2) and (3) and insert—
“(2) For section 2(4) substitute—“(4) Standing Orders must make provision for filling vacancies among the people excepted from section 1 through a nomination and selection process run by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.””

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I rise to move this amendment.

[Noble Lords]

It has already been debated.

[Lord Trefgarne]

I do not think it has been spoken to—certainly not by me.

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I may help the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, with the procedure, as he is fairly new to this place. This amendment was in a group that we discussed in March, when we dealt, I think, with 10 amendments in two hours. So far today, we have dealt with two amendments in one hour 40 minutes. At this rate, we will need about 10 more Fridays to complete this stage. I hope that the noble Lord acknowledges the appalling waste of precious time that is resulting from what he is doing. To now start moving an amendment that has already been part of a debated group is something that he should refrain from doing.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I do not wish to offend the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, or anyone else for that matter, so I shall not move the amendment.

Amendment 14 not moved.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

I can help the noble Lord by telling the House about my ancestor. I am the second Lord Trefgarne and my father was the first. He was a Liberal and then later a Labour MP.

[Lord Colgrain (Con)]

My Lords, I would point out that I am the fourth who has been fortunate enough to be a representative in your Lordships’ House. I am also the most recent hereditary Peer to have been elected by the whole House: 803 of your Lordships were in a position to elect me, which makes me feel that my position is slightly more democratically representative than that of a large number of others.

I was hoping to say quite a lot of things today but I do not want to be accused of filibustering. Therefore, I will foreshorten my speech and just say three things that people have referred to me when it comes to what they find attractive about hereditaries.

The first is that we do not come from the other place with trappings of party tribalism and a sense of our own personal political importance. Secondly, in the main, we do not have experience of working for the public sector, so we have a more finely tuned sense of the anxieties and insecurities of the private sector and the self-employed. Lastly, we are not beneficiaries of political patronage, which has resulted in over 300 of your Lordships being ex-MPs, MEPs or representatives of regional Assemblies and county councils. That counts for a great deal in the eyes of the public and is not something that should be discounted.

If the hereditary principle is seen as anomalous in a present-day democracy, it is probably no more so in the eyes of many, and no more idiosyncratic, than the fact that this country has been ruled for centuries without a written constitution, and for many, tradition begets legitimacy. The time for any review of the election of hereditary Peers should therefore not be piecemeal, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, proposes, but should be an integral part of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. We should await the finalising of his report. If in the meanwhile there was a desire to change the current voting powers so that rather than being party specific, any hereditary should be elected by the whole House, that recommendation would have my unqualified support.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

A few weeks ago, I asked the Procedure Committee to consider changing the arrangements for by-elections so that in future they would be on an all-House basis and perhaps conducted in accordance with the so-called Carter convention. I have not yet heard the result of the committee’s consideration. I have heard it informally, at least, and I wonder whether I will hear it formally.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, one or two people in the House for whom I have great respect have suggested that we could solve the issue of absurd by-elections on a party basis—because in the case of Labour and the Lib Dems, we have only four hereditary Peers, so we get these idiotic procedures—where the whole House votes. I have two problems with that, one of which is insurmountable. The first is the turnout, as referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. He rightly said that turnout figures can be very high in party by-elections: in the Lib Dem by-election, I think that the turnout was 100%. There were three electors, all of whom voted, so that is a high percentage.

However, turnout figures are consistently very low—often less than 50%—when a turnout of the whole House is required. That is lower than the lowest turnout in any constituency in the country at the last general election, by way of a useless fact, mainly because I am sure that people like me think that the system is idiotic so do not bother. Certainly, the whole-House elections have a low turnout so the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would be proposing a system with a low turnout.

The far more fundamental issue, which is why I hope that the House will reject this proposal, is that this does not nothing whatsoever about the spectacularly unrepresentative nature of the register of hereditary Peers. The question of who can vote is one thing—by all means, you can put forward a proposal for the whole House if you want to—but we would still face a choice restricted to the 211 people on the register, 210 of whom are men and among whom there are no members of ethnic minorities, for example. It is utterly absurd to proceed with by-elections, whatever the mechanism of election or the electorate, if the eligibility of the people to stand is so totally unrepresentative. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, will withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred to the list of hereditary Peers who are qualified to stand in by-elections. That list has I think only one female. I hope that the noble Lord will therefore support my Private Member’s Bill to change the law of succession for peerages so that noble Baronesses can succeed in the normal way.

[Lord Grocott]

How long does the noble Lord estimate it will be before the effect of his Bill will be parity between the sexes?

[Lord Trefgarne]

It is not in my hands at my age, I am afraid.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the point has been made about daughters inheriting titles. I would be in total support of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s Bill. I would be very happy if eldest daughters were entitled to inherit. In fact, I supported the Bill at an earlier stage. It is that mischief that needs to be corrected, not the mischief that there are only males, except for one, on the waiting list to stand for a by-election.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that if there were elections of the whole House only a small percentage of Peers would vote. If I remember rightly the figures that my noble friend Lord Trenchard gave earlier, I did a quick bit of maths and 50% of the House voted on the whole-House election. If that is considered to be a total waste of time because it is a small percentage, it is worth bearing in mind that the highest percentage of people who voted in the UK at a European parliamentary election is only 38%. Perhaps that is a very good reason why elections to that Parliament should be stopped. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I will bring it back at a later stage.