Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill

Lord True Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her introduction to this Bill and for her very clear explanation of it; I can confirm that I support it and I can therefore be brief.

As most of the House who have followed this will know—the noble Baroness alluded to this—I have form on the matter. When I became Leader of the House in 2022, I found it absolutely astonishing that in the 21st century we had a statutory position where, practically, in one of our Houses of Parliament in many circumstances people had to have private means to become a Minister. There have always been wealthy people who have been willing to do this signal public service for nothing. They still exist, and I of course salute them for their public spirit in doing that. Some on my side, when I was Leader, made great personal sacrifices, for which I once told the House I was ashamed to ask them, and for which I was beyond appreciation when I saw them ready to make those sacrifices.

However, the converse of that appreciation is that it cannot ever be right that those who do not have the means cannot serve this country as a Minister because a post is unpaid. I said from the Front Bench, both in office and in opposition, that I believe this matter must be addressed. Whenever we discussed it, there was widespread support for the principle, and I think that was found when my predecessors also tried to address the matter. But there was always a reason not to act, and not only in my time but before.

I think I have told the House that, when I tried to get something in a Bill such as this when I was Leader in the 2023-24 Session, I was told by my own very senior colleagues that it would “cause comment”—perhaps we were approaching an election or something. When I tried to address the matter by different means, ensuring at least that senior unpaid figures on both the Government and Opposition Front Benches, such as a Foreign Office Minister and leading shadow spokesman, might be allowed deemed attendance when they were out of London, perhaps on related business, this was disagreed to by senior figures then in the Labour Party on the basis, as I was told, that Labour would have fewer Ministers and so it would not be necessary. It has not quite worked out that way and it was never really going to. As the noble Baroness explained, this position has grown and persisted for decades.

The number of unpaid Lords Front-Benchers, which rose as high as 13—or maybe even 14—in my time is still at least 11, as advertised currently on the GOV.UK list of Ministers. It would be invidious to list those names, but they include some of the most hard-working and respected Members on the Front Bench opposite, just as they did under our Government.

This Bill could bring that inherent unfairness in public life to a close. I hope that, when the noble Baroness responds, she will undertake that it will do precisely that—she said it would largely do it; I understand there may be transitional reasons why that might not be possible. But I affirm that public office in the 21st century must be open to all.

The Bill allows the total number of paid Ministers, as the noble Baroness explained, to rise to 120 against the current 109. The existing limit on the scale of patronage in the other place set by the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, as she explained, remains unchanged at 95. So if the Commons end, if I may put it thus—or the other place, or the patronage secretary—still decides that the House of Commons Members should take up all their potential places, the number of Lords Ministers allowed to be paid by statute will rise from 14 under the present system to 25 under the revised system brought in by the Bill.

The noble Baroness alluded to the fact that that is still a ratio of nearly four to one between this House and the other place. I do not wish to disparage anyone, because I had an uphill struggle with my own colleagues, and I make no disparagement of the Government because they are addressing the point, but over the years I have sometimes wondered whether some of our colleagues at the other end actually know the burdens on Ministers in this House, the revising Chamber, and the amount of continuous work that arises, for example, from our less regimented system of organising Questions and the clear and penetrating scrutiny of Bills.

I said I would not name names, but I look at people such as the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, who carries out what I think we would all acknowledge is one of the hardest jobs in government, carrying the Home Office brief in your Lordships’ House, and I remember my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, whom the House was praising not long ago, and who was a truly outstanding Minister of State in the Foreign Office and an indefatigable traveller in service of his country. Those people need to be properly recognised. Many might and could contend that the real answer would of course be to restrain the growing size of the payroll in the other place. It does not need to be 95—it has not always been 95—but that is not on offer currently, and therefore I feel that in the interests of the whole House we should proceed as the noble Baroness suggests in the Bill.

I was very grateful for the support that Members across the House, as the noble Baroness reminded us, gave to an amendment which I moved during the passage of the House of Lords Act earlier this Session. I recognise that it was not actually practical in its explicit effect, but it was designed to allow this House to express a view and perhaps force the other place to consider this issue. That has been done, and I am grateful for the constructive discussions that I have had on this with the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, both when I was in government and now in opposition. I hope that we can continue to give positive consideration to issues that arise from the burdens on various Front Benches in this House.

However, setting that aside, for the interim I welcome the Bill. It ends a long-standing injustice, it opens doors that should never have been closed, and I ask my colleagues on this side to give it a fair wind in the full spirit of respect and sensible co-operation across this Chamber for which I will always stand.