House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in spite of the fireworks we have occasionally had from the Conservative Benches, this long debate has shown some elements of agreement about where we go from here, and I hope we will pick those up and take them further.

I will be very sorry to lose the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, with whom I have worked on many things for many years. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Brady, who may remember that we first met 20 years ago, when the temperature was dropping from minus 10 towards minus 20. He had not brought a hat with him, and I lent him mine. We look forward to cross-party working with him, as we all do here.

When I was appointed to this House three years before the 1999 reforms, it was in many ways a club. The Conservatives were the dominant party, and the hereditaries were the dominant element within the Conservative group. One Tory life Peer told me that his hereditary colleagues referred to their lifers as “the day boys”. Public school people will know exactly what that means. It has changed a lot since then; it has become much more serious. The Cross-Benchers work infinitely harder than they did then—so do we all. It has become much more clearly a working House, and there is now clearly a consensus that Peers are expected to pull their weight, and that those who drop in only occasionally do not deserve their place in the House. However, its reputation outside remains poor and its work is little understood there.

We on these Benches are disappointed at the modesty of the Bill. We want to hear from the Lord Privy Seal what the Government plan to do next. What we most wish to hear from her is a commitment that, within this Parliament, there will be further measures along the lines agreed across the House, and that those will be carried through. That will make the passage of this very modest Bill much easier.

I am astonished at the obstinacy and self-denial—and occasional hysteria—on the Conservative Benches. There is constructive opposition, and there is obstructive opposition. I fear that we are faced with what may easily slip into very obstructive opposition. The Conservative manifesto of 2010, nearly 15 years ago, said:

“We plan to work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the … House of Lords”.


We have not got very far with that. After cross-party negotiations had successfully been agreed in 1999, the White Paper stated that

“For the transitional House, the Government will ensure that no one political party commands a majority in the Lords. The Government presently plans to seek only broad parity with the Conservatives”.


As has been remarked, the number of Labour Peers did not pass that of the Conservatives until 2005. The elephant in the Chamber is that there are now over 100 more Conservative Peers than Labour, and I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, as she winds up for the Conservative side, will at least address that elephant and recognise that it is there, and that it is one of the underlying motivations for doing this first and only before we move on to other things.

We know why: Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister, broke the 1999 agreement. Let us be clear when we are talking about who broke what. Indeed, the last Conservative Government broke a whole host of constitutional conventions. You have only to read Tim Shipman or Anthony Seldon to know just how bad it was. Conservative Ministers in that Government have to take responsibility for what went wrong. The noble Lord, Lord True, was a Minister of State in the Cabinet Office for the first two years, and thereafter was a Minister in the Cabinet. To call now for consensus, when the Conservatives did not pursue consensus in any way in the last five years, is, to say the least, a little odd. Conservatives must take responsibility for what went wrong and recognise that, if we are talking about rebuilding public confidence in our constitution, they have to start from where they were.

The noble Lord, Lord Swire, called for a constitutional convention. The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised us as a convention on the constitution, to explore

“the broader aspects of our constitution”.

I remember that the noble Lord, Lord True, tried to explain to us on a number of occasions in the years since why the Conservative Government had not actually done anything about that. Now they are out of office, they would like the Labour Party to do it instead. Perhaps there will be consultations in which we will reach some agreement as to where we go ahead. I remind the Conservatives that in this election they received 23.7% of the vote and that they have only 121 MPs in the other Chamber. That does make it difficult to justify a Lords group getting on to 40% larger than their group in the Commons.

The language in this debate has been quite extraordinary. The noble Lord, Lord True, talked about class war; the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, talked about political assassination. We had “sheer vindictiveness”, “political spite”, “despicable, intemperate and reckless”, comparisons to Pride’s Purge in the midst of the Civil War, to Animal Farm, and even to communist dictatorship. Above all, we had “gerrymandering”. I am not quite sure what that means, I think it means fixing the election, in this case, for your advantage. The fixing that went on was to add the extra 100 Peers in the last Parliament. We are going to unfix that, so let us all discuss it and have some consultations. Of course, consultations require compromise on all sides; they do not simply require the rest of us moving towards the Conservative position.

We have heard quite a lot about the romantic image of the hereditary peerage. Those of us who have watched “Wolf Hall” have heard about the Courtenays causing trouble for Henry VIII. I am sure they caused trouble for Elizabeth I and James I as well. As I have looked around at hereditary peerages, I discovered that a Camoys commanded the left flank at Agincourt, and that the first Lord de Clifford was killed at Bannockburn. I wish I could say that it was a Wallace who was responsible for that, but unfortunately the most distinguished Wallace was killed by the English nine years before.

Since the end of the 17th century, and certainly since 1714, all hereditary peerages, and now life peerages, have been a matter of prime ministerial patronage. As Prime Minister, Walpole produced so many new peerages that the first Bill to cap the size of the House of Lords was introduced in 1719—it did not get very far. Under Gladstone and Disraeli, two-thirds of those appointed to the upper House were former Members of the lower House. That is, again, political patronage. In the House of 1958, the clear majority had been appointed since 1900.

The difference between the lifers and the hereditaries is that the lifers were appointed by the current Prime Minister under patronage, while the hereditaries were appointed by a previous Prime Minister’s patronage: that of Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee or Eden. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, whose grandfather was appointed by Anthony Eden, was one of the last hereditaries. Had the noble Lord’s grandfather been appointed to the House of Lords five years later, he would probably have been made a life Peer. We would have been deprived of the wonderful lectures that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has given us over the years on the importance of the House not standing up to a Conservative Government when there are a Conservative Government in power. The noble Lord, Lord Moore, said that the Lords has been ridiculed more since 1958 than before. I recommend that he reads Lloyd George’s speeches of 1910-11, or even Lord Rosebery’s speeches of 1894-95, when he was proposing the abolition of the House of Lords.

We are asking the Government to move forward with the next stage of reform and to consult us on what it should be. The consensus in the House is fairly strong. We want to talk about term limits or age limits. I am older than President Biden, so I think that age limits might be a good thing. Biden clearly went on for too long, just as Gladstone, who was Prime Minister into his 80s, went on for too long—he should not have done.

There should be a separation of appointments to the second Chamber from honours; HOLAC should have much greater powers to disapprove of nominations; there should be agreement on a formula for the balance of new appointments, and there should be something on improving the regional and national balance.

Above all, we have to remember how we look to the outside, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, have said. How do we look to our disillusioned public? All the opinion polls show that the British public are more disillusioned with national politics than any other democratic country except the United States. They also show, as my noble friend Lord Newby pointed out, that a clear majority believe that an elected House would be preferable to the current one. Only 25% of Conservative voters have a positive view of the Lords as it is now. For Labour, Liberal Democrat and Reform voters, the figure is much lower.

Everything we do on this Bill—and how long we spend on it—has to take the broader public issue into account. We and the Commons have to regain the public’s trust. That means being not a club but a working House. We have a job to do, and we should pursue our reform in that constructive context, with constructive opposition on all sides.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, along with others, I share the concerns of my noble friend Lord Caithness, as I also much appreciate the comments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

As already indicated, the priority aim for a reformed House of Lords must be its quality of function as a revising Chamber and, therefore, the continuation of its present very high standard of legislative and government scrutiny.

In a later amendment, it is proposed that, within a reformed House of 600 temporal members, the non-political Cross-Benchers should be in the majority with 200 members, while the Government and Opposition have exactly 150 each and the Liberal Democrats, and others, 100. Compared with others, this formula can far better protect our present legislative scrutiny high standard, otherwise threatened and undermined if, instead, the Government of the day, whoever that might be, were to be the largest group within a reformed House.

Political patronage to create non-parliamentary peerages would continue. However, its current ability to appoint members of this House would be abolished, becoming replaced by two processes: first, as already indicated, by the Appointments Commission appointing 200 non-political temporal Peers and, secondly, by an electoral college representative of all parts of the United Kingdom indirectly electing 400 political temporal Peers.

For the necessary transitional period, as your Lordships are well aware, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, indicates a very good, workable system, which is this: in a given year, the collective total of life Peers who retire or die are replaced at 50%. That means that, in a natural way and over not too many years, the current number of temporal Peers, which is now just under 800, will have come down to about 600.

Obviously, it would come down more quickly if life Peers were coerced to retire at 80 or 85. Yet it would be much wiser not to enforce that. Instead, with the retirement age of 90, the transitional period can be expected to be a bit more than five years, with the advantage of enabling some new Peers in the reformed House when they first begin to serve their 15 years to do so alongside existing life Peers, thereby being all the more able to develop and uphold the skills, usefulness and democratic efficacy of this House as a revising Chamber.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has just indicated the difficulty of discussing some of the broader issues that this Bill raises when we have so many different groupings. I suggest, in the very constructive spirit of the noble Lord, Lord True, when he opened the debate on the first amendment, that it would be wiser, if we are going to discuss as we go through this Committee stage some of the longer-term issues that it raises, that we should group the large number of amendments we have together, rather than have a constant repetition of broader points from one amendment to another. This certainly this cannot be done today, but I suggest that, before the second day of Committee, the usual channels have a constructive conversation about the number of groupings that we need. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that I think that it is the consensus of the House that we would have a more constructive Committee stage if there was a much smaller number of groupings into which the major themes are contained.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

On the question of groupings, I understand that the Opposition put forward some suggestions for groupings to the Government Whips’ Office at the end of last week, and they were rejected without even being looked at until the Government had put forward their own proposals. That is my understanding.

I think that the whole question of groupings is important and useful, but we are only on the second amendment of the day and I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was suggesting that this amendment should be grouped with. I am happy to listen to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The first four separate amendments seem to me to have a very natural linkage, and it would have been much more sensible to debate them in a group, for example.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, let me carry on on the groupings that we have and on the speech in introducing his amendment of my noble friend—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

That is why I support my noble friend’s amendment, because it brings just a little glimmer of democracy—as he says, a controllable element of democracy—into your Lordships’ House on a limited basis. I would like to go further and to see a larger element of democracy in your Lordships’ House if we are going to make change at all, but I will go with what my noble friend Lord Lucas is proposing, precisely because it opens that door. I really wish to hear from the Minister on the Front Bench why that is such a bad idea and why a glimmer of democracy is not possible, and a little bit more than we have had so far in terms of that programme, on which, in every attempt to raise it, she has just brought down the shutters.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Conservative Benches that if we are talking about what has been in manifestos, there was a very clear pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to set up a commission on the constitution to examine some of the underlying difficulties of the British structure of government. I recall the noble Lord, Lord True, on a number of occasions, defending from the Government Front Bench the reason why nothing had happened on that. Constitutional matters get easily put off and, once put off, we tend not to get back to them.

With these amendments, we are now beginning to talk about where we go from here, which I am sure the Leader of the House will recognise we all want to hear more about. Where do we go next, after this? This is a rather ingenious proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am not entirely sure that ,as an electorate, this House is the best place. There might be a certain tendency in our current composition to overselect people who have been to the same school as we had, or people who are very like us, when actually, some of the people who are not like us are particularly good.

For example, if you had asked me to vote for a ballerina, on first impression I would have thought that was totally the wrong person for the Lords. I regard the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, as one of the most valued Members of the House, which was a great and wonderful surprise. If you had asked me to vote for the noble Lord, Lord Bird, as the candidate, again I might not have thought at first impression that he was a good person for the Lords. That is the hesitation I raise: elites selecting new members of the elite tend to go for the safe people like them, which is not necessarily ideal.

I will make a few wider remarks about where we go from here. I have on my shelves a full shelf of reports on House of Lords reform and previous Bills. The 2012 scheme, which I had the duty of trying to move in this House, was relatively clear. It was agreed by the coalition partners, although it was Conservative Back-Benchers, as much as the Labour Party, who let down that scheme.

[Lord True (Con)]

It was Labour.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Well, let us agree to differ on that.

The Gordon Brown proposals are out there, and there are a range of other matters that we could begin to pull together very quickly; we do not need to start again. I find the reference to the Council of the Nations and Regions interesting. In two or three weeks I have a Question on how precisely the new Council of the Nations and Regions will fit in to our constitutional arrangements, because I am not at all sure that I or the Government yet understand how it will fit in.

We need to level up the way our politics are done. I have spent most of my political life in Yorkshire. We now have a situation in which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some voice in London, but the English regions and the English principal councils do not. I am not entirely sure that mayors elected on perhaps 29% or 30% of the vote on a 25% turnout will have that much legitimacy to represent their areas to the central Government. The question of how far the second Chamber should be constituted so as to strengthen the representation of areas outside London in the centralised governance of this country is very important, so we need to move on to that.

We shall say from these Benches to the Government Front Bench, several times, that before we clear this Bill we need some assurance as to where we go from here and when we might start to move from here. This is an interesting, slightly idiosyncratic set of proposals, but one could perhaps throw it into the mix.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that this is an ingenious, but perhaps at points impractical, solution. But it does address one of the more eccentric features of the by-election procedure, not least the use of single transferable vote. Of course, the only Members of the UK Parliament elected by single transferable vote are the hereditary Peers elected in by-elections. I am not sure whether that is the proposal for the by-elections in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment, but I am speaking of the nature of the electorate—or selectorate—for the by-elections. The 92 under the present reforms are largely elected by the hereditary Peers of each party and group, save for the 15 places that were occupied by Deputy Speakers in 1999, when the vote was by all Members of the House. As I understand the proposal from my noble friend Lord Lucas, the Deputy Speaker solution is proposed for these by-elections.

I must say, as a sideline, that I particularly enjoyed voting in one of those by-elections, when the House had to choose between the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and Earl Lloyd-George. I do not think I am breaking any confidences by saying that I voted for Earl Lloyd-George because he demonstrated a particular fondness for the creation of hereditary peerages, although perhaps not always for the best reasons.

Be that as it may, this amendment highlights the core of the mischief of this Bill, in that it means that one of the few avenues of getting into this House that is not controlled by the selection of the Prime Minister—whereby everybody in this House has to be sharp-elbowed enough to catch the eye of the Prime Minister pro tem —is being closed. I commend my noble friend Lord Lucas on proposing a solution that keeps open another avenue into this House.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the principle behind terms, but I cannot support and would not vote for any of these amendments. The idea behind terms is a great one because it limits our contributions to while we are fresh. I do not agree with prejudice as expressed by age, which I think is irrelevant and hard to justify. Even murderers do not get life any longer, so I think “life” is an inappropriate term.

Finally, as with many of the speeches on the amendments we have heard today, this is not the time nor the Bill to be debating these issues. They need to be referred to and considered in the round, but that is for another day. There are many issues about our constitution that deserve attention. Should we have an established Church? In what relation is the Supreme Court held to Parliament? Many things have yet to be remedied, but not in this Bill. For that reason, I would not vote for these amendments. These are worthy issues that should be debated in another place when we have the time, but not in the time we are taking to debate this Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this and the next three groups are about related issues, and we cannot avoid moving from one on to the other. They are about limiting the conditions under which one becomes a Member of this House.

When I was appointed to this House 29 years ago, the majority of Members clearly saw this as a part-time job. It was explained to me that it was a part-time job. I managed to go on being a full-time professor at the LSE for another nine years. Now we have a more professional House. We are expected to commit ourselves to working hard while we are here. Life expectancy has risen and more of us have some expectation of living well into our 90s. I am told that my life expectancy, given my parents and my elder sisters, is around 98, so I can perhaps look for many years to come. Clearly, we need to take this on board and the Government need to give us some indication of how they are going to moderate the lifetime rights to sit in this House.

As we have become a professional second Chamber, do we think that retirement, life terms, participation or attendance is the most useful way to do it? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that term limits are the easiest way. The 2012 Bill proposed for the elected Members a single term of 15 years, elected in thirds, and a 15-year term for those who were appointed. That, at the time, commanded widespread support. I suggest that the Government look back to this; we have been around this circuit before.

I will also say briefly that we have to remember the context in which we are discussing this. Popular disillusionment with politics in Britain is high; respect for both the Commons and the Lords is low. We have, outside Britain, much that we dislike in populist politics, anti-democratic tendencies, the belief that strong men make politics easier, and we see the problems of systems where checks and balances built into their constitutions are being ignored. We cannot entirely ignore that, as limited outside opinion looks at the way that we as a second Chamber behave. If the Government are going to push this limited Bill through, they must also respond to that for the longer term. The sort of second Chamber to which we might slowly shuffle is one in which term limits are perhaps one of the ways in which one limits the life cycle of Members.

[Lord de Clifford (CB)]

I support this group of amendments and other groups that follow with regards to Lords reform. I take this opportunity to say again that, as an hereditary Peer, I am not opposed to Clause 1, but having the opportunity to be elected to the House of Lords is not an appropriate way of selecting people to sit in the House in the 21st century, for many reasons. This is a simple Bill with one purpose: to remove the right for hereditary Peers to continue to sit, contribute and vote. It is a great privilege to be a Member of this House, and I am fortunate enough to have experienced it for a short time.

The Bill achieves some reform of an outdated process, possibly the easiest one, as it is a simple one. If this Bill is so simple, why have so many amendments been put down? That concerns me and others such as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The fear is that there will be no further reform for many years after the Bill has received Royal Assent and the hereditary Peers have left. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal has said on many occasions that further House of Lords reform is under consultation. Sadly, the track record of the House in making decisions on legislative reforms is not a good one, as proven by Bills from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and many others, and the implementation of the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee.

This group of amendments makes suggestions for reform, one of which concerns the length of term a Peer can serve in the House. Having been in the House for only just over a year, I would say that the ways of the House are quite challenging at times, especially if you are not used to the way that government works. A bit of time is needed to understand the way that the House works, to gain experience and to be best able to contribute. I feel strongly that, in the majority of cases, a term of 15 or 20 years is appropriate for Peers to serve in the House. As Peers have many skills and experiences that they can bring during their term, they can contribute to the workings of the House. When they come to the end of a term, there are many outside this Chamber, as some Peers have already commented, who have similar skills and different experience to bring to the House: the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, stated this clearly on the previous group.

Another feature of the 21st century is that there are not very many jobs for life with no formal review process, appraisal or performance review. That privilege and the privilege of the role can be maintained with just half a day’s work every year. I agree that a consultation on this matter is appropriate, and I agree with the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. That has great promise, and I agree that it should apply only to Peers who enter the House at this stage. I note what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said regarding the consultation process that is ongoing. Can I ask when she might bring reform to the House on one or two of the areas that we are about to discuss in the next few minutes?

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, before the birthday boy, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, begins to wind up for the Front Benches, I will speak very briefly to my Amendment 28, which seeks to provide for a maximum participation threshold, as well as a minimum. I do so with the humility and self-awareness of one who is speaking on the Bill from both the Front Benches and the Back Benches.

My amendment is an important flip side to the debate and there are some salutary examples from what happened in another place. A few years ago, there was the invention of a number of websites and journalistic tools, such as TheyWorkForYou, which track the participation levels of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. That encouraged some to game the system by making lots of short speeches or interrupting others with great frequency, preferring quantity over quality.

There is value in restraint. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said about what we can learn from academic theory. The Swiss-American psychologist and pioneer of organisational development, Edgar Schein, set out the concept of humble inquiry. He said that those in public life or leadership positions should ask themselves three questions before making a speech. Does it need to be said? If so, does it need to be said by me? If so, does it need to be said by me now? I should say that I was put on to the work of Professor Schein by one of our more taciturn and thoughtful colleagues in your Lordships’ House.

I have often suspected that, if one looked at the top 10% of speakers and the bottom 10%, it would serve as an interesting competition about those who one would rather hear from. I asked the Library to crunch the numbers for me relating to the last Session. It is not as large or interesting reading as the now famous spreadsheets of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, but it certainly reveals some interesting points.

I am sure we can all guess some of the names that appear in the top 10%, so I will not name names, other than to confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that the Green Party is the group from which we hear most frequently. We have the pleasure of hearing from the noble Baroness on 68% of the days that she can speak. Personally, I find the other 32% of days to be days of great sadness.

All of us who miss our late noble friend Lord Cormack will be impressed to hear that he still made it into the top 5% of speakers, even though he was sadly taken from us before the end of that Session.

By contrast, 106 noble Lords spoke on only 1% of the days that they could have done. If one glances down that list, which is available from the Library, one sees many examples of what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has rightly described as low-frequency, high-impact Members. One sees the names of three former Cabinet Secretaries, a former Governor of the Bank of England, former Leaders of your Lordships’ House from both sides of the House, a director-general of the Security Service rendered quiet by his service in the Royal Household as Lord Chamberlain, and fellows, and indeed the next president, of the British Academy. I see some of them in their places today—I see them in their places frequently—and I am glad that they are using their brains more than they are using their mouths.

I agree with what my noble friend Lord Swire said about the dangers of debate that just repeats verbatim the briefings we are given from lobby groups. I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, says about the many other valuable ways that Members of your Lordships’ House can influence the way that we are governed in this country. With that, I shall take my own advice and shut up.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, beneath the wide-ranging and sometimes unfocused discussion we have had on these amendments, there is a degree of limited consensus that we should build on. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, shows us the way we should go. I hope that between Committee and Report, we will have a number of discussions, off the Floor, about where we go from here that will build on that limited consensus. I hope that the Government will consider accepting a limited number of amendments, which would show us the direction in which we go further, as well as committing to make some clear statements about how they would see further developments.

On the questions of attendance, participation and retirement, I agree strongly with my noble friend Lord Newby that some of this can be done through Standing Orders and agreements of the House and does not require legislation. That is part of the way that we may go forward.

I suggest that we all know pretty well what we mean by a minimum level of attendance and participation, and can name quietly, but we will not, some of the people who fail to fulfil it. I recall some years ago being invited to an office in the City of London to brief the CEO of a rather major operation on how to make a maiden speech. He had been a Member of the House for almost a year and I do not think that he had attended more than two or three times. He did not understand the House and he felt that he ought to make a maiden speech. That is clearly below the level of attendance and commitment.

This is a Parliament in which we are supposed to parley with each other—to exchange ideas, to listen and to learn. I have learned a lot through taking part in Bill Committees. I look at the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and I remember the Procurement Bill, which we worked through in the previous Session. It was not my area of expertise, but I learned a great deal from him and from a number of other participants. We are here to examine in detail proposals that the Government make and to discuss difficult issues that the Government sometimes do not want to grapple with. That requires a minimum level of attendance and interaction between us. That is part of what we are here for.

Having said that, I hope that we will now be able in the rest of this evening to get through several more amendments, much more rapidly. I hope that the Government will think about what assurances they need to give us in order that we can make greater speed on Report. We should never forget that how this House is seen from the outside is something that we all need to be conscious of. The size of our House and those who come in for just 20 minutes and go out again are an embarrassment, and are picked up by the media. Honours and obligations need to be balanced. A later amendment suggests that we should be moving towards separating honours from the obligation to attend and participate, but these are all questions for the longer term. Dividing what we think this Bill can achieve from what we need to commit ourselves to discuss for the future is part of what we need to discuss between Committee and Report. I hope that this amendment will be withdrawn, but we should bear in mind that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is offering us a very useful way forward.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken—sorry, I am forgetting that I am not a Minister anymore; that is what the noble Baroness says. This debate has generally conformed to the good-natured debates that we have been having. I am very grateful to the Front Bench opposite and to others that that has been the case.

If I may say so, I was disappointed by the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which slightly changed the atmosphere for a time. The noble Lord and I were good comrades, he will recall, in the Brexit years, when he and I were among the very few people in the House who thought that we should do what the British people had voted for. There were times then when I felt, and I am sure he felt very often, that the House did not really want to hear from us again on the subject. I beg him to understand that we are facing a situation where many of our colleagues are threatened with leaving this House, and it does not help if they are told that they should not be heard from again. We will never be able to hear from them again. I have to say that the noble Lord has never been known not to repeat arguments on the House of Lords that he has put before—I have heard them many times. I shall break the rules of the House and say, “Come on, Bruce, let’s put our smiles on again”.

This has been a good debate. Again, many noble Lords have said, quite correctly—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made this point in a measured and sensible way—that it is important that we should understand the direction the Government are going in, and it is perfectly legitimate that House of Lords, faced with a Bill to reform and change the House of Lords, should express views about the future of the House of Lords. Let us recall that this question of participation is not a subject that has been dreamt up by some deviant Back-Bencher to put before your Lordships’ House; it was put before us in the Labour manifesto, so of course we should look at it.

When I hear these debates, it seems there is a widespread feeling in our House that there is a strong case in equity, and in the interests of the whole House, for finding some way towards a transition that allows many of the best of us who are threatened with expulsion to remain. I also believe there is an equally widespread feeling across the House that we should not continue to protect those who never come here, while working to throw out people who do contribute.

The question on participation is, how do we define it? It goes far further than attendance, and this debate has illustrated that. The Government surely must have had a view on this when they put the Bill in the manifesto, but there are many ways in which we can measure participation, and these have been brought out in the debate. I could cite those who serve as Government and Opposition spokesmen, Deputy Speakers or indeed Convenors of the Cross Benches—they are vital to the operation and functioning of your Lordships’ House. Hereditary Peers currently make up 27% of our Opposition Front Bench, 21% of Deputy Speakers and 100% of the Convenors of your Lordships’ Cross Benches. I say these things because I believe that noble Lords who are already with us—all of us, not just the hereditary Peers—should be judged, if we are to be judged at all, on our participation and contribution to your Lordships’ House, and not on any of our identities or characteristics.

I acknowledge how difficult it is, potentially, to define participation, and this has come out in the debate. There are many ways that noble Lords contribute to the House, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra, in his repeated brilliant speeches, keeps bringing up so many of them. Noble Lords can make legislation, propose amendments to Bills, participate in Divisions, ask Oral and Written Questions, contribute to committees, participate in debates, serve as Opposition spokesmen and even take part in international work, as my noble friend pointed out. They can also make use of their expertise and experience—as have several noble Lords who have spoken in this debate—to contribute in myriad ways to the work of this House and the progress of our nation behind the scenes. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee spoke to those points eloquently. One Peer, who was recently attacked in the media for not speaking enough, has been a diligent, active and hugely valued member of your Lordships’ committees for decades.

My noble friend Lord Lucas focused on a broad definition of committee work in his Amendment 40. This is extended to participation in all Bill stages, Questions and Statements by my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s Amendment 42, but as I and this debate have illustrated, the participation net could be cast even wider. My noble friend Lord Blencathra suggested a practical solution in his Amendment 26, which sets out some initial suggestions but would otherwise allow for a participation requirement to be determined flexibly through Standing Orders and a committee of the House.

I will come to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in a moment, but the more we can do in this House—this is no disrespect to the Minister; I would have said it of my own Government—and the less we can leave to Secretaries of State in the House of Commons, the happier I will be. There is great wisdom in this House, and the more we can reach solutions here through the kind of consultations the Minister is initiating, the better.

In his Amendment 63, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has not sought to pre-empt the definition of “participation” or, in fact, the level at which it would be required. But he proposed a structure to make and implement decisions that would need to be made. Given the broad range of views that we have discussed today and our need to reach consensus, while avoiding any unintended consequences, I—like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire—consider the content of the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to be a sensible basis for progress. However, I repeat that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra that it would best to keep the House of Commons out of it as far as we can.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I do not actually believe in God. However, just in case, I always seek to adhere to the highest ethical and moral standards, especially so far as public life is concerned. I do not propose to speak to the next group because it is so closely related to this one.

The vast majority of your Lordships’ House are nominally Christian. If your Lordships want to have Prayers read by a Bishop—and I do—we need about 27 Bishops so that one of them can be the duty Bishop for the week or for two weeks, or however they organise it. An important point about the Bishops is that they normally retire, although, as the noble Baroness pointed out, a few come back as life Peers—and they are welcome. Bishops are appointed by the Prime Minister. If there were a problem, I am sure that in most cases the Prime Minister would find out; I am not sure that HOLAC is any better equipped, especially in so far as some of these safeguarding issues are concerned.

It would be profitable for the Leader to find some way for other religious leaders to have temporary membership of your Lordships’ House in the same way as the Anglican Bishops. I do not think this point has been made today, but just because only a few other states have a revising Chamber with religious or moral input, that is not a good reason for us not having such input. I would counsel leaving the Bishops well alone.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Scriven has his name to Amendments 48 and 49 but is unable to be here, sadly, so let me speak briefly from our Benches. I declare my interests as a member of the Church of England and as a former member of the Westminster Abbey Foundation; I am still active with it.

I am very disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not suggest that abbots should be restored to their places here. Clearly, if we are discussing longer-term reform of the Lords, we need to address the question of the Bishops. At the same time, we might as well—other noble Lords have done this via Amendment 34 —address the question of faith representation in the House. In my lifetime, I have seen the Church of England—and certainly Westminster Abbey—become much more welcoming to ecumenical arrangements of all sorts. The Cardinal Archbishop has read the lesson in Westminster Abbey several times. I have been to a joint Jewish-Christian service in the abbey. I have listened to readings of the Koran in the middle of an abbey service. That is part of how the Church of England now tries to maintain its position as a national Church representing all faiths.

It is worth mentioning in passing that this House is not entirely without representation of other Churches and faiths. My namesake was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland two years ago and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, is one of the most distinguished Methodists. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, was the lead rabbi of Liberal Judaism, and we had a retired Chief Rabbi on the Benches of our House for some time.

There is a broader question, which we clearly need to address, about the role of representatives of faith in a different House, if we are slowly moving further in that direction. The Bishops need to respond to that, and I hope they will contribute to that debate. That is as far as we need to go when discussing this Bill because it is not necessarily part of the Bill. But in the broader, wider discussion that we are unavoidably finding ourselves having in Committee, that has to be one of the questions under discussion.

The noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not remark that there were only 14 or 15 Bishops in the Middle Ages, as I remember, and that the reason the number was fixed at 26 was because the number of dioceses was mushrooming so fast in the course of the 19th century. Perhaps that is the number we should go back to as an interim measure, but I look forward to hearing from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield if he is about to contribute to the debate.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Moore, in the fact that the Bench of Bishops is briefly going to speak up on its own behalf. He may be surprised, as may many noble Lords opposite, that in the first eight months of the current Parliament the Bishops have voted 29 times, and only five times with the Labour Government. The Bishops are not party political; we really do seek to improve and scrutinise legislation. That is by the way.

I am grateful for the opportunity offered by this range of amendments to address some of the concerns expressed by Members of this Committee about the place and role of those of us who serve on these Benches. Although we are not whipped and do not have a party line, the Lords spiritual are pretty much all of one mind that your Lordships’ House would benefit from some reform, not least to do with numbers and patronage. As noble Lords would expect, we believe that a reformed House of Lords should include Lords spiritual and should continue to reflect the present constitutional arrangement.

I will try to speak briefly to all the amendments in this group, taking first Amendments 33 and 78, which seek to reduce the number of Lords spiritual serving on these Benches. Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would reduce the number from its current 26 to five—the two Archbishops and three others nominated by the Church’s General Synod.

In practice, since every one of the Lords spiritual has full-time responsibilities outside this place, a reduction to five would make it impossible for the remaining Lords spiritual to perform their functions as parliamentarians alongside their duties as diocesan bishops or primates. Although there are at present 26 Lords spiritual, noble Lords will notice that we are never by any means all present at any one time. That is because the demands of our other responsibilities prevent it. Only a minority of Lords spiritual are able to be present in this Chamber on any given day, and I urge noble Lords to keep this in mind in any consideration of a reduction in the number of those serving on these Benches.

Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, seeks to reduce the Lords spiritual by a smaller number, to 20. As in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, there is no obvious rationale for the number chosen. We are very open to the possibility of a reduction in the size of your Lordships’ House as a whole, with consequences for the Bench of Bishops, but we believe that a conversation about the number of Bishops should take place as part of a comprehensive review of membership of this House. We would warmly welcome representations not just from other Christian denominations but from other faith groups in this country.

Amendments 48 and 49 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would prevent new Lords spiritual receiving writs to join the House but would allow current Bishops to remain until retirement and would not prevent someone who is a Bishop being made a life Peer. However, the amendment would permit a bishop to enter for the purposes of reading Prayers. While we appreciate the latter aspect of this amendment, we note that the role of the Lords spiritual is much more than mere chaplaincy. We highly value the privilege of leading your Lordships’ House in prayer, but we do not regard that as our only, nor always our most significant, contribution.

Ultimately, on these Benches we oppose these amendments on the basis that they would effectively sever the constitutional link between Church and state. This limited Bill is not the place to settle questions about the constitutional status of the established Church of England—that is a bigger discussion for another time.

Finally, Amendment 90B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, would amend the Bishoprics Act 1878 so that the issuing of writs to Lords spiritual would be subject to the approval and effective veto of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. I understand the noble Baroness’s desire for the appointments process for diocesan bishops who become Lords spiritual to be robust. We on these Benches share that view and, indeed, would be open to the direct scrutiny of this House if that is what the House desires. However, there is already a stringent process for assessing propriety in the appointment of the diocesan bishops who subsequently become Lords spiritual. In fact, I venture to suggest that, while of course not perfect, the process overseen by the Crown Nominations Commission in the discernment of new diocesan bishops is at least as thorough as the other processes used to appoint Members to this House. Moreover, Writs of Summons to Lords spiritual are issued by the operation of law, not by the will of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, so any involvement of the House of Lords Appointments Commission would need to be quite carefully calibrated.

Noble Lords will hardly be surprised to learn that we on these Benches are not able to support this group of amendments.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it would be a really useful flexibility in our system if life Peers could be appointed without the right to sit in the House of Lords. Frankly, there are people who deserve a peerage but who do not want the obligations, which we have been discussing today, to attend here and deal with the minutiae of legislation. In particular there are those who have grown senior and grand enough that arguing whether a comma should be moved one word to the right is not how they want to spend their life—unlike me.

So this would be a useful addition to the structure of our life peerage. It would enable people to be honoured properly and to be given a seat in this House only if that is what they really want and they intend to make full use of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I support the sentiment of this amendment. Again, this is a longer-term issue, but separating the honour from the obligation is an important part of how we should be moving forward. We know that a number of people have desperately wanted peerages—I am one of the many who found, after my appointment to this House, that the number of people who wished to invite me out to lunch to tell me what excellent Peers they would make increased very considerably.

This House has—happily—become much more professional in the past 20 years. We do now recognise this as a job, but we do not necessarily need to be Peers to do the job. Perhaps if we were called “Senators” or whatever, that would work quite as well. I immensely enjoy my title, in the sense that Saltaire is a very special village. It is now a world heritage site. It has a Hockney gallery, and I suspect that no one apart from me in this House knows that Paul Hockney, David’s elder brother, was a Liberal Democrat councillor and the Mayor of Bradford.

The more important thing for the long-term interest of this House is that we have good people appointed to the second Chamber, and that this is thought of first as a second Chamber and not so much as a House of Lords. Those who wish to have titles could perhaps have titles that do not have the obligations that we all now willingly accept to examine legislation, to debate difficult issues and to play a part in the governance of this country.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I just say that I will have to leave at 10 pm, but I think we have time for me to make a speech. I am not convinced that this is a good idea, although I understand my noble friend’s thinking. Like it or not, we live in a much less deferential society. It always depresses me when I read of senior military officers or junior ratings or NCOs in the Regular Army being referred to as “Mr”, even in a military context. Many years ago, when I was just a full corporal in the reserves, I was proud of the rank that I held and what it indicated. However, I am not sure now that being a Peer is an attractive rank or honour any more. We see one Baroness who is a national treasure more often referred to by her damehood than her peerage.

I have a point for the Minister and perhaps the Leader to consider. So far as I am aware, there is no reliable, regularly used database of preferred styles for their Lordships. Googling an active Member will take an unsuspecting user to a highly misleading page on the House website. The result is that the uninitiated will inadvertently send irritating emails to traditional Peers such as myself, but at the same time they may irritate other Peers by being far too deferential—the worst of all worlds. Would it not be better if the House of Lords website made it clear what each Peer’s preferred style was?

The situation is even worse, as some potentially really good members, particularly from the party opposite, may be deterred from putting themselves forward for consideration for a peerage because they would be horrified by the prospect of being addressed formally as a Member of your Lordships’ House. This problem could be alleviated by having the database I have referred to and encouraging its use, particularly by the lobbying industry.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, what feels like many years ago when we had the first day in Committee on this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord True, moved a completely unnecessary amendment to restate the purpose of the Bill as already expressed in the short title. That focused on the content of the Bill, which is about hereditary Peers.

The problem with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, which has a great deal to be said for it in terms of substance, is that it is not relevant to the Bill. It focuses on another matter, a matter which needs to be resolved—for the future of this House and for the reputation of this House—but it is not a matter for this discussion in this Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have taken a certain interest in this issue because a Peer who was extremely kind to my wife and me when we were young academics, and was himself then a senior diplomat, was the case in point.

This is something which needs sorting. It can be sorted by either a change in Standing Orders or an Order in Council. If that is not allowed, it needs legislation. We have just passed a short Bill through this House, the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill, which covered one extremely small element that was forgotten or not allowed by the Church of Scotland in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. If we can do that, then we can add, if necessary, a short amendment to this Bill to have that effect.

As I walked through the Lobby the other day, another Peer, who happens to be a relative of the Peer in question, said to me, “This is not just a single case. Until we have agreed a retirement age, we are likely to be facing this again and again with others”. We all know that there have been cases of Peers who have continued to come here as they begin to lose their mental capacity.

I have another reason for intervening on this. I recall my mother, aged 93, trying to sign a power of attorney for me to act on her behalf. Her paralysis had reached a point where she was unable to sign and thus not able to confer the power of attorney, despite being completely in her right mind.

This can be done. We are entitled to ask the Government that, by Report, we have clear advice on whether it has to be done by legislation or can be done by an Order in Council or a change in Standing Orders. I know that there is conflicting advice on this, because I have taken some interest in the case.

I know that the Government’s preferred outcome is that there should be no amendments to this Bill. However, this is a Bill about some further reform of the Lords, and we are unlikely to see another one for some time. Therefore, this House is entitled to say, as it goes through, that we are interested in some further reforms and that some further limited reforms might appropriately be attached to this Bill. That is what we are now discussing.

I look forward to the Government making an announcement at the start of Report on what further changes in the structures, Standing Orders and procedures of this House they propose, what further consultation on legislative changes they have in mind and when they propose to complete them, so as to help the passage of this Bill through the House. I strongly support this amendment. I do not mind whether the changes are made in one form or another, but they are simple to make, and it should be done.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, as a signatory of the amendment, perhaps I may make one or two points in support of my noble friend Lord Ashton.

A lasting power of attorney gives the attorney a power to make decisions about two sets of things—health and welfare, and property and financial affairs. Under health and welfare, the attorney can deal with your daily routine—washing, dressing and eating. They can make arrangements for your medical care, for moving into a care home and for life-sustaining treatment. They can make use of that power when you are unable to make your own decisions.

A property and financial affairs lasting power of attorney can be used as soon as it is registered and with your permission. That allows the attorney to manage a bank or building society account to pay bills, to collect benefits or a pension, and, as my noble friend Lord Ashton mentioned, to sell your home. These are big decisions in both types of power of attorney. However, as he pointed out, what they cannot do is enable you to retire from this House when you have lost your faculties.

I am particularly interested in this amendment because, having been on the Conduct Committee for the last three years—I came off it in January—it appeared to me and perhaps to other members of the committee that loss of mental capacity is something that this House will have to deal with in a humane but none the less determined fashion. Had the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, been making that point about this being out of scope of this Bill in a court, I would have said it was a mere pleading point and, “Shall we just get to the substance?” The substance is that this is an issue—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was right to address it—that has to be dealt with, if not within this Bill then in some other way by the House, because we are facing a growing and difficult problem of people who are beginning to fail to understand that they should no longer be here. It may be cruel to expel people, but if they could make up their own mind, they would do so. We need to cater for those who have lost the ability and the capacity to make that decision.

I urge the House, if it does not accept the amendment in its current terms, to understand that this is a problem that faces us, and we must deal with it as a House.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I just correct her on regional balance? So far as I am aware, at present we have only one hereditary Peer in the House from Yorkshire. I think the north of England is very underrepresented and there has been, I regret to say, with the hereditary peerage, a tendency for young generations to move to the Home Counties over the years and, of course, to go to school in the Home Counties as well. So the regional representation of the hereditaries is not particularly good.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I understand why noble Lords opposite would like to terminate debate, but I think there is a case for going a little bit further. Since noble Lords have allowed themselves some personal reflections, perhaps I can first add one of my own, which is that, when I was introduced to this House, one of my supporters was a Cross-Bench hereditary Peer. I will not mention his name, because I have not told him in advance that I am going to make these remarks. It all went back to the fact that, more than 40 years ago, I used to play bridge with his mother, and when he made his maiden speech shortly after his 21st birthday, I sat with his mother in the Peeresses’ Gallery and listened to him. We remained in touch and so, when I was being introduced, I thought that it was time for some payback. He willingly agreed, adding that he had never in the whole of his time in the House been asked to sponsor anybody at their introduction, so he was very happy to do so.

He has served throughout that time because he survived the Blair cull. He has been committed to the House and he has worked hard. What so many people find unfair—as I said, I have not discussed these remarks with him at all—is that he is to be expelled not because of lack of merit, not because of lack of commitment, not because of lack of expertise, but simply because of the way in which he entered the House. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, there seems to be an inherent unfairness in that.

I turn to the amendment, which I support. I emphasise that this amendment is not about the hereditary principle. It is about the principle of expulsion. We seem to be taking it for granted that an act of expulsion is sort of okay, whereas, in fact, it is almost entirely without precedent. There is the baleful precedent of Pride’s Purge, and since then the only example of the expulsion of people as a class from Parliament was what happened in 1999. To take that as a precedent so that it becomes, if you like, a normal thing for groups to be expelled from one House of Parliament or another, but more likely from this House, according to—I will not say the whims, but perhaps the vagaries of what might appear in manifestos is a very bad principle indeed. It does not affect only the hereditary Peers; it affects all of us because one can divide and one can create those criteria for expulsion according to, really, anything that fits, and can achieve political and other objectives in doing so.

When we say, “A whole group of us is to be expelled”, we appear to have a precedent for it in 1999, I grant you that, but it is not a good precedent. It is not a precedent that should be repeated. The proposal made by my noble friend Lady Mobarik avoids that and puts that danger at some distance from us. So I think that there are broader reasons for accepting it than simply our admiration of and friendship with the individuals involved in this case. There are broader reasons of principle for accepting it and I urge the Front Bench to consider them on constitutional grounds.

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I appreciate that simply increasing representation from Northern Ireland in this House would not guarantee a majority prepared to state that a credible way forward can involve the disfranchisement of any UK citizen, as is happening in Northern Ireland, but it would increase the chance of someone in government finally listening. The real answer, of course, is replacing the iniquitous Irish Sea border with mutual enforcement, which would facilitate the restoration of our citizenship. Let us hope that this debate today will at least help stimulate interest in our just cause.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, talked about how we need to think about our messaging. The noble Lord, Lord McCrea, has spoken about the denial of democracy and problems with democracy. I think that, as a House, we need to think about how we look to the outside world and where we are now in context. We look across to the United States and we see the subversion of constitutional democracy. We see here an increasingly disillusioned public, particularly the disillusioned young, throughout the country, not just in Northern Ireland.

I have just finished reading the latest book of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, the title of which is, Could it Happen Here? If we look ahead and think about the implications for British politics of the next four or five years—in which we may well have an economy that does not grow, foreign threats appearing much more serious, and foreign interference not only from Russia and China but from anti-democratic groups and billionaires within the United States—we could find ourselves, by the next general election, in a very difficult situation that challenges the assumptions of our democracy.

I say to the Conservatives here that, if they are still happily thinking about our established two-party system, they have not looked at the opinion polls for the last several months, in which our two established parties have been receiving well under 50% of public support, in which four parties have been receiving more than 10%—Reform has been up there, way ahead of the Conservative Party, most of the time—and in which the likelihood of turnout in the next general election dropping further ought seriously to concern us.

In his book, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, sets out a scenario for a future election taking place under conditions of economic difficulties, foreign interference and foreign threats, and disorder on the streets. That is serious. That is a threat to our constitutional democracy. That is what we ought to be considering, rather than, if I may respectfully suggest so, being overindulgent by talking about ourselves and a very modest—too modest—proposal for further minor reforms to the way this House operates. I appeal from these Benches that we recognise the context we are in and pay attention to that, rather than to ourselves.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I commend the amendment brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Morrow, and commend the young people who have helped to provoke this debate. I agree with the previous speaker that we need to focus on the future. Looking to our young people and to what we can do for them is very much at the heart of that.

I support this amendment, but not because I believe that Northern Ireland is the best part of the United Kingdom, nor because I believe that the Peers that come from Northern Ireland bring the greatest level of sagacity to this House. Those two things are self-evidently true, but I support this amendment because it identifies two deficiencies within the Bill. It does not do violence to the Bill but points out two things that we need to consider for the future.

Many unkind critics of the Bill will see the removal of the hereditary Peers by the current Government as a party-political gesture: throwing red meat to the activists within the Labour Party. Perhaps even unkinder people may say that it is used to distract from some of the actions of the Government in the last number of months—over pensioners, the WASPI women, the farmers or, most recently, those on disability benefits. I am sure that the Government would very clearly deny that. However, that denial has a level of credibility only if the actions taken in this Bill move beyond that one simple action of the removal of the hereditary Peers towards a much wider reform of our democracy and of this House.

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, does that by starting to look towards the future. What should the composition of this House be in the future? Undoubtedly, in terms of composition, we have a much more diverse House than we had a number of years ago. I recently viewed one of the old episodes of “Yes, Minister”, in which Sir Humphrey was sitting around the table with eight or nine of his Permanent Secretary colleagues, every one of them male, every one of them middle-aged and every one of them middle-class. He concluded a discussion by saying, “Well, I don’t think we could get a more diverse group of individuals than us here”.

Thankfully, we have begun to move away from those days. We have a much more diverse group of people within the House of Lords, from a wide range of backgrounds. But that is not to suggest that we can rest on our laurels. One area where we are still lacking is in a level of regional diversity throughout the United Kingdom. This House should be the voice of all parts of the United Kingdom. When I talk about regional balance, I do not mean between competing boroughs in north London; I mean throughout the entire country. In future, we need to reflect that. The amendment makes specific reference to Northern Ireland, but it could be true of other elements. In debate on one of the earlier amendments, it was mentioned that only one of the hereditary Peers came from Yorkshire, for example. We need to have that wider reflection. Therefore, keeping an observance of the composition of this House as we move forward and recognising that there is widespread representation of the diversity of this country, particularly on a regional basis, is important.

My second reason for commending this amendment, and the second gap that has been identified, is that the supposed driving force behind this amendment was a step towards equality, a step towards greater democracy and a step towards accountability. A case may be made that this is a step in that direction, but it rings hollow when people from my part of the United Kingdom are denied that level of equality, that level of democracy and that level of accountability, because of the current arrangements in place in the post-Brexit situation.

Two things need to happen to rectify that. First, the frictions that are there in terms of the Irish Sea need to be removed completely. We need to see, as the first step, the Government honouring what has been pledged in the past. When the previous Government proposed changes, the current Government, then in opposition, were fully in support of those. Yet we are now a number of months into the new Government and have not seen the speed of action that needs to take place. That is not simply a political point coming from these Benches. Evidence is being given of the daily impact on the ground by retailers, some of the large supermarkets, the haulage companies and the freight companies. That evidence will tell you of the friction that is there. Actions that need to be taken.

Secondly, as has been highlighted, for Northern Ireland a deep democratic deficit has been left, which means that, uniquely, we are left in a situation in which, on a wide range of our laws, we are placed in a different position from the rest of the United Kingdom. Solutions can be pursued. My preferred solution would be mutual enforcement. However, we are told by the Government that they are going to do a reset with Europe. Nobody is quite clear what that means. I suspect that the parameters of any form of reset are probably changing on a relatively daily basis as the world changes. If the Prime Minister is to be genuine in what he means by a broader reset, we need to see a reset which treats all the United Kingdom on an exactly equal basis, with exactly the same rights, responsibilities and restrictions as any other part of the United Kingdom. We need to see a reset not simply with our wider external relations or indeed the internal unity of the United Kingdom. If this Bill and this amendment are to have value, we need to see a reset of our democracy, our sense of equality and our sense of accountability. This amendment has been very useful in provoking that debate.