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—