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.