House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

5: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Life peerages not to be conferred against recommendation of the House of Lords Appointments Commission(1) The Life Peerages Act 1958 is amended as follows.(2) In section 1 (power to confer life peerages), after subsection (1) insert—“(1A) The power under subsection (1) may not be exercised in relation to a person if the House of Lords Appointments Commission has written to the Prime Minister to recommend that a peerage should not be conferred on that person.””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would prevent a life peerage being conferred on a person if the House of Lords Appointments Commission has recommended against the appointment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 5 is in the names of my noble friend Lord Newby, me and others. In preparing for this, I was also looking at preparation for Friday’s debate on a report from our Select Committee on the Constitution, Executive Oversight and Responsibility for the UK Constitution. That report in effect says that the chief responsibility for maintaining constitutional behaviour in Britain rests with the Prime Minister. That is to say the Prime Minister, who is the all-powerful Executive, is also responsible for making sure that the Executive behave themselves. That, of course, is one of the underlying problems with our unwritten constitution: it relies on our Head of Government being a “good chap”, or a “good chapess” in the case of Liz Truss. The responsibility, authority and power to appoint Members of the second Chamber also lie with the guardian of the constitution and Prime Minister, more or less unchecked.

The Written Statement we had the other week—quietly put out on the Government’s behalf—suggests that future party appointments to this House should require the party nominating them to provide a short note on the qualifications for the—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but, just as a matter of accuracy, I think he is talking about the citations that are already in place and were used in the last list to come forward.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My apologies. The Prime Minister in future would have to justify overriding the House of Lords Appointments Commission. This perhaps is some control mechanism on the Prime Minister’s power of appointment, but we have lived through a difficult period in which we have had Prime Ministers who did not particularly pay attention to constitutional conventions and did override the advice on the integrity and suitability of nominations presented by the Prime Minister.

I think the long-term answer to this is clear: we change the way in which this House is constituted. The Bill we presented when we were in the coalition in 2011 and 2012 suggested that we would do much better to have a second Chamber elected in thirds for 15-year terms. That would resolve a lot of these problems, but in the meantime, with the very slow pace of partial reform that we have on these occasions, we need a number of interim measures to limit the Prime Minister’s prerogative and to guard against the real risk that we might again have a Prime Minister who is not a good chap or chapess.

Over the last 30 or 40 years the British have constructed a number of what are called constitutional guard-rails to limit the Prime Minister’s untrammelled prerogative power. We have the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests and the House of Lords Appointments Commission itself. The Labour Party’s manifesto committed to construct a new ethics and integrity commission that will also be a means, yet undefined by the Government, of checking the Prime Minister’s untrammelled authority and holding the Prime Minister to account.

We are all painfully conscious that not all Prime Ministers or presidents respect constitutional or ethical constraints. We have experience in this country, the United States has an extremely painful experience at the moment, and we might again have the experience after the next election, so this interim measure seems to many of us necessary and highly desirable. I beg to move.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendments 5 and 6. I very much support enhancing the powers of HOLAC, largely for the reasons explained by the noble Lord. Too many appointments made by previous Prime Ministers have been of people who I rather doubt were in any sense appropriate. That, I am afraid, has happened on too many occasions.

In Committee I tabled an amendment which did not find favour with my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne. It would have required HOLAC to state its reasons for not approving an individual and allowed that individual the opportunity to make representations. I did that because I was very conscious that injustices can happen, and I think natural justice requires some form of remedy. My noble friend argued very persuasively, as he always does, that this would open up the prospect of judicial review. I am bound to say that I think he was unduly pessimistic; I do not agree with him. But I took the sense of the House, and I have not repeated that part of my amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

Those four Cross-Benchers have come through the route of public service, and there is still obviously the expectation that HOLAC would have its appointments done separately. I think that was quite clear in the Statement. I am sorry that that was not clear to the noble Lord before.

Having answered questions again, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this debate has gone a good deal wider than our modest amendment. Perhaps we will come back to oaths, and the question of the balance in appointments of Cross-Benchers, between the great and the good and people’s Peers, is another thing that we should clearly come back to.

I was very struck at various points in the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, particularly when he was discussing the difference between liberal democracy and popular democracy. Liberal democracy is where those who govern do so with a degree of checks and balances to make sure that decisions are taken with due consideration and that policy does not swing with popular opinion too rapidly from one to another.

When the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, says that we should not have unelected judges holding Governments to account, he is actually saying that the rule of law should not be a check on the tribune of the people, whoever the President or Prime Minister may be. In this amendment, we are talking about a check. We are not saying that HOLAC should make all the nominations. We are saying that, when the Prime Minister makes nominations, HOLAC should advise and the Prime Minister should accept that advice.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord says this is not about all nominations but just those from the Prime Minister. However, the only other nominations other than the HOLAC-appointed ones come through the Prime Minister from the political parties, so which nominations is the noble Lord referring to?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

In that case, I must have misspoken and I apologise. The Prime Minister makes the nominations and HOLAC considers them. That seems to us to be a valuable part of the checks and balances of a liberal democracy.

This is not a new problem. Boris Johnson is not the only person who has abused the system. If one is looking for villains of the past, my party provides by far the greatest in David Lloyd George, who sold peerages. Thankfully, we have moved away from that. I wish to press this to a vote, so I ask if I may test the opinion of the House.