House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Tankerness Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. In asserting my support for this Bill, it in no way detracts from the respect and esteem in which I hold the noble Lord, or indeed the other hereditary Peer who has already spoken in the debate: the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. The fact that one supports the removal of hereditary Peers does not in any way reflect on the contribution that they have made.

The Bill falls short because it fails to meet the bigger challenge of a more fundamental reform of the House. Removing all the remaining hereditary Peers at least helps us move into the 20th century. As my noble friends Lord Newby and Lord Rennard noted in a debate on Lords reform on 12 November, the preamble to the Liberal Government’s Parliament Act 1911 read:

“And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation”.


That was 113 years ago: I think we have waited long enough.

I read some of the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons on that, and it is interesting that it would appear that the preamble was put in to give some reassurance that further reform of the House of Lords would take place, because at that time, the Conservative Opposition in the Commons were saying that there should not be any change in the powers of the House of Lords, as was proposed by the Parliament Act, until there was a more fundamental reform of the House of Lords. This has echoed down the century again and again, but one also suspects that it is a bit of a delay rather than an act of principle.

There is a need to work out reform. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said was necessary—one of the few things on which I agreed with him—we should refresh the conventions to clearly establish the relationship between the Lords and the Commons. Indeed, in the debate on the Parliament Bill in 1911, the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, outlined his goals:

“First, that this House must be predominant in legislation. Next, that the functions, and the only functions, which are appropriate to a Second Chamber, are the functions of consultation and revision and, subject to proper safeguards, of delay. Further, that the body which is to perform those functions shall be a relatively small body. Next, that it must be a body which does not rest on an hereditary basis”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/1911; col. 588.]


Most of us today would readily sign up to Asquith’s limits of what the second Chamber should be. Refreshing the conventions would help to reinforce that. In a representative democracy, direct election is the basis on which those promoting and revising legislation should be chosen.

The proposals brought forward in 2012 did try to take into account all the difficulties and recognised what the relationship should be between the two Chambers, albeit it was going towards a fully elected House. It follows that if there should be a direct election, there would no place in a second Chamber for the Lords Spiritual. I do not have a problem with that. The right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, in the debate on 12 November, said:

“It is an expression of our vocation to service in all communities that is core to our constitutional status as an established Church”


and that the Bishops brought

“a voice for faith and for our local communities”.—[Official Report, 12/11/24; col. 1714.]

I am sure that the right reverend Prelate did not mean to imply that there were no other voices of faith in your Lordships’ House, because I can look around and see many of them at the moment.

Although the right reverend Prelate said that the Bishops served the local communities, they are the communities in only one part of the United Kingdom. This is a Chamber of the Parliament of the whole United Kingdom, and it is not logical that only one part of the United Kingdom should be represented by the Lords Spiritual. If we had a properly directly elected Chamber, there would be people of faith here; there would be an opportunity to make sure that the whole United Kingdom was well represented. One of the ways in which we go forward might be to ensure that all the nations and regions are fairly and properly represented.

I do not subscribe to the idea that the Bishops could be balanced out by bringing in representatives of other denominations. My own denomination, the Church of Scotland, made it clear, last time the General Assembly debated it, that in a small House, there should be no faith representatives at all. I would go along with that, but I do not suspect that it is going to happen in the near future; it would certainly be a healthy thing if that is the direction that we move in.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Tankerness Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, who has made a very robust defence of the Lords spiritual in this House. As he was speaking and outlining the reasons why certain numbers would not work, it occurred to me that the logical thing was not to have Bishops at all. Then, they could devote all their time to their diocesan work without having to worry about sitting in Parliament.

I found the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, very persuasive for a number of reasons. The first is the historical link, which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Moore, between the hereditary peerages and the Lords spiritual. A House of Lords Library briefing in 2017 said:

“The participation of the Bishops in public business dates back to the early feudal period, when Bishops were summoned to Parliament by virtue of their feudal status as royal tenants by barony. It has been said that ‘at one time the Spiritual Peers were the most influential Members of the House. They filled the more important offices of state, and in actual number they had a majority over the Temporal Peers’”.


So there is that historical link. The bishops were powers in the land. They owned land—as indeed the Church of England still does—and it was therefore not surprising that they should have a voice in Parliament, but that argument can no longer be made.

I have been reflecting on what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Moore: no bishops, no King. I come from a part of the United Kingdom, and am a member of the Church of Scotland, which has not had bishops since the Reformation, but I can tell noble Lords that the King is respected and very much loved in Scotland.

Next week, we will debate the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill, which is a good illustration of the link between the monarch and the Church. It means that the Church is a national church, but without us having any desire or need to be in the legislature, not even the Scottish Parliament. It is a link. So, while the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield says we cannot break the link between Church and state, I think we can. There is no need for the Church, or any particular church, to have representation in the legislature—and it still can be a national church. It can still reflect the views from the different component geographical parts.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made the valid point that, while it is said that the Church of England has the great advantage of having its dioceses, and it brings views from different parts of England to your Lordships’ House, it is representation from only one part of our United Kingdom. It does not have any representation from Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, and in a Parliament that seeks to be a Parliament of the United Kingdom—and many of us here are very strong in our belief that we should continue as a United Kingdom—it is unfortunate that only one part of the United Kingdom has religious representation.

I have looked at the amendment that suggests a whole series of different denominations and faiths that could be nominated. It brought to mind that, when the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, the first resolution we voted on was whether there should be a “time for reflection” or “prayers”, and time for reflection it became. One of my colleagues, Donald Gorrie, now sadly deceased, proposed prayers by proportional representation. I looked at the list in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and thought, “For heaven’s sake! They’ll be wanting to have faith representation here by proportional representation, and who knows where that would lead us to”.

The last time the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland discussed this issue, it took the view that there should be no bishops in a smaller House of Lords, and nor indeed should there be automatic representation of any other denomination or faith. By all means have bishops, moderators, clergy, or presidents of the Methodist Conference who get here on their own merit as life Peers, but there is no need for them to be automatically ex officio appointed to your Lordships’ House. For that reason, I am very supportive of the amendment tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, I extend my sincere thanks to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, for tabling Amendments 48 and 49, which I am pleased to be supporting today. I rise in strong support of both amendments, which offer an opportunity for meaningful reform.

Plaid Cymru has long advocated an end to the automatic provision of legislative seats to Bishops, a change that these amendments would help to realise. Currently, 26 seats are guaranteed to Bishops of the Church of England, yet, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, no guaranteed seats exist for the Church in Wales, the Church of Scotland or for any other faith group. This disparity reflects a deeper issue: the exclusion of Wales and Scotland from representation within the Lords spiritual. It is, regrettably, another example of the UK Parliament’s continuing disproportionate focus on England.

Beyond the Vatican City and Iran, most countries do not grant automatic seats as lawmakers to religious leaders. While some Members of your Lordships’ House may propose the inclusion of representatives from other faiths, I firmly believe that this is not a viable solution. The complexity of deciding which faiths, denominations or non-religious organisations should be represented alongside the constantly shifting demographic of the UK make such a proposal impossible. This is why I cannot support Amendments 33 and 78; they do not differ significantly from our current system, which already grants 26 Bishops automatic seats. As such, they fail to address the issue of representation in a meaningful way.

Polling data from a YouGov survey conducted last September reveals the depth of public sentiment on this matter. Only 22% of respondents believed that the House of Lords should continue reserving places for Church of England Bishops. This consensus spans political divides, age groups, gender and regions. Across the board, the public support an end to reserved places for the Lords spiritual.

Let me be clear: this is not a reflection of the valuable work done by individual Lords spiritual. On the contrary, many Bishops have made significant contributions, particularly on prison reform, contributing to debates on overcrowding and offender treatment; and through their efforts to support migrants and refugees, including their vocal opposition to the Rwanda Bill, which should be commended. However, these accomplishments speak to the individuals involved, not the system that automatically grants them a place in the House of Lords. In a reformed second Chamber, such individuals could, and should, be elected on the merit of their work and dedication, not based on their religious office.

Therefore, I urge the Committee to support Amendments 48 and 49, which represent a clear and necessary step towards a more equitable and representative House of Lords.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Tankerness Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make one brief contribution to this debate, which is likely to go on for some time. I enjoyed listening to the contributions entirely from lawyers except for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. They had one thing clearly in common: none of them had any reference whatsoever to the subject of hereditary Peers being removed from this House. They are entitled to have made their amendments because of some ruling, which came from somewhere that I have not yet discovered, that under remote circumstances hereditary Peer membership could relate to other parts of the constitution. I accept that this might be the case in some remote circumstances. However, it is very difficult for me to understand, in any sensible conversation, what relevance adding, through these amendments, 25 protected places in the House of Lords has to the subject of this Bill.

I do not want to prolong it because I do not want to promote debate. However, with such a loose definition of what is included and what is not, on the same logic if you had a Bill to reduce class sizes in infant classes it would be entirely within the scope of the Bill to discuss university admissions processes—because, obviously, if you reduce class sizes, that gives an opportunity for children to develop more effectively and stand a better chance of getting into university. Lawyers can do that but, in the interests of common sense and as a general principle, if an amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the Bill, it would be a good idea to determine that it is out of order.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to my Amendments 58A and 59B. I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said. I tabled these amendments against a background of also aspiring to a wholly elected House, where appointments would not come into it.

What prompted my amendments was that Amendment 57 recommends that

“the Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls and Lord President of the Court of Session be granted a life peerage”.

In the interests of the union, we should not forget one part of the United Kingdom, and that is why I have sought to add the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. I do not know the present Lady Chief Justice, Dame Siobhan Keegan, but I know her predecessor, Sir Declan Morgan, who would make excellent contributions to your Lordships’ House—and may yet do so for all that I know. If we are passing legislation for some parts of the United Kingdom, there is no logic at all to why Northern Ireland should be omitted.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has said. Like him, I spotted the omission of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and note that we have not had a holder of that office since Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, who was the last person to receive a peerage under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, so I welcome the noble and learned Lord’s amendment.

My Amendments 58 and 59 are designed not to disagree with the proposition that senior lawyers are very important and useful people but simply to point out that useful and important people can be found in other walks of life as well. There is much sense in the amendments that my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and my noble friends Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Banner have tabled.

I agree with what my noble friend Lord Wolfson said: a lot of the mess that we are in stems from the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. The fact that we are still, 20 years on, debating some of the questions that were left unanswered, perhaps even unopposed, at the time of the passage of that Act, answers the point that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, raised. It is important when embarking on constitutional reform to try to think of the implications, and that is why I welcome noble Lords scrutinising this Bill and its knock-on effects in many other areas. I know the noble Lord regrets that we are debating it at such length, but this is a very important Bill with serious consequences, and we do not want in 20 years’ time to find ourselves with the sorts of problems that were not properly addressed during the debates on the Constitutional Reform Act.

From my experience working in Downing Street under my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead, I can say a little bit about a more recent chapter. Noble Lords know that, when he was Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, established a committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to look at the size of the House and propose non-legislative ways that it could be reduced. Not everyone agreed that the size of the House was a problem, but a clear majority did, including those who spoke in a well-attended debate held on the committee’s report on 19 December 2017. As Prime Minister at the time, it fell to my noble friend Lady May to respond to this initiative, which had been taken by your Lordships’ House to reduce its size. She wrote to Lord Fowler on 20 February 2018, responding to the report, as well as to the points that were made in the debate in December about it.

My noble friend Lady May acknowledged that, if noble Lords were to be persuaded to embrace retirement, an innovation which at that point had only recently been brought about through the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, they would need an assurance of restraint from the Prime Minister. In her letter to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, my noble friend gave that assurance, and she stuck to it: she and Gordon Brown are the only Prime Ministers in modern times under whom the size of the House of Lords has gone down rather than up. As part of her policy of restraint, my noble friend said that she would

“operate on the basis that there is no automatic entitlement to a peerage for any holder of high office in public life”.

That is the reason, in addition to the Parliamentary Answer that was highlighted by my noble friend Lord Murray a few moments ago, why senior judges have not, as they might have expected, come to your Lordships’ House automatically.

This has certainly been disappointing to them, and it has denied your Lordships’ House the valuable contributions that they would all undoubtedly have made. In his memoir, Lord Dyson records with very good grace his understandable disappointment at being the first Master of the Rolls for, I think, two centuries not to sit in your Lordships’ House; only death prevented others from doing so. His successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, has come here and plays a very valuable role indeed in the work of this House.

As my noble friend Lord Murray says, Lord Dyson was also the first Justice of the Supreme Court not to come to this House. The first cohort were, of course, Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, so entitled to return to this House on their retirement. Unlike my noble friend Lord Banner, I am among those who regret their removal from your Lordships’ House. I tend to the view that cases like some of those that we saw in the Brexit years would have been less politicised had they been decided in this building, rather than pitting two institutions on opposite sides of Parliament Square against one another and asking them to settle the matter over the heads of protesting crowds standing between them.

But if all Justices of the Supreme Court were to come here on retirement, as my noble friends Lord Murray and Lord Banner suggest, we would be adding a tally of 20 new Cross-Benchers—nine former justices and 11 current ones—on current numbers alone. It would also seem to run counter to the argument that was made by those who supported the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 that the judiciary and Parliament should be more separate.

My noble friend Lord Wolfson and others, in their Amendment 56, suggest that there should be peerages ex officio only for the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Stepping aside from the debate on numbers, they crucially and sensibly suggest that the peerage should be granted on appointment and not at the end of their time on the judicial bench. As I said at Second Reading, there are dangers in allowing politicians to pick the judges on whom they wish to bestow favour; but that same danger relates to other key public servants, such as Chiefs of the Defence Staff, Commissioners of Police of the Metropolis, heads of the intelligence agencies, Cabinet Secretaries and many more.