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.