House of Lords

Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

My Lords, it may be thought odd that I should, in my 93rd year, after 25 years of service in this House, be speaking in this debate—because, clearly, according to what the noble Lord, Lord Williams, said in his excellent opening speech, I am a part of the problem, as I am one of those very aged Peers.

I should like to say something on three relevant topics in relation to this debate. The first is a note of personal gratitude. It would never have occurred to me in my childhood in a mining village in Durham County, as the son of two primary school teachers, with one grandfather a miner and the other a worker in the shipyards of the Tyne, that I would ever end up in the House of Lords. I went to my father’s school in a mining village but then later got a scholarship to an excellent grammar school in a place called Spennymoor. I was on the science side, and there was a young man —among a series of others who had striking careers—on the arts side, who became a close friend. He came from a village called Byers Green near Spennymoor; some of you may have heard of his subsequent career—he was Sir Percy Cradock, who later became the ambassador in Beijing and, eventually, Margaret Thatcher’s adviser on foreign affairs.

I had an excellent education and then went to medical school. I graduated after a shortened wartime course 70 years ago. My subsequent career in medicine was exciting, but I did not enter this House until 1989 —25 years ago—when I was 67 years of age. Fortunately, I came in having just completed my presidency of the General Medical Council and having also completed my wardenship of Green College, Oxford, so I had the time to devote to debates in this House on issues relating to medicine, science and education.

I am very glad that my noble friend Lord Sutherland referred particularly to the work of Select Committees in this House, because it is something that is often overlooked by Members of the other place and by the general public at large. So many reports of Select Committees of this House are on issues that mould, develop and promote changes in government policy. I was fortunate enough to chair a very powerful committee on medical ethics in 1993 to 1994, which produced a report that was accepted by the then Government, who recognised that they should not legalise voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. I appreciate that this matter is now, 20 years later, very much under review, with the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, under consideration in this House. Nevertheless, 20 years of policy was moulded by that Select Committee.

I was for 15 years in total on the Select Committee on Science and Technology, and I chaired a sub-committee on research in the NHS, which in turn led to a series of developments and meetings that created the National Institute for Health Research. We are now looking forward to the opening of the Crick centre near King’s Cross station, which will be a major centre of scientific expertise that will be of enormous value to this nation. Another Crick centre is planned for Manchester. That arose out of an inquiry by the Select Committee.

Of course, many other issues are relevant. However, the second point to which I will refer is the recent development and the fact that it is now possible for life Peers to retire. I was greatly moved by the valedictory speech of Lord Jenkin of Roding. There is no doubt that I shall take advantage of that in the fullness of time and the not too distant future, with my failing hearing and living as I do in north Northumberland, so the burden of travel is becoming increasingly difficult. I hope very much that one way in which the number of people in this House may be reduced is by others following that pattern. However, there are several issues to which I still wish to contribute in debate, which are coming up in the not-too-distant future. That is something that I think is important.

Some two years ago, I followed the noble Lord, Lord Steel, who suggested a possible financial incentive to persuade Peers to accept retirement. A paper by Andrew Makower of the finance department said that that would clearly be, in the end, financially neutral. However, I understand fully that the attitude of government and the usual channels is implacably opposed to any such development, and I think that we can no longer have reason to pursue that topic. I know that the usual channels were very much against it—although I recall a Member of Parliament saying many years ago that the usual channels were the most polluted waterways in western Europe.

I go on to my last point, which has been referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Clark and Lord Sutherland, and by many others in this debate. When I came into this House, the thing that struck me most was that there was no topic on which you could speak in the House of Lords where there was no other expert present. There was a massive range of expertise among people who had a background of training in the arts, humanities and education, as well as in business and finance. We know the remarkable contributions that have been made and are still being made by Law Lords and former Law Lords in this House, which we enormously appreciate. Of course, the expertise in this House is one of its most powerful strengths, which not only contributes to difficult debates on matters in medicine that raise ethical as well as scientific problems, but nurtures the work of the Select Committees. This is crucially important.

Years ago, I often wondered as I looked around this House how a lad from a mining village in Durham County got here, because I was so much taken by the sense of wonderment that had such an effect on me when I first entered this House. That attitude of wonderment has been just a little eroded by some of the developments of the last year or two. The House is too large, and there have been occasions when its behaviour has been less than I would have considered appropriate in early days. It is crucially important that we find a way to reduce that membership, because the actual scientific expertise in this House, to quote one example, has been slowly but progressively eroded at the same time as the House has become increasingly politicised, with a massive influx of politically motivated Peers.

We used to have several distinguished chemists in this House, such as Lord Porter, who was president of the Royal Society and, until recently, Lord Lewis of Newnham. We no longer have an academic chemist in this House to give us support in such activities and, in several other aspects of science, there has been a progressive decline in numbers. It is therefore crucial that any decisions that are made in future maintain the expertise of the Cross Benches and make certain that all the necessary academic disciplines, including science and medicine, are properly represented in this House to maintain its background of being able to scrutinise legislation and promote important developments in each of these fields in Select Committee inquiries.

I could say so much more, but from the lofty heights of my advancing antiquity I wish simply to say that it is an enormous pleasure to be a Member of this House. However, the future is uncertain, because inevitably after the next election, whoever wins, there will be another major influx of political Peers. It is crucial that Members of this House and government should ensure that an adequate number of new Peers with expertise in scientific and other disciplines become Members of this House. If one compares the membership of this House at the moment and over the last few years with that of the House of Commons, where the number of people with scientific qualifications is minimal, one can see that it is crucial to maintain the expertise that is one of the great strengths of this House. For that reason, it is right that we should have not only a further meeting of the Procedure Committee but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, an expansion of the Procedure Committee into something like a constitutional conference. The future must be clarified before it is too late.