House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Mark Ferguson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to a sapling. The interesting thing about saplings, as I am sure he knows, is that sometimes we become oaks—I guess we shall have to see—and the reason there are so many saplings on the Government Benches is that we chopped down so many oaks from the Conservative party. Although we have not been in the House for long, many of us have been involved in the interests of our constituents and the conversations of politics for a long time. Does he agree that the House does not hold the collective knowledge of the whole country and that sometimes we may have formed views about what is necessary for the other place before reaching this Chamber?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman grows into a sturdy oak, like all the great oaks on the Benches behind me. There is a path to be followed to achieve that. Many people may well enter the House with pre-existing views, and that is of course the basis on which many of them were elected, but my argument is that we should consider the consequences of one change in relation to hereditaries for the wider composition of the House of Lords and the constitution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Curtis]

I rise to make a few brief points in this incredibly important debate. The most important point—one that we have still not spent enough time discussing—is the basic one that people should not be in this place on the basis of the hereditary principle. It is incredibly important that we move away from that for a variety of reasons, which I will come to. I will not pretend that the legislation goes as far as many of us would like it to —although, at the moment, most of us Labour Members think that elections are a pretty good way to decide things.

[Mark Ferguson]

Recently, while doing a media interview, I was confronted by comments from a Conservative Member of the other place who argued that hereditary peers were good for Parliament because it meant that there were more northerners in that Chamber. I am a proud northerner myself. Does my more southern Friend agree that although regional proportionality is important, hereditary peers are not the way to achieve it?

[Chris Curtis]

We could say many things about hereditary peers, but their being representative of the country as a whole is certainly not one of them. Many of us Labour Members think that elections are certainly good, and I hope there will be a point in the future when we can look at introducing them to the House of Lords, but in the meantime, there is no good argument for keeping the hereditary principle.

Let me turn to the importance of trust in politics. I worked in polling before I became an MP; I spoke to many people across the country, and unfortunately it was always amazing just how low trust in politics is. There are many reasons for that, which I hope we will continue to work on throughout this Parliament—we are doing some important work to address that lack of trust—but one of those reasons has to be the knowledge that people can make it to Parliament not because of what they have done in life, because they represent their communities and their country, or because they have a fantastic vision for what they want to do, but because of what womb they happen to be born from. I do not think that is right, and it is one of the reasons why we have seen that lack of trust.