House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Roger Gale Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I have already given way to the right hon. Gentleman once.

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

In a moment.

It is not right that what was seen, even in 1999, as a temporary arrangement should persist any longer. This Government were elected on a manifesto that was explicit in its promises that we would bring about immediate reform by removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. The Bill has a tightly defined objective, and a clear focus and aim that delivers on that mandate.

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

There is no bar on that happening. When the new Leader of the Opposition eventually emerges from their parallel universe leadership contest, I am sure that they will have a quota, as all Leaders of the Opposition do. It is for them to consider that issue.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Some minutes ago, the right hon. Gentleman said that the young people of Torfaen believed in and wanted equal opportunity, a point reiterated by the hon. Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey). I am not quite sure how that equal opportunity squares with a Labour party that wants to stuff the House of Lords with its cronies. I cannot see any equal opportunity in that. That aside, this legislation, on which we will be required to vote, is ill thought through. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the hereditary peers who are Members of the House of Lords have made, and continue to make, a considerable contribution to the work of the upper House, and if so, has he given any consideration to, at the very least, ensuring that those hereditary peers who are abolished are given life peerages in a future Parliament?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

How can Members of the Conservative party talk about stuffing the upper House with people after the events of the last 14 years? I thought irony had died. As for the right hon. Gentleman’s point about life peers, I have just said that having been a hereditary peer is no bar to becoming a Member of the Lords. That will be a matter for the new Leader of the Opposition, having looked at the contributions individuals have made. I have not denigrated the contributions of hereditary peers—far from it. I have thanked people for their public service in the upper House, but it is for the new Leader of the Opposition to decide whether to put forward former hereditary peers as life peers. There will be no objection from Labour Members.

I have covered why the removal of the hereditary peers from the other place is overdue. Let me turn to why it is essential. It is indefensible in this day and age for people to sit in our legislature as a result of an accident of birth. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, putting forward a programme for change in this House in October 1968, said:

“the Government believe that reform should achieve the following objectives: first, the hereditary basis for membership should be eliminated”.—[Official Report, 30 October 1968; Vol. 772, c. 34.]

All these years later, that first objective still needs to be fully achieved. It is time for the hereditary nature of the House of Lords to come to an end. The former Lord Speaker Lord Fowler put it eloquently:

“It is not a question of personalities; it is a question of whether appointment of the House based on heredity is the right solution for the 21st century, and I do not believe that it is.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 July 2024; Vol. 839, c. 388.]

As I said in response to the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale), the Bill is not an attack on individuals in the other place. As I have said twice already, we recognise individual contributions. We are saying that we should reflect on the millions of people who were unable to make the same contribution as a result of the family they were born into. The time has come for change. If we are to maintain trust in our democratic institutions, it is important that our second Chamber reflects modern Britain. I hope Members will vote for the Bill this evening, and agree with me that it is indefensible, in this day and age, that over a 10th of our second Chamber is essentially reserved for certain individuals due to an accident of birth.

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[Sarah Olney]

Regrettably, the right hon. Gentleman has not been listening to what I have been saying. Liberal Democrat policy is to have an elected second Chamber. We welcome these measures as a step towards a democratically elected Chamber.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I have long advocated—with, I think, the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (Sir David Davis)—the abolition of the House of Commons, the abolition of the House of Lords, and instead four national Parliaments, each with a First Minister, and an upper House dealing solely with defence, foreign policy and macro-taxation, which was the original purpose of Parliament. Why is the hon. Lady prepared to go half hog rather than the whole hog?

[Sarah Olney]

I must say, I regret that the Conservatives did not win a mandate in July for the kind of wholesale reform that the right hon. Gentleman is proposing. As I say, the Liberal Democrat policy has always been for an elected second Chamber. That is not what the Bill delivers, but we are looking for the Government to go further—far further than the Conservatives did in the previous 14 years. [Interruption.] I find it so extraordinary that Conservative Members are suddenly all converts to the cause of Lords reform when they have done nothing about it for a decade and a half—it is insane. I say to both right hon. Gentlemen who have intervened on me that Liberal Democrat policy is for an elected upper Chamber, but getting rid of the hereditary peers is a welcome first step, and that is why we will support the legislation.

We must do all we can to restore public trust in politics after the chaos of the last Conservative Government. By removing this unelected and undemocratic aspect of our Parliament, we will move closer to that goal.

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[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to stray outside the scope of the Bill. Madam Deputy Speaker has been clear that the Bill is specifically about hereditary peers. The Government have committed to reform the appointments process for the House of Lords. Everything does not have to be done in the same Bill. As the former Deputy Prime Minister pointed out, the pace needs to be considered, so that there are no unintended consequences, about which he is rightly concerned. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) can chunter at me from a sedentary position, but when we are considering hereditary peers, we are looking at the 92.

If anyone wants to justify reserving seats in the House of Lords for 92 white men, I will take an intervention now. Conservative Members do not want to do that because they do not want to defend the indefensible. They want to complain and bellyache that they do not like what we are doing. They dress up their complaints as process concerns about unintended consequences and make spurious arguments about the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain. That all shows that the Conservative party has simply run out of steam and ideas. All Conservative Members can do is chunter and complain about what we want to do.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Setting aside the hon. Gentleman’s ageist remarks, which I find deeply offensive, let me consider the point that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) made. Why is it okay for the Labour party to maintain the Prime Minister’s patronage to appoint party cronies to the House of Lords while abolishing the hereditary peers, who do a good job?

[Gareth Snell]

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if my suggestion that he did not look a day over 60 was ageist—perhaps I should have said “over 50”. I find it difficult to take an argument from Conservative Members about crony patronage and the House of Lords when the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson put hundreds of people in there. He did so against the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, yet Conservative Members said nothing at the time and were happy about it. Now, all of a sudden, it is an absolute problem that needs to be resolved.

I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has made it clear that, after we have completed the process of removing the excepted hereditary peers, the Government will move on to other parts of House of Lords reform, which will make the appointments process more transparent. That will allow us to have a considered debate about the way in which that process can happen. While we have prime ministerial patronage, it must be transparent. Frankly, Conservative Members can give no lessons to any of us about transparency in prime ministerial patronage. Boris Johnson packed the House of Lords with his friends and cronies against the advice of officials, and Conservative Members had nothing to say about it.

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[Simon Hoare]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I nearly called my hon. Friend because he is a friend, that I am more than likely to vote for this Bill on Second Reading. I possibly should have told my Whip about that beforehand—there is my peerage gone. Notwithstanding the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) is one of my oldest and dearest friends, I must say that his reasoned amendment seems to have been written more because of the need to write something, rather than actually to make a case to persuade, which is entirely atypical of the way he usually works.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge made the important point—I do hope that those on the Treasury Bench and the Government Whips have listened—that this is an opportunity to consider proper amendments to make this a more material exercise.

We live, thank God—I say this as a Roman Catholic—in a multicultural, multi-religious society. We have an established church, and I do not think anybody would advocate for its disestablishment at this stage. However, it is surely an anachronism, just because of the sees to which they have been appointed, for the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to sit as part of the legislature. The only other country that has clerics in such a position by dint of office is Iran, which I suggest is not a country that we should seek to emulate very much. Let us have a faith Bench or faith Benches, but let those Benches be of mixed faiths and truly representative of the faith groups doing so much good in our country.

A number of the hereditary peers have been doing sterling work. I think, in particular, of my noble Friend The Earl Howe and His Grace the Duke of Wellington, whom Labour Members were praying in aid just a few months ago, of course, when His Grace was leading the campaign against the then Government to improve water quality and sewerage. I suggest that his expertise in and knowledge of water quality in chalk streams and so forth should not be lost.

I do take on board the sincerity that the Minister claims—this is not a personal thing or a class war; it is a matter of principle. I think the House gets him on that. I do not think he needs to make that point any more. But I do hope that there may be an opportunity for a supernumerary list outside the normal leaders’ nominations —birthday or new year honours—so that those hereditaries who wish to continue their service, and not all will, can have conferred upon them a life peerage. That would make good much of what the Minister has said with regard to his principal motivation and that this is not a personal thing.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Will my hon. Friend agree that if this legislation is to go through, there should be a provision to ensure that all the hereditary peers are offered a life peerage as part of the package?

[Simon Hoare]

One can make a perfectly reasonable argument to say it should be offered to all. One can make an equally good argument that it should be offered only to hereditary peers who are fulfilling a House of Lords duty—chairing a Committee perhaps, or if they are active on their party’s Front Bench. My right hon. Friend has made an important point and I am sure that the Minister will consider it. It would certainly be an act of good grace and it would be an act of charm, both of which I know are characteristics with which the Minister is fully imbued.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I do not wish to detain the House, but when I raised this point during the Minister’s remarks he indicated that it would be perfectly proper and possible for a leader of a party to put forward hereditary peers for life peerages, but that is not the point. The point is that there should be a separate list in this legislation to accommodate all of them.

[Simon Hoare]

I am going to stay mute on the “all” point, but my right hon. Friend echoes the point I was endeavouring to make, which is that a list of conversion, as it were, from hereditary to life should be considered by His Majesty’s Government, outwith leaving it to leaders of any party to nominate for a new year’s honour or a birthday honour, because that would clog up the system for those who are new to public life—echoing the point the Minister raised—where people want to make a contribution and may have caught the eye of the powers that be in order to secure a nomination.

I think there is a job of work that needs to be done. There are a number of ways in which one can land on the right solution, but it should not just be a case of, “Thank you so very much indeed for your service. Please return the ermine to the Lord Great Chamberlain. Your retirement party has been postponed because we could not find a room to have it in”, or whatever it may happen to be. I think there is a way which is elegant, which is kind, which is graceful and which has some democratic underpinning, because at least it will have gone through the appointments.

I close by saying that this is a missed opportunity, and the Labour Front Bench needs to consider that. I appreciate that they have the distorting effect of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who did take up a little Labour bandwidth. We all got constrained by delivering Brexit, or trying not to deliver Brexit. And then we all had the big national distortion of the pandemic. But to offer this dance of the seven veils, after 14 years of opposition, and on an issue that people in this place and outside have been talking about for over a century, suggests to me a lack of detailed preparedness by the Government in some policy areas. It cannot have been a shock to Labour that they won the election; it may have come as a pleasant surprise that they won so comprehensively, but it really cannot have come as a shock that they were likely to win the general election whenever it came, irrespective of how hard my colleagues and I were working to ensure that did not happen:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”,

or misfortune in my party’s case, but we are where we are.

I hope that amendments are forthcoming—I do not think it is too late to work cross-party on this—to buttress this proposal and deliver some of that democratisation of the House of Lords, and to make sure it is more regionally reflective. I listened to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) talking about the number of white men. I will be careful as he is helping me on a constituency issue, for which I am grateful and I want to put my thanks on the record, but my party has given the country three female Prime Ministers, the first Prime Minister of Jewish heritage and the first Prime Minister of the Hindu faith, so I am not entirely certain that we need to take lessons from the Labour party on how to bring people who are not necessarily used to public life into public life.

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[Sir Gavin Williamson]

No, they are totally different things. There will be no disestablishment of the Church of England, but we need to lance the boil of the frankly ridiculous fact that we have clergy automatically sitting, as of right, in one of the Houses that make up this Parliament. To me, that is not right. It happens in Iran, but it does not happen elsewhere. I cannot see the justification for it, especially when it does not reflect the nations and regions of this country. Strong arguments have been made across this House, including on the Labour Benches, about the fact that hereditary peers do not reflect the make-up of this country. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) made a persuasive argument about the fact that they are nearly all male, and that only 1% of them—I think he mentioned—were female. Well, there is a similar challenge with those bishops. Of course, nowadays, only 2% of the British population attend Anglican services on a Sunday. More people declare that they have no religion than actually attend a church. Britain is a very different country today from how it was in the past.

[Sir Roger Gale]

In an earlier intervention, my right hon. Friend said that this Bill is an opportunity missed, and that such legislative opportunities do not come by very often. For the moment, the Cabinet Office has this Bill. Might I suggest that replacing 92 hereditary peers with what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) called “placemen” is not reform? Would it not be a good idea if Ministers gave a clear undertaking this afternoon that they will accept amendments of the kind that my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) proposes?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

I very much hope so. I know the burning radicalism within the Paymaster General’s stomach, and I know he wants to make a difference, but I seem to be more committed to delivering it than he does. I am very keen to make sure that we deliver what he promised on page 108 of the manifesto. I want to see that delivered.

The Paymaster General knows that he will not have another opportunity to legislate on this issue, but he has this opportunity to make a difference, because so many of the things mentioned in the Labour manifesto can be delivered within the scope of this Bill. He has heard that there are Conservative Members with the reforming zeal he once had as a young man, which he seems to have forgotten with the trappings of office. We want to fan the flames of radicalism in him.

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[Sir Gavin Williamson]

What I will be doing is the work to make sure that this House has the opportunity to vote on a Bill that will deliver proper reform of the upper House. Whether that is in areas set out in the Labour manifesto, such as a retirement age of 80 years, which is in paragraph 2 on page 108—

[Sir Roger Gale]

Shame!

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

Only in the House of Lords, let me be clear. It is also vital to introduce participation requirements, and I look forward to working with Ministers to make such amendments.