House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I will endeavour to be brief. I think that the Bill is to be welcomed. It is many things, but it is not, I fear, what the Government have tried to dress it up as. It is the fulfilment of a manifesto commitment, but one that was made, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) made clear, back in 1997. Blair blinked because my friend Robert Salisbury did what all Cecils have done since their appointment by Queen Elizabeth: he did a bit of deal-making and they found a solution.

If you are very quiet and listen, Madam Deputy Speaker, you can hear the voices of Labour radicals of the past muttering to themselves, “Is that it? Is that what all the intervening years since 1997 and the 14 years of Labour navel-gazing in opposition, as it contemplated its radical programme for government, have produced—removing 92 people who would have been removed in any event had Blair not blinked? No democratisation at all of the House of Lords? What a wasted opportunity.” What a wasted period of opposition that was—something I hope and know that our Front Benchers will not replicate. This timid church mouse of a Bill says, “We will take away some people who we would have taken away more than a quarter of a century ago.”

The Paymaster General, who I always consider to be one of the stars of the Treasury Bench and who is a good friend, told us that the principal motivation behind the Bill is for young constituents of Torfaen to say, “Ah, a glass ceiling has been removed,” as if they have sat there thinking, “You know, I would love to get involved in public life, if it wasn’t for this roadblock to my advancement”—namely, the 92 hereditary peers. With the greatest of respect to those on Treasury Bench, I think that a greater percentage of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and constituents of all Labour Members—are probably asking themselves when the Labour party will crash the glass ceiling of having either a person of colour or a woman lead it.