House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Stephen Gethins Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mark Ferguson]

I thank my hon. Friend, although I do not think that will help me with my diet. However, I am doing the great north run on Sunday so I will probably need the calories.

I am happy that we are having the debate, but I am somewhat surprised by its tenor, which runs contrary to the Salisbury convention—its correct name, of course, is the Salisbury-Addison convention; we too often neglect the Labour Member of that important duopoly. It has been surprising—particularly so on Second Reading, when the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), led for the Opposition—that there has not been a more straightforward argument from the Opposition in favour of the hereditary principle, because it seems fairly clear that that is what they are arguing for.

I dare say there is a—probably dwindling—proportion of the electorate who wish to see the hereditary principle enshrined within those crucial aspects of our legislature in the scope of our discussions, but no Opposition Members appear willing to make that argument. I am afraid it is an act of constitutional contortion for them to say they merely wish to allow some people to serve out their time. If that is the case, why do we have elections? Many wonderful public servants on both sides of the House lost their seats at the last election; but in this place we believe that, at the will of the people, any of us could be gone—and that is quite right.

[Stephen Gethins (Arbroath and Broughty Ferry) (SNP)]

The hon. Member is making the point that any of us should be able to go, and I agree. Should that not be the case for all parliamentarians and not just those in this House?

[Mark Ferguson]

My long-standing views on reform of our Parliament can be looked up by any Member if they so wish. I very much welcomed, both on Second Reading and from the Front Bench today, the comments on the future reform of the Lords and what that might look like. However, I dare say to the hon. Gentleman that we might agree on some specific aspects more than he imagines.

There has not been much discussion of Lords amendment 2, on Ministers’ pay. I welcome the Conservative party’s stout defence of working people and of ensuring that people are paid what they are owed. We have also heard references to equalities law from the Opposition Benches, and I welcome that. I just think it is such as a shame that it is only being applied specifically and uniquely to hereditary peers.

As Conservative Members well know, there is a limit on the number of Ministers who can be paid. I think that is right and I do not believe that now is the right time to expand the cost of our politics with more paid Ministers. However, if the Conservative party believes, genuinely and deep down in its soul, that it needed to have more paid Ministers, it had 14 years of Government in which it could have done that, rather than tacking it on as a distraction from the issue at hand here, which is incrementally but crucially reforming our constitution.

I support the Government’s position on all the amendments. Let us get on with this. We have had 62 hours of debate—and counting. Let us crack on. It has been 1,100 years; I think it is time to cut it short.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

Yes, she is very good. I thank my hon. Friend for that.

I want to start by addressing some of the points that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) made—he has left. His characterisation of the House of Lords is grossly unfair. He characterised everybody who is a Member as being some sort of pocket-stuffing hanger-on. I think that exposes more about his particular brand of petty grievance politics than it does about the actual calibre of the individuals down at the end of the corridor. Regardless of party affiliation or whether they are independent or bishops, the Members I have come across—in Committee or Joint Committee work, or in delegations when I was previously in the House are—good people who want to see the nation benefit and our country thrive and see good politics and good governance. The characterisation is often unfair and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire belittles his own position as a Member of this House.

[Stephen Gethins]

I intervene merely because my hon. Friend is not here to defend himself, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. There are a number of fine people in the House of Lords and I have worked with them in a number of ways. However, democratic accountability should be at the heart. Labour promised to scrap the House of Lords in the first ever manifesto it produced over a century ago, so although his hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson) might have been waiting 1,100 years, we have been waiting 110 years for Labour to fulfil its commitment to electing and giving them that democratic mandate.

[Gareth Snell]

Without getting drawn into the debate on the rights and wrongs, I will say that if the Scottish National party had wanted an elected second Chamber, it could have had one in the Scottish Parliament but chose not to. There are things about the way in which our democracy works that mean the SNP Members come down here simply to have a pop at this place for their grievance politics in Scotland. Frankly, if the SNP spent more time thinking about how it could help the nation rather than its petty nationalism, we might be in a better place as a country and things would be better in Scotland.

In a point relating to amendment 1, as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) rightly pointed out, Lord Grocott has proposed this Bill in the House of Lords numerous times over the past 20 years. He has tried to get to the point when there could have been an opportunity over the past two decades for Members who are here by virtue of the hereditary principle to be phased out over time. At every opportunity, it was blocked by the Conservative party; at every opportunity, it was talked out.

When the Bill was introduced in this place, first by David Hanson and then by John Spellar, the Conservative party opposed it, saying that the principle was wrong and there was not enough reform. I therefore feel that it is slightly disingenuous now to propose something that the Conservatives have opposed for the past two decades as their solution to the problem that they themselves created by not accepting it in the first place. It is slightly unfair, and it is a categorisation of their own politics that they seek to find ways to frustrate the Bill because they have no option for themselves.

On the somewhat spuriously suggestion that this is a way of neutering opposition in the other place, the number of Conservative peers, even after the expulsion of the hereditaries, will still make them the largest party in the House of Lords, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) pointed out. The Labour party is currently the third largest party in the House of Lords, after the Cross Benchers. Even after the removal of some of the Cross Benchers who sit by virtue of a hereditary peerage, they will still only be slightly behind the Labour party. The idea that this will remove any form of opposition in the upper House is simply incorrect—it does not hold water.

The other idea that good scrutiny of legislation in the House of Lords can somehow happen only by virtue of the application of the minds of the hereditary peers is equally incorrect. Some of the best challenges to Government in this Parliament have come from Members of the House of Lords who have been appointed. It does not necessarily mean they are less likely to be independent because they are not there by virtue of a hereditary peerage. I genuinely do not see that for myself. The times when I have sat and watched the House of Lords, because their sitting hours are later, I have seen that the challenges that come from the bishops, the Cross Benchers and the members of the Conservative and Liberal parties, regardless of how they reached there, have been thoughtful and well considered, and long may that continue. I do not think that is diminished by virtue of the fact that we say to a small group of those who have a right in the House of Lords, “Your route into this place was an irregularity, and we are seeking to sort that.”

The shadow Paymaster General, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), disputed my figure. There have been 21 appointments to the House of Lords who have had the Conservative Whip. I appreciate that some of those have been resignation honours from previous Prime Ministers—and there were a few to get through because of the way their party operated—but there have been 21. At any point, the former Prime Ministers could have said, “We would like to consider giving those to members of the hereditary group who are not able to continue.” There have been a number of appointees who were not part of a resignation honours list, and again, the Conservative party did not take the opportunity to say to Earl Howe, “We are going to make sure that you can continue.”