House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am very attracted to what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has just said. I find what my noble friend Lord Banner had to say extremely attractive, and I hope that the Government will find it their—

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

Wisdom?

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Yes, wisdom—I was clutching for the word. I hope they will find it in their wisdom to reach a conclusion similar to that advanced by my noble friend.

Quickly, while the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is still in the Chamber—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

He is never far absent from it. This series of amendments does not appeal to the noble Lord because it does not deal with the hereditary peerage, but of course, right in front of us—of me—is my noble friend Lord Hailsham, the third Viscount, whose grandfather and father were both Lords Chancellor and therefore senior members of the judiciary in their day. He demonstrates the agility of the British constitution, in that, although a hereditary Peer, he sits here as a life Peer.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I cannot be culled.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Exactly; and we are all the better off for that. However, I think it very important to recognise that, although our constitution is odd, strange and, in many ways, not very neat, it does function all the better by having people from a variety of backgrounds in this place.

The fact that we do not any more regularly have the presence of what used to be called Law Lords, and now are justices of the Supreme Court, is a disbenefit to us. Also, I suspect that there was a time when the Law Lords gained advantage by, if not speaking and voting in the Chamber, at least being here and listening to or discerning the political mood of the moment. This is particularly so when they are dealing with cases involving public policy. I suspect that we have missed a trick by informing the Supreme Court and our being informed by it in our respective deliberations.

--- Later in debate ---

I have raised this point before in your Lordships’ House. The last time I did so from the Government Benches, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, whom we all miss, wryly commented, with that twinkle in his eye, that this was, he thought, the first job application ever made on the Floor of the House of Lords. This is not meant to be a job application, but I beg to move.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I sympathise with a very great deal of what my noble friend said. I speak with a certain family background, and I too regret the diminution of the role and status of the Lord Chancellor. That said, we are where we are and we cannot sensibly address this amendment without asking ourselves what the role of the Lord Chancellor is and should be. Since 2007, the Lord Chancellor has also been Secretary of State for Justice, sitting in the House of Commons. The Secretary of State for Justice has a very large number of responsibilities that touch on the constituency interests of Members of Parliament. I find it very difficult to believe that Members of Parliament would accept the Secretary of State for Justice sitting in the House of Lords.

That takes one directly to the role. Are we to separate the role of the Lord Chancellor from that of Secretary of State for Justice? That is certainly possible; it could be done. But what other departmental responsibility would the Lord Chancellor then have? I accept that there are some senior offices that can be represented in this House—if I may say so, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General does so with distinction. He has been preceded by other Attorneys-General in this House, and I regard that as perfectly proper because there are a relatively few constituency interests that would engage Members of the House of Commons.

That, to a lesser extent, was also true of the Foreign Secretary. My noble friend Lord Cameron occupied the role of Foreign Secretary with great distinction. It caused real problems in the House of Commons, as indeed did the role of Lord Carrington at the time of Lady Thatcher’s Government. In both cases, this had to be met by having a very effective deputy. But, again, the Foreign Secretary’s role, although hugely important, raised relatively few constituency interests.

My point is this: if the Lord Chancellor is to have a serious departmental responsibility, which has constituency interests engaged so far as Members of the House of Commons are concerned, that Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice or whatever, has to be in the House of Commons. If this Committee accepts that, one is then driven to ask: what, if any, departmental role would a new Lord Chancellor have? I find it very difficult to identify one. If that is the case, we are diminishing and not enhancing the role of the Lord Chancellor. So, while I agreed with an awful lot of the underlying sentiments expressed by my noble friend, I cannot back him on this one.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I have my name on Amendment 60. It seems to me that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in this regard—the Lord Chancellor having by law to be a Member of your Lordships’ House—is sensible. My noble friend Lord Hailsham’s point is easy to answer. Part of the constitutional pottage made by the Blair Government when they passed the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 was the creation of the Ministry of Justice, with its Orwellian-sounding name. It has not been a happy experience melding the operation of the prison system with the court system, and I suggest that the answer is that that is broken up and the Prison Service returned to the Home Office. Accordingly, there would be no need for a separate Secretary of State for Justice, thus answering my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s point, and the Lord Chancellor could therefore return to this House and protect the interests of the judiciary in the Cabinet. He could indeed also return to being Speaker of this House, which would further guarantee his independence from the Government of the day. That, of course, is for another day, but, at the moment, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing my remarks so capably. I hate to disappoint him, but my intention is to speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Laing’s Amendment 67, not to move Amendment 90C in my name. I tabled it intending for it to sit with the earlier amendment that I proposed, which we debated at an earlier stage. My intention was to draw out a broader debate about the importance of a separation of powers. We heard earlier about the separation between the judiciary and the legislature, but we do not speak very often about the possible separation between the Executive and the legislature. That is the debate I was wishing to have, but it does not sit comfortably at this point in our proceedings.

I do, however, very strongly support my noble friend Lady Laing’s amendment, which serves quite an important purpose—and sits naturally with the avowed intention of the Bill. Most of us across the House recognise that the odd process of exempted hereditary Peers being chosen by by-election has become very difficult to justify. It has been widely said at previous stages that it had already really fallen into disuse and most people have been happy to see that there would not be future by-elections.

In dealing with what appeared to be an anomalous route for appointment to your Lordships’ House, it is very hard to see how the appointment of a Peer for life simply because they are being appointed to do a specific job for a specific period of time is not at least as anomalous.

I strongly support my noble friend in her intention. As she has said, it would increase the freedom of Prime Ministers to bring in people to act as Ministers from a much broader field or a much wider spectrum of life experience—and it would not have the unintended consequence of constantly swelling the ranks of your Lordships’ House.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to make two brief points. First, with regard to what has just been said by the noble Baroness, I strongly support the idea of time-limited persons in this House, whether they are Ministers, appointed for a particular short term or—my own favoured proposal—for fixed terms of, say, 10 years, which addresses some of my noble friend’s point.

Amendment 90C, which my noble friend Lord Brady does not intend to move, would be seriously bad news. If this House is to perform its function as a revising Chamber by scrutinising legislation, it is essential that the Government of the day are represented by competent Ministers who can answer questions from the Opposition or their own Benches. If my noble friend’s amendment, which he does not intend to move, was ever to find favour, the role of this House would be hugely diminished.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, support Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Laing of Elderslie, which I have signed.

As a stalwart participant in debates about the future of your Lordships’ House, in particular on the principle of its hereditary membership, it has been a source of constant frustration to me that the House has been unable since 2015 to make even minor and sensible reforms to our composition, until now. There are several sensible amendments to this Bill that go beyond removing the hereditary basis for membership, and I support the principle of this one.

I have looked at ministerial appointments made by way of creating a new peerage since 2015. There have been 29 in this period, of which nine—or approximately one-third—have lasted as Ministers for less than a year. Only seven of the 29 new Peers created in this way have lasted as Ministers for more than two years. Therefore, 76% of them have not lasted as Ministers for two years, but all of them have been granted lifetime membership of the House. I then looked at the record of those appointed Ministers in this way after they ceased to be Ministers. Of the 29, 11 have gone on to make fewer than 10 spoken contributions and only 12 have made more than 50. Fifteen did not serve on a committee, 17 took part in fewer than 50 Divisions and only eight took part in more than 100 Divisions. It is a great source of frustration to many in the House that we have seen so many ministerial appointments which involved the granting of a life peerage, with the newly appointed Ministers lasting only a very short period of time in office and then mostly disappearing without trace from our Chamber but without choosing to resign from it.

If ministerial appointments created in that way continue at the same rate over the next decade, we will add another 30 Members to the House. That would make the cull of the hereditary Members less justified, if it were simply about numbers. One ministerial Peer would be created for every three hereditary Peers removed, and the ministerial Peers are likely to be of less value to the House in the long run.

All the evidence suggests that peerages created to enable ministerial appointments inflate our size while not invariably providing Members who are very active beyond the term of their ministerial office. We need to end the practice of a peerage for life being granted simply to enable ministerial appointments to be made from outside the membership of the House of Commons. Almost everyone agrees that the House of Lords is too large and that it is not well served by having Members who inflate our numbers without properly participating in our work.

Therefore, I hope that the Government will look favourably at ending the link between a life peerage and ministerial office. They could, at the very least, expect any new Ministers appointed in this way, at the end of their term of ministerial office, either to remain as active in the House as expected by the standards of the House of Lords Appointments Commission or to resign immediately from membership of the House. A public statement from the Prime Minister that this will be the case would be a welcome step, pending more wide-ranging reforms of the House. It would make an amendment such as this less necessary and avoid further debate.