House of Lords Reform

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for having brought forward this debate, which has been thoughtful and an immensely valuable contribution to deliberations on the future of your Lordships’ House. However, for me, it has brought on a slight Groundhog Day feeling, since I have been taking part in such debates since my first incarnation in this House, in the other place, and again in this House for nearly 30 years now.

The first debate was in 1996, when I was struck for ever by the contribution of my late great friend Lord Mackie of Benshie, who rose and, in his stentorian voice, said, “I believe wholeheartedly in the hereditary principle”, and then after a pause said, “For breeding cattle”. He went on to describe the policy of these Benches, which was not about hereditaries. I have remained absolutely convinced since those days that a reformed House, based mostly, if not entirely, upon election, is the proper way to go forward.

I accept that that is not going to happen in a hurry. When we failed to get the 2012 Bill, which got its Second Reading, through to its other stages we missed a real trick for proper reform. In the short term, two things are absolutely imperative, both of which are in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns.

The first is size. We have to agree a size and agree it even before we have worked out how to get there. We have to say a number—I am not going to put a number on it, but numbers have been floated—and then we can agree how to get there. Until we have decided on the size, nothing else can really work. The second is limits. I am not in favour of an age limit. There is no age limit down the other end and I know lots of people can come into this House at a later stage in life and make a valuable contribution. I am against people being here for ever; it is ridiculous that we would look at a young person aged 30 being able to sit for 50 years while a highly confident 75 year-old had to go after five. I am in favour of term limits rather than age limits.

Why reform? The House works extremely well: its committees work excellently, the quality of debate is very good, and the way in which legislation is improved is excellent. Unfortunately, for all that great work—and I have nothing but admiration and respect for every Member of this House—there is one fundamental defect. It is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, referred to: it does not have legitimacy. At the end of the day, when you are at the other end and voting out whatever has been done at this end, you will not have heard the debate. You just troop through the Lobby and the Minister’s phrase will be, “We’re the elected House”.

We are not legitimate in the eyes of the press, except on those very rare occasions when we come up with something that they happen to agree with, and we are not legitimate in the eyes of the public. I disagree here with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for whom I have great affection and respect, notwithstanding his regular name-checking of my election to this place the second time around. I have regularly discussed the House of Lords and our constitution with people on the doorsteps in Caithness. I do not pretend that Caithnesians are cleverer than those anywhere else; it is just that people actually care. Without that legitimacy, which I believe will ultimately come only from election, we are always going to have a problem.

I am not that keen on a commission doing everything, because the commission will be composed of the metropolitan Oxbridge elite. Where will the crofters, the carers, the binmen and the fishermen come from? That is what representative democracy actually delivers.

I remain convinced that, ultimately, we should have an elected House. Being elected for one term, with one-third elected every three elections, so that people would be here for 15 years, is the best way to do it, but I recognise that it will not happen in a hurry. Most of all, I am a parliamentarian and I want this House to be strengthened—to strengthen Parliament against the Executive. In a liberal democracy, at the point where we are under threat as never before from the algorithms that are driving us into silos of agreement and taking away from the great market of ideas, we need this House more than ever to function well.