House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, the night is young and there is still plenty of time, so it is a real delight to move Amendment 90A in front of an audience of the Labour Party on its Benches. I have to tell noble Lords opposite that their own Front Bench has been working valiantly during the days we have spent on this Bill with near-deserted Back Benches. It has been rather depressing, in just the last few minutes, to see the Government Chief Whip going around tapping the odd folk on the shoulder and sending them home just as I was about to get to my feet and get into my stride. But that will not put me off.

This amendment is not a probing amendment; it is a helpful amendment, designed at a problem that has been haunting the House of Lords for many years. My noble friend Lord Fowler, and the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Butler, have referred to it this evening in looking for imaginative ways of dealing with the issue of the numbers in the House.

At a stroke, this amendment finds the solution to that, and it does so in several ways. This is an amendment that is already in statute law in the House of Lords Act 1999. It is therefore extremely well precedented; we have demonstrated that it can work. Perhaps noble Lords who were around 25 years ago will remember that the then Convenor of the Cross Benches, Lord Weatherill, moved an amendment—which became known as the Weatherill amendment—to reduce the number of hereditary Peers to the 92 that exist at the moment. This amendment seeks to reduce the size of the whole House to some 600-odd people—the Bishops, incidentally, are supernumerary to that. It would do so by election—a well-tested method of reducing the size of the House that worked extremely well in 1999.

Tonight, I offer it up to the Committee, not just as one amendment but as three in one. It is a solution to a problem, it is already in law, and it is already well precedented. I know that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will find the amendment very difficult to accept, but perhaps she will indicate that she finds real attraction in finding an electoral way of reducing the size of the House without relying on the kinds of formula that so many noble Lords tried to introduce in the past. I offer it to the Committee, and I very much hope that it might be brought forward in a future Bill in due course. I beg to move.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Strathclyde on tabling his very sensible Amendment 90A. It should find favour on all Benches because, as my noble friend said, it ticks so many boxes. It would ensure that the hereditary Peers who have sat in your Lordships’ House these 25 years have not sat in vain. We were allowed to continue to sit on the basis that stage 2 would provide some substantive reform and move the House’s composition in the direction of a popular basis, as stated in the Parliament Act 1911.

The amendment would introduce some democratic legitimacy by allocating seats according to party blocs based on the average of the number of votes cast in the last three general elections. That provision would ensure that the composition of the House provides a balance to major shifts in public opinion that result in wide disparity of seats in the House of Commons, which is elected on a first past the post basis. It would give a nod to PR, since the voting strengths are determined on the basis of the number of votes cast, ensure that your Lordships’ House provides stability, and help to avoid dramatic shifts in policy supported by the public only ephemerally.

The amendment should be supported by those of your Lordships who agree with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, that the House should be reduced to 600 people. It should also be supported by those noble Lords who believe that the Bill as drafted is discriminatory, in that it treats some members of the body of Lords temporal differently from others although, for all practical purposes, there is no difference between life and hereditary Peers in terms of rights and privileges in this House. We are appointed to serve on committees or on the Front Bench without any consideration of the route by which we entered your Lordships’ House.

The amendment treats all holders of a Writ of Summons to this Parliament equally. It would result in the House enjoying greater democratic legitimacy but retain the service of those noble Lords who are more independent, and election by party groups would give preference to those who work harder and make a greater contribution. It is an excellent amendment, and I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House to consider it seriously.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for this ingenious proposal. The aim of getting down to 600 Members would be achieved by having a retirement age and sensible participation limits. That would probably get us well below 600. But I really rise just to ask the noble Lord whether, when he replies to this debate, he could confirm that his support for this amendment has not undermined the principled stance he took on my amendment, which calls for a wholly elected House.