House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

This Bill is about something much more immediate. We are not actually in government. It is very nice to say, “If we want to be in government, we could do something about this House”, but we are not there at the moment. The House can do something at the moment with this Bill. It is a very modest proposal and I call on all noble Lords to move with speed today and get the Bill through.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I support this regret Motion and I will support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as well because it is about democracy. If the other place is reduced by 50 people, I would point out that the proportion of Ministers who are heads of the Executive’s departments will increase in proportion to the number of Back-Bench MPs. The challenge comes because Parliament is here to control the Executive. The danger in the Commons is that if there are too many Ministers who see themselves as more powerful, yet are circumscribed in what they can join in on as Ministers, that weakens parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive. Therefore, the Bill is extremely dangerous because it will reduce the poison pill—us, the hereditaries—but not incentivise further democratic reform, which I have always supported. Both regret Motions are valid. It cannot be piecemeal because once we go, there will not be further reform. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is therefore absolutely right, apart from his point about moving Parliaments backwards and forwards, which does not work very well with Strasbourg. Apart from that, the democratic effect is vital. If your Lordships really think that there will be further reform if you allow this Bill through, I think that is charmingly naive.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I have heard some convoluted arguments in my life but we are getting into near-nonsense territory. I ask the House to consider whether the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, for whom the whole House has the greatest respect, can really sustain the argument—I hope he will correct me if I quote him incorrectly—that his fundamental opposition is to a principle not being sustained by this House if we wish to act by legislation, when this House has always said that it would act by self-regulation. That sounds fine but I ask the House to consider how this could be done by self-regulation. I happened to be here just in time for the 1999 Bill. At that time, it was clear that that reform had to be done by legislation. Am I right or am I wrong?

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[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I do not think we have covered ourselves in glory over the past 45 minutes. The Commons is not sitting today, so if there is any parliamentary coverage, it will presumably focus on us and this debate. I hope that one or two contributions do not receive a wider audience, because essentially what is happening now is a filibuster on a Bill which had overwhelming support at Second Reading. It is an identical Bill to one that I introduced in the previous Parliament which, likewise, had overwhelming support on Second Reading and was filibustered out of existence in Committee. The principal supporters—organisers, indeed—of this filibuster know that there is a small minority of people opposed to the Bill in this House. That is what the world outside, if it is interested, needs to know. The Bill is simply ending by-elections. I make no apology for repeating that in one of the most recent ones, there was an electorate of three but seven candidates. There is no by-election in the world as absurd as that and yet, amazingly, a number of speakers today want us to continue that system in perpetuity. Let us make no bones about that whatsoever.

[The Earl of Erroll]

First, the Bill’s sole purpose is not to end by-elections. You will get an appointed House de facto through the back door, whether you like it or not. That is the net result, and we do not want by-elections to go on in perpetuity: I want a democratically elected House.

[Lord Grocott]

The noble Earl should simply read the title of the Bill: the clue is in the title. The Bill is the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill. That is what it does: nothing more, nothing less. If you oppose the Bill, you support the by-elections: there is no equivocation on that fact.

I must respond on two specific points made that are worthy of emphasis. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, made a point about the assisted places scheme that the Bill addresses. It is worth putting it into figures. If you inherit a title from a hereditary Peer, you have something like a one in 211 chance—that is the number on the list of hereditary Peers able to stand in any by-election—of becoming a Member of Parliament, because this is a House of Parliament. If you are anyone else, like most of us here or the 60 million or however many people it is who are over the age of 18 in Britain, you have something like a one in 70,000 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament. That is the arithmetic, as I make it, so it is a ridiculous assisted places scheme, and all those who speak up to defend it who are hereditary Peers—I know that some are not—need to explain why they should have that massive advantage over all their fellow citizens.

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[Lord Northbrook]

That is beyond the terms of my amendment.

The Peerage Act 1963 gave all hereditary Peers of Scotland the right to sit in the House of Lords, instead of requiring them to elect 16 of their number, as had been the case since the union with Scotland in 1707. But no similar measure was introduced for the Peers of Ireland.

We move on to 1965. A number of Irish Peers, led by the Earl of Antrim, petitioned the House of Lords for recognition of their rights to elect 28 representative Peers to sit in the House of Lords. This was referred to our Committee for Privileges. The committee concluded that as there was no longer one Ireland, the Act of Union 1800 provision for 28 representative Peers no longer applied. However, Lord Wilberforce, dissenting in part, made a crucial point. He said as follows: because the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, as well as other offices such as the Clerk of the Crown in Parliament, which enabled the election of Irish representative Peers, had been abolished in 1922, it made it impossible to follow the procedures laid down in the Act of Union 1800 for a replacement when one of them died.

The Committee for Privileges’ verdict, in my layman’s view, is unsatisfactory because it failed to recognise, first, that the Irish representative Peers represented the Peers of Ireland and not Ireland as a whole. As a result, any change in Ireland was irrelevant. It also ignored the continued existence of part of Ireland—Northern Ireland—in the United Kingdom. Lord Wilberforce also expressed doubts that an Act of such constitutional importance as the Act of Union with Ireland could be repealed by implication or obsolescence.

Returning to the Scottish peerage, I cannot fail to mention the challenge of the House of Lords Act 1999, which stated that there should be 16 Scottish hereditary Peers in perpetuity in the House of Lords and that their abolition was contrary to Article 22 of the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland.

This is therefore an excellent opportunity to redress the scarcity of elected hereditary Northern Ireland Peers and maintain the number of elected Scottish hereditary Peers.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I wish to say—very quickly, because we have just had a history lecture—that, under the Peerage Act 1963, hereditary Peeresses, Peers in their own right, could sit for the first time in the House of Lords. My mother was one of the 16 elected Scottish representative Peers to sit, and one of the first five hereditary Peeresses to sit in the House of Lords—so we did get a bit of female representation. The answer to the Wales question is that of course it was not a kingdom. The issue of the Scots Peers was around the merging of two kingdoms under a Scottish king.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, to refer to the point made in my noble friend Lord Northbrook’s amendment, the question of the Scottish Peers was of course addressed when what became the 1999 Act went through your Lordships’ House. As I recall, although it is now a long time ago, the Scottish Peers petitioned the House for exclusion from the provisions of the 1999 Act. They were represented by none other than the then Mr Richard Keen—now none other than my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie himself. His petition did not succeed.

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[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, this is a new amendment which has not been moved before. It suggests that any excepted person under the House of Lords Act would, once the Burns commission report has been adopted, remain a Member of the House for a fixed term of 15 years, as other Members will be after the Burns report is implemented. However, until the legislation changes, a by-election could still be held at the end of 15 years after the first hereditary Peer had been elected. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll]

This amendment sounds quite sensible as it brings us into line with the spirit of the Burns report.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the best way to respond to the spirit of the Burns report would be to pass this Bill and turn it into an Act, because, for as long as it remains on the statute book, for every one hereditary Peer who leaves for whatever reason, he or she—well, it is “he”, actually—will always be replaced by another hereditary Peer. Everyone else would be under a system whereby it is two out and one in, with the exception of the hereditary Peers. I suggest that if the noble Lord is concerned about the Burns report, he should withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this is an all-appointed House; it is just that some people are here because their fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers were appointed by the King or the Queen at the time. It is an all-appointed House.

[The Earl of Erroll]

The difference is that because we are here and that is found objectionable by some people, we might get a democratic House. If we go, we will not. Those of us who are democrats think that there should be democratic authority and legitimacy in the House of Lords for it to survive long term.

[Lord Snape]

Can the noble Earl tell us how many of his ancestors fought for democracy and where?

[The Earl of Erroll]

I think I should answer that question later.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, this is such a well-crafted amendment that it would make a fundamental reform of this House unavoidable, which was the original purpose of the undertakings given by my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine of Lairg during the passage of the 1999 Act. He saw at the time, and we agreed, that this would be a poisoned pill in the composition of the current House of Lords that would make the creation of a democratic House unavoidable. That, alas, has not happened in the last 20 years. I greatly regret it and I accept some measure of responsibility for the fact that the Government of which I was apart did not succeed in carrying through its proposals for a fully elected House. But I am afraid that the party opposite did not succeed in it, and that the noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches, who claim to be most powerfully in favour of these reforms, also failed when they were in government. So in different ways, all the parties in this House have failed.

That failure, and the failure of wider constitutional reform of which it is a part, is a substantial part of the reason why we are going through the current Brexit crisis. We need to address it, and I would much rather do so by fundamental changes and improvements to the constitution of the United Kingdom than by wrenching this country out of the European Union.

These issues cannot be ducked, and we certainly cannot sweep them under the carpet with tiny, incremental changes of the kind which my noble friend Lord Grocott is proposing, so I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I rise to support this amendment because it introduces the concept of democracy. As I have said, I would like to see democratic reform of the House of Lords. As for the practicality of it—as has just been raised by my noble friend Lord Low—with online voting coming, I am sure, and with modern electronic methods, we do not need a sort of general election set-up with lots of voting polls. Things will be handled electronically online, and this is an interesting way of introducing some democracy and accountability. I support the amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

Such Members as would be elected under this amendment would not be bound by the conventions of the House. That is the fundamental issue. I cannot take seriously people talking about reform in terms of the composition of the House. They completely ignore the functions and powers of the House. We cannot have the existing powers and functions of the House unchanged and then impose an election on it—under that structure there would be no dispute resolution between the two Houses. At the present time, the Commons always has the last word. That is my telling point when I take part in Peers in Schools. We are not equal Houses. The Commons always has the last word. Very occasionally it might have to wait a year, but the fact is it always has the last word because it is elected. It is as simple as that.

If, like Nick Clegg, one refuses to accept the discussion about the functions and powers of the House and only wants to change the composition process, that will lead to absolute chaos in the governance of the country. I cannot take seriously those who say we want an elected second Chamber, because they completely ignore the two fundamental things that have to change. Before we get elected to this House, we have to know what we are going to do when we get here. It is no good saying: “Oh, we’ll change it afterwards”. If we get an elected second Chamber, the first thing the elected Peer will say is, “I’ve got a mandate. Open the cupboard. What are my powers? I can chuck out this Bill from the Commons. I don’t agree with it—I don’t have to scrutinise anything because I’ve got a mandate”. There would be no dispute resolution. I cannot take such ideas seriously.