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

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has got a whole series of different complaints which are not relevant to this debate off his chest, and I hope he feels better for it, but I hope he will forgive me if I do not follow him exactly in what he had to say.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has based his case, as he often does—I beg your pardon, as he always does I think—on logic. That is his habit, but logic is not the only guide to our constitution. From a practical point of view, I believe that the House has gained from having hereditary Peers and from the system of electing new ones to replace those who pass on. We all know of the valuable service of individual hereditary Peers, some of whom came back of course as life Peers—I see the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the holder of one of the most distinguished and oldest peerages in the House, who sits here as a life Peer, in his place. All of us could list a whole number of hereditary Peers by name who play a great part in this House—the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, emphasised this in her speech. As we have been reminded, and as many of us recall, the system created in 1999 was expected to be temporary. But as we also all know, in the British constitution, when temporary expedients work, they tend to last. This one has lasted, in my view because it has produced Members who make valuable contributions to the House.

But whatever one’s point of view on that, a central point of the argument or the criticism made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others is that in some cases when a hereditary Peer dies, there are only three electors under Standing Order 10(2). If the House wishes, we can change that without legislation. It is enshrined solely in the House of Lords Standing Orders. The legislation requires there to be by-elections but does not specify the electors for a by-election or some of the other arrangements. That is all in Standing Order 10. We can amend that Standing Order, so that, for example, all vacancies are filled by election under Standing Order 10(3), with the whole House voting instead of just the appropriate hereditary Peers as now for many vacancies—that is, elections conducted under Standing Order 10(2). That would of course increase the electorate substantially. If we were to do that, it would be important that the excellent Carter convention, which preserves the proportions of the different party groups, should continue under such a proposal. That could be included, if we wished, in the changes to the Standing Order to bring this about.

This plan is entirely within the authority of this House and would not involve the Commons, nor the legislative procedures inevitably involved in the wider proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. It would involve no expenditure of government or other time in the House of Commons and very little in this House—the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I have reason to know about the difficulties with parliamentary time and its allocation by government. As I say, this would take very little time in this Session, in which, although it is a long one, parliamentary time is going to be extremely scarce.