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

Lord Snape Excerpts

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

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Bill, moved so ably and wittily by my noble friend Lord Grocott. I want to start by asking a question that many people outside this House are asking: what is the House of Lords for? What is our purpose? Some Members opposite, no doubt including the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, think that it is for wise men—particularly men, reluctantly accepting women now—to advise the Commons, to offer our wisdom, but ultimately to accept our impotence. I do not believe that is how the second Chamber of a bicameral system should operate. It is entirely ridiculous. We have no authority whatsoever. We have no legitimacy whatsoever. Ultimately, this place has to be reformed. I am glad that my party—the Labour Party—is in favour of an indirectly elected senate of the nations and regions. On other occasions I will argue the case in favour of that.

Meanwhile, as we acknowledge in the Labour group in the Lords, and indeed other people have acknowledged, there is a need for reforming our existing structure. We have set up a committee to look at the size of the House. I am not sure that it is the wisest thing to have as chair someone who, though a very distinguished former civil servant, is not one of the best attenders of the House, to see how we actually operate. But there we are; we have that.

Meanwhile, one of the things that I hope will be looked at is ending the participation of all the hereditary Peers, as well as ending the by-elections. Those who should legitimately sit here or who now have a place to offer some wisdom or advice in the House could become life Peers, on the clear understanding that they are, like most of us who have been appointed, working Peers. We should see the second Chamber as based on the concept of working Peers.

Working Peers, however, need some assistance. I was sitting in my office the other day in Millbank House, and the telephone rang. Naturally, I answered it, and someone from a large company asked, “Could I speak to Lord Foulkes’s diary secretary?”. I said, “Yes, you are speaking to Lord Foulkes’s diary secretary”, and I fixed myself an appointment. We do not have diary secretaries; most of us do not even have secretaries.

I had some correspondence with the Clerk of the Parliaments recently, just the other day, suggesting that he might second one of the members of his extensive staff to help me. He thought I was joking, but I am not. People outside this House genuinely believe that, like MPs, we have three or four people working for us: doing our research; making our appointments; dealing with correspondence—I said this in my letter—and emails and phone calls; dealing with invitations; arranging our travel; and dealing with our committee papers, for those of us who are active on committees.

Then there is dealing with the ever-increasing demands of Black Rod—who is not my favourite person in this House—for security. We have to inform security about every visit, which I can understand as far as security is concerned, but it does impose additional burdens on us. How do we deal with it? We have absolutely no one to help us. It is ridiculous in the 21st century.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Can he tell the House whether he would like to employ anybody to write his speeches?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I was going to refer to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as my noble friend, but I am not sure whether I should. The speeches would certainly be much better than they are at the moment. But he is right. I had two speeches yesterday in Grand Committee—one on St Helena and the other on Brexit—and here I am speaking today. If we want to participate we have to do research, do the work and try and think of—

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[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I join noble Lords on both sides of the House in congratulating my noble friend on bringing forward this Bill once again. As a personal friend of his for almost 50 years—I hope that I can refer to myself in such terms—I think that he is in grave danger of getting his fingers burned for the second time. Given the speeches we have heard from the other side of the House, it is apparent that there will be substantial opposition to the Bill, and that that will be conducted in the same deplorable way as it was a year ago.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, on her speech. I fear that she will not have endeared herself to most of her colleagues, particularly the hereditaries, but I applaud her courage none the less. I think that there are three female speakers out of 20-plus speakers in this debate, which illustrates the point she sought to make about your Lordships’ House.

I marginally commend some of the speeches made by hereditary Peers. All of them have managed to fan my fading embers of class warfare, particularly my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who does this on a regular basis. They always manage to do that when they speak in your Lordships’ House. Listening to them reminds me why I joined the Labour Party all those years ago. We heard a wonderful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, who sought to take this House back to not the last century but the one before, I would have thought. It is somewhat unwise, if I might have the temerity to say this to the noble Lord, to refer to speeches in the present-day House of Lords as predetermined, turgid and boring when you are reading every word yourself. One is inclined to think that that is indeed the pot calling the kettle black. As for the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, I had the privilege of hearing him speak on this matter on two occasions. Again, to proffer some advice as a former railwayman, he ought to get out more. If he spoke to one or two more people about the composition of this House, they might well edge away at best, and at worst resort to violence. So I urge him to be careful.

We are time-constrained, and much of what I wanted to say has been said. However, I return first to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who, unaccountably, failed to respond to the rather mischievous intervention from my noble friend Lord Howarth. I referred to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, as an arriviste some time ago, because his hereditary title does not compare in length, for example, to that of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I have long since given up trying to convince the noble Earl in these debates of the sensible nature of the Bill, but I returned, more in hope than expectation, to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, because he has been here a long time. He plays an important role; I have watched him going around the building on numerous occasions—a word here, an elbow there, nudging and fixing, and he does it extremely well. But it does not entitle him to permanent membership of your Lordships’ House. Nor does he justify the preposterous electoral system that has been so rightly condemned on both sides in this debate.

I do not want to write the response of the noble Lord, Lord Young, for him, but we all know what it will be. As my noble friend Lord Anderson indicated, some degree of sympathy will be expressed for the Bill. He will congratulate my noble friend Lord Grocott on his lucid and witty manner in moving it. He will say that the Government are not particularly against it— but of course they will not be for it. Of course, he is a former Chief Whip. I never attained those heights; I was, I must admit, a Whip in the other place—one of these deplorable characters so rightly condemned by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft—but both I and he know that the advice which, as Chief Whip, he would have given to any Prime Minister when it came to Lords reform would be, “Don’t touch it with a bargepole”. If the Blair Government, with a majority of whatever it was—300—could not get rid of only 92 hereditary Peers, there is not much hope that this lot will reform your Lordships’ House given the current political situation in the other House. I am sure that in his lucid, emollient and always listenable way, the noble Lord, Lord Young, will sympathise with the Bill but will tell us that the Government cannot do it.

As for long-term reform of your Lordships’ House, the first time I heard that discussed was in a Labour Party meeting 50 years ago, and it has not been reformed very much since. I am not a gambler, but I would wager a few pounds that it will not be reformed in any significant sense in the lifetime of any of us who are participating in this debate today. So all speed to the Bill as far as my noble friend is concerned, but I fear that like the man who put the candle out twice, he will get his fingers burnt a second time.

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[Lord Grocott]

I advise the noble Lord to stop digging. This wondrous independence and spirit of quality and intellectual debate invariably resulted in a House that always supported Conservative Governments and caused no end of trouble to Labour Governments. I will leave that one there.

I could not improve on my good friend Lord Snape. He has lost none of it in 50 years; he really can turn it on when he needs to. I was always deeply respectful of him. He reports the fact that I was his Chief Whip, but he was my Whip in the 1970s, when he reportedly put next to my name “WWWW”, which meant, “Works well when watched”.

[Lord Snape]

Will my noble friend accept the perception of my views at that time? He has come along very well since.

[Lord Grocott]

I saw no arguments in favour of the by-elections, apart from the one that I really want to put to rest now, which the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, repeats time and again about this compromise reached in 1999 which resulted in the 92 hereditary Peers remaining. The noble Lord, Lord True, referred to the fact that I was involved to some extent in that because I was working in Downing Street at the time. I remind him of what I still feel was breath-taking about what happened then. A Labour Government, elected on the clearest possible manifesto commitment to end the hereditary principle as a basis for being in the second Chamber—a Labour Government with a record post-war majority of more than 150—brought that proposal to this House. It was made clear in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and others that the Bill, with a huge majority and manifesto commitment, would not be allowed to pass unless major concessions were made, of which these 92 Peers are the result. That was not normal parliamentary procedure resulting in this binding agreement; it was blackmail. That is the only argument that has been put forward to continue with these by-elections. It is a history lesson that ought to be written according to what actually happened.

The only other argument I have picked up is that, somehow or other, the hereditary Peers here provide a constant incentive towards swift movement towards a fully comprehensive elected House. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is in a better position than me because he was there longer: there were loads of debates in the other place on an elected House, but I never heard anyone say that we need to do this because the noble Lords, Lord Trefgarne and Lord Elton, or the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, are insisting that it happens. By definition it simply has not worked. Those Members who want a fully elected House, of which I am not one, have not been able for various reasons to deliver it, so this incentive that allegedly is there clearly is not working. We should remember that as well.

The only really helpful, constructive attempt to move forward on this, other than what I think is the only sensible way to proceed, which is my Bill unamended—although I always listen to what the noble Lords, Lord Cope and Lord Cormack, and others, have to say—is that there should be an election of the whole House whenever a vacancy occurs rather than these absurd party by-elections with minuscule electorates. I partly answered it in my opening remarks. Even when that happens, less than half the House participates. I always regarded it as a waste of time and I am clearly not the only one. That does not enhance the quality of the democracy, and—this is an even more substantial point made brilliantly by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge—it does not alter the fundamental flaw that, on the register of hereditary Peers as it stands, there are 198 names, 197 of whom are men. Changing the Standing Orders and having an electorate comprising the whole House would not alter that fundamental problem any more than it would alter the fundamental problem of why on earth the only people entitled to stand should be the heirs of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, or the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, although we hope their heirs do not materialise for a long period yet in their new titles. Why should their heirs have an assisted places scheme to get into the House of Lords?

We all think our arguments are pretty convincing. I think the argument I and many of my noble friends put forward are absolutely overwhelming, so let us get on with it.