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

Lord Snape Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

We are giving it consideration. It was that eureka moment in the bath that has prompted this debate. My noble friend Lord Forsyth knows full well my position on hereditary Peers. I do not think that they should be here, and I also think that this ought to be an elected House. However, in 1999 there was a binding-in-honour agreement that the hereditary Peers would stay here until stage 2 of House of Lords reform. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, never refers to that and I can quite understand why, but to us it was a fundamental part of the agreement. If I am being criticised for standing up for a binding agreement and principle, so be it, and I am very sad that other noble Lords do not take the same principled view on the matter.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Far from it being a noble quest back in 1999, those of us who were in the other place at the time seem to recollect that it was a rather squalid agreement to preserve the neck of the Conservative Party.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, that is the noble Lord’s interpretation of the agreement. I was not party to it, but it was introduced by the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, and it was binding in Privy Council terms on all of us who took part in that debate. That was a binding commitment. I have tabled an amendment that we shall come to later to try to help the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, get to the same position that I want to get to, which is to get rid of the hereditary Peers in this House.

Perhaps I may return to my amendments. I set out in quite considerable detail how the House of Lords statutory appointments commission should work. It will come as no surprise to my noble friend Lord Young on the Front Bench because he will recognise the details. They come from Schedules 5 and 6 to the 2012 Bill, which, sadly, failed in another place. I would have supported it had it come to this House. His name was on that Bill, as indeed was Danny Alexander’s, so I presume that the Liberal party still supports a statutory appointments commission, and I look forward to getting the support of its Members for this.

I do something slightly different from my noble friend. I set out that there should be a House of Lords appointments commission, and, equally and importantly, that there should be a Speakers’ committee comprising 13 members, as designed in 2012, to oversee the statutory appointments commission. It was drafted by a government draftsman, so I will not go into any detail, but I hope that the House will give this consideration. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, there would be a lacuna. When the hereditary Peers go, it would be a much better arrangement if there were a totally independent committee to look at all appointments. My amendment covers all that. Proposed new subsection (4) in Amendment 58 says that it should come into operation,

“on a statutory basis, with the role of screening, selecting and recommending all persons for appointment to the House of Lords”.

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[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, Professor Meg Russell of UCL’s Constitution Unit, who is an acknowledged expert on House of Lords matters, said that the non-statutory Appointments Commission,

“has helped to transform the Crossbenches into a more active place where members arrive better prepared, and there is now a clear distinction between independent and party peers. It has also been possible to use these appointments to somewhat improve the gender and ethnic balance in the chamber, and fill clear expertise/professional gaps”.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, is reported to have told the committee that,

“by focusing on merit, quality and diversity, the Commission had helped to bring much-needed experience to the cross-benches”.

He added that,

“figures for gender diversity, ethnic minorities and disability on the cross-benches are considerably higher than among members of the House … as a whole”.

Some members of the committee, such as Meg Russell, argue that the non-statutory commission should be given more powers. I fear that this would not work. There are problems with its non-statutory basis. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in giving evidence said:

“While the existing Appointments Commission acts with scrupulous care and excellent judgement it is not satisfactory, to itself or anyone else, that it has no statutory basis, it invents its own remit and makes up its own rules as it goes along. There should be a statutory Appointments Commission, its task defined in general terms by Parliament and plain for the public to see”.


I agree, and believe that this amendment is important for the future appointments process.

I will make a few more general remarks. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was saying, in 1999 the Lord Chancellor—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine—replied:

“I say quite clearly that … the position of the excepted Peers shall be addressed in phase two reform legislation”.—[Official Report, 22/6/1999; cols. 798-800.]


He also said, in March 1999:

“The amendment reflects a compromise negotiated between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent”.—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]


As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was Tony Blair’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, he must have been well aware of all this. To the hereditary peerage, it was a vital part of the 1999 Act and an additional reason to let it have satisfactory progress through the House.

[Lord Snape]

I appeal to the noble Lord not to try to rewrite history in the way that he is doing. Does he not recollect that the deal in 1999 to which he refers was done in such an underhand way that it led to the resignation of the Conservative leader of the Peers in this House? There was nothing particularly noble about it; rather the reverse.

[Lord Northbrook]

With respect to the noble Lord, I was not part of that deal so I cannot go into the detail of it. With reference to the Burns report, I have just seen that the Government do not accept the committee’s recommendation that the Prime Minister must now commit to a specific cap on numbers, absolutely limiting appointments in line with the formula proposed. Thus an important element of the Burns report is deemed to be invalid and the major reform which was promised for phase 2 is incomplete.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, ducked the opportunity to explain to this House why he is a Member.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said earlier that he was just like everyone else: a hereditary Peer, and one could not tell the difference between the two. Did he think that when we walked through from the Division Lobby a moment ago there was some confusion among noble Lords as to who was the former railwayman and who was the Scottish landowner?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I could not possibly comment on that nor tell the difference between the two. It was a pleasure to be in the Lobbies with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, and I was glad that we had a good conversation. However, I say again to my noble friend Lord Cormack that if really wants to have a Division on every single amendment, he may find this Bill delayed a bit more. That is the law of unintended consequences. I suggest that my noble friend does not try it again.

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[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, I suggest that a feature of this group of amendments—indeed, of all the others too with the single exception of Amendment 2A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—is the destruction of the Bill’s essential purpose: to abolish hereditary Peers for the future but keep our present invaluable 90, or 92. The original proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was at least consistent with the Bill in the sense that he was prepared, as he said, to accept the abolition of future elections provided that we introduce a statutory HOLAC but that is not true of the rest of these amendments.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this group of amendments but I was provoked to do so by the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He was around in 1999; indeed, I am pretty sure that he played a major role in what took place then. It is all very well for the likes of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, to pray in aid the agreement that came about then and use it as an excuse to say that it was a solemn and binding—he did not use that particular phrase—way to reform the House, that it was at only an initial stage and that he intended to continue that reform later, but the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows full well how the 1999 agreement came about. It was accepted by the Labour Government because the Conservative majority in the House of Lords at the time was enormous. Despite the equally enormous Labour majority down the corridor as a result of the 1997 election, that Conservative majority, in which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, played a major role, made it quite plain that it was either this particular deal or no reform of the House of Lords at all. So let us not have any nonsense that this was merely stage one and talk of solemn and binding promises.

Indeed, that agreement came about without the knowledge and permission of the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. The leader of the Labour Peers in the House of Lords lost his job as a result of the agreement. He was a descendant of Lord Salisbury. I would have thought that it takes a lot to shift a Salisbury from your Lordships’ House, but that is exactly what happened. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows not only where the bodies are buried but I suspect wielded a shovel himself.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I really do think that I would try the patience of the House if I even attempted to respond to the noble Lord, so I will not do so, except perhaps another time in the bar.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I understand my noble friend’s intention, which is to try to guarantee some sort of regional representation in this House. That is very important, but I am not convinced that this is in fact the right way to do it. His amendment talks about, “hereditary peers representing Scotland”. Being someone who comes from Scotland—I was born in Scotland and live in Scotland—I do not suppose that anyone in Scotland thinks I am representing them. Indeed, the whole purpose of this House is not to represent anyone; we represent ourselves.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord is being too modest. After all, he owns a large chunk of Scotland, so who better to represent it?

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is a very kind thought from the noble Lord, but I do not represent Scotland or anyone in Scotland any more than he represents railway workers, train drivers, signalmen or anyone else involved in the transport industry. I hope my noble friend will withdraw this amendment and take it away.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend Lord Snape takes huge offence at that remark by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He represents in his person all the railway workers of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Snape]

If I may say so, none of them Members of this House, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said earlier.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Okay, my Lords, I can see that I have lost that particular argument with the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

At the end of the last amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, wanted to place on the record exactly what was going on. That was his version—his truth. But what is also going on here is an attempt to create an all-appointed House with no guarantees of representation from anywhere in the UK, as laid out in this amendment, which of course would be solved if we had an independent statutory appointments commission. It is in no way an argument to say that, just because the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, believes he is right, no one from any part of the House should be able to argue against him. I have witnessed the noble Lord arguing many times on Bills, and it would be an absurdity to change the rules to stop him, any more than it would be to stop my noble friend Lord Caithness.