Black Rod
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
My Lords, I have to acquaint the House that His Majesty has appointed Lieutenant General Ed Davis to be Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, in succession to Sarah Clarke, and that he is at the Door ready to receive your Lordships’ commands.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
As we have done previously, the usual channels will make brief tributes to the retiring Black Rod. Sarah Clarke took up her appointment as Black Rod in February 2018, joining us directly from a position as championships director at Wimbledon. Her uniform here was definitely more formal attire, but who would have thought that managing Wimbledon and dealing with Centre Court personalities would be good training for her role here? It could be said that she went from tennis rallies at Wimbledon to ping-pong in the House of Lords.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I liked it.
When the office of Black Rod was created in 1361, the decree stated that the post should be held by
“a gentleman famous in arms and in blood”,
a reference to the postholder being a man who had served in the military. Sarah Clarke made history as the first Lady Usher of the Black Rod.
On taking up her appointment, Sarah had rehearsals for the part of the role that the public and MPs will be most familiar with—having a door slammed in her face as part of the historic theatre of the State Opening. At her first rehearsal, she marched along to the Commons and walked straight in: they forgot to slam the door. At the second attempt, they remembered to slam the door, but the timing was not quite right and she was a hair’s breadth away from a broken nose. Sarah also believed that there should be a hard, robust knock on the door so that it could be heard in Central Lobby. The result was a rather stern email from the heritage team along the lines of, “Do not knock splinters off the door, please”.
Sarah’s tenure here since 2018 has been a momentous time in our nation’s history and she always discharged her duties with diligence, dedication, care and professionalism. In just under seven and a half years, she has led 252 Introductions to your Lordships’ House; there have been six State Openings and seven Prorogations. One of the highlights of our parliamentary calendar is a state visit and all of us know the huge logistical arrangements required behind the scenes. They are organised by Black Rod and her team to ensure a seamless visit. Sarah has overseen five state visits to this Palace, ensuring that visiting dignitaries enjoy the experience. Even on her final day in post, she was here to welcome President Macron.
However, it was Sarah’s leadership and calm professionalism, following the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II, when she worked tirelessly—literally around the clock—with the Royal Household to ensure that the lying-in-state and final journey of Her late Majesty reflected the mood and respect of the nation. Hundreds and thousands of members of the public walked through Westminster Hall to pay their final respects, and hundreds of millions watched on TV from all over the world. This would not have been possible without the fantastic support of the House staff, particularly the Yeoman Usher, Brigadier Neil Baverstock, and the Deputy Yeoman Usher, Fiona Channon. It is impossible to refer to that time without mentioning our excellent doorkeepers, many of whom became familiar faces when the lying-in-state was livestreamed on TV and proved to be most compulsive—and certainly most emotional —viewing.
Sarah’s leadership and commitment at that time were the embodiment of the truly excellent public servant that she is. We have enjoyed and valued our time with her. I have spoken of her professionalism, her dedication and her leadership, but we also remember her forthrightness, her friendship and her sense of fun. After Sarah and I spoke last week about her departure— I confess it was over a small gin and tonic—she emailed me, and I hope she will not mind if I share that email with your Lordships’ House:
“It has been the greatest honour to serve as Black Rod. I have deeply appreciated the huge support the House and Members have given me in over seven and a half extraordinary years with so many historic moments. I leave knowing I did my best to deliver my duties, met and worked with incredible people and certainly had a truly memorable and enjoyable time here. I could not have asked for more”—
neither could we. While we might fondly imagine that Sarah will have more time at home to spend with her partner Catherine and her two dogs Marge and Wilma—they really are called Marge and Wilma—I am certain she will fill her new role with the same dedication and commitment that we have seen.
Finally, I warmly welcome our new Black Rod, Ed Davis, to your Lordships’ House. As a former Royal Marines officer and a former Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar, he brings a wealth of experience. We are confident that his previous diplomatic experience will serve him well in juggling the competing demands of this role, and we look forward to working with him.
Lord True (Con)
It is a pleasure, on behalf of these Benches, to follow the Lord Privy Seal, who spoke beautifully for us all as our Leader in her generous tribute to our outgoing Black Rod, Sarah Clarke. I rather liked the joke; I wish I had thought of it myself.
By a curious coincidence, I found myself sitting last night in the evening sun watching Carlos Alcaraz display his dominance of Centre Court. As I looked round that historic arena, packed with 15,000 contented people—well, perhaps not quite so contented, because he was playing a British tennis player—I thought: who in their right mind would exchange that glorious theatre for a dingy 19th century building riddled with mice and moths? Who would swap Centre Court’s giant retractable roof, costing just £70 million—
Lord True (Con)
I had probably better not go on. But we all know who made that choice, and that was Sarah Clarke. How grateful we are that she did, despite the fact that she is well and truly in her right mind.
Sarah brought with her a wealth of logistical and managerial expertise when she accepted our offer to become the first Lady Usher of the Black Rod and the late Queen graciously confirmed that recommendation. She may not have been the conventional choice,
“famous in arms and blood”,
as the Leader of the House reminded us, but she was unquestionably the right choice.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, when Sarah Clarke first came to be interviewed to be David Leakey’s successor, the majority view of the panel—of which I was one—was one of curiosity, but no great expectation. How could someone who was non-military and, heaven forfend, a woman, and with no public sector background, possibly compete with her more traditional competitor candidates?
The interview, however, was a revelation. Sarah was calm, assured, thoughtful and humorous. We thought that she was the best candidate, but we were so surprised at our own conclusion that we invited her back for a second interview, just in case we had missed something the first time. But the second interview merely confirmed the first, and those characteristics which we saw in Sarah when she first appeared at the interview she brought to the job from day one.
Sarah immediately established a serene authority, and a sensible, no-nonsense approach which meant that she was quickly respected by the House as a whole—a respect which only grew as she managed the many quick changes which were required during Covid, and then, with such great aplomb, the great royal events which occurred during her watch.
Personally, I found Sarah simply a pleasure to work with. She is, I believe, taking a break before taking on other duties. I wish her well for the break, and for her future career, whatever it might be. In doing so, I welcome her successor. He has a hard act to follow, but I am sure that he will do it extremely well.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I add our warm welcome to Lieutenant General Ed Davis. He will find things in very good order, and I look forward very much to working with him on all the many facets of Black Rod’s unique role.
It is a privilege on behalf of my Cross-Bench colleagues to pay tribute to Sarah Clarke. While we have known Sarah simply as Black Rod, she has been fulfilling three distinct roles, all of which involve Cross-Bench Members. Black Rod is not only the Serjeant-at-Arms here in the House of Lords but the Usher to the Order of the Garter and Secretary to the Lord Great Chamberlain.
Sarah’s first Garter ceremony was at Windsor. Naturally, she arrived early, with her uniform in a grip bag. She and three others got into a lift, which promptly broke down between floors. Help was summoned, but Sarah took charge of the lift, for time was short. On instruction, the others in the lift turned to examine the lift walls while Sarah changed. Just as decency was restored, the lift creaked on, and the Windsor fire brigade was surprised to find an immaculate Black Rod with a dress as an ankle warmer. She stepped forth with her usual perfection and big smile, and the Garter ceremony was none the wiser.
The Lord Great Chamberlain, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, remarked to me on Black Rod’s modernisations of the State Opening of Parliament ceremony. One was to cut out the canter of 100 yards or so to the Commons from the Lords Chamber. Sarah has now arranged it so that the Lord Great Chamberlain waves his very long wand at Black Rod, already standing in Central Lobby, allowing Black Rod then to stride to the Commons with a dignity not available to other Black Rods over the centuries. The Lord Great Chamberlain’s new signalling method, while owing something to his inner Apache warrior, is a great testament to his dignity.
Sarah arrives at our House, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, does, on a bicycle, dressed modestly and with an instant humour. In difficult discussions in her office, her main weapons have been the chocolate digestive and her smile, and how effective these have been. We have already heard of the six State Openings, the seven Prorogations, the lying-in-state of the great Queen Elizabeth II and her funeral, and the Coronation of His Majesty the King. What we have not heard is that for these latter events, Sarah was on duty at 4 o’clock each morning, occasionally earlier. Each of those events was an outstanding success.
That apart, Sarah has been in charge of maintaining our proceedings in good order, including managing the access of many of the people who come to our House, allowing for their and our safety in equal measure. This has all happened seemingly effortlessly and with the great charm and warm smile that we know of our Sarah.
I know that Sarah would want me particularly to mention Neil Baverstock and Fiona Channon, her colleagues, who will be retiring later this year. On behalf of these Benches, I salute them as well.
In closing, noble Lords will note that I have not used the W-word—Wimbledon—but we were all thinking of it. If Sarah had still been in charge, there would have been no nonsense with the line calls this week.
Sarah is not going far. This is not “goodbye”; it is “au revoir”.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, as Convenor of the Lords Spiritual, I offer our heartfelt thanks to Sarah for the way she has welcomed and worked with those of us on these Benches over the past seven and a half years. As others have noted, although I will not repeat it, she has held office at a point of great change, from overseeing the response to the pandemic—during which I arrived here in a very pared-down Introduction—and keeping the Palace operational throughout, to managing those major royal events under two monarchs.
As the first ever Lady Usher of the Black Rod, Sarah’s very title embodies the process of change—a very welcome one. I am not sure that there was a viable alternative. While we on these Benches now have women Members who remain styled “Lord Bishop”, to have had to refer to Sarah as “Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod” may have provoked the kinds of arguments over sex and gender that have more recently occupied the time and energy of the Supreme Court; I am so glad that we were spared that.
A few weeks ago, as part of my induction as convenor of these Benches, I paid a visit to Sarah in her office, to be instructed in some of the more arcane duties that might befall me. I was struck by the fact that she was not in uniform, and nor was I. The formal garb of office that both Black Rod and those of us on these Benches wear in this Chamber serve as a daily reminder of the long centuries through which this House has served the nation. Indeed, your Lordships’ House is a place where change and tradition have combined to produce a form of governance that nobody would have invented but which has served and evolved over many centuries, and where ceremonial and formal dress combine with such state-of-the-art practices as the electronic voting system that many of us will use later today.
Like newly appointed Bishops arriving to be enthroned in their cathedral, Sarah’s duties, as we well know, have involved having the door firmly shut in her face and being required—just as we Bishops are—to knock with her staff of office to gain entry. Again, it is an important tradition, albeit one that contrasts so hugely with the open-door policy and collaborative style of working she has always maintained. Our prayer from these Benches is that, as she moves on in life, doors, unlike that at Peers’ Entrance at the moment, will always open and never shut at her approach.
We also wish Lieutenant General Ed Davis all the best in his new role. As we have just heard, we will be going back to a Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. We look forward to working with him.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, lastly and briefly, I pay my own tribute to Sarah Clarke for her dedicated service to this House. I wish her the greatest success in her future career.
Sarah has served Parliament with distinction for over seven years, most notably at the lying-in-state of Her late Majesty the Queen. In recognition of that, she was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, a richly deserved honour. I offer my own heartfelt thanks to Sarah for her guidance and support to me personally during the significant and demanding period around the demise of the Queen and the accession of His Majesty the King.
Sarah was, as has been mentioned, the first Lady Usher of the Black Rod in the 670-year history of the role, and I am sure that more will follow in her footsteps in the years to come.
I also extend my warmest welcome to the new Black Rod, Lieutenant General Ed Davis. I look forward to working with him and, on behalf of the House, I wish him every success in his new post.
Prisons: Early Release
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Lord Murray of Blidworth
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the long-term impact of schemes for early release from prison on public confidence in the justice system.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
The previous Government introduced the end of custody supervised licence scheme, which released over 13,000 prisoners without any impact assessment. It is clear that this Government inherited a prison system on the verge of collapse. We introduced SDS40, which was safely implemented thanks to our hard-working staff. A full impact assessment was published for our measure. We are now embarking on long-term sentencing reforms to place prisons on a sustainable footing so that we can protect the public and maintain public confidence in the justice system.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I thank the Minister for that Answer. Rather than ending automatic early release of prisoners, many of whom now serve only 40% of their sentence in prison, would it not make more sense to shift to a system of earned early release, whereby prisoners can earn the opportunity to be released early based on good behaviour and completion of training, education, work and rehabilitation programmes? Does the Minister not agree that such an alternative approach would go further in restoring public confidence in the justice system?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The noble Lord has obviously been studying the plans that we have been looking at, especially the Texas model, which I think he refers to. There are two ways of looking at how we can incentivise prisoners to behave when they are in prison and engage with purposeful activities and education. One is the Texas model, which I describe as going down the hill: for every week they are well behaved, they get time off their sentence. The other is going up the hill: if they behave badly, they can get extra days. The model we prefer is the latter. It is clear that if prisoners assault officers they should, via adjudication, receive extra days. I am a big believer in incentives and in looking at other examples internationally. The Texas model is one where I think we all recognise that there has been a dramatic reduction in reoffending of those released from prison.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that when a prisoner is discharged, particularly in early discharge, they have somewhere to stay when they have left prison? Secondly, can he assure the House that every effort is made to reinforce the conditions of their discharge, so that the general public can be sure that people who have been discharged from prison will be properly supervised and their behaviour will be kept under review?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The release scheme that we inherited from the previous Government was very chaotic. Far too many people left prison and were recalled very quickly, which meant that more victims were created. The SDS40 scheme was far more stable and organised, and probation colleagues had the time to find accommodation. The noble Lord is completely right: accommodation is one of the key factors in ensuring that when someone gets out of prison, they stay out. We have far too many people still leaving prison with NFA against their name, and that is totally unacceptable. The £700 million extra funding that we have secured for probation is important. A lot of that will go on accommodation, tagging, extra staff and technology.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, as I have suggested on a number of earlier occasions, the Government’s proposed policy on early release is flawed. Does the Minister now accept that the Government should expressly address whether technical or minor breaches of licence conditions by non-violent offenders should not result in recall to prison, whether for 28 days or otherwise? That would go a considerable way towards relieving pressure on our prison capacity.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The crisis we inherited in the justice system meant that, had we not acted, we would have run out of prison places, on the basis that the previous Government built only 500 prison places when the population of prisons increases by 3,000 a year. That is why, by the time of the next election, there will be more people in prison than ever before. On recall, it is important that our probation professionals use their judgment based on risk. When people leave prison, we need to give them all the tools possible so that when they get out, they stay out. I do not want them having a return ticket back to prison; I want them to have a one-way ticket. That is why accommodation and all the support services we put around people will ensure that there are fewer recalls.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the real route to public confidence in the prison system is, first, not to have overflowing prisons and lengthy court delays before trial, bequeathed by the last Government to this Government, and secondly, not just to lock people up for longer and longer but to ensure that the Probation Service is effective at reducing risk and protecting the public, as well as rehabilitation?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
My noble friend is right that probation is where the heavy lifting in the justice system needs to be done. I would like to let your Lordships’ House know that last week I was in a women’s prison, where the average length of stay of a woman was 46 days. There was also one very ill woman who, on average, tries to take her life over 20 times a month. We are dealing with people who are both very ill and very complex, and often the best way to reduce reoffending of these people and deal with their offending behaviour is to punish them in the community and support them in the community.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, referred to “public confidence”. On the basis that the Government are right that early release schemes have been essential to save our prison system from collapse, would that not be the ultimate disaster for public confidence? As well as working on their response to the Leveson report, will the Government now urgently implement David Gauke’s proposals for a presumption against short prison sentences, for more community sentences and for more early release on licence? Should the Government not also encourage a review of the sentencing guidelines with a view to bringing prison sentences here down to the level of those imposed elsewhere in Europe?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The review that David Gauke and his panel undertook will form a very important part of the reform of the criminal justice system that we need. We need a sustainable criminal justice system, and that includes the review that Sir Brian Leveson has published today. On short sentences, it is important that the judiciary still has the power in exceptional circumstances to send people to prison for short sentences. Victims must come first, and the worst thing for victims would be for us to allow prisons to run out of places. We cannot run out of prison places, and the action that we are taking will ensure that we have a sustainable prison system.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
Is the Minister satisfied that the Probation Service is properly resourced to manage and supervise prisoners on discharge?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
At the moment, the Probation Service is really struggling. It is struggling because of the workload of staff and the lack of integrated technology—staff spend far too much time doing admin rather than spending face-to-face time with offenders. When it comes to resourcing, when I leave this place eventually and go back to running my business, I would like the Lord Chancellor to support me in negotiations, because the amount of money that we managed to secure for probation, £700 million, is a really important amount—nearly a 45% increase. That, along with the other reforms that I am planning to do on probation, will go a long way.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, nothing undermines public confidence more than miscarriages of justice, and there is no bigger miscarriage of justice than IPP prisoners. Can the Minister kindly explain why these people are not being given the same opportunity for early release as the people we are talking about today?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
My noble friend has done fantastic work championing the cause of IPP prisoners. It is clear that people should be released when the Parole Board determines that they are safe to be released. We are using all the levers at our disposal to make sure we do everything we can so that IPP prisoners get released from prison and stay out of prison.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, how does the reoffending rate of those released early compare with that of those released after full term?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The early release scheme that we inherited from the previous Government had a high reoffending rate. On the controlled SDS40 releases, while we are still analysing the figures, the themes that I am seeing show that the reoffending rates were no higher than we normally see. My overall plan is to reduce reoffending rates generally, which is why I am pleased I managed to get that into my job title.
Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)
My Lords, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner has accused the Government of watering down the criminal justice system at the expense of victims’ safety. What assurance can the Minister give to women, given the PM’s commitment on VAWG, that abusers will receive and serve custodial sentences?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
We are not abolishing short sentences entirely, and judges will retain the power to hand down sentences of under a year in exceptional circumstances—for example, to provide a victim of domestic abuse with a period of respite. I know this is particularly vital to safeguard victims of domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. Breaches of protective orders linked to VAWG, such as stalking and domestic abuse protection orders, will also be excluded from the presumption against short sentences.
European Union Entry/Exit System
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Baroness Pidgeon
To ask His Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to prevent the introduction of the European Union’s Entry/Exit System causing transport congestion and disruption to freight.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, the European Union’s Entry/Exit System, EES, is now expected to be introduced in October 2025, with checks taking place on UK soil at the juxtaposed controls at the Port of Dover, Eurotunnel and Eurostar. The Government continue to work closely with the authorities at those three places and the French authorities to ensure that EES is implemented successfully. In respect of freight, over 80% of HGV journeys from Britain to the EU are undertaken by foreign-registered vehicles. EU hauliers will not be required to complete EES checks.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
I thank the Minister for his Answer, but, given the significant risk to UK exports, particularly “just in time” produce, what work are the Government doing with the French authorities and the European Commission to ensure that pre-registration systems are in place ahead of implementation to alleviate congestion and support smoother freight flows?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Of course, the primary aim of government has to be to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place at juxtaposed portals ahead of the implementation of the system. The EES is an EU-wide system. Although the EU has expressed a desire to explore pre-registration and we continue to work with European colleagues to encourage the development and adoption of an app, it is still in the early stages and will not be available at the start of implementation. However, even if there were an app, passengers would still need to attend a kiosk, booth or tablet to enrol biometrics, but of course the app would reduce the time taken for individuals to undertake full EES checks at the border, so it would be very desirable. We are urging them as hard as we can.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is a facility at Stansted Airport that currently takes live racehorses, exporting them to the rest of Europe and further afield? For good reason, that has been requisitioned for other purposes, but there could be a period when those racehorses will not be able to move from East Anglia to the rest of Europe. Will he use his good offices to investigate this to make sure that a comparable facility is available without any delay to expediting flights of live racehorses, which bring much joy as well as being good for the East Anglian economy?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am afraid it is a revelation to me that there is such a facility at Stansted, but, now that I know, I will go away and look at the noble Baroness’s remarks to see what can be done.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, Operation Brock causes absolute havoc around Kent, and the renewed and enhanced passport restrictions will inevitably cause delays. Can the Minister assure us that Operation Brock will not become a regular feature of life in that part of Kent?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Of course, one has to be very sympathetic about the considerable disruption that Brock causes. Since they took office, the Government have been thinking about what else can be done. My department has signed a contract with Lydden Hill racetrack to be a contingency site for the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum to incorporate into its traffic management plans, and we are also in negotiations with another site. But the primary thing that needs to happen is for the Port of Dover to finish its facility at Dover Western Docks. That was facilitated by an early action of this Government, and the work finally started in March 2025. It is in progress to be finished by 1 November, and it is monitored by my department and the Home Office weekly and by Ministers monthly.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, will the Government still require incoming freight vehicles to call at a place called Ashford Sevington to be checked, or will that be removed? At the moment, all incoming vehicles are supposed to be checked at Sevington but, of course, half of them just drive by up the motorway and are never seen again.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. I will have to take some advice on how that works; it is not immediately apparent that it is connected with the EES, but I will go away and answer his question in writing.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, following the concerns expressed about Operation Brock, it is worth recalling that the EU’s phased introduction of EES allows for temporary suspension at specific border points in the event of high traffic. Given that the UK’s traffic monitoring will give us advance notice of building problems at the juxtaposed borders in Dover and Folkestone, what assurance can the Minister give us that the Government have sought to ensure that French border officials will accept and use our traffic information when making a decision to suspend the EES?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is quite correct that there is considerable flexibility, certainly in the early days of the scheme, to suspend it for the benefit of traffic getting through. The juxtaposition of the French and British border controls is very helpful in that respect. With our current, better relationship with the French Government, I know that there is an intention both at the highest level and at a working level to do precisely what the noble Lord says so that the French can apply this flexibility at the right times for the benefit of traffic going through the ports and Eurotunnel.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, on the movement of trucks across EU borders, what developments, if any, have there been on sorting out the urgent question of cabotage for touring musicians, which the Minister’s department should be taking a keen interest in?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am absolutely sure that my department is taking a keen interest in it. Again, this is not immediately connected with the European Entry/Exit System, but I would be very happy to write to the noble Earl and say what progress there has been.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, given that the Channel Tunnel has quite a lot of capacity, what consideration have the Government given to the increased use of the tunnel for rail freight? Will the Government’s strategy for increasing rail freight in this country include a proposal along those lines?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an excellent point. In fact, the Government and I are very active in encouraging more freight through the tunnel—and, indeed, more railway freight generally. Of course, as the noble Lord will know from our discussions on the then public ownership Bill and subsequently, the Government intend to give Great British Railways a target to increase rail freight, particularly in respect of the use of Eurotunnel. Both Eurotunnel and HS1 have the facility to discount track access charges for new freight. When I meet the freight community, as I do probably more often than the passenger operators —at least as a group—I regularly encourage and unfailingly remind it of this so that we can use the surplus capacity to which the noble Lord refers.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that, while most of this discussion has related to the south of England, the impact of these changes is at least as significant on the other bits of England—not least the north of England, because businesses up there are affected at least equivalently by the changes that may take place?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Indeed—we are very mindful of the fact that, done inelegantly and with the wrong result, this could affect business across the country generally, not merely in the south of England. The three juxtaposed controls are in the south of England, but they affect travellers and freight from all over the country. We are mindful of the effect on the economy as a whole; that is why the Government have worked so hard since they took office to check both that the arrangements in these places are adequate and that there is more capacity, as well as in collaboration with the European Union so that its end of this works as well as ours will.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister consider exploring the viability of processing and charging facilities on the M20 in the Ashford area, away from the coast at Folkestone, Dover and Thanet, to ameliorate the problem with congestion on the coast?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his suggestion. The juxtaposed portals work by having designated areas which are under the control of other sovereign nations. That would always require a lot of attention. The site in the Dover Western Docks was chosen after the Government took action to enable it to happen. We feel confident that it will work and that the authorities at Dover can sort out the difference between EU hauliers, who do not need to go through these checks, and hauliers from Great Britain, who do. It will depend on the dexterity of the Port of Dover, which needs to work hard to maintain its own business. What the noble Lord suggests is clever, but it would take a lot of doing, while the arrangements that we are putting in place must be there by the autumn.
Fujitsu: Government Contracts
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of Fujitsu’s suitability to hold government contracts.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my entry in the register of Members’ interests.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, the impact of the Horizon scandal on postmasters and their families has been horrendous. The Government are determined to hold those responsible to account and will continue to seek to make rapid progress on compensation and redress. Fujitsu’s role in Horizon is one of the issues currently being reviewed by Sir Wyn Williams’s statutory inquiry. In January 2024, Fujitsu committed to withdraw from bidding for contracts with new government customers until the Post Office Horizon inquiry concludes. It will bid for work with existing government customers only where it already has a contract with them or where there is an agreed need for Fujitsu’s skills and capabilities. The Government are carefully considering volume 1 of the report, published yesterday, which is limited in scope. Once the inquiry has established the full facts, we will review its final report and consider any further action, where appropriate.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her Answer. Given yesterday’s results from the official inquiry into the Post Office scandal, and the human tragedies which unfolded as a result of wrongful convictions of postmasters, what additional due diligence measures have the Government implemented or will the Government implement to ensure that contractors with a history of significant failures or legal issues can demonstrate that they have addressed these concerns before being awarded new contracts? In this, I am mindful of the bid by Fujitsu for the controversial trader support scheme in Northern Ireland.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My noble friend makes the most important of points, which is about the impact on people, and the victims of the Horizon scandal, a lot of which we heard yet again yesterday. It broke my heart and other people’s hearts.
On my noble friend’s specific question, the Procurement Act, which was passed by Your Lordships’ House in 2023, provides buyers with more scope to exclude suppliers who have performed poorly on previous relevant contracts. Previously, exclusion was possible only if poor performance had led to termination of a contract, damages or comparable sanctions. Due diligence on such failures is also more straightforward as the Act now provides for the sharing of information on poorly performing suppliers. This information is publicly available via notices published on the central digital platform.
With regards to the Trader Support Service contract, HMRC is currently undertaking a competitive procurement process for the renewal of that scheme, and it would therefore be inappropriate of me to comment further.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, Fujitsu has paid not one penny towards the victims of the havoc and misery that it helped to cause. Is the Government —is the country—over a barrel to Fujitsu? If not, why is Fujitsu still winning government work? If we are, what are the Government doing about it?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I want to put on record my personal thanks for the work that the noble Lord did in getting us to this point. Even with yesterday’s report, we would not have got as far as we have without his work and that of my noble friend Lord Beamish.
With regard to the role of Fujitsu and its contribution towards compensation and redress, it has accepted that it has a moral obligation to give funds, but the noble Lord will be even more aware than I am that we are yet to see a penny. The Secretary of State met the CEO of Fujitsu on 7 March. Fujitsu has agreed that it will have to make a financial contribution, but I am urged not to give a running commentary, although we will welcome any interim payment in due course.
With regards to ongoing contracts, the noble Lord will be aware that there have been 12 contracts in the last 12 months issued to Fujitsu. Some of that is to transition away from Fujitsu contracts, where we have to make sure there is a smooth transition process. I must remind and urge noble Lords that there are, as yet, no criminal proceedings against Fujitsu, and until then, we have to operate in a quasi-judicial way with regards to our approach to the contracts.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that I have asked quite a number of questions about the Fujitsu contracts, and she has repeated, word for word, quite a bit of what she said in her Written Answers. The Treasury was particularly shocking in its response. When asked why HMRC had retendered to Fujitsu and given Fujitsu contracts this year, it said:
“Contract opportunities are available to any economic operator that is able to meet the requirements of the procurement in compliance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 or the Procurement Regulations 2024, as applicable”.
That is a totally dead-bat answer to something quite shocking in my view. In the light of the Horizon report yesterday, which condemned Fujitsu’s conduct as a key contributor to the suffering of thousands of innocent people, is it not already clear that Fujitsu should be nowhere near any new contract?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an incredibly important point. Yesterday, we saw the first volume of Sir Wyn Williams’s 160-page report, based on 2 million pages of evidence, which included 19 recommendations, and we will come back to it in due course. The Government are committed to responding in full to the findings of the report by 10 October.
With regard to Fujitsu and the ongoing contracts, I believe that the Treasury contract is about the HMRC platform. Some of this is about continuity of service, to make sure that we are still able to have business supply secured. But I think everyone in your Lordships’ House would agree with the noble Lord’s sentiment that this is about how we operate in a way that is based on evidence going forward, so that we can ensure that those who need to be held accountable are held accountable and we do not make mistakes at the Dispatch Box, which I might by saying something that is unhelpful going forward as we progress after volume 2 is published.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, yesterday Sir Wyn produced the first volume of his report. It is worth all noble Lords reading section 2, because it gives a summary of individual cases of those who have been affected. I challenge anyone to read some of those without being moved: something that my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I have got used to over the years.
He also raises in the report the issue around compensation and Fujitsu. To date, the Government and taxpayers have paid over £1 billion, quite rightly, to those victims. Fujitsu has not paid one penny piece. It may have a moral obligation, but moral obligations do not pay compensation. I have raised on numerous occasions an issue that has been raised about ongoing contracts. I dispute the fact that some of these are ongoing contracts; some are new contracts. I have called, along with my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for Fujitsu to at least pay some interim payments. When will the Government get on and force Fujitsu to act on its moral obligations, put its hands in its pockets and at least pay some interim payments?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for the work he has done and for his ongoing participation in the Horizon compensation schemes. I agree that all noble Lords should review the 17 cases Sir Wyn Williams has highlighted. Many of us will have listened again last night to the personal testimonies of Jo Hamilton and Seema Misra, which are totally and completely heartbreaking and give us an indication of the human cost of the Horizon scandal, including the 13 people who have committed suicide because of it.
We have urged Fujitsu to make interim payments. There are ongoing conversations with Fujitsu, including regular meetings with the Crown Representative, the Cabinet Office and DBT. We will continue to have such meetings.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has seriously damaged public trust in procurement processes and, yet again, Fujitsu is right at the heart of it. Can the Minister tell the House exactly what the Government are going to do to finally hold Fujitsu to account and confirm whether the Government will be taking advantage of the new procurement regime enshrined by the previous Government, which allows the exclusion of suppliers from future procurement processes based on the grounds of professional misconduct?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely correct that the tools now exist because of the Procurement Act 2023. They came into effect on 25 February this year. But the process the noble Baroness describes is quasi-judicial and it is vitally important that we follow the evidence and make sure that we are acting appropriately with government money in the application of any investigation into Fujitsu. Obviously, there are also other accountability measures that are ongoing, including those currently being undertaken by the Metropolitan Police. There are many different levels of this investigation and the Government will respond in due course on our next steps after we have the full public inquiry findings.
Universal Credit: Two-child Limit
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the cost of abolishing the two-child limit for Universal Credit.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government do not routinely publish costings of policy alternatives. However, estimates have been produced by independent think tanks, including the IFS, the Resolution Foundation and IPPR. Their costings range from £2.5 billion to £3.5 billion a year in steady state. This Government are committed to tackling child poverty and will publish an ambitious child poverty strategy in the autumn.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, it is generally accepted that the abolition of the two-child limit and, many would argue, the benefit cap must be, in the words of the Children’s Commissioner, “the foundation” of the much-anticipated child poverty strategy. Does my noble friend therefore agree with charities in the field and former Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown that the immediate cost to the Exchequer must be weighed against the economic, financial and social costs of this key driver of child poverty, including the cost to the NHS, education, children’s care services, homelessness provisions, local economies and, indeed, to the Government’s own missions?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend mentioned the Children’s Commissioner. She will be aware that the Government commissioned the Children’s Commissioner to look at the experience of children in poverty. I am sure that, like me, she has read their comments, and they make for uncomfortable reading. But we cannot tackle child poverty in this country if we are not willing to look in the face the reality of the lives of our children. Importantly, having set up a Child Poverty Taskforce, the Government have pledged to look at the full range of the underlying causes of poverty and will continue to do that work.
I reassure my noble friend that the Child Poverty Taskforce is continuing to look at all available levers to lift our children out of poverty. We are looking at everything, including social security measures, housing, education and health, and the Government will bring forward an ambitious child poverty strategy in the autumn. But I want to reassure her that the last Labour Government lifted the best part of 1 million kids out of poverty, and we have a manifesto commitment to tackle child poverty. The Prime Minister set up this task force very early in his time in office. We are determined to tackle this scourge in our country.
Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row (Con)
I apologise to your Lordships for not being in as often as I would like; I have had some health issues, but I have been watching the proceedings of your Lordships’ House and the other place on television. Given everything that the Minister has just said could be brought forward, does she think she will have the backing of the Back Benches on the other side of the House?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I am sorry to hear about the noble Lord’s health; we are very pleased to see him here today, and as often as he is able to make it. I wish I could be in two places at once, because then I would watch what is happening down the other end of the Corridor, as well as at the better end, but so be it.
Noble Lords will be aware that the Government set out a Bill looking at reforming support for sick and disabled people. It came in two parts, addressing PIP and the extra cost benefit, and universal credit. As the result of the proceedings in the Commons last week, the Government, having listened to comments from around and beyond the House, will now look again at the PIP part after the review being led by my right honourable friend Sir Stephen Timms, co-produced with disability charities and disabled people.
However, down the other end they are discussing a Bill, which will soon arrive in this House, dealing with important issues such as rebalancing universal credit. We will be looking at producing the biggest sustained increase in the basic standard allowance of universal credit since it was set up, but also at how to balance that by making sure the gap between that and the amount people get as a health top-up is less. It will introduce lots of other things, including a right to try, bringing forward regulations so that trying a job will never mean in and of itself that you get reassessed. There is a lot of welfare reform to be done yet. It is tough going but we are determined to keep doing it, and I hope to see the noble Lord at the debate, if he is well enough, in the next few weeks.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
I thank the Minister for explaining the Government’s position, but it always seems to be that the real position is how much money we can save and how we can make the system financially viable. What analysis has the department conducted of the effects of the policy on children’s life chances, educational achievements and mental health? You cannot measure it all in how much money is saved.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
If the noble Lord is referring to the two-child limit, he will be aware that the policy was introduced not by a Labour Government but by a Conservative Government, and it is not a policy we would have introduced. We are working our way through the entire landscape we inherited. In tackling child poverty, we are setting out not to save money but to make children’s lives better. We understand that poverty is not just about one thing. Look at the things we have already done. We have announced a fair repayment rate to try to make sure that being in debt to the Government does not drive you further into poverty. Some 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty by extending free school meals to all those on universal credit. We have raised the minimum wage by so much that an average full-time worker on the national living wage will get a pay rise of £1,400 a year on average. We are looking at the full range, and we have already taken steps to try to make the lives of our citizens better, particularly of our children. The child poverty strategy is not about money; it is designed to make children’s lives better, and I commend it to him.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, is there any evidence that the two-child benefit cap has contributed to the rapid decline in our total fertility rates? In its latest Fiscal Risk and Sustainability report, the OBR highlights this as one of the UK’s daunting challenges—and, notably, the shrinking of our future workforce in an ageing society. What policies, if any, are the Government considering to address this disturbing decline in birth rates?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a really important point. I am not aware of any evidence connecting those but, if he is, I would be interested in it. I periodically survey the global evidence. If the noble Lord has looked into this, he may know that a declining birth rate is a common problem in many developed economies. A number of different countries have tried different strategies to tackle it, but they have been remarkably unsuccessful. So I am not aware of evidence of clear policies that Governments can use to tackle this.
It is my personal view that women have children for all kinds of reasons. While it is possible to remove barriers, it is never about just a single thing. It will be about things like childcare, so the Government are investing heavily in providing childcare for working families to make it possible for families to do that. It is about making sure that work pays enough to support a family, so we are investing in the minimum wage. We are doing a number of different things, but this is a House full of expertise and if any noble Lord has good ideas or evidence on this, I am open to it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Following on from the question from my noble friend Lord Brownlow, what decisions are being made and what coherent plan will there be to tackle the welfare Bill? It is extraordinary that the Timms review will report—before any legislation —two years and three months after the last general election, with no meaningful progress having been made at all.
My question is on the two-child cap. Can the Minister remind the House what the exceptions are to that policy, meaning that difficulties or hardship arising for those who have chosen to have more than two children can be mitigated substantially with extra funding from the taxpayer?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, since the noble Viscount’s Government brought in the policy, he probably does not need me to remind him there are exceptions—for example, those involved in kinship care and those who have produced a child as a result of non-consensual conception, who can be exempted if they can produce evidence of having been raped and the conception being the result of that, or if they can find another way to account for that. However, this is not the driver behind the Government’s action. This Government want to make the lives of children and families better. I make no apologies for starting off by looking at the terrible rise in child poverty over the last 14 years, and I cheered the Prime Minister when one of his early actions was to set up a cross-government child poverty task force and a unit to look at the full range of drivers of that. If our children grow up in poverty, it has a scarring effect that they do not recover from. If we do nothing else in our time in government, we need to find a way to address this, and I hope this could eventually be the cross-party view.
During the last Labour Government, I worked in the Treasury advising Gordon Brown and had to tackle child poverty. We set up Sure Start and invested in all kinds of programmes, and I sat in this House and watched many of them being dismantled when I went into opposition. If we are going to find a way to make the country better for all our children, we surely need to agree on how we tackle child poverty and stop it recurring generation after generation.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, reference has already been made to the Children’s Commissioner’s report published yesterday, which gives voice to the experiences of children and young people in poverty. It makes for harrowing reading, including one boy who was faced with the choice of going hungry or eating mouldy food, and many other such difficult stories. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that all the Government’s work on welfare will be based on the human dignity and equal value of every person in this country?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that, and, indeed, for the work that he and his colleagues do in this area. Like him, one of the reasons I was so glad to see the report, even though it is hard reading for the Government and for everyone, is that it talks about individual stories and the experience of individuals. There is always a risk when we are trying to make decisions at a macro level that we forget how they are experienced at the micro level of the individual. One of the things the task force has done is to have lots of encounters with families and children. It has worked with Save the Children to hear from children, and it has worked with the Children’s Commissioner. I was very grateful that, as part of the process, his colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby welcomed me to Derby to meet a range of faith organisations working on many different aspects and trying to join up the support given to families with children. His point about, in essence, the inalienable worth of every individual is one I am very happy to approve.
Combined Authorities (Adult Education Functions) (Amendment) Order 2025
Baroness Blake of Leeds
That the draft Order laid before the House on 19 May be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 7 July.
Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) (Threshold Amount) (Amendment) Order 2025
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint
That the draft Order laid before the House on 13 May be approved.
Relevant document: 27th Report from Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 7 July.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
Wednesday 9th July 2025
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
Lords ChamberHouse of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 View all House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 49-R-II(a) Amendment for Report (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (8 Jul 2025)
17:08 - Division on Amendment 13A (to Amendment 13) - Ayes: 284 / Noes: 239 - Amendment 13A (to Amendment 13) agreed.
18:23 - Division on Amendment 17 - Ayes: 265 / Noes: 247 - Amendment 17 agreed.
Lord True
“Unsalaried MinistersNo one who is a Minister of the Crown shall be eligible for membership of the House of Lords unless they are in receipt of, or have been offered, a salary under the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would mean that unpaid Ministers would not be eligible for membership of the House, effectively requiring all Lords Ministers to be paid.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, before speaking to Amendment 13, I should explain that I have tabled Amendment 13A on the supplementary list to put beyond doubt a point that may have been an unintended effect of the original drafting of Amendment 13. Amendment 13A ensures that the proposal in Amendment 13 would not apply to any existing Member of this House, but only to future ministerial appointments of new life Peers. After all, we on this side do not favour the forced expulsion of any Member of your Lordships’ House, and indeed your Lordships voted to support that important constitutional principle only last week. It has been agreed in the usual channels that, if the clarifying Amendment 13A is supported in a Division, Amendment 13 will be accepted as a consequential, so there will be only one vote on this issue.
The purpose of this is to send a clear message to the other place and to all Governments—I emphasise “all Governments”, and will come back to that—that service as a Minister in your Lordships’ House should be properly remunerated. There are other issues that need to be addressed, including pension and severance pay, but this amendment is about pay.
I spoke at some length on this in Committee, and I do not need to repeat all the arguments here, but let me set out three firm principles on which surely we across this House should all stand. The first is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work; the second is equal treatment for Ministers in both Houses; and the third is that no Member of this House should be prevented from serving their party, their House and their country for the lack of private means to do so. That is an unfairness that should have ceased to exist in the 18th century, let alone now in the second quarter of the 21st century. None of those basic principles that I have set out currently applies to Lords Ministers’ pay. Surely all Government Ministers in the House of Lords, whichever party is in office, should be paid. If they wish to renounce that pay, or any part of it, that is all well and good, but that does not affect the basic underlying principles.
In Committee, I spoke very frankly of my sense of shame—and, I might have added, anger—that I was unable to resolve this issue while I was Leader of the House because of, frankly, opposition at the top of both major parties. I exclude the noble Baroness opposite from this, who was extremely helpful and constructive in our discussions. I need not repeat those points today.
Towards the end of the last Government, 14 Ministers and Whips in this House were expected to work unpaid. The unpaid Ministers included my noble friends Lord Howe, Lord Minto, Lord Camrose and Lord Roborough. It is richly ironic that their public service and self-sacrifice then will now be rewarded by this Bill, as originally drafted, excluding them from our House.
As I said in Committee, I felt particularly keenly that it was a disgrace that my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a consummate and internationally respected servant of his country, lost out doubly as being unpaid and unable to claim an allowance because he was so often unable to attend the House because of his duties overseas. Such things should not happen.
Today, the Downing Street website tells us—I take it directly from there—that the noble Baroness, Lady Gustafsson, of Chesterton, and the noble Lords, Lord Hanson of Flint, Lord Timpson and Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, all work as Ministers of State unpaid. The noble Lords, Lord Moraes, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, Lord Katz and Lord Leong, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, all work as Government Whips unpaid, according to the government website this morning.
Perhaps only those of us in this House understand the immense burden and workload that falls on Whips in your Lordships’ House. It is quite different from what happens in the Commons. We admire them all greatly, and each of those Ministers I named are greatly admired and respected by their colleagues on this side of the House.
But no one should be required to do all that work without pay. No one in any other workplace would tolerate that as a fair way to treat labour. Where is the clause in the massive Employment Rights Bill to right the wrong that is done not just to those individuals but, frankly, to the dignity of this House?
I take nothing away from the sense of public duty. I admire it tremendously because it has led noble Lords under successive Governments to give public service here without reward. But not everyone in this place has the means to do that. That is an unfairness and an injustice, and it should end.
The problem results from two 50 year-old statutes: the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 limits the total number of paid Ministers to 109, and the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 allows for up to 95 Ministers in the House of Commons. If the Commons takes up its full allocation of 95 ministerial places, the effective, legal statutory limit for paid Ministers in your Lordships’ House under that limit of 109 is just 14. Clearly, that is not enough. The system must be changed. Of course, it could be changed by a simple Bill agreed across the parties to amend paragraph 2 of Part V of Schedule 1 to the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 Act. I am sure we could agree that very swiftly.
The self-sacrifice and sense of duty of those who serve for nothing should be respected. However, it need not for ever be repeated. We cannot neglect this issue, I submit, for the dignity and effectiveness of this House. This amendment would force the hand of all future Governments and all parties in the other place to address the issue. Now that the Bill has now been amended and is going back to the other place, I hope we may agree to send this important message down the Corridor.
On the basis of my experience and my sense of the rightness and fairness of this House, it is high time to open up the opportunity to every one of us here who may wish to serve their party and country as Ministers or Whips in this place but cannot afford to do so without pay to have that chance.
On our side, we will work across the House to agree and expedite a fuller solution going beyond this initial step, which will redress the balance between Commons and Lords Ministers. In the interim, I commend this first step to the House, with the firm belief that if no message is ever sent, the same experience that I and former Leaders of the House have had will go on recurring and people here will be asked to work for nothing.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords—
Amendment 13A (to Amendment 13)
Lord True
“(2) This section does not apply to Ministers of the Crown appointed before the day on which this section comes into effect.”
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, as explained, I have already spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
I apologise for jumping the gun, but the enthusiasm I feel for this amendment from my noble friend goes back to the previous Parliament: I pay tribute to the Leader of the House and to my noble friend for the efforts that were made in the last Parliament to right this wrong. Perhaps I could just make a few punchy points.
There is a limit, as my noble friend has explained, on the total number of Ministers. I was very indebted, in the last Parliament, to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who pointed out that there seems to be an increasingly inflationary effect on the number of Ministers who are needed to run this country. When I was Secretary of State, pre-devolution, we were responsible for everything, not just the devolutionary matters in Scotland, and we did it with one Secretary of State, four Ministers and two law officers. There are now 29 Ministers in the Scottish Parliament.
I am looking at my noble friend Lord Clarke. He and my noble friend Lord Fowler ran the Department for Transport in 1979 with two Ministers, and in 1979, that department was responsible for British Airways, the ports and the National Freight Corporation, none of which applies to the present or the previous Government’s Department for Transport, just to show that I am being non-partisan. In 1979, there were two Ministers, but by 2023 there were five Ministers in the Department for Transport, with much less to do.
The same was true of the DHSS, which had five Ministers in 1979. The DHSS was then split into two departments: the Department of Health and the DWP. The DHSS had five Ministers in 1979, but the two departments between them had 12 Ministers. You could argue that things have got more complicated, but there does seem to be an inflationary effect which even beats the Bank of England in the ability to create this kind of growth.
I think that it is very important that the principle that my noble friend has enunciated should be upheld: no one should be unable to be a Minister because they do not have the private means to do so. But just to follow up on my point, it looks to me suspiciously as though ministerial appointments in the other place were being used as a means of patronage by the previous Government to make sure that people would go through the Lobbies.
This Government do not really need much patronage —until recently, at least, they had a huge and loyal majority—but it looks as if that is what is happening. If we add to that the appointment of people who act as trade envoys and so on, it looks as if appointments are being used to increase the power of the Executive at the expense of the elected Chamber and this House. I think that my noble friend’s amendment and this principle is very important, because it goes to the heart of the ability of Parliament to hold the Executive to account.
This is not the only anomaly in the way this House is treated in respect of remuneration. Our Select Committees, if they go and do their work outside the House, can claim only half a day’s attendance, yet if people participate in our Questions remotely, they can claim a full day’s attendance allowance. I am sick to death of reading in the newspapers how we in this House are paid £371 for just turning up. No one points out that, out of that £371, people are expected to make a contribution to their overnight allowance and expected to cover their own secretarial and research costs. I point out that in the other place, the allowance for secretarial and other support can go up to £250,000 and the housing allowance up to £25,000.
Yes, MPs have constituents but, in this House, we often sit long after the other place has gone because we are clearing up the mess which is left when Bills have not been properly considered. Ministers in this House—God bless them—are expected to stand at the Dispatch Box, although they do not always do so, and answer questions not only on behalf of their departments but for the whole of the Government. This is an onerous task, and the idea that people should be expected to do that unpaid is, frankly, utterly outrageous.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, as probably the most recently retired unpaid Minister, I acknowledge the shop stewarding role of the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Forsyth. Clearly, they raise an issue of principle. As they have set out, the issue is around a Prime Minister’s management of MPs in the Commons and both Acts of 1975. Although I do not think this amendment is really appropriate in this Bill, it is a substantive issue and it is clearly unacceptable that Ministers of the Crown are unpaid. It reduces the talent pool from which to choose, and it has a flavour of cricket 50 years ago and gentlefolk amateurs. That is quite unfair, but it gives a flavour of those compared with professional politicians.
How can this be solved? Of course, Prime Ministers could exercise rather more restraint over the number of Commons Ministers who are appointed—good luck with that. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, we could also bring forward a little Bill to increase the number of paid Ministers allowed. I cannot believe—and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, put his finger on it—that a Government would ever increase the number of paid Ministers in the febrile atmosphere in which we currently operate.
It is worth acknowledging that the inflation has gone down a bit. Research from the Library shows that in 2010, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, had 118 Ministers, which, by my reckoning, means at least nine were unpaid. The noble Baroness, Lady May, had a similar figure in 2015. Mr Johnson had nine unpaid in December 2019, according to a Parliamentary Answer. My figures show that Mr Sunak increased it to 17 unpaid Ministers, 15 of whom were in your Lordships’ House.
Frankly, I am very dubious that we will see any improvement until we come back to the fundamental issue of substantive reform of your Lordships’ House. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may shake his head, but the reality is that the Lords is treated in the way that it is because we are not legitimate at the moment. I am afraid that the sorts of amendments from the Lib Dems on an elected House, and even tinkering around in terms of the numbers, is not going to cut the cake until we decide what the role of the second Chamber should be, its powers, how its membership is arrived at and whether Ministers would be appropriate to serve in such a reformed second Chamber.
Finally, the question which noble Lords and all other commentators will never answer is: what are the respective powers and relationships between the Lords and Commons, and how do you resolve differences? Let us get down to the real business and not go ahead with this proposal, which, I am afraid, is for the birds.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support these amendments because arrangements in a free economy involve an exchange of labour in return for payment. Since time immemorial, we have accepted that the labourer is worthy of his hire. Not only does payment represent a benefit to him for work done, but it reflects the obligations on the employer to meet certain conditions and take certain responsibilities, as it does on him.
In the case of ministerial salaries, as my noble friends have pointed out, this has long been recognised in law, with limits put on the number of Ministers, of course. The Ministers of the Crown Act 1937 regulated the salaries payable to Ministers. As we have heard today, the 1975 Act expanded on that and on the limits on numbers.
Unpaid Ministers in the House of Lords should indeed be entitled to claim parliamentary allowances under the prevailing rules of Parliament, but they are not. As we have heard, many lose out even on the attendance allowance if they are on business abroad. There is good reason to pay people for work expected of them and done. In my view, it is thrice blessed. It blesses he or she who gives their labour, he or she who takes the money and he or she who benefits from the labour.
I am in no doubt that without payment—I speak as a former director of a think tank and an employer—we cannot expect clear responsibilities to be fulfilled without Lords Ministers and the public being clear about the obligations on all Ministers, including those in the Lords. Parliament and the Executive will not be seen to be responsible to their paymasters.
We need to be clear about what the duties are in this Chamber. We know what they are, but the public are not aware of them. We have heard today about the long hours and the serious grind that is put in by Ministers of the Crown. Therefore, it is in my view very important that this work and this contract of employment—for that is what it is, even if it is not stated—should be set out. People should freely see what is expected of Ministers and that they fulfil their duties. It is very good for democracy, for our constitution and for accountability, so I support the amendments. I also echo what was said by my noble friend Lord True, that they can denounce the payment—I add that they could give it to charity—but the principle should be implemented.
Lord Markham (Con)
I was very happy to add my name to this amendment as someone also with personal experience. My noble friend Lord True set out three principles which I think we would all agree with. I think there is a fourth: meritocracy. The best person selected for a position should be selected regardless of race, gender, religion, sexuality or wealth. We all believe in the principle of equality in this House, so why should it not apply in the case of Ministers?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I too was happy to put my name to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord True, and agree with the points that my noble friends have made so far.
In contrast to the rest of the Bill, where we have been debating complex and profound elements of our constitution, this—as we have heard—is a much more common-sense amendment. It could be fixed with a single clause or even, to placate the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, a sunset clause attached to it if others agreed that more reform was needed. In addition to the points made about being paid fairly for the work that one does, attracting the best talent from the widest pool and adopting an approach of meritocracy, as my noble friend Lord Markham said, I will make a couple of other points.
The first is stability. Both the previous and current Governments have been able to attract people of great talent, reputation and achievement, but historically that has not always been a stable ministerial model. Stability is important for delivering and executing a Government’s policy effectively. If a Minister changes every year, that is unhelpful, and I know that a number of previous Ministers have felt unable to continue in their role, despite the unquestioned expertise that they brought to it.
As has been touched on, there is also an effectiveness point. I was fortunate to be a Minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education. In the Department for Education, I did pretty much all my visits on a Friday because I needed to claim my expenses—or allowance, whatever it is called—for attending your Lordships’ House. As has been noted, colleagues in the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and so forth were not able to.
An article in the Times in 2023 reported a Conservative Back-Bencher—I am dying to know who it was—as saying:
“You can always find ambitious flunkies who will do it—but it is much harder to find anyone good”.
I have to say that I have never thought of myself as an ambitious flunkey, and I worked with excellent fellow Ministers. For me, being a Minister, although I was unpaid, was the highlight of my career. I would do it again like a shot, paid or unpaid, but it is not a choice we should ask potential Ministers to make.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I rise to give strong support to the amendment moved so ably by my noble friend. Like other noble Lords, I do so on the basis of some experience.
In November 2021, I was invited to join the Government as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office. I had been involved in the affairs of Northern Ireland since the mid-1980s and advised six Secretaries of State, so it was familiar territory for me. At the time, however, it was made clear that there was no salary. Ministers of the Crown are rightly forbidden from having outside interests. As has been pointed out, some are fortunate enough to be independently wealthy. Alas, I was not in that category. As a result, for reasons that will be understood across the House, it was necessary for me to attend your Lordships’ House each sitting day.
Being an effective Northern Ireland Office Minister requires a significant amount of engagement and visibility within Northern Ireland itself, but I was severely constrained from doing that for a year. For that first year, invitations to attend events or meetings from Monday to Wednesday—or to substitute for other Ministers who might have three-line Whips in the other place—had to be declined.
Noble Lords will be familiar with the ongoing significance of US involvement in the affairs of Northern Ireland and of the importance of engaging directly with Irish America. Of the ministerial team of three— I assure my noble friend Lord Forsyth—at the NIO at the time, I had by far the most experience in these matters and the best network of contacts. So in March 2022, then Secretary of State Brandon Lewis asked me to accompany him on the annual week-long St Patrick’s visit, which typically involves high-level meetings at the Executive Office, the State Department, the House Speaker’s lunch and the President’s reception at the White House. I see the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in his place; he will be familiar with those events. It is essential that the UK Government’s voice is heard during this frantic week. Unfortunately, however, I had to decline the invitation in order to attend your Lordships’ House. It was, to put it mildly, a less than satisfactory situation and, as has been referred to, a number of my noble friends had similar problems when they were in government.
It cannot be right that Members of your Lordships’ House have to face the challenges with which I grappled for a year and be expected to perform as Ministers without a salary—frankly, it is absurd. The Prime Minister himself is certainly aware of this issue, as he discussed it with me as a problem to be resolved during an event that we both attended at Hillsborough Castle in April 2023. I strongly support my noble friend and urge the Lord Privy Seal, herself a distinguished former Northern Ireland Office Minister, to accept this sensible and necessary amendment.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made a very eloquent speech, but I am puzzled by it. He did not dispute the merits of what is proposed in this amendment or the mischief that it is addressing; his point appeared to be that nothing will be done by government until there is fundamental reform of this House. But we all know that that will not occur—at the very least, not for a very long time. Because of that, over recent years this House has regularly addressed specific mischiefs and improved them. This is another one, and we should act on it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest: for five years, I was an unpaid Lords Minister and Whip in the coalition Government. When we have a coalition Government—we may very well find ourselves with a rather messy coalition after the next election—there may be an argument for having a larger number of Ministers, because we have to spend some of our time marking each other, so to speak.
My responsibilities were in the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office, and I did indeed spend quite a lot of time outside the country. That enabled the Foreign Office to send someone to a number of countries that would otherwise have been entirely neglected without the most junior Minister, as it were, being sent there. I was lucky enough—and still am—to have an academic pension and a wife who has an academic pension, which means that we are moderately comfortably off. Maybe if we were of the Conservative variety, we would find that we needed more to live on, but one can manage not too badly on an academic pension. I did not mind missing some of the days in the House.
We have heard a number of interesting speeches, which have ranged very widely, including on the relationship between the two Houses. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I am reading a book on the House of Lords in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when we had conferences between the two Houses; maybe he would like to suggest that we move back towards that. Here we are on Report for a Bill that has been deliberately designed to be as narrow as possible, but we are talking about the relationship between the two Houses, the way in which government is structured and how many Ministers we need.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is absolutely correct that keeping the Back-Benchers in order has led to an expansion of government patronage. He did not make as much about the expansion of PPSs in the House, as well as trade envoys, which has meant that the House of Commons has ceased, in effect, to do a lot of its scrutiny job. Indeed, some weeks ago I met a Labour MP, elected last year, and she said that she wondered what the purpose of an MP is in the House of Commons now, as they are not expected to change legislation or to get at the mistakes that their own Government are making. There are some very broad issues here, but those issues are broader than this Bill.
We all know what the impact of this amendment, if passed, would be: the House of Lords would have fewer Ministers. That would damage this House very considerably, because the current Government are highly unlikely to shrink the number of Ministers in the Commons. If we want to shrink the number of Ministers, we should be agitating, but, of course, part of what has happened is that as local government has got weaker and central government has taken on more of what used to the role of local democracy, Ministers have expanded in all the things they do.
So, from these Benches, we will not support the amendment. Yes, we do favour much wider parliamentary reform. Yes, we favour much more thoroughgoing reform of this House. Yes, we are immensely disappointed at the timidity of this Government, with respect to this Bill as in so many other areas. But here we are, with a Bill that is concerned with a small change in the nature of this House, and unable to persuade the Government, without a much longer conversation, to change the 1975 Act, to change the way the Commons operates and, in that case, those of us on these Benches will vote against the amendment if a Division is called.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I was sitting here with unusual patience, but the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has encouraged me to intervene to make just one point. The Bill says it is to:
“Remove the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords; to abolish the jurisdiction of the House of Lords in relation to claims to hereditary peerages; and for connected purposes”.
Whereas I agreed with almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, it is nothing to do with this Bill, and I do not understand, with due respect to the clerks, how they agreed these amendments. I think it is a disgrace.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I was going to intervene briefly anyway, but, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I do not think it is customary for any Member of this House to start to question the clerks, who do not have the ability to speak for themselves. As the noble Lords knows, if this amendment were not allowed, it would not have been possible to table it.
The only point I want to add was prompted by something my noble friend Lord Caine said. I do not think it has been reflected in this debate. Before we decide how to respond to my noble friend pushing his amendment, the noble Lord Caine made the point that, when a Member of this House becomes a Minister, even an unpaid Minister, they have to give up all their outside interests. There is another factor that it is worth us being aware of: the same Ministers are also subject to the ACOBA restrictions for two years after they stop being Ministers. So their employment prospects also have some constraints put on them, after they have not been paid for two years and they have had to give up any outside interests as well. That is something else we should take account of.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, for raising this issue again, following the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. It is one of those issues. He and I have discussed it many times, including when he was Leader of the House. I think the principle of paid Ministers is an absolutely sound one and I welcome the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Forsyth, to the Ministers’ union, for which I am happy to supply application forms in due course. As much as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is an unlikely shop steward, I am sure he would be very welcome.
This comes to the heart of the issue. I have to disagree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes; the clerks did rule it in order as an amendment. There was some surprise about the range of amendments we have had on the Bill, but that is not to say they are not in scope. We have to accept they are in scope, however wide they go from the original title of the Bill.
I am glad the noble Lord, Lord True, tabled his Amendment 13A. I think he did so, recognising that the consequence of Amendment 13 would be that not only would we lose Ministers from the Government if it passed, but we would lose them from your Lordships’ House as well. They would have to go immediately, as Ministers, so I welcome his amendment.
First, it is right to say that the work of a Lords Minister is one of the most difficult jobs in government.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My noble friends agree with me—both paid, I hasten to add; both Foreign Office Ministers and our Defence Ministers are paid Ministers but are still here in the Chamber, recognising the duty and responsibility they have to the House, as well as to their departments and the Government.
As I say, the work Lords Ministers do covers not just their ministerial work in the department but any other work related to the Government, and they will answer questions on behalf of any issue affecting their department. I have great pride in the Ministers we have in our Government, and indeed I think the House has always respected Ministers from all the three parties who have been in government in the past.
I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, when she quoted somebody else who talked about it being “hard to find someone good”. Actually, we do find good people, but they make a sacrifice in order to do so—she is nodding that she did quote somebody, and I accept that.
Baroness Barran (Con)
To be clear, I also completely disagree with that, which is why I went on to say that I had worked with excellent Ministers, and we have excellent Ministers today.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I did not think that was what the noble Baroness said; I thought she was quoting somebody else.
On the points made about ministerial pay, again, there was a very spirited and valuable defence from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I have to say that the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Hunt, went rather wider than this particular issue, as did the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in talking about the respective merits of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. That just shows the appetite for looking at these issues across government.
As the noble Lord, Lord True, confessed, we have been able to make some improvements in this Government. Before the general election, there were 31 Ministers in government in your Lordships’ House, of whom only 17 were paid and 14 were unpaid. We have been able to improve that situation; we now have only nine unpaid Ministers out of 20 Ministers. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, asked for an assurance from me that I would use my best endeavours to persuade colleagues to try to find a way forward in delivering this. He will know, as does the noble Lord, Lord True, that I have done so since I have been in post and did so before, which is partly why the position is so much better than it was under the last Government. I look forward to further improvements in that regard.
The noble Lord, Lord True, gave his three principles. The first was a fair day’s pay for work done, and the second was equal treatment. Actually, there is not equal treatment between the two Houses. He will be aware that the ministerial salaries that Ministers receive in the House of Commons are in addition to their salary, whereas in the House of Lord there is a choice in the sense that Ministers who are unpaid claim, or can claim, the daily allowance. So if we say that they are completely unpaid, we understand what we mean by that but those outside the House may not.
However, it is also worth looking at the fact that, since 2010, there have been no incremental or cost-of-living increases in ministerial salaries. That has meant that Ministers whom we term unpaid, particularly if they live in London, can be earning more than Ministers who are paid. So there are a number of issues to be addressed. I am not citing exact figures, but it is a very similar amount. I am pointing out that there are a number of issues to be addressed in the inequalities between both Houses. I think we all agree that no one should be prevented from serving.
So I am not disputing the principle behind the amendment; I am saying that we cannot support the amendment. If the noble Lord had as his amendment that he wanted to amend the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act to increase the number of Ministers overall, that would certainly help guarantee an increase in the number of Ministers. But it has always been the case since then that there has been a small number of unpaid Ministers in your Lordships’ House; it grew under the last Government. However, if this amendment was passed, it would not mean that any currently unpaid Lords Minister would receive a salary—it would have no impact. It would not increase the number of salaries available for Lords Ministers, therefore it is not a practical solution to what we all agree is a problem. It would also put limits on the ability of the Prime Minister to choose the Ministers he or she seeks to choose.
This amendment would have no effect and we cannot support it. It is an issue to be addressed, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—who is leaping to his feet as I speak—sought an assurance that we are addressing it. He can take some comfort that this is a significantly better situation than under the last Government. Before I ask the noble Lord, Lord True, to withdraw, I will take this urgent intervention.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, can she help me on a procedural point? If Amendment 13 were to be passed, Amendment 13A is clearly sensible. We are going to consider Amendment 13A first. Will it be possible to agree Amendment 13A and then vote against Amendment 13?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. My understanding—I look to the clerk—is that we will vote on Amendment 13A first, and the noble Lord, Lord True, has said that he regards Amendment 13 as consequential and would not seek to press it. It would have to be a vote for or against Amendment 13A, rather than Amendment 13.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
I am most grateful to the Leader of the House. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, may have some validity. He said that, in practical terms, it probably means increasing the number of Ministers in order to deal with this issue. That would be a one-clause Bill that could be agreed between both Front Benches and would go through very quickly, I would suggest. Will the Leader explore with her colleagues the possibility of doing that? My noble friend Lord True tried this with the last Government and, unfortunately, there was a view taken at the top of the party, which did not understand this place, not to agree to it. In fairness, there is overwhelming support, and anyone in the House of Commons who understood this issue would surely find it possible to vote for such a Bill without difficulty.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. I know the draft Bill under the last Government that he refers to. We were never approached about that draft Bill—I am not aware of any discussion. The noble Lord, Lord True, spoke to me about it, but, as a party in the other place, we were never approached about it and it was never discussed.
There are two ways of dealing with this: an overall increase in the number of Ministers, or some way to ring-fence the number of Lords Ministers within the total number of Ministers. The noble Lord made an important point when he said that the number of Ministers overall in government is growing and asked whether that is necessary. A discussion could take place around those two issues—that is the better way—but we want to secure, for this House, the right number of Ministers to do the work that is required of us.
Having said that, this amendment is not a way to achieve this. It would not take us any further forward. The noble Lord’s suggestion is actually better, and I would be happy to take that forward. I urge the noble Lord, Lord True, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who spoke in this short debate. I have been struck above all by one thing: absolutely nobody who spoke has disagreed with the principle behind this amendment. It has had universal support. We had a startling intervention from the Liberal Democrat Benches, to say that they supported the principle but would vote against the amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord said his amendment has universal support, but it does not. I talked about the principle of supporting our Lords Ministers, and said that I preferred the way forward suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I do not support the amendment, but I do not think anyone disagrees with the principle of ensuring that we have the right support for our Ministers.
Lord True (Con)
That was exactly my point, and the noble Baroness has reiterated it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
If I may also correct the noble Lord, I pointed out that the consequence of this would be a reduction in the number of Ministers in the Lords, which would be extremely bad for this House.
Lord True (Con)
That was also incorrect; it need not necessarily do that at all. I must say that I was surprised when I heard the strictures from the Liberal Democrat Benches—“We cannot support this because this is a very narrow Bill”. Were those not the Benches that pressed two Divisions on the Bill to redesign the House on a democratic basis? They have the gall to now come forward and say that your Lordships should not ask that our Ministers be paid. The intervention was even more startling having heard the explanation from the Liberal Democrat Benches.
The intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is universally respected in this House, was germane, and I thank him too. I had not realised that he was also on the list of unpaid Ministers, which would have been 10 up until a few weeks ago. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, immediately and skilfully picked up the key point that he made. He said that there is never going to be a Bill that comes along to deal with this. Frankly, as I said, we have had the Employment Rights Bill—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I served as Whip on the Bill in 1999 and I was present for every session. I keep the flame that, one day, we will deal with these issues in a substantive way. I still stick to my point that we will make no progress in this area whatever. I know that the Leader may not agree with me but the idea that a Government would bring forward a Bill to say that we are going to increase the number of paid Ministers is completely naive. That is why, in the end, we should get down to the real business of sorting out what this place should really be for.
Lord True (Con)
The noble Lord absolutely makes my point for me. When an opportunity arises, let us put aside all the ardour of this and that, and whether or not we like hereditary Peers. We have a Bill that concerns our House and the better workings of this House. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, if there is a mischief that might be addressed, let us use this opportunity to address it. The Bill has already been amended. It is not a Bill that is intacta. It is not a Bill that is not going back to the House of Commons.
Under successive Governments, for all the striving of the noble Baroness opposite, the House of Commons has continued, and will continue, to ignore the voice of the House of Lords in respect of our request. If we support my amendment, it will force the House of Commons to consider this point and to consider whether there should be a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work in the House of Lords. It will force the House of Commons to consider whether meritocracy should apply and whether the absence of wealth should not deny one the opportunity to serve one’s country in Parliament. It will force the House of Commons to consider the principle that no one should be prevented from serving their party or this House for the lack of private means. Those are critical principles that should be laid before the House of Commons. This amendment would enable that to be done.
I beg Peers from all sides to stand up for their fellows—perhaps silent fellows—in this House who secretly would like to come forward and serve but, as we have heard from these Benches and the Benches opposite, have to look at their bank balances and say that they cannot. Yes, we can. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
“Retirement from the House of LordsIn section 1(2)(b) of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, after “peer” insert “or a person holding a lasting power of attorney for that peer”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment allows for a person holding a lasting power of attorney for a peer to sign on their behalf when notifying the Clerk of the Parliaments of the peer’s retirement.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in Committee, it was pretty much acknowledged that this amendment addressed a genuine problem and that the House as a whole would benefit from a solution. That problem, in a nutshell, is that the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 clearly states that a notice of resignation
“must … be signed by the peer and by a witness”.
Therefore, if a Peer has lost mental capacity and the Clerk of the Parliaments does not feel able to accept an attorney’s signature, there could be the perverse situation where a Peer’s attorney could arrange medical care or sell a Peer’s house but could not submit a notice of resignation on their behalf, thus leaving that Peer free to speak or vote in the House when they really should not. This is undignified for the Peer and bad for the reputation of the House.
Amendment 16 would amend the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 to allow a person holding a lasting power of attorney to sign a letter of resignation on a Peer’s behalf. Following the debate in Committee, I do not think the intention is controversial and I will not spend more time on it.
I thank the Leader of the House and the Clerk of the Parliaments separately for spending time with me to discuss this amendment. The Leader has done what she said she would do in Committee and has, together with the Clerk of the Parliaments, come up with a solution—the issue is whether it is the best one. In the decade or so since the passing of the 2014 Act, the Clerk of the Parliaments and his predecessors have accepted legal advice that it would not be lawful to accept a notice of resignation by a Peer’s agent or attorney. The Leader recently commissioned further advice from the Government Legal Department, which I am informed admits that there are good arguments on both sides but now advises that an attorney may submit a notice of resignation on behalf of a Peer.
Armed with the new government lawyers’ advice but conscious of the good arguments on both sides, the Clerk of the Parliaments has changed his mind and said that he is now prepared to accept the legal risk of accepting a resignation from an attorney, subject to certain safeguards. I emphasise that the unfortunate Clerk of the Parliaments is only implementing a system that we have created but is forced to take the legal risk by accepting the new advice instead of the previous advice. He may later be found to be correct in accepting the advice or he may not.
What would happen if a successor Clerk of the Parliaments disagreed with his interpretation of the advice? What would happen if a court found that the advice was incorrect? Why should we leave the Clerk of the Parliaments to bear the risk that we have created? Surely it would be better if we made the situation clear by amending the 2014 Act in the way the amendment suggests. The Government are already amending that Act in Clause 3(4).
As we all know, legislative time is at a premium, so adopting the amendment is a perfect opportunity for this House to do its duty to revise legislation and remove doubt. In the words of the Leader of the House when she was Leader of the Opposition,
“there is an obligation on us to do what we can to improve legislation. That is our role”.—[Official Report, 31/1/23; col. 636.]
Baroness Browning (Con)
Before my noble friend sits down, I fully understand why he is suggesting this and I have a lot of sympathy with it, but, for clarity, I would like to know about a detail in his discussions with the Clerk of the Parliaments. For the attorney to exercise an attorney’s power, they would have to make sure that the person they were representing had lost capacity. What steps have been included to assess that capacity? I served on the Mental Capacity Act committee for many years, and under the Act there is a procedure to assess someone’s capacity. Particularly in respect of very elderly people, sometimes people are deemed to have lost capacity when in fact they are suffering from things like urinary tract infections. For that power to be exercised legally, what has my noble friend agreed will be the way in which capacity is legally assessed?
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
As far as I understand it, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 says that an attorney established under a lasting power of attorney must think about the code of practice within that Bill when they make decisions on the other person’s behalf, so they are under a duty to abide by the code of practice that is contained within that Bill.
Baroness Browning (Con)
Forgive me, but within that code of practice is a clear code of conduct for how capacity is assessed and by whom. There should be an assumption of capacity before that process starts.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
Exactly. The attorney under a lasting power of attorney has duties. If he or she was exercising that duty within the realm of the Act, they would be acting lawfully, and they would establish capacity using the advice that is contained in the code of practice. I beg to move.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I will be brief because I cosigned and spoke to this amendment in Committee. The amendment seems to me to be bathed in common sense and one that this House should accept without question. It is a timely amendment that is also based in humanity. As I explained last time, there are two types of powers of attorney, but Section 1 of the 2014 Act does not seem to come within either of them. Therefore, to avoid the confusion that currently seems to be abroad, we should make that confusion go away by agreeing to my noble friend’s amendment.
We have heard something of what the Clerk of the Parliaments may or may not think, but, with the greatest respect to him, what he thinks is neither here nor there. This is a government Bill, and presumably the Government’s policy is not to permit this amendment. They must justify their refusal to accept the noble Lord’s amendment, and they cannot hide behind their lawyer or our clerk.
The simple point is: are we to be humane? Are we to allow those who have lost their capacity to be released from the burdens of membership of this House of Lords, or are we to leave them to hang on in some undignified way? My noble friend’s amendment is sensible, humane and timely, and I support it with great vigour.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment. I suggest, in addition to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, that the position is even worse. We are not relying on the Clerk of the Parliaments; the Government are relying on legal advice which has been received that none of us have seen. I cannot understand, on a matter of this importance which goes to the integrity of the House, why we are denied access to legal advice which, as I understand it, the Government are relying on in order to respond to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ashton. This is a matter on which certainty is essential and I, for my part, without seeing this legal advice, cannot accept that the best solution is not to put the matter, with clarity, in legislation.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I join with others to support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Ashton. The constitutional role of this House is to review and improve legislation, and this is a clear case of improving legislation. I make only two points. First, to repeat the observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, we have never seen the second set of legal advice that has now been provided by the Government Legal Department. There is absolutely no convincing reason why confidentially should not be waived in respect of that legal advice. It is impossible for us to make any judgment without that happening. It is equally clear that there remains real doubt as to the advice received. The Clerk of the Parliaments has talked about being willing to take a risk. There is only a risk where there is uncertainty.
The second point I wish to underline is that mental incapacity does not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion. I take the simple example of George III: periods of pronounced mental incapacity may be followed by clear and lengthy periods of lucidity. Indeed, in the case of George III that led to constitutional problems, because when lucid he went on to question some of the steps taken in the regency. Here, you also have the case of someone who suffers a massive nervous breakdown and fully recovers, only to discover that they have been resigned from this House—an irretrievable step. They cannot go back, so what do they do? They seek to challenge and review the decision on the grounds that it was unlawful, and they may well succeed.
What happens if, after one or two years in court, it is determined that that person was entitled to continue as a Member of this House, and they then say, “Well, I would have acted in the following way with regard to primary or secondary legislation that passed through this House during the period when I was unlawfully prevented from contributing to proceedings”? It seems to me that it just leads to a constitutional problem, one that is simply resolved by a very straightforward amendment to the 2014 Act.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I have seen two of these instances happen before. On legal advice given to a Minister not being revealed to this House, I can remember a huge row about it, and the House adjourned for 10 or 20 minutes while everyone recovered their composure because the row got so bad. It has been longstanding legal advice, and whether it is a good or a bad thing, this is probably not the place to break it, unfortunately. I do agree that it would have been very helpful to the House on the other occasion if the Minister had been able to say what that advice was. It is a good question whether we should do it, but I do not think this is necessarily the place or time, although there is long precedence for that.
On the question of powers of attorney or legal capacity, I have met this too to do with a will and things like that. The answer, very simply, is that you get advice on the question of legal capacity. If you want to push it far enough, it can end up in the courts or the Court of Protection; probably, the power of attorney would end up in front of the Court of Protection, if someone wants to push it that far, and it would be very unfortunate. If, in the George III case, the person recovered somewhat and two years’ later said, “No, I wish I had not been chucked out”, I am afraid he would not have been sitting for two years, so he would be disbarred from the House by reason of non-attendance. So that might just solve the problem.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment. I want to make a slightly different point in addition to the legal arguments that have already been made. It is a shame to be speaking before hearing the Leader of the House set out her case, but, as my noble friend said, she was very clear in Committee that she takes this matter very seriously, as I know she does. As we discussed in Committee, all of us who have led our groups or been Chief Whips have had to deal with this issue, and I think we are united in knowing that it needs addressing.
The thing I find hard to understand is why we would not use the opportunity we have right now to put this matter beyond doubt. There are very few opportunities to do that, and one is presented to us right now, so I hope that the Leader of the House will take it. If she does not and my noble friend presses for a Division and is successful, I hope that, in the period between now and the Commons considering any amendments we pass, she will use the opportunity to make the case for this amendment to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues. As the Leader of the House sometimes reminded me when I was sat where she is, the Leader has a responsibility not just to bring the Government’s arguments to this House but to represent the arguments of this House back to government. This is one of those occasions when the House would look to her to take that lead.
I would simply add that, on this occasion, this is not political or partisan; it is about serving the public interest, not just the interests of us as individual Members. I hope that the Leader of the House will act in accordance with that if my noble friend divides the House and is successful in passing his amendment.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, the point raised by this amendment is very short, and I will therefore make only three short points on it. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, it is unfortunate that we do not have sight of the relevant legal advice. Here, the Government are not relying on legal advice that is covered by the normal principles of confidentiality; this goes directly to how the House is going to vote on this matter, and it is unsatisfactory and unfortunate that we do not have sight of that legal advice.
Secondly, whatever view one takes on the underlying position, we now know that there are two contrary and conflicting legal opinions out there. That necessarily gives rise to ambiguity, which is something we should avoid if we possibly can. That brings me to the third point: we can avoid ambiguity here, because this amendment makes very clear what the position is going to be going forward, and we have the ability to put the matter beyond any doubt. Given that the Bill is already going back to the other place in respect of a number of points, I suggest that this amendment ought to be accepted. If the Leader of the House is unable to accept it, these Benches will support my noble friend in the Lobbies.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for that, and perhaps I can offer a helpful way forward. This amendment is identical to one tabled in Committee, except that it seeks to permit Peers to retire by allowing a person holding a lasting power of attorney to sign the notice of retirement, which is then given to the Clerk of the Parliaments.
The debate we had in Committee was very useful. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, it was an example of the House at its best, coming together to resolve an issue concerning the dignity of our Members that we all need to be resolved. There was cross-party support for addressing this issue, which has lingered unresolved for far too long, and which the House should have addressed a long time ago.
At the Dispatch Box last time, I made a commitment to report back to the House, and I am able to do so positively today. I will give some of the background of why this matters to me: I was concerned about it before I was Leader of the House, when I was Leader of the Opposition. I know that previous Leaders and Chief Whips were given the same advice as I was—that it was not possible for somebody to be retired by lasting power of attorney or by power of attorney.
I had a case with a colleague whose health was declining, the family wished that Member to retire, and when they approached the Clerk of the Parliaments they were told that the Member could not be retired but he could take a leave of absence. I found that completely and totally unacceptable, because we did not give that Member the opportunity to leave this House with dignity. I investigated further, and I was shocked to discover that they would not even accept a power of attorney. Given that the circumstances in which a power of attorney is accepted are significant, for this House not to accept it seemed rather strange, and I thought it was unacceptable. You can sell your family home, you can resign somebody as a director of a company, but you could not retire from the House.
I raised this matter with the Clerk of the Parliaments, but I also sought my own government legal advice. I have discussed the matter with noble and learned colleagues around the House and the Clerk of the Parliaments, and we reached an immediate practical solution. Members may or may not have seen the Procedure and Privileges Committee’s report. The Clerk of the Parliaments contacted me to say that, having reviewed the legal advice available to him and his predecessors, subject to safeguards—which I will come on to—he would be willing to accept the notice of resignation submitted to him on behalf of a Peer who has lost capacity, holding either a lasting power of attorney covering property and affairs, executed under Section 9(1) of the Mental Capacity Act, or an enduring power of attorney made prior to the 2005 Act coming into force. The safeguards were that the clerk would see the power of attorney, which is a standard procedure in all cases, and that if there was any doubt or any concern, he would raise that with the Whips.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I have a number of other points to make that might be helpful.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
As to the noble and learned Lord’s impatience, I ask him to bear with me as I go through this.
The basis of that is the legal advice received on that. I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, about not sharing legal advice, even though that is a commonly held view in government, but I will come to that as I may have a way forward that will help him. I think he understands the risks of sharing legal advice and knows full well why the Government do not share it.
We have moved on, and it is now possible. There are families of noble Lords who presently are looking at this to ensure they can retire Members who are ill. That decision is based on a lasting power of attorney or an enduring power of attorney, so we are clear that we can accept both of those.
The noble Lord referred to the risk that the position may change again. The matter has already been considered and approved by the Procedure and Privileges Committee, of which the noble Lord, Lord True, is also a member. The report that I showed was published on 24 June with details, and the relevant amendments have been made to the Companion. To state the obvious—I am sure that noble Lords understand this—to reverse that would require further consideration by the committee and then notification to the House. I am confident that the position is practical and sustainable and will not be reversed. The House has a clear view on this matter: Members should be able to retire with dignity through power of attorney. We should let that work through and ensure it takes full effect.
Having listened to the discussion that has taken place, I want to proceed further. I have long held the view, and have discussed it with noble Lords across the House, that this House should take some responsibility for managing its own affairs. The question is: does this have to be in statute in order to take effect? As I have said previously on issues such as retirement and participation, I want the House to step up to its own responsibilities.
I question whether we need primary legislation to resolve this, and I do not think we should pass legislation that is not needed, but I am also concerned that as drafted, the amendment could risk unintended consequences. Unlike the report of the Procedure and Privileges Committee, this amendment makes provision only for lasting power of attorney. This is part of a broader area of law that involves both enduring power of attorney, which is recognised in the Procedure and Privileges Committee report, and other forms of legal authority, such as the ordinary power of attorney, more regularly used when someone manages an individual’s affairs when they are temporarily abroad or unwell.
There are also the provisions that the noble Baroness referred to in the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and legislation prior to that which was carefully developed and set out when a lasting power of attorney or an enduring power of attorney should or should not be relied upon. Those ensure that safeguards are in place. By singling out just the lasting power of attorney and making it so that a notice signed by a person holding one is effective in all circumstances, the amendment makes no provision for the wider context. This is a complex issue. I have to admit to noble Lords that when I first embarked on this, I thought it was a straightforward issue, and the more I have looked at it, the more complex it has become. I am wary of looking at simple legislative fixes for what are complicated issues.
Lord Pannick (CB)
The noble Baroness has been extremely helpful. In the period before Third Reading, if the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, agrees with that approach, would she be prepared, at the very least, to share with the House, or with those who are interested in this issue, the substance of the legal advice, so that we can understand what the issues and uncertainties may be?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I think the best way forward would be for the government lawyers to talk with lawyers in the House with an interest, including the noble Lord, so that we can find a way forward. It is in the interests of the House to resolve this and for lawyers to talk to lawyers. I am not a lawyer and I have no intention of becoming a lawyer, although the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, once accused me of being a lawyer —I say that with some pride—but I think we are all in the same place and want to find a way forward.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
Before the noble Baroness the Leader sits down, has any thought been given to the fact that the law of Scotland may not be precisely the same as England’s? I was not able to catch what she was saying in her original statement as to what the formula is she is using, but care has to be taken to see that the law of Scotland would be covered by whatever solution is being put forward.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble and learned Lord is right and I am grateful to him for the discussions we have had on this point. In the legislative solution, there would have to be reference to Scotland as well. That is why I am confident that our current position, for the Procedure and Privileges Committee, is the right one and works.
However, I accept the views of noble Lords who want to put this matter beyond risk. If it is possible to do that through discussions then, as I have said to the noble Lord, I am happy to delay Third Reading to enable those discussions to take place. That is a way forward on this. I hope it is available to the noble Lord, because we want to get this right. None of us wants to be in a position in which a noble Lord whose family think it is appropriate for them to retire is in legislative limbo and cannot do so. If we pass this today, we would be in that position. I am very happy to have discussions with government lawyers between now and Third Reading to resolve the matter. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank everyone who spoke in this debate, including my co-signatories—a formidable legal team. I repeat my thanks to the Leader of the House, who spent a lot of time discussing this with me. I am very grateful for her offer to work further on this matter over the coming weeks, and I am willing to accept that. However, I am afraid I do not think the commitment she has made, though generous, is enough, and I noted that it quite understandably included the ominous phrase “if agreement can be reached”.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord. To be clear, if he puts his amendment to the vote, we cannot support him in that amendment and therefore we cannot have discussions on it between now and Third Reading, because it will be part of the Bill. We would have to wait until ping- pong and have discussions then, which is why this is a better route forward. I am sorry if noble Lords do not quite understand the procedure around how we would have to manage this, which is why I suggest we have discussions. We are even prepared to delay Third Reading to allow for those discussions to take place, so that we can reach a solution that satisfies the whole House. It is a perfectly reasonable way forward.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
It is a shame that it is take it or leave it, as far as discussions are concerned.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord is a former Chief Whip and he will understand the procedures of the House. If he puts his amendment to the vote today and it is not agreed, the vote we had in Committee stands and the clerk has accepted it. If his amendment is agreed, it is therefore part of the Bill and we cannot address that until it has been to the House of Commons. It is not that we are saying take it or leave it; we are saying that we are unable to do so within our procedures. The way that the House can have the discussion is at Third Reading. It is in the noble Lord’s hands.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
I do not agree with that exactly. It would be perfectly possible to have discussions, even if it was in the Bill. Even if there are particular problems, once it is in the Bill it can be brought back at Third Reading.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, to assist the House, paragraph 8.153 in the Companion says that:
“An issue which has been fully debated and voted on or negatived at a previous stage of a bill may not be reopened by an amendment on third reading”.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
There is still ping-pong. However, I accept what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House has said.
I am quite surprised there is such controversy about what I thought was a fairly common-sense amendment. We would like to get a solution that everyone could agree on. There is a principle here that errors or problems with legislation should be addressed by legislation. If we have something that we all agree is wrong in a Bill then it should be corrected in the Bill. I have accepted what the noble Baroness has said about having discussions before Third Reading and that the Third Reading could be delayed to enable those discussions. I am sure that we will come to an agreement if we discuss this sensibly. I am therefore prepared to withdraw my amendment.
Lord True
“Rights of life peers to sit in the House of Lords(1) Section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages) is amended as follows.(2) At the end of subsection (1) insert “, and, as the case may be, the incidents specified in subsection (2A) of this section”.(3) Omit from “and” in subsection (2)(a) to the end of subsection (2)(b).(4) After subsection (2), insert—“(2A) A peerage conferred under this section may, if the letters patent so state, during the life of the person on whom it is conferred, entitle him, subject to subsection (4) of this section, to receive writs of summons to attend the House of Lords and sit and vote therein accordingly, and shall expire on his death.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would make it possible to create a life peerage without a seat in parliament under the Life Peerages Act 1958.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, in preface, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her readiness on that amendment. We have reached a good point as a result of that discussion, and I thank her for that—though there is no doubt in my mind that there is a matter to resolve.
Amendment 17, in my name, seeks to amend the Life Peerages Act to place absolutely beyond doubt what I and many others consider probably is beyond doubt: the untrammelled power of the Crown to create a peerage that does not bring with it a summons to attend your Lordships’ House.
Throughout the passage of this Bill and over many years, if not decades, we have heard arguments about the size of the House, complaints about people who take peerages and then do not attend the House, reference to people who accept a peerage and then very swiftly retire, and on many occasions criticism of previous Prime Ministers’ extensive peerage creations. This one is not doing too badly, and I have no complaint—it was perfectly reasonable, to my mind, that the Labour Party should create more Peers in this House. That has always been my position, and I stand by what I said when I was in government and at this Dispatch Box. We welcomed all these new Peers in the good spirit that is customary in our House.
However, we all know that not all who receive the supreme honour and dignity of a peerage for life in many walks of service—business, the Armed Forces, the arts or even sport, and many others—want to be working Peers in this place, or even feel that they may be equipped to do so. Some come and then swiftly retire. Some very rarely pass those brass gates but, in the statistics, they still count among our number. Neither of those things serves the interest of the House as a whole.
This is one of many reasons why I submit to your Lordships that there is an overwhelming case for a modernising reform of our system of peerages, so that those who are worthy of being honoured in this way for their services to public life, with this extraordinary high degree of honour, but who do not want or may not be able to fulfil the obligations to attend here, may receive a peerage for life without being required to take a seat here.
He is not in his place, but I have often heard the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, make this point and I have always agreed with him. My noble friend Lord Lucas argued it very ably in Committee, and I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, supported the sentiment in Committee. He argued that
“separating the honour from the obligation is an important part of how we should be moving forward”.—[Official Report, 12/3/25; col. 796.]
I agree with him, and I hope that now the Bill is going back to the other place he will be as good as his word and support what he called this important part of moving forward—though, having heard earlier that the Liberal Democrats’ policy on the Bill is to vote against principles they support, I wish I could be more confident that he would follow me if I chose to divide the House. I will obviously listen carefully to the debate.
As I argued in Committee, it is probable that the right to create a life peerage of this type already exists. Indeed, such a life peerage was created as recently as 2023 in the case of the present Duke of Edinburgh, and there are many historical precedents, as I explained in Committee. When we hear a new Peer introduced in the House, we hear our clerk intone these words every time, after the reference to the Life Peerages Act:
“And of all other powers in that behalf us enabling”.
These affirm the undoubted and full range of powers inherent in the monarch to bestow peerages and other honours.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
I have just a practical question, really. There is a Peer who came into this House and did not make a maiden speech for 10 years because he considered the peerage an honour. Then, one day, the Prime Minister said to that person, “By the way, with your experience, I’ve got a bit of a job I want you to do”. That Peer came in and made his maiden speech and worked inside the Government. That would not be possible with this kind of amendment.
Lord True (Con)
It would. If such a rare case applied, a second, life peerage under the 1958 Act could be conferred—it would be very simple.
Like much constructive reform, this may not be a great innovation. It is an extension of a principle that exists under the royal prerogative, an extension to the 1958 Act so that non-sitting life Peers may be created through a statutory process as well. This would be helpful to Prime Ministers who wish to honour distinguished men and women but not necessarily to swell the ranks of this House.
There are many Peers who currently do not have the right to sit in your Lordships’ House, and I found the arguments put against this proposition in Committee faintly risible. A clear and unequivocal reform, enabling the creation of non-sitting life Peers under the 1958 Act, would be no more or less confusing than the current position, but it would relieve us of the potential difficulties both for individual Peers and for the House, to which I have referred. It might save some future Peers, and indeed your Lordships’ House, from the unnecessary embarrassment of including people who do not want to be here or to stay here for very long. I cannot think for the life of me why any Government would wish to resist it.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I will risk the possibility of being called risible by the noble Lord, Lord True, for disagreeing with him, but I think he has failed to spell out precisely one point that he should have done. He prayed in aid various people, including my noble friend Lord Foulkes as someone who thought we should separate membership of this House from the peerage. I agree with that—it is a very good idea—but there are of course two ways of doing it.
One way is to say that you do not require a peerage to be in this House, nor do you need a title—we could be called Members of the upper House. That deals with the problem just as effectively as the problem he has constructed, which I do not think is a serious one, to create a new category of Peer. This is the last thing we want to be doing in a Bill of this sort, which tries to simplify and clarify membership of this House, however far from that we have strayed.
According to my reckoning, if we were to make the mistake of following the advice of the noble Lord, Lord True, we would then have six categories of membership of this House. We would have hereditary Peers here for at least another 40 years, maybe longer, due to the amendment we have carried; some Law Lords remaining from the previous legislation; Bishops; life Peers; and we would still have—though not as Members of the Lords—hereditary Peers, who are not able to sit in the Lords. He is adding a further category of life Peers who are not able to sit in the Lords.
If he tried to explain that in “Understanding the House of Lords” to the average 18 year-old studying the British constitution at the moment—or the average anybody—it would sound like the ultimate in making a mountain out of a molehill. We do not need additional categories of membership of this House; we need fewer.
Lord True (Con)
I am not proposing an additional category of Members of this House; the whole point of this amendment is that those people should not be Members of this House. By the way, any life Peer who retires from this House is still a life Peer and a Lord, so is the noble Lord confused by that?
Lord Grocott (Lab)
If the noble Lord, Lord True, cannot see the difference in category between a life Peer who can sit in here and legislate and a life Peer who cannot, then we are going to have considerable difficulty in having a sensible discussion. They are obviously fundamentally different, just as there is a fundamental difference between a hereditary Peer who cannot sit in this House because he is not one of the favoured 92, and a hereditary Peer who can. Believe me, they know the difference—and I am sure the life Peers would, as well.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
Just to help the noble Lord’s confusion, there are the courtesy titles of the younger sons of certain levels of the peerage.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, my support for this concept is not new. Indeed, this was one of my recommendations to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his report. If Prime Ministers had created fewer Peers so that we were not so numerous, I would continue to resist this concept of creating Peers with no right to sit in this House making laws.
However, our numbers are perceived to be a problem. We must recognise that Prime Ministers need to grant peerages not just because they need bodies in this House, legislating, but because they need to reward achievement in the same way as others receive other honours, like knighthoods and other gongs.
Being granted the title of Lord or Baroness is a great reward in itself, but I can see merit in Prime Ministers being able to grant a peerage and the title of Lord or Baroness to someone who would not be entitled to sit in the Lords and make laws, but in recognition of the good they have done in their own particular field. I cannot define a category of these people, but it may be like an even higher version of a knighthood.
This suggestion may give Prime Ministers the flexibility they need to create peerages and reward people for their great work without flooding this House with new Peers. Perhaps the noble Baroness the Leader of the House would like to make this suggestion to the new Lords Select Committee and ask it to report back with recommendations, because I believe there is merit in having non-legislative Peers.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but I have to do so because this is a concept that, like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I have proposed in your Lordships’ House on many occasions. I have not heard that support for it from the Conservative Benches in the past, but I have put it forward because I believe it would be a useful component of a wholesale reform programme of your Lordships’ House.
However much I agree that it is useful, I cannot agree that we should vote for it tonight. If I had written the Labour Party manifesto, I might have included it, with many other things, and if I had been the parliamentary draftsman for this Bill, I might have looked much more widely and had a much wider Bill —but I am neither of those things.
We have before us a very specific, narrow Bill. I do not believe that I shall argue later in today’s proceedings even about the content of the agenda for the Select Committee—but this should not be included in it, because it is not based on a manifesto commitment in any way. It is completely piecemeal, and I have not heard support for it in the past as part of a wholesale package of reform. Therefore, however much I might be tempted by the idea, I shall be happy to vote against it if the noble Lord, Lord True, puts the question to the House.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
Thinking of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I trust that no wives of these new Lords will take the title “Lady”. That just creates a whole lot—we have wives of Knights who call themselves Ladies, we have wives of noble Lords who call themselves Ladies, and now we have some of us who call ourselves Ladies. If this was to go through, I trust that the new Lords—who I am against, by the way—should not be able to give that honorary title, unless my husband could become Lord Hayter.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the combination of titles with membership of the second Chamber is one of the many things that we have inherited from the medieval period and the 16th and 17th centuries. It is very pleasant, most of us enjoy it and I particularly enjoy the title that I have, because the village in which I live is a special one, a world heritage site, and people love to come and visit us. But I am occasionally confused—some years ago I was at a conference in Japan from which I had to return early. As I shared a taxi to the airport with a senior Japanese diplomat, he asked me in a most polite way, “Are you returning to your estate”? I wanted to say, “No, to my allotment”, but did not feel that he would entirely understand the subtlety of that reply.
We in the Liberal Democrats are in favour of a working and modern second Chamber. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord True, in his quirky way, described this as a modernising move. It seems to us to be adding another area of complexity, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, to our already highly complex honours system. There are plenty of honours around: there are knighthoods, damehoods, and members of the Order of the Companions of Honour and the Order of Merit. We are not quite sure why—perhaps for the Conservative Party in particular—if one wants to award one’s more generous donors with something, the title of a peerage is particularly important.
The noble Lord, Lord True, did the honour of quoting what I said at Committee. I emphasise that, in terms of modernising the role of the second Chamber, we are in favour of thoroughgoing reform in which the title would be separated from membership of this House. What would then happen to the title is, to us, a matter of secondary importance. I know that the noble Lord, Lord True, has a particular problem with the existence of Liberal Democrats, which relates to events in Richmond in the past. It is even more difficult now that the Liberal Democrats are at roughly the same level as the Conservative Party in the polls.
I note that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, used to object to the appallingly high number of Liberal Democrats here at a point when we had, as he would point out, fewer than 10% of the number of Conservative MPs in the Commons. Now that we are at two-thirds of the number of Conservative MPs in the Commons, I look at those very full Conservative Benches and wonder whether the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord True, really wish to defend the gross imbalance between Conservatives in this House and the other forms of representation. I remind the noble Lord, Lord True, that not only in Richmond, but throughout England, the number of Liberal Democrat councillors is about to overtake the number of Conservative councillors, so there are a range of areas that are a source of underlying problems for the noble Lord, Lord True. No doubt he wakes at 2.30am and thinks about the Liberal Democrats in a devilish fashion.
What my party wishes is to separate the honours system from membership of this House. We value the work of the House as a second Chamber, we see it as a working second Chamber and we do not think it should be muddled with the honours system in the future.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
I do not wish to be unkind to the noble Lord, but my recollection of the coalition Government is that every time the Government wanted to get agreement on a policy, the Liberals demanded more peerages, which is why we got those numbers. Therefore, for him to argue against this amendment is a particular example of how the Liberals behave in politics.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
That was an imaginative idea from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but it is the first time that I have heard it. I am not sure where his sources may be.
I do not wish to detain the House. This seems to us to be an unnecessary amendment, and we will not support it.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 17 is identical to Amendment 35 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in Committee. There was a lively debate on this proposal in Committee, as we have also seen today. However, I would point to our extensive, comprehensive and long-standing honours system that seeks to recognise and promote the outstanding contributions made by individuals from the length and breadth of the country, and all sections of society. With the sovereign as the fount of honour, honours are awarded based on merit, regardless of background, for those who give service above and beyond to better the lives of others. I would have thought that this was an answer to the apparent problems suggested by the noble Lord, Lord True.
Many of your Lordships will agree that it is an honour to be appointed as a Peer, but that quite rightly brings with it responsibilities to the work of your Lordships’ House. Peers are appointed in recognition of their skills and expertise, and how they can be put to the service of your Lordships’ House. As my noble friend the Leader of the House said last week, party leaders should be mindful of this when making nominations.
The Government do not support the decoupling of a life peerage conferred under the Life Peerages Act 1958 from membership of your Lordships’ House. We have a manifesto commitment to introduce a participation requirement, to ensure that all Peers contribute to the work of the House, which many noble Lords have been clear that they support. I do not think that creating another layer to the system, to provide for the creation of non-active Peers, is in keeping with the mood of the House.
The noble Lord, Lord True, and others, have consistently advocated for a thoughtful and measured approach when implementing constitutional changes, to avoid unintended consequences. It is not clear how this new honorific peerage would work in practice. It is not clear what HOLAC’s role would be in this two-tier system, whether there would be a role for another honours committee, whether such a system would necessitate the need for additional governance structures or who would remove such a title if we got to that point.
In addition, to create a new class of Peers with the same titles as the ones who sit and vote would exacerbate the confusion that already exists amongst the public regarding the difference between honours and peerages. In essence, this amendment raises further questions that have not been given due consideration, especially when we already have an established and much respected honours system to recognise excellence. I therefore respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am disappointed by the response from the party opposite. Is this not the great reformist party? Is this not the party that speaks about its accomplishments in changing Britain?
We have heard from the Front Bench opposite that they cannot support the idea that anybody could be a Peer and not have to come and swell the ranks in your Lordships’ House. That is not the way that your Lordships’ House, in its evolving thinking, has been going. We have an important and interesting debate which is being put to us later by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. The feeling of the House is that we should find ways to reduce the numbers, and one way of reducing the numbers is by reducing unnecessary entries by people who have no intention of being working Peers.
I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said. As a matter of fact, if you google me, you will find that I have repeatedly, over many years, proposed this reform, and have even done so from the Dispatch Box opposite.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
Perhaps I was not clear enough. The proposition to which I have always given support is that there should be a complete separation of honours and titles from membership of your Lordships’ House. For that, I have not had support from the noble Lord’s Benches.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the amendment includes a separation.
Do we have such a low view of the public that we think they cannot tell one person from another? In a previous debate, the Attorney-General offered the argument that it was so confusing. Does he think that the public could not tell an Attorney-General from a major-general? Are they so confused?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
A constant argument of the Conservatives against any changes to our electoral system has been that the public would be unable to understand a voting system in which one put “1”, “2”, “3” and “4”, rather than simply “X”. If that is the Conservative view of the public in relation to voting, I think the noble Lord would find it hard to argue that, without much more complicated citizenship education, the public would be expected to understand the distinctions he is making.
Lord True (Con)
I am again startled, as always, by an intervention from those Benches. The noble Lord may remember that we had a referendum on proportional representation; the public well understood the proposition being put to them and they rejected it. For the noble Lord to say that the public would not understand this, he is digging a bigger hole for himself. As for the Lib Dems, I love the Lib Dems. One of the most beautiful things about Britain is its eccentricities, and we love the Lib Dems’ charming eccentricities. All we ask is that they are always charming—which is not always the case, although they have been today.
Let me return to the case in point. My noble friend Lord Blencathra skewered it when he pointed out, very fairly and properly, that this matter was put to the Burns committee. It is in tenor with the way the House is going in trying to find ways not to swell our ranks artificially. It is therefore an extraordinary idea—we have heard it already—that the Government support something but cannot support it today, and yet they might support it sometime in future. That is a nonsensical argument, as is the argument that the public might be confused.
I remind the House that this is not an unheard-of thought; many people have argued for it over a period of years. It would be a useful addition to the honours system. It would prevent the House being burdened and embarrassed by those who, frankly, do not want to come here but who deserve a high honour. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.
The Earl of Kinnoull
“Non-attendanceIn section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 (non-attendance)—(a) in subsection (1), after the second “Lords”, insert “for 10% or more of sitting days”; (b) in subsection (2), after “Lords”, insert “for 10% or more of sitting days”;(c) in subsection (2)(a), leave out “at no time during the Session attended the House” and insert “attended the House for fewer than 10% of sitting days during the Session”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment will ensure that Peers would be required to sit at a minimum for more than 10% of the House’s sitting days in order to maintain their membership of this House.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, each of us receives, on appointment and at the start of each subsequent Parliament, a Writ of Summons. The writ says:
“We strictly enjoining command you upon the faith and allegiance by which you are bound to Us that considering the difficulty of the said affairs and dangers impending (waiving all excuses) you be personally present at Our aforesaid Parliament … to treat and give your counsel upon the affairs aforesaid”.
These words have a natural meaning, and everyone who is in the Chamber tonight is living up to their writ. I have observed in the various debates, starting in November last year, that those Peers who are in our House only very rarely are not living up to the words or the spirit of their Writ of Summons. Legally speaking, the minimum attendance is governed by Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. This provides that every Peer must attend at least once during a Session that lasts more than six months, or they cease to be a Member going forward.
There have been quite a lot of statistics on attendance during the passage of this Bill. I am, as I think many are, very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his work in this area. I have run a few fresh statistics for this current Session. Up to last Friday, 122 of our 834 Members had attended less than 10% of the time. Looking at how close people of the 122 are to the 10% line, at the whole-House level, it is entirely reasonable to think that, were this amendment to be enacted, 83 Peers, or 10% of the House, might choose a retirement option.
I have looked very carefully at the Cross-Bench position once again; the 10% hurdle is one that would allow a very important part of the Cross Benches to continue their valuable work in the House without threat. Examples of this cadre would be senior lawyers still in practice and senior academics. Having looked at the statistics for this session, which I did not have available in Committee when I made a similar point, I can say that nothing has changed. I feel the 10% hurdle is set with the interests of the House in mind. I believe this is the correct level to move participation to, from that set in 2014 of just one day.
I further note that, thanks to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we were able to debate this at some length in Committee. I am very sorry, I have the wrong draft in front of me, but I think my point is made. We have been able to debate this a number of times. I can say, having been present at every single one of the debates, that throughout the House there has been general agreement about people who do come and do not fulfil their obligations under the Writ of Summons, which is a very serious document. There was not a single person who did not feel that this was wrong. The only real debate was how high the bar should be set.
I made the point that, in the selfish interests of the Cross Benches, we have a number of people who are not able to come more than 10% of the time, or significantly more, and so, for us, we would want a lower bar. However, it is the case that we would have a haircut of a number of Members. A lot of us feel that there are too many Members of this House. Certainly, with the facilities that we enjoy—the number of offices and desks and the sheer cramming when I go to buy a sandwich in the River restaurant downstairs at lunchtime —that would be a benefit.
Anyway, I hope this will be a very interesting debate. The Leader and I have discussed this over many months, and I am very grateful. In fact, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and I have also discussed it, as well as various other interesting ways around. In the meantime, I beg to move.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I tried to deal with this problem when I was convenor in 2018. In that year my noble friend Lord Burns produced his report, which received quite a lot of support across the House, and I was persuaded that it was one of my duties as convenor to see whether I could persuade some Members on the Cross Benches to retire so that we would achieve the balance that my noble friend was seeking. What I did—it was my own choice—was to choose a 10% level, which the noble Earl has chosen in his amendment. I was conscious that the only way I could deal with this was by writing letters to people who were below the 10% bar, suggesting to them that it might be better for them to retire if they were not really able to make use of their privilege of membership of the House.
I received a mixed response—I do not think I was particularly popular in making that suggestion. But some of them responded, and a number decided to retire. The result was that I was able to achieve the balance that my noble friend Lord Burns was proposing, and I was able to maintain it during the rest of my tenure as convenor into 2019. I was greatly helped by the fact that the Prime Minister at the time was the noble Baroness, Lady May, who had very little interest in proposing new Members of the House, certainly as far as the Cross Benches were concerned, so the balance was quite easy for me to achieve.
Looking back, I am conscious of two problems. The first was the lack of authority. I really had no authority whatever, particularly as convenor; the convenor is much respected, but he does not have any authority among the Cross-Benchers. Just because I said it was time to retire, that was not necessarily something that they should follow—it was merely advice. Therefore, if we are to follow this suggestion that attendance is to be a qualification, we need the backing of something to enable the proposal to be enforced. Whether that is by legislation or by standing order is a different matter, but some kind of backing is necessary if the noble Lord and his successors are to be able to maintain the idea that attendance below 10% is not acceptable any more, and therefore people should retire.
The other problem—I am anticipating what my noble friend Lord Burns will tell us in the debate on Amendment 23—is the balance being upset by new Peers coming in whose number exceeds that of those who are retiring. That is a different issue, which we will come back to on Amendment 23.
My main point in support of the noble Earl is, first, that the 10% figure was one that I had decided was the right one in my time—we may want to debate it, but it seemed a sensible one—and, secondly, that we need some kind of authority across all the Benches seeking to enforce the idea. I offer my support for that.
I have just one footnote. One of the people to whom I wrote and who decided to retire was an academic who did not live in London and had very good reasons for finding it very difficult to get here to attend. Looking back, I thought it was a shame that he retired because if he had been a little more active, he would have made a major contribution. His attendance was at only 1%, and I thought, “Well, okay, it’s not really a margin”. If he had been at 9%, I might have said, “Look, let’s just drop it and try a little harder”, but his attendance was so far below that I felt there was no chance. If we have a cliff edge at 10%, there is the question of some people dropping over the edge of the cliff who really should not do so, and the committee should probably discuss that quite carefully.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I have sympathy for the amendment and I am happy with the percentage suggested, but there is a difficulty. I spent most of 1995 running an NGO in Rwanda. In the winter of 1997-98, I was engaged in military operations in Bosnia; fortunately, it was a peacekeeping operation and it was for only six months. In 2003, I was engaged in a war-fighting operation. Fortunately, because of our military success—initially, anyway—I did not need to spend very long there. There could be very good reasons why a noble Lord is unable to attend, and we will have to find some way of dealing with that, but I support the general principle of the amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I signed the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and I rise briefly to support him. The House may recall that in Committee I presented three options for the removal of Peers who attended infrequently, and the mood of the House seemed to coalesce around the 10% one. I say to my noble friend Lord Attlee that leave of absence should deal with the problem he has just described.
If we were not being constantly told by the Government that there are too many Peers, I might not necessarily advocate this measure. If a Peer turns up for just 5% of sittings, he is not getting an allowance for the 95% of sittings when he is not here, so there is no burden on the taxpayer. However, there is a burden on all the rest of us doing all our committee work, as we will find out when our hard-working hereditaries are removed and the Whips start calling around for volunteers to fill the slots they were previously filling. We will then realise how much our hereditaries have been doing. Of course, I think this issue will now be considered by the new Select Committee, and I look forward to seeing its conclusions.
I just want to flag up two points. First, I note that this amendment suggests amending the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. That proves the point I made to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, last week: we may need legislation to do these things, and it cannot be done just by internal Standing Orders. Secondly and finally, when the Select Committee makes recommendations on attendance, how will we pass them into law? If we cannot use Standing Orders, we have to use either primary or secondary legislation to do it. In the debate on my Amendment 23A, coming up shortly, I shall lay out a quick, simple and painless way to do it with secondary legislation; I commend it to noble Lords and hope they will all be here to support it.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, when the noble Baroness comes to reply to this amendment, can she assure us that her new committee will look at the question that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, raised as to whether the House of Lords already has the powers to do this? As the Convenor of the Cross Benches said, we all agree to the terms of the Writ of Summons. There is a very strong argument that that inherently gives this House the power, through its Standing Orders, to achieve what this amendment sets out to achieve. It is clear that this question has never been settled or established. The noble Baroness’s committee would be an ideal forum to do that, and I very much hope that it will.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I am puzzled by the intervention just now by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. For some time now, if a Member of this House has been posted abroad or for some other reason is unable to attend the House regularly, they apply for a leave of absence. It is as simple as that.
Lord Gove (Con)
My Lords, I hesitate to rise in this debate and was not intending to, but since no other Member of this House has spoken in opposition to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, I shall do so very briefly.
I hesitate to do so because when I was Education Secretary, I introduced legislation to deal with persistent absentees, and therefore it might be thought that I was in sympathy with the intent behind this amendment. But one of the reasons why I am very cautious about seeing this amendment go further is this. It is based on a false premise that we hear often, which is that this House has too many Members and new schemes must be found somehow to identify those who should be expunged or removed at any point. If we look at the Division lists in the votes that we have just had, the numbers are lower than one would expect in some of the Divisions in the other place. The suggestion that there are too many Members can often be a means of trying to get rid of those Members whom the Executive or others, for whatever reason, ideologically or otherwise, find inconvenient—a stone in the shoe. We in this House should not be seeking to reduce the range of voices, to limit the number of Members or indeed, potentially, to forfeit expertise.
That takes me to my second point. Many of those Members of this House who will not be here for 10%, 11% or 12% of the time—or whatever arbitrary percentage figure we choose—will be people of eminence who will be occupied outside in deploying their expertise for the public good or who will have achieved eminence in a particular role. They may be, for example, former Prime Ministers. Would it be right if we found that, for example, Theresa May—the noble Baroness, Lady May —had attended this House for only 8% or 9% of Sittings in a given year and should somehow be expelled? That would be an outrage, but that is what would happen if we followed this arbitrary proposal.
That takes me to my third point. I know that this amendment comes from a place of courtesy and consideration and that the Cross Benches are anxious to ensure that this House can accommodate the request for reform that comes from the other place and from outside. That is why I am so cautious in pushing back. But, rather than seeking to bend the operation of our House to those who are not in sympathy with it, we should seek to ensure that it operates effectively in challenging faulty legislation and in making sure that expertise is deployed—not in attempting to regulate our numbers but in attempting to regulate the flow of legislation that comes from the other place which is faulty and which benefits from the expertise here. If we lose a single voice that is expert and authoritative in challenging that Executive, we undermine the case for this place. That is why, with the greatest respect, I oppose this amendment.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, we undermine respect for this House if we continue to have people who do not turn up more than once in each Session. The answer to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Gove, about previous Prime Ministers is that the rule is not absolute, because Section 2(3)(b) of the legislation being amended provides that the House may resolve that the period of attendance should not apply to the particular Peer
“by reason of special circumstances”,
so there is already a statutory provision that allows for exceptions.
My other point in answer to the noble Lord is that we have already accepted the principle. Section 2(1) requires that each Peer must attend at least once during a Session, so we have accepted that people who do not comply with the timing position must go. The only question is whether that is a realistic limit. I entirely agree with the convenor that a once-in-a-Session provision is not an appropriate rule. A much more appropriate rule is to require people to be here 10% of the time.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I strongly support the principle behind this amendment. We have debated the concept at some length and, in my view, it is essential that we now move to a position where there is a rule that means that people who play no part after a period cease to be Members of your Lordships’ House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, talked about persuading non-attendees to retire, and I too have done that. One case is seared in my memory: I went to see a member of the Liberal Democrat group with my Chief Whip to try and explain to him that he had done absolutely nothing for a considerable number of years and it might be appropriate for him to retire. He was extremely sweet; he smiled and said, “I never thought of that. Could you give me a bit of time to think about it?”. Years later, he still had not thought about it. So I am absolutely certain that we need to move.
As for the objections of the noble Lord, Lord Gove, the people we are talking about are not the stone in the shoe; they are never in the shoe. When they are in the shoe, they are normally sand at best, because they do not do anything. The idea that we would lose voices of any consequence by saying that people had to be here rather more than they are at the moment is just wrong, I am afraid, as far as legislation is concerned. In my experience, the number of people who normally are not here and suddenly turn up to play a full part in a Bill is immeasurably small.
My only problem with the amendment, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, knows and as I have said before, is that this issue should be considered first by a Select Committee, for a number of reasons that have been given—10% may be the right answer, but it is worth thinking about that. The other thing that has been put to me—it will be contentious, but at least we ought to think about it—is whether the requirement applies retrospectively. Some people have said that, unless it applies retrospectively, we will get flooded with people who have never been here before. There are arguments for and against it, but we need to discuss that; we have not done so at all.
So, for those reasons, while I absolutely support the principle, if the noble Earl were to press this amendment to a Division, I do not think we would be able to support him in the Lobby.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, when I was appointed to your Lordships’ House, I was summoned to an interview conducted principally by the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Jay. He said to me at the end, “There’s one thing I want to ask you: if we were to appoint you to the House of Lords, would you come and would you contribute? We look really stupid when we appoint people who then don’t bother to come—who take the title and swan off into the evening”. I said, “I tend not to take on anything unless I’m going to do it properly”.
I very much support my noble friend because, looking around your Lordships’ House, I see people who are here the whole time, who care passionately and who feel that it is an honour and a privilege. Picking up on what the noble Lord, Lord True, said on another amendment about a fair amount for a fair day’s work, I say that the reverse is true. If you do not bother to come and do not work, you do not deserve to be here. I will support my noble friend.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I remember what you might call the good old days before the first reform, when a lot of hereditaries got chucked out. In those days, although there were nominally a lot of Peers—many more than now—people turned up when they knew something. There was a hardcore who turned up to run things for the two parties, but other people turned up when they knew something; they would suddenly appear. Sometimes you would get quite a swelling on something.
Some experts turned up only when they only knew about something. I remember that, once, they were talking about decommissioning the North Sea oil rigs, and very few of us knew anything about it. I have never forgotten how someone up on the Back Benches stood up and gave the Government a talk on it all that completely destroyed everything they had in the Bill. He showed that the people who had drawn up the stuff knew nothing about it, and the Government stood up and said, “Yes, I think we’d better get together and discuss this. Could you come and advise us?” That was the end, and I think it all got sorted out afterwards.
You have to be careful that you do not knock out people who are experts on something. I know that a lot of the stuff that I have done in this House has not been on the Floor but when legislation is coming up and you are preparing for it. I have been in IT, and I remember the identity cards stuff and how a lot of the things were impractical—people do not think about things—as well the digital economy, online identity and all those things. We did briefing papers and stuff, which take a lot of time behind the scenes. That needs to be taken account of, but I do not know how you would do it. But, in principle, I can see the point of this. If someone does absolutely nothing, yes, they need to move on.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will briefly respond to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. If we voted for this amendment now, it would probably apply from this Session, because of Section 2(6). We would probably have to amend that to ensure that it applied from the next Session.
Has the Leader of the House considered whether any change of the rule of non-attendance would necessarily require a legislative change? At the moment, that rule is provided for in statute.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for his amendment and the time that he has devoted to considering this issue, not just since our debates in Committee but over many years. It is an issue that has occupied his mind and those of many of his predecessors as Convenors of the Cross Benches—we heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, as well.
Earl Attlee (Con)
This is the problem, though. When I was running an NGO in Africa, if I had taken a leave of absence and come back to the UK on R&R —some opportunity—but there was a debate about Rwanda, I would not have been able to take part.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
That is true, but it would have been open to my noble friend to make the decision that he felt was best in terms of how he could best serve his country: by continuing the work or by bringing that experience to the debates that were present before your Lordships’ House. This is why we have the leave of absence provision. Those who serve in the Diplomatic Service make use of it at the moment.
As I said in Committee, we understand the no-less-noble demands on the time of our colleagues who serve as husbands and wives, as parents and grandparents, and as carers—they help reflect the population we all serve—but the Government and the House are right to insist that we all take our duties here seriously and that we are seen to be doing so. We already have a minimum attendance requirement through Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. That, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said, requires just one day of attendance per Session, which he and others have rightly argued is not really commensurate with the command that we have received from our sovereign.
That Act became law in 2014 thanks to a consensus and an initiative taken here in your Lordships’ House. Incidentally, the initiative was taken by a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Lord Steel of Aikwood, who would, I think, be staggered to hear the argument advanced by the leader of the Liberal Democrats here today that he supports the principle but does not want to take this opportunity to make this change. If that is the pace of change favoured by the Liberal Democrats, it is no wonder that they have not finished the job they set out to do in 1911.
Under the 2014 Act, which your Lordships decided, 16 noble Lords have been removed for failing to clear the very low hurdle that it established. We do not criticise them; we know that some of them were seriously ill. Perhaps that Act helped them take a decision that it would have been rather painful for them to take more actively. However, it still leaves a large number of people who, in the words of the Government’s manifesto,
“do not play a proper role in our democracy”.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, reminded us that we are summoned here to give counsel not just on the topics on which we consider ourselves experts but on the certain arduous and urgent affairs that change throughout the course of a Parliament. Also in Committee, my noble friend Lord Bethell reminded us how the collective deliberative act of parleying that we all undertake here requires getting to know one another and establishing bonds of trust and understanding—not just turning up and disappearing into rival Division Lobbies. That is how we establish the consensus that the Leader of the House rightly wants us to achieve.
There is, I think, an emerging consensus in your Lordships’ House that the current attendance requirement of a single day per Session, without having to speak, vote or sit on a committee, is too low. Thanks to the spreadsheets compiled by the Library at the request of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, we know who we are talking about without having to name names or point fingers. We can proceed calmly and empirically. The Convenor of the Cross Benches is among those who have looked very closely at those numbers and been satisfied that a 10% requirement would not affect what he called in Committee the
“low-frequency, high-impact Members”—[Official Report, 12/3/25; col. 719.]
who bring sparing but specialist experience, particularly to the Cross Benches.
I have to say to my noble friend Lord Gove—sadly, he was not yet among us in Committee, so he missed my quoting “Evita” in citing the example of our noble friend Lord Lloyd-Webber—that I have much sympathy for what he says. Lord Lloyd-Webber was driven from your Lordships’ House and attacked for being a composer first and a politician second; as I said in Committee, I found it disappointing that he was not able to be here with us, when the pandemic hit, to give his experience on behalf of our performing arts, the West End and the theatres around the country that were facing plight. I must say, the 10% threshold that the Convenor of the Cross Benches has looked at would raise the bar slightly but would not prevent us having the expertise of people like Lord Lloyd-Webber joining us sparingly, but importantly, for our debates. I think that my noble friend Lord Gove will find that our noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead will clear that bar quite easily.
There are certainly some further questions that the House will need to address in future—for instance, how we turn attendance into more active participation so that we are not encouraging people to game the system by simply making speeches for the sake of appearing in Hansard, and so that people are not just turning up and reciting speeches written by lobby groups into the pages of the Official Report. We are all embarrassed by our colleagues from all corners of the House who turn up to lurk below the Bar for a few paltry minutes or skulk off after the first Division of the day—it would be a disgrace for us to expel hard-working Members from your Lordships’ House and not address that problem—but we can do this in bite-sized chunks, as the Leader of the House said.
There is no reason why proper consideration of those issues, whether through a Select Committee or future debates on the Floor of the House, should prevent us taking this initiative today, saying that we expect better and raising the bar a little higher. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, put it earlier, here is another mischief that we can rectify through this Bill. I think that this amendment, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, would be a sensible and timely upgrade to the 2014 Act. We have seen that Act in operation for a decade now. We can strengthen it in the light of what we have seen over the past 11 years. It would provide the authority that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, says will be necessary if we are to make progress on this important issue. We can allow ourselves the time to consider other matters without delaying taking a step that would, I think, genuinely improve the standing and function of your Lordships’ House.
I do hope that the noble Earl will press his amendment when the debate is concluded and that we can all embrace this important, timely and modest improvement to the functions of your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for raising this issue again today. I am grateful for the discussions that we have had on it and, indeed, for the discussions that we have had in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions. My sense is that there is a lot of support—I have been encouraged by it—for a participation requirement, although I do not think that there is consensus on what the level should be. The noble Earl seems happy with 10% but, in our previous debates, a number of noble Lords have been against 10% and been concerned that attending once a fortnight, as it would turn to be, might cause ridicule to the House. I have to say, I do not know what the appropriate figure is, but it is right that we discuss it and look at what it could look like.
Noble Lords have raised a number of issues in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others said, requiring attendance once in a Session does not really invite participation. There is an issue here: we all think that we know what we mean when we talk about participation and what levels are appropriate, but quantifying that is different. This is why I think that having a debate around one particular field—in this case, the figure of 10%—is very helpful.
The noble Lord, Lord Gove, said that it would reduce the range of voices. It does not reduce the range of voices if they are the voices of people who do not attend this House. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, that the noble Baroness, Lady May, would easily score on that point as well. We have to consider how best to address this issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked an important question about something that I raised last time— I just want to emphasise that. I have said a number of times that if the House can take responsibility for its own behaviour and actions then it should do so. As for what the House could do with its Standing Orders, that is not 100% clear. There are lots of things that we can do via Standing Orders and, where we can, we should take responsibility and do it. However, it would be appropriate for a Select Committee to look at participation/attendance and retirement in the round and to find an appropriate way forward, and at what needs legislation and what could be done prior to or without legislation. That would be a valid way to move forward and one that I could commit to.
The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is very keen to set a figure in stone and in statute. I am not keen to do that. I have gone round the houses a little on this and said it before, but this Bill is before the House as it is because the principle of this was discussed 25 years ago, and the Bill completes that part of the reform. On attendance and participation, particularly the areas that have been discussed, there is consensus that something should be done, but I have not seen consensus around the House on a particular number. It would be worthwhile for Members across the House to look at this and see how it could be done. It may be that 10% is the appropriate figure, but we have not said what it should be for participation. That is something which the House needs to look at. How do we do it? Should it be in statute?
The noble Lord, Lord Newby, raised what might happen at the other end. If we sent an amendment to the other place saying that we want 10% attendance, those in the other place who attend a lot more regularly might think that 10% was difficult to justify and might have other views on it.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The other place did pass the 2014 Act, which requires us to turn up only once per Session.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
That was a long time ago. I do not think that it anticipated that people would turn up just once per Session.
Despite the inventive proposal from the noble Lord, Lord True, to have Peers who do not have to attend at all, as the Prime Minister stated recently—the Opposition have said something similar—our expectation is that Members of this House want to play a role in this House, participate in our activities and engage, as the noble Lord said, with other Members. It is not just about sitting here listening to other people debating but about playing a full role. The point about expertise is an important one, though we are not all here just for our expertise, as we do not have an expert on every single issue. We are here for the judgment we bring, having listened to debates.
The timescale for a committee of the House to look at these issues is important. If we let the momentum drop when so many noble Lords are keen to progress on this, we would be failing in our duty. I anticipate setting up such a committee very soon after Royal Assent, to look at these issues in the round and make proposals for your Lordships’ House to consider, and to consider whether we can move more quickly on things that can be done without or prior to legislation.
I assure the noble Earl that I am very keen that we make progress and deal with these issues as quickly as possible. I hope that reassures him that I have no intention of putting this issue on the back burner. All the points that he has raised are entirely valid. It is not just the reputation of the House we are concerned about but the value of the work that we do. It is impossible to do that work if somebody turns up only occasionally, possibly just to vote or to be here for only one amendment. If we are dealing with legislation, they probably should see that legislation through in its entirety, as a number of noble Lords do.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for raising this and hope that it is a view that he will put to the committee when it discusses these issues. I respectfully ask that he withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, this is the fourth time we have had a very similar debate on this topic in the last nine months. As ever, it has been of high quality, and I am very grateful to those who have participated.
I referred earlier to the many meetings that I have had with the Leader. I know how busy she is, and she has been very helpful on this topic. In those meetings we have talked about the committee and whether it could go a bit wider and deeper. I suspect that, when we come to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, the subject of the committee will be raised again, as it has this issue within it.
I have had extensive discussions with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, around what Standing Orders could do within the House. Many noble Lords will not be that familiar with Standing Orders, but Standing Order 2 regulates the minimum age for being in the House. The minimum age of 21 is nothing to do with statute but is in the Standing Order. That is an example of how powerful the Standing Orders can be. However, they cannot strike down primary legislation. They could never strike down Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, but they could be added on top of it, as long as they are consistent with the Act itself. I am of course a hopeless lawyer, but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, is not, and it did seem that there is considerable promise in the Standing Order route.
That route brings another difficulty. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, looked at the statistics some years ago. I have now looked at lots of statistics and we have come to the same answer. I take comfort in that. However, putting 10% in statute would mean that, if it turned out that 10% was the wrong number and that it should have been 9.2%, it would be very difficult to move that around. If it was a Standing Order, it would be rather better.
That might sound as if I am not for my own amendment. Of course I am, as anyone would be. My feeling is that the words “personally present” and
“treat and give your counsel”
from our Writ of Summons are simply not taken seriously enough by a large number of fellow Members of the House.
At the end of all of that, and after an awful lot of discussion and thought, I have decided that I should beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Viscount Thurso
“Expiry of right to receive writ of summons(1) The Life Peerages Act 1958 is amended as follows.(2) In section 1(2)(b) omit “subsection (4)” and insert “subsections (4) and (5).”(3) After subsection (4) insert—“(5) For peerages granted after the end of the Parliament in which the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2025 is passed, the right to receive a writ of summons expires on the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of the person holding the peerage into the House of Lords.”.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment introduces a term limit for peerages created after the end of this Parliament by limiting the right to receive a writ of summons to 20 years. It has no effect on existing peerages.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 21 is substantially the same amendment that I tabled in Committee and seeks to achieve the same purpose but with one substantive difference, which is in timing. The amendment I tabled in Committee would have come into effect during this Parliament, whereas this amendment would come into effect in the next Parliament. I will explain briefly in a moment why I came to the decision to change that.
The amendment itself is the same, so I will not repeat the explanation, save that it seeks to create term limits of 20 years. I am not hugely hung up on 20 years, 15 years or 25 years. I am concerned with the principle that nobody should have the right to sit in this place for ever. There is obviously a discussion to be had around retirement, which we have had. I listened very carefully to the comments of the Lord Privy Seal in that debate last week, and think that around that the Select Committee will do a good job. However, I am not sure that it will entirely be able to do the job that is required.
The reasons why I have gone for a new timing are, first, that it would be only fair to allow the current Government the freedom to do what they wish during the lifetime of this Parliament and to perhaps make up for some of the more egregious excesses that happened in the last Parliament. It is a little unfair to remove the current system and, as it were, at half-time change all the rules. That was the first reason, which may just be me being a bit overly fair, but I thought that it was. Secondly, if during this Parliament there is further reform, and if the Government are able to take through legislation which gives us a different landscape, this amendment coming into force in the next Parliament could be got rid of or scrapped.
I want to make it clear at the outset that my primary choice would be a democratically constituted House of Lords, which is what I have said in many of our debates and, on and off, in different guises for the best part of 30 years. I took part in the debates in the other place in 2012 and the consideration of the draft legislation and was happy to vote with the majority in the House of Commons for that Bill to achieve a Second Reading. But I recognise that having got that far up to the hill and been marched back down again by our then leader, there is little chance of anything substantive happening. I rather suspect that the Select Committee will do its work and discussions will continue, but that at the end of this Parliament we will not be greatly further forward than we are now.
The amendment is a real longstop in the sense of if we arrive at that situation, and if, as has been pointed out by a number of noble Lords, the electoral results for the next Parliament are somewhat more surprising than they might have been at the last general election. Indeed, one poll I saw showed that what would be the largest party in the House of Commons would have no representation in this House—although there were one or two speeches last week that sounded remarkably like a job application from the Benches across—while the largest party in this House would be the fourth party in the Commons, which is a completely ridiculous situation. My amendment does not solve that in any way, shape or form, but it would put a burr under the saddle and make sure that if we were in that circumstance, the Government of the day would need to do something about it.
My amendment very much ties in with Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, which I hope to speak to briefly later, with one exception which I will leave to that point. However, there is an opportunity in this legislation, which may be the only legislation that would affect no one in your Lordships’ House during this Parliament or any of the operation of this Parliament or fetter the Prime Minister in any way during this Parliament but that, if none of the hoped-for reforms came through, would in the next Parliament take effect and oblige, I rather suspect, some action.
I will say two other things in moving the amendment. The first is in response to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his comments earlier about how function should come before form. I take the diametrically opposite view and always have done, and it was a point that was thrashed out in the Committee of both Houses when we looked at it in 2012. I think the function comes from the form; if you introduce a democratic element, the form will change. That also follows the history of what has happened in the relationship between the two Houses over the years. If you have long discussions about the function, you will end up never changing anything and never changing the form. But, most of all, what I would say is—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I cannot resist intervening. How on earth can one go ahead and say we will elect the House of Lords without looking at the powers the House would have? We have the conventions, which, in essence, are voluntary constraints on what we do. The conventions would not last one second with an elected House. It would be wholly irresponsible to simply go ahead with an elected House without sorting out the powers, and particularly what we do when there is a dispute between the two Houses. Would the courts have to be involved? What other mechanism would you have to decide on? You cannot go for an elected House without sorting that out.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, one of the great joys of being a chalk stream trout fisherman is to land a fly on top of the fish and watch it take with such vigour. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for having done so. I am not going to engage with him in this debate on my amendment, because it is not part of it, as I did not engage when he made the point earlier. If he would like to meet me in the Bishops’ Bar at any time, I will take him through the detail with the greatest of pleasure.
I say to the Lord Privy Seal that if by any chance she were to make me an offer as generous as that which she made to the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, earlier, she would not have to repeat it and I would grab it with both hands. I genuinely hope that the Government might reflect on this. It has been put to me that this is not necessary because if we get our elected House, we will not need to have this form of term limit. That is absolutely true, but my amendment is not about if we get an elected House; it is about if we do not get an elected House.
Finally, I agreed with the Lord Privy Seal when she said, as she once agreed with me when I said it, that we are here not for our expertise but for our judgment. I do not have vast expertise other than in running hotels and trout fishing, but I think I have good judgment. My judgment is that if we fail to do this at this juncture, we may well end up regretting it and not having the kind of reform that we all really would want to have. I beg to move.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
I must point out to your Lordships that the new clause proposed by Amendment 21 would be in substitution for the new clause “Rights of life peers to sit in the House of Lords” agreed by the House earlier today in Amendment 17.
Lord Blackwell (Con)
My Lords, I oppose the amendment, and I should perhaps declare an interest as one of the many Members of the House who has had the privilege to be in the House for over 20 years, but that is not the reason for opposing the amendment. The reason is that I do not accept the argument that contributions to the House decline the longer you have been here. In fact, in many cases the opposite is true. In the period I have been in the House, some of the most distinguished contributions have come from former Ministers, former civil servants, former judges and former distinguished people in many careers who, over time, bring their experience; and that experience and the memory of past legislation and previous government experience are an extremely valuable part of our legislative process. The premise of this is mistaken. Of course, people may wish to retire at a certain age, but for those who have the faculty and the desire to continue, longevity and age should not be a barrier.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, is absolutely right to make us think about whether time limits for service in your Lordships’ House are a way of looking at when retirement should happen, rather than the hard stop of a particular age. I am particularly grateful to him; I think he is giving me grandmother rights under his proposal, and I have been here a very long time.
This is undoubtedly one of the issues that the Select Committee the noble Baroness is putting forward should consider, even though she has been talking about retirement, because the question is rightly being put about the contributions that can be made. Even in the very short debate we are having now, it is very obvious—I would not be happy with a single term of office. It is important that a proportion of people serve longer than the 15 or 20 years proposed as a period of office.
If you look at the House of Commons and the value of the people who have been there for decades, such as the Mother of the House and the Father of the House, and the contributions they make, you cannot simply say that one size fits all. This is a useful contribution and I hope it will be considered by the Select Committee, but I am afraid I cannot support the noble Viscount’s amendment to the Bill.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 21, which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, said, would require that from the next Parliament all life peerages be created for a fixed term of 20 years. I looked up the debate that introduced the Life Peerages Act 1958 to see why it was decided that a new Peer should be created for life. I found that Viscount Hailsham, Viscount Stansgate and Earl Attlee participated at Second Reading on 3 December 1957—plus ça change.
It was difficult to see that the issue of why new creations should be for life was ever discussed apart from in the introductory speech by the then Leader, the Earl of Home, who said:
“We … have willingly modified the hereditary principle by the introduction of Life Peers”.—[Official Report, 3/12/1957; col. 615.]
As hereditary Peers were there for life, that principle was applied equally to life Peers so that they would be there on equal terms. Actually, there was much more of a discussion as to whether the daily allowance of three guineas would be enough to attract people of the right calibre. Now that there will, sadly, be no more hereditary Peers who are here for life, the original logic of making the rest of us here for life falls away.
The need for experience, which is a feature of your Lordships’ House, needs to be balanced by the equally important need for that experience to be up to date. Is someone who was at the top of their profession 20 years ago of more value to the House than someone at the top of their profession today? The amendment would allow the House to refresh and renew those qualities that make it different from the other place, which is why I support it.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for 28 years. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for sparing me from the noose he is gently preparing for others. I absolutely agree with him that we need to move to a position where the House is refreshed, which is why we have spent so much time talking about other ways of doing it—the central one being, of course, retirement. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, I think there is now consensus across the House that being here for life is no longer acceptable, because we no longer wish to see people who are in declining years decline in your Lordships’ House.
The question that this amendment raises is, what is the best way of achieving that refreshment? I rather agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that for some people—I would like to think I am one of them, but other people may well disagree—being here for quite a long time can bring benefits. I completely agree that it also brings disbenefits—one’s expertise, to the extent that one ever had it, is more in the past. On the other hand, there are things about the parliamentary process and the way we do business, particularly in a curious body such as this, that you accrete over a long period. Although I am absolutely in favour of a retirement age and might even favour a younger retirement age than some other Members of your Lordships’ House, if somebody were appointed at the age of 50, I am not sure I would want them necessarily to be required to retire at 70.
My noble friend says that the advantage of passing this amendment is that it would be the burr under the saddle in case the Select Committee makes no progress and does not do all the things we will ask it to do. It is incumbent on us all to try to make sure that the committee is a success. This sort of burr will not help or hinder that process. It requires us to agree—broadly speaking, I think we have—that we want to make changes around retirement and participation and that the best way of getting there is via a Select Committee. So, although I have complete sympathy with what my noble friend is trying to achieve, I am afraid I cannot support it because I do not think it is the best way of getting to the end that he wants.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly as the issue of term limits was covered extensively in Committee and touched on briefly last week. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.
There have been a number of proposals for reform of your Lordships’ House during the debates on the Bill. In common with many of those other proposals, and indeed even those being mooted for consideration by a Select Committee, the noble Viscount’s amendment would apply only to new Peers. The reason for that is the perennial problem, as my noble friend Lord Parkinson observed in Committee, that any debate on House of Lords reform very quickly descends into self-interest. I agree with that aspect of the noble Viscount’s amendment because, as we on these Benches have repeatedly stated, we fundamentally disagree with the removal of active parliamentarians from your Lordships’ House by the Executive.
Not only does the Bill remove some of the most active, knowledgeable and experienced Members of this House, it fails to respect the existing rights and expectations of our long-serving hereditary colleagues. I have, for my sins, been involved in many negotiations with trade unions and their leaders and representatives, many of whom now sit on the Benches opposite, and I have the greatest respect, and indeed admiration, for the way they fought for their members. Notably, they would always argue for grandfather rights and against the removal of any rights or privileges for existing members. I hope that those on the Liberal Democrat Benches have therefore come around to our way of thinking and that perhaps they will display the same kindness and consideration to our hereditary colleagues in future votes.
Of course, the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, may have another incentive for not making his amendment retrospective. If a 15-year term limit were introduced without the grandfather rights this House has proposed for our hereditary Peers, 59 Liberal Democrat Peers—more than 75% of their number—would have been removed from your Lordships’ House by 2029.
I will not repeat all the reasons why we disagree with this amendment, except to emphasise that we are a House of knowledge and experience; we should respect and appreciate public service. As such, we should not seek to prevent those who are actively and effectively contributing, and who wish to continue to do so, being able to serve. While I thank the noble Viscount for explaining his amendment so clearly today, I am afraid that it does not have the support of our Benches.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 21 tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, is similar to his amendment in Committee. With regard to a term limit of 20 years, it may be of interest to your Lordships’ House to know that the current average length of service for noble Lords is 13.7 years, which suggests that 20 years may or may not be something the House will want to consider.
The Government agree with the principle that membership of this House should not be for life but respectfully disagree with this approach. As set out in our manifesto, the Government believe that a retirement age is the most effective way of realising this principle while also achieving the objective of reducing the size of your Lordships’ House.
As the Leader of the House set out at the beginning of Report, we want to see further reform of your Lordships’ House, and we are determined to maintain the House’s enthusiasm and determination to implement the manifesto proposals on retirement age and participation. We think this can best be achieved by establishing a Select Committee, and we will work with the usual channels to put forward a proposal for the House’s approval. We believe that looking at these matters in bite-sized chunks is the best way to progress reform of your Lordships’ House.
I also reiterate that that your Lordships’ House should feel confident to take greater ownership over the management of our affairs. That means we should consider where we can implement solutions without the need for further legislation, if that sort of approach has the agreement of the House. Of course, if there is an agreed view that legislation is a better route forward, the findings of the commission may help pave the way to take the relevant legislation forward, because we will have agreed that view. With all these issues in mind, I respectfully ask that the noble Viscount withdraw his amendment.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this short debate, which highlights the important issue of the size of your Lordships’ House and the fact that, if more people are constantly coming in than are going out, it is always going to get bigger. I rather disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, that people should be enabled to come here for as long as they wish; a time limit of a certain length is a fair way of ensuring current expertise and not having the bed blocking that would otherwise happen.
I am grateful for the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I knew she was not going to support me, but I am grateful for the sympathy that she generously gave to the point that I was making. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and I were co-conspirators in the other place on many attempts to get a democratic outcome. It was very nice to have his support, notwithstanding the comments of his Front Bench here today.
As always, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby for his comments. I respect his faith in the Select Committee; I have to say that my faith is not quite as strong as his, but we will see where we go with that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, missed the point with considerable style. It is not about 15 years; my whole point is that this was about laying it in the next Parliament to allow people to look at it there.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, that, yes indeed, if you are going to eat an elephant, it is best to do it in bite-sized chunks. However, this elephant has been around for 114 years or whatever it is, and I have a strong suspicion that it will still be galloping around in another 114. However, with that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
NHS 10-Year Plan
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Health Secretary in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“There are moments in our national story when our choices define who we are. In 1948, the Attlee Government made a choice founded on fairness: that everyone in our country deserves to receive the care they need, not just the care they can afford. It enshrined in law, and in the service itself, our collective conviction that healthcare is not a privilege to be bought and sold but a right to be cherished and protected. Now it falls to our generation to make the same choice: to rebuild our National Health Service and to protect in this century what Attlee’s Government built for the last. This is the driving mission of our 10-year plan.
In September, Lord Darzi provided the diagnosis: the NHS was broken by 14 years of the Conservatives’ underinvestment and by their catastrophic top-down reorganisation. In the past year, Labour has put the NHS on the road to recovery. We promised 2 million extra appointments; we have delivered more than 4 million. We promised 1,000 new GPs on the front line; we have recruited 1,900. We have taken almost 250,000 people off waiting lists, cutting them to their lowest level in two years. We have launched an independent commission, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to build a national consensus around a new national care service to meet the needs of older and disabled people into the 21st century.
Today, the Prime Minister has set out our prescription to get the NHS back on its feet and make it fit for the future. Our plan will deliver three big shifts. The first is from hospital to community. We will turn our National Health Service into a neighbourhood health service. The principle is simple: care should happen as locally as it can—digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and in a hospital where necessary.
We will put neighbourhood health centres in every community, so that people can see a GP, nurse, physio, care worker or therapist, and they can get a test, scan or treatment for minor injuries, all under one roof. The NHS will be organised around patients, rather than patients having to organise their lives around the NHS. It will be easier and faster to see a GP. We will train thousands more, end the 8 am scramble, provide same-day consultations and bring back the family doctor. If you are someone with multiple conditions and complex needs, the NHS will co-create a personal care plan so your care is done with you, not to you.
Pharmacies will play an expanded role in the neighbourhood health service. They will manage long-term conditions, treat conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure, screen for disease and vaccinate against it. We will also reform the dental contract to get more dentists doing NHS work, rebuilding NHS dentistry.
Over the course of this plan, the majority of the 135 million out-patient appointments done each year will be moved out of hospitals. The funding will follow so that a greater share of NHS investment will be spent on primary and community care.
The second shift is from analogue to digital. No longer will NHS staff have to enter seven passwords to log in to their computers or spend hours writing notes and entering data. Our plan will liberate front-line staff from the parts of the job that they often hate, so that they can focus on the job they love—caring for patients. For the first time ever, patients will be given real control over a single, secure and authoritative account of their data. The single patient record will mean that NHS staff can see medical records and know a patient’s medical history so they can provide them with the best possible care.
Wearable technology will feed in real-time health data, so patients’ health can be monitored while they stay in the comfort of their own home, with clinicians reaching out at the first signs of deterioration. The NHS app will become the front door to the health service, delivering power to the patient. You will be able to book and rearrange appointments for you, your children or a loved one you care for; get instant advice from an AI doctor in your pocket; leave feedback on your care and see what feedback other patients have left; choose where you are treated; book appointments in urgent care so you do not wait for hours; and refer yourself to a specialist where clinically appropriate. Of course, patients can already do all that, but only if they can afford private healthcare. With Labour’s plan, every patient will receive a first-class service—whatever their background and whatever they earn.
The third shift is from sickness to prevention. Working with the food industry, we will make the healthy choice the easy choice to cut calories. We will roll out obesity jabs on the NHS. We will get Britain moving with our new NHS points scheme, and we will update school foods standards so that kids are fed healthy, nutritious meals. We will tackle the mental health crisis with support in every school to catch problems early, 24/7 support with virtual therapists for those with moderate need, and dedicated emergency departments for patients for when they reach crisis point.
The science is on our side. The revolution in artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data offers a golden opportunity to deliver better care at better value. New innovator passports and reform of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency will see medicines and technology rapidly adopted. Robotic surgery will become the norm in certain procedures, so patients recover from surgery at home rather than in a hospital bed. The NHS will usher in a new age of medicine, leap-frogging disease so we are predicting and preventing, rather than just diagnosing and treating. It is therefore the ambition of the plan to provide a genomic test for every newborn baby by 2035. Thanks to my right honourable friend the Chancellor, this plan is backed by an extra £29 billion a year by the end of the spending review period, as well as the biggest capital investment in the history of the NHS.
Alongside investment comes reform. This plan slashes unnecessary bureaucracy and devolves power and resource to the front line. It abolishes more than 200 bodies, because listening to patients, guaranteeing safety and protecting whistleblowers is core business for the NHS and should never have been outsourced. The plan commits to publishing league tables to rank providers. We will intervene to turn around failing providers, and we will reinvent the foundation trust model in a new system of earned autonomy. Pay will be tied to performance, so excellence is recognised and failure has consequences. Tariffs will be reduced to boost productivity. Block contracts will end, with funding tied to outcomes. The plan gives power to the patient, so hospitals are financially rewarded for better service. It closes health inequalities by investing more in working-class communities, and it establishes a national investigation into maternity and neonatal services to deliver the truth, justice and improvement that bereaved families deserve.
I am sometimes told that NHS staff are resistant to change. On the contrary, they are crying out for it. They suffer the moral injury of seeing their patients treated in unfit conditions. They are ones driving innovation on the front line, so their fingerprints are all over this plan. The public are desperate for change too. Each of us has our own story about the NHS and the difference it made to our lives. We also know the consequences of failure. To succeed, we need to defeat the cynicism that says that nothing ever changes.
We know the change in our plan is possible because it is already happening. We have toured the length and breadth of the country and scouted the world for the best examples of reform. If Australia can effectively serve communities living in the outback, we can surely meet the needs of rural England. If community health teams can go door to door to prevent illness in Brazil, we can certainly do the same in Bradford. We know that we can build the neighbourhood health service, because teams in Cornwall, Camden, Northumbria, and Stratford—where I was with the Prime Minister and Chancellor this morning—are already showing us how to do it. We will take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. We will apply the best examples of innovation from around the world to benefit people here at home. Above all else, we will give power to the patient. This plan fulfils Nye Bevan’s commitment in 1948 to put a megaphone to the mouth of every patient. It will restore the founding promise of the NHS to be there for us when we need it.
Of course, we know that there are those on the right who are willing us to fail. They will exploit the crisis in the NHS in order to dismantle it. The honourable Member for Clacton—Nigel Farage—and his cronies argue that universal healthcare could be afforded in the 20th century but not in the 21st. Labour rejects their declinist pessimism and so do the public. But that is the choice—it is change or bust, and we choose change.
We know that the British people are counting on us. It falls to us to ensure that the NHS not only survives but thrives, and we will not let our country down. Of course, if we succeed, we will be able to say with pride that will echo down the decades of the 21st century that we were the generation who built an NHS fit for the future and a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, it is the first opportunity for me from these Benches to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, a speedy but restful recovery over the summer. I look forward to seeing her back after recess. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. As she will appreciate, for many questions that have been asked on health in this House in the last few months, the answer has often been, “You have to wait for the 10-year plan”. As the 10-year plan is here, now is the time to have some constructive debate. We will ask questions but also perhaps suggest some improvements. It gives us a chance to scrutinise and, I hope, to work constructively to make sure that the Government can deliver on the plan.
Let me be clear that the Government welcome aspects of this plan—sorry, the Opposition; it has been a year now and I am still getting used to it. I am sure that the Government welcome it too, but we have many questions. First, I know there is the Casey review, but surely, we have to understand that we must get social care right if we are to unblock many of our beds. Some 13% of NHS beds have patients waiting for discharge. It is not about the financing of social care; it is about making sure people can go into the community.
Secondly, we completely agree on the use of technology. I was the Minister for Technology in the Department of Health and Social Care, and we will support pushing through technological change as quickly as possible, but we also want to make sure we can save both time and cost and improve the patient experience. Far too many functions are duplicated, but, at the same time, if you fall off your bike in an area where you do not live, surely it ought to be easy for the clinicians and paramedics there to pull up and view your record. We still have not quite got there.
How will the single patient record link with the NHS summary care record and the National Care Records Service? Will there be duplication, or will the Government be merging the SCR and the NCRS into a single patient record? The plan rightly places a lot of emphasis on the NHS app. I am proud that a Conservative Government introduced that app and welcome the fact that the Government are going to build on it.
Page 121 talks about wearable medical technology being integrated into the app, which is very welcome. We know that many people already have these wearables and that they integrate them with apps other than the NHS app, but what about the concerns of some patients who worry about where else their personal data will be shared when they share it with the app? How will the Government reassure those people that the data from their wearables will not be shared elsewhere? Will patients be able to see who has accessed their records and when, so that they can have greater confidence in the idea of data sharing?
Turning to the shift from the hospital to the community, which is something that we also agree with. On page 36 it says:
“Our aim is to establish a Neighbourhood Health Centre … in every community”,
and on page 32 it says that a neighbourhood will consist of 50,000 people. However, in his answers on the Statement, the Secretary of State said:
“We aim to go for 250 to 300 new neighbourhood health centres by the end of this plan and 40 to 50 over the course of this Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/25; col. 449.]
If the Government create 300 neighbourhood health centres that each serve 50,000 people, the total served by these neighbourhood health centres will be 15 million people. England has a much larger population of about 57 million people, so, far from there being one in every community, simple maths suggests that there will be 42 million people without one.
To help noble Lords understand, can the Minister explain some of the maths behind this assertion about neighbourhood health centres and what this really means? There needs to be some clarification. If they do not serve the whole population and we are not going to have neighbourhood health centres everywhere, on what basis will they be set up? Who decides where they will be? How do we make sure that they are located on the basis of need or deprivation rather than the politics of a local area? Will they complement existing GP practices and surgical hubs, and how do we make sure that there is no duplication?
On prevention, we all know that we must tackle the obesity crisis and the ill-health crisis. The problem is that quite often we are tempted to go for top-down solutions. We like to say, “Let’s ban this and let’s ban that”, but when I speak to local community civil society organisations, which work with people in local communities to encourage them to eat healthily, they are very sceptical of a lot of these top-down measures. I think of a project like BRITE Box, near where I live in south London, which goes into family homes and delivers healthy ingredients and an easy-to-read menu that children can enjoy and teaches families to cook healthily together. Surely we need to get healthy eating, healthy cooking and the sharing of meals into family homes, particularly those in deprived communities, rather than adopt a top-down solution from Whitehall or Westminster. I would have liked to see more about how we engage the power of the community and civil society at local-community level to tackle many of these issues.
Finally, there is one omission in this plan: fracture liaison services. There is only one mention of it, on page 165. That is rather disappointing, because I remember in June last year, before the last election, the current Secretary of State for Health said that he would take “immediate action” on fracture liaison services. Of course, we had to give the Government time to bed in, but it has now been a year, and we have got the 10-year plan, and there is nothing concrete on fracture liaison services. This is an easy win for the Government, because the savings to be gained from the rollout of fracture liaison services will be realised in two or three years—easily within the political cycle and easily before the next general election.
If the Minister does not have the answer to all these questions, she can write to us and deposit a letter in the Library. We look forward to her replies.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the Minister to her place. I know that, when I say that we hope that she is not too long in her place and that the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, is with us again soon, she will understand that I say it in the nicest possible way.
From these Liberal Democrat Benches, our unwavering commitment to the NHS remains absolute. We welcome any stated ambition to improve the health service, particularly with a focus on prevention, leveraging technology and moving care closer to people’s homes. However, our support is contingent on plans being genuinely deliverable, properly funded and, crucially, addressing the interconnected crisis in social care. We have long championed that you cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care.
I confess that, as I read the Government’s new 10-year plan, a familiar echo resonated through my mind. Having started my career in the early 1990s as a manager in the health service, much of what is proposed sounds eerily familiar. This plan speaks of a network of new neighbourhood-based care that provides services between general practice and traditional general hospitals. This mirrors strikingly similar initiatives from previous governments—echoing, for example, the advocacy of the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, for polyclinics in 2007.
What does history teach us about such wholesale shifts of care from hospital? It tells us that this inevitably involves running the old and new systems simultaneously, which is, without exception, expensive. Hospitals will continue to perform their essential functions, and their fixed costs will remain. The new community service demands significant new investment in buildings, staff and technology, and there are no immediate savings to fund the shift. Let us not forget the stark reality: we currently lack the capital simply to repair our existing crumbling health estate, let alone build numerous new hubs.
Crucially, for any plan that speaks of shifting care out of hospitals, the most frequent users of the NHS are our elderly population. Keeping them well and out of acute settings profoundly depends on effective social care, yet this essential pillar remains largely absent from this new plan. We search in vain for a decade-long funding and development road map for social care, or for a stand-alone, fully resourced social care strategy. This is a crucial strategic failure, undermining the very foundation upon which this shift to community is based.
Moreover, while the enthusiasm for digital transformation is understandable, the detailed implementation plan of how to do it is absent. The app is a diagnostic tool; it does not provide direct care, it does not give the jabs and it does not provide the treatment. The King’s Fund has shared its concern on this:
“AI scribes can only transform the productivity of the NHS if staff don’t need to spend 30 minutes every morning logging into multiple out-of-date IT systems”.
The fundamental question remains unanswered: how will this be delivered? The plan is ambitious, but it has been launched into an incredibly chaotic delivery environment marked by significant structural change within the health system bureaucracy. The key question for the Government is how this will be delivered. I therefore have a few questions for the Minister.
What precise funding strategy is embedded within the 10-year plan to deliver the necessary reform and integration of adult social care? Given the dual running costs of new neighbourhood health facilities, can the Minister provide a year-by-year financial breakdown of expenditure and demonstrate how these investments will lead to overall system efficiencies and net savings? Will the Minister commit to publishing within the next four months a comprehensive, independently overseen delivery road map for this 10-year plan that details specific year-by-year objectives and names leads and mechanisms for public reporting on progress? While we wish the ambitions well, the key challenge for this Government is how they will deliver and being open and transparent on that.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I also start by sending my very best wishes to my noble friend Lady Merron. No one more than me is looking forward to her making a very speedy recovery. I am very pleased to hear from her that she is making good progress, so we look forward to her return. I think it is appropriate that I declare an interest: my son is a GP, which I think is perhaps slightly relevant to the debate before us today.
To recap before I go into more of the details, I emphasise that this plan is different in so many ways to the NHS plans that have come before it. As we have heard, it is a road map for radical reform that is built on three fundamental shifts. Those of us that have been around the health agenda for a while recognise the past aspiration for some of these measures, but there was never a bold, innovative, collaborative plan to take our ambitions forward.
From hospital to community care, bringing care closer to home and making access to GPs faster and simpler is absolutely fundamental, particularly in the current climate—and from analogue to digital, giving staff modern tools and patients the kind of convenience and control they expect elsewhere in their lives. All of us have heard heartbreaking stories of patients who go from one specialist to another, and there is not that join-up. This has to be changed. There is no reason why this cannot apply across all the experiences the public have, regardless of where they are seeking services.
Many of us have been talking about the need to move to prevention in so many areas of life. Where better than people’s health, looking at the root causes of poor health and making healthy choices? It is the easy choice, but at the moment it is not that easy.
The new NHS has patients at its heart, will deliver equity and quality, is devolved and decentralised so that we are more responsive to local community needs and the front line is freed up to harness innovations, and the rules and incentives in the system support clinicians and lead us locally to be able to make the right decisions. This means that there is no simple chapter or section within the plan for individual conditions or groups setting top-down actions. The impact on particular services and outcomes will be through successfully transforming how our health ecosystem works. As we will come on to with the more specific questions, this is very much a work in progress. I am delighted by the reach the consultation has had over the last year. That has informed the debate and the outcome that is seen in the plan, so there have been no surprises. Many people who have been involved recognise what is in the plan.
The plan is backed by £29 billion per annum of extra investment by the end of the review period and, crucially, by a drive to cut unnecessary bureaucracy and empower front-line staff, giving them the tools to do what they do best: caring for patients.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, for his very constructive comments; they were exceptionally helpful. Across the House, we all look forward to taking this extremely seriously and moving forward.
Turning to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, on social care, he and I share a very positive background in local government, and nothing could be closer to our hearts than working out how we are going to bring the two together. That is fundamental. Both noble Lords made the point very clearly, and we welcome that.
Over the next three years, we will focus on the neighbourhood health approach to those most let down by the current system. That includes older people with frailty and those in care homes. Social care professionals will work alongside NHS staff in local teams, supporting recovery, rehabilitation and independence. We have examples from around the country where this is already happening: services are joined up and the cultural differences between the NHS and local government have been successfully broken down. We need to make sure this is replicated and spread to every part of the country. We need to enable care professionals to take on many more health-related responsibilities, such as blood pressure checks and reducing avoidable hospital administrations. Of course, pay terms and conditions have to be improved through fair pay agreements.
In the longer term, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will produce an interim report next week, but it is very much a work in progress.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
Sorry, I meant next year—I was just testing that everyone was still with us—in anticipation of the in-depth work she is already involved with. There will be cross-party discussions and a real engagement with stakeholders.
On the single patient record, I will have to write to the noble Lord about how the merging of the different systems will be achieved, but it will very much be about the patient being in control and giving a full picture for staff moving forward. The digital red book for children is absolutely fantastic.
On the shift to the community, as we have made clear, we will initially prioritise those living in areas of greatest deprivation. We will be opening neighbourhood health centres in places where life expectancy is low. There will be principles that we will follow, bringing all the multidisciplinary teams together.
On the fracture liaison service, I will have to respond in writing. I am sorry but I do not have the specific details in front of me.
Returning to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and his comments about social care, it is critical that we get this right and make sure that local leaders are right in there, responsible for delivery, proactive, providing a co-ordinated response and building on the work already being done.
On the funding, £29 billion is quite a significant amount of resource to work from. We recognise that there are challenges, and it would be wrong of me to pre-empt the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. But I know she has been encouraged to work with the best of the best, and I look forward to the outcomes.
I have to finish—I am sorry; there is never enough time. Our health system is in crisis, and we need to act now. We must make sure that the NHS continues as a publicly funded service free at the point of use. We need to seize the opportunities provided by all the new technologies and medicines outlined in the plan, go forward with innovation and make sure that the patients are at the heart of everything we do.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, from these Benches, we too send best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Merron.
The stress on prevention in this plan is welcome, but it does not adequately address the commercial determinants of ill health. On every high street there is alcohol for sale which does not have minimum unit pricing, and that is not coming in. There are vape shops and betting shops, and poor quality ultra-processed food is the food available for purchase. Putting the onus on the individual under the name of choice is unfair when they do not have anything reasonable to choose from that they can afford. I really push the Government to look at these broader commercial determinants of ill health.
I was disappointed that palliative care was mentioned only once, because the Commission on Palliative and End-of-Life Care has shown that good care is less costly than poor care. It can avoid inappropriate admissions to hospital and support people to live well. When at peace emotionally and physically comfortable, they can gently let go of life and die gently in the place of their choice, which is usually their home. But for care at home, they need support 24/7. My concern has been that the plan does not really emphasise that there are times at nights and weekends when AI and technology are not the answer. You need a person who is available to come out and provide help and support to someone in the home. I hope that in the neighbourhoods, the 24/7 need will be addressed and that there will not be an excessive reliance on AI, thinking that it will be the answer to everything. I look forward to hearing the response.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her questions and for her best wishes to my noble friend Lady Merron—I am sure that she will receive them. I thank her for bringing up the commercial determinants of health, which are critical. I reassure her that, outside of the health scenario, an enormous amount of work is happening. The NHS is going to work much more closely with local government—which has responsibility for trading standards, for example—and other local public services. We have certain things in place. Come the autumn, we will be bringing back the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, for example, with its huge opportunity to create a smoke-free generation. We are restricting junk food advertising targeted at children, banning the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to the under-16s, and we will be the first country in the world to introduce mandatory health food sales reporting for all large companies in the food sector.
The noble Baroness raised a few questions. I have to be brief to give other people the opportunity to come in, but palliative care is a real priority moving forward. I will leave it there, but I am happy to pick up anything that I have missed with her outside the House.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her place and, like others, send good wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Merron.
I welcome very much, as others have done, the three aspirations in Fit for the Future. I think that they are significant and that they are the right ones. I think they are bold and visionary. However, while I welcome the move from analogue to digital, for me, the document raises significant questions. We are looking to build a National Health Service which cares for whole people, not machines. We need, therefore, to be concerned for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, at every stage of life, across the NHS. That demands continuous investment in people, including, of course, chaplains.
I have specific questions around the ethics, governance and provision of technology. Where will process and governance responsibility lie for data storage? Will the Government continue to outsource this to Palantir or another provider, or will we build and maintain the NHS’s own secure provision? I am mindful that our data stored by the NHS is a hugely valuable commercial asset. Where will the ethical debates take place around, for example, the proposal that newborns will undergo wholesale genetic sequencing from birth from 2035, which seems to raise massive issues for our society? The document as it stands, it seems to me, is wholly positive about technology—it is techno-optimism. Will the Minister please balance this by telling us about the safeguards, reservations and governance that the technology needs in order to deliver the human, humane and kind care that we need?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his very thoughtful contribution. It is particularly of the moment, and I completely recognise everything he said about this needing to focus on people.
We have to look at this technology as enabling better care and freeing up time. How many of us go to the GP and experience frustration at the restriction on the time that we are allowed to spend with the GP, because so much of their time is taken up with admin? Of course, data protection is central. The health service is not the only area where we are looking at systems of data protection, and the normal protection methodology will be brought to bear. We have to make sure that, in governance, there is a much more transparent and open style, which, frankly, we all have to admit has been missing in some cases. This is an opportunity to look at that.
I must admit that I will have to have a conversation about where the ethical discussions will actually take place, but I know that, throughout the professional bodies, these considerations are taken into account all the time. It is fundamental. The direction of travel is to have people at the centre, building the workforce, so that they have the opportunities to thrive and do their jobs to the best of their abilities for their patients.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lord, this is a pot-pourri of worthy aspirations, with the most extraordinary sense of déjà vu: hospital to community; sickness to prevention; a patient-driven NHS; league tables; foundation trusts; funding following the patients and outcomes. I was a contemporary of Alan Milburn, and he is behind this; these were all measures that we were discussing long ago. Maybe they have not been sufficiently implemented—and I so welcome the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asking where the timetable and implementation plan are, and how this is going to happen.
But I must leap forward to the most serious issue of the day. We are all united on the importance of the NHS. It is incredibly difficult to change it, manage it and lead it. How can it be right for resident doctors to be taking industrial action for five days later in July? They have had an incredible increase compared with other members of the public sector, and the Government have said that they will help them on their work conditions. For those who say that their greatest pride is in helping patients, this is a shocking state of events—in a career that people want to join and that has long-term respect. Will the Minister ensure, very specifically, that the department checks up on whether any junior doctor taking industrial action then moonlights in another health authority, or in a private health provision, so that while they are taking industrial action they are also earning, at a premium rate, making up the gap left by the other doctors on industrial action?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
As someone who has been involved in the plan, I start by saying to the noble Baroness that although it might echo things that have happened in the past, there is an enormous difference now. There is a depth of collaboration, bringing people together and recognising the different cultures in organisations. Of the 200 bodies that are going to be dismantled, Healthwatch is one; it has been very positive and has contributed to the future plan for how this is all going to look. There has been a step change in how we get out and work with people. It is a very ambitious plan, which I am pleased about. I am also very optimistic, because, quite frankly, too many professionals have gone too close to the edge and they realise what is on the other side if we do not all pull together and do something about this.
We are disappointed about the BMA decision to strike. The majority of resident doctors did not vote to strike, and threatening strike action that could harm patients will set back progress. I assure the noble Baroness that no one on these Benches is welcoming the strike. The basic truth is that, thanks to this Government, resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise compared to three years ago, and the highest pay award in the entire public sector this year. The Secretary of State met the BMA yesterday. Although he has made it very clear that the Government cannot go further on pay than we already have this year, he has offered to work with resident doctors to resolve issues they might face around working conditions. It will, of course, be down to their managers to work with staff to come up with a plan to deal with the action that is being proposed.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)
My Lords, I add my welcome for this 10-year plan. I also welcome my noble friend to her position and send my best wishes to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron; I hope she recovers very quickly.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, I can see some echoes—or important themes—that the 10-year plan picks up. I was particularly interested to think about how the themes in the 10-year plan will dovetail with what I hope will be a new cancer plan that will come out in the autumn. I am particularly interested in how, for example, prompt diagnosis will be promoted. Are we going to think about stratified screening, with faster diagnosis targets, or faster access to clinical trials for patients with cancer, or speeding up access to modern medicine so that we can have those cutting-edge treatments widely available?
All that is set out in the 10-year plan and the investment—particularly the capital investment, which I welcome—leads me to believe that I can feel very optimistic about what is coming down the track in the autumn. I hope the Minister can give me some assurance. After all, one in two of us may go on to develop cancer in our lifetime, and that is an awful lot of the population.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her interest. Of course, the 10-year health plan sets out how we will fight cancer on all fronts. She is quite right that the national cancer plan is going to be published later this year, setting out in detail how we will increase survival rates through early diagnosis and access to better-quality treatment, and how we move forward with care in the community to help with lives beyond cancer. There is a great deal of detail behind this; I cannot go into it now, but I am happy to discuss it.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the emphasis in the plan on community mental health services and the shift towards 24/7 neighbourhood working. But for this to work, it will have to be achieved by significant rebalancing of resources towards community services. The share of overall NHS spending on mental health has fallen for the last two years and is expected to fall again this year. Although I looked hard in the plan for any reference to the mental health investment standard, I could not see it. Can the Minister tell us what is happening to the standard?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I do not have that specific information to hand, but I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness. Mental health is written throughout the plan, for both adults and children. All the work we are doing in schools—opening up access and making sure that mental health is treated in the way that it needs to be—is one of the major commitments that we have made through the plan.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has very kindly said that she will write to my noble friend Lord Kamall about fracture liaison services. I declare an interest as someone with a rather painful bone condition, and I am delighted that they were mentioned in the 10-year plan. In her letter to my noble friend, can she include an explanation as to an implementation plan and when it will be introduced? When will follow-up pump-priming to support the implementation plan be announced?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I would be delighted to add those details to the letter. I am very sorry to hear about the noble Lord’s condition and its pertinence to this part of the debate.
Lord Mawson (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this plan. As some will know, my colleagues and I have been working in this space for over 40 years, trying to encourage a move into our communities of a more joined-up approach. Are colleagues in the health department talking to colleagues about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill? Our work is now right across the country, in many communities, and we still see that lessons are not being learned. You still have major developments where the health centre is at one end of a site, the nurse is at another, the school and the community buildings are somewhere else—none of it is joined up. All this disconnection is at great expense. How, at this important moment, can steps be taken to try to join up these conversations? How can we try to ensure that in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill there are messages from the health service about the important need to enable this?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I am very aware of the noble Lord’s work in this area, particularly on regeneration. As the plan outlines, looking at the new neighbourhood provision, and how to bring different neighbourhood and community services together, gives us a fantastic opportunity to make sure that the whole community is considered—for example, it will look at connectivity with the centres, which has not always been the case in the past. It is a great opportunity and I am very much aware that our colleagues in planning, and MHCLG generally, are involved in our discussions.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I recently had a major operation by robotic surgery. It was very successful; I was out and at home within two and a half days. How will the rollout of this happen? For example, I happen to know that the Royal College of Surgeons at the moment offers only one online module on robotic surgery, which seems to me to be not adequate. What conversations are going on to make sure that this can be delivered?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
Robotic surgery is one of the areas generating enormous excitement, and I was very interested to hear of my noble friend’s experiences. I assure her that conversations are taking place, and I know that they will be part of the plan when we come to talk about delivery.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, if so many people want to speak, we should have a full debate on this plan, which is generally welcome. On digital, the plan summarises various digital improvements. There is also a red book for a child’s health, and feedback from Fitbits and data, which is all very good. However, there is no timescale for any of this and no plan to make patient records from GPs or hospitals available and viewable on the NHS app by the patient, as is the case in other countries. When will the Government give patients open access, as opposed to control by NHS professionals?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I hoped I had made it clear that this is the broad outline. Of course, more specific details will come forward and we will have the opportunity to debate them as they do so. The noble Baroness raises important points about challenges as well as great opportunities. I look forward to those debates; I think we are on a very positive way forward. However, I hope everyone understands that this is a 10-year plan for very good reason. We realise the scale of the challenges that face us, and we look forward to getting on with implementation.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, we are not going to resume until 8.42 pm, so we have four minutes.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, we have had three Cross-Benchers; perhaps we could hear from a Liberal Democrat.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, we are not due to return to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill until 8.42 pm. The time allocated for Statement repeats is very clear in the Companion: 20 minutes for Front-Benchers and 20 minutes for Back-Benchers. We have now exceeded that allotted time so, as we were not due to return to the Bill until 8.42 pm, the House will adjourn during pleasure until that point.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
Wednesday 9th July 2025
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
Lords ChamberHouse of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 View all House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 49-R-II(a) Amendment for Report (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (8 Jul 2025)
22:18 - Division on Amendment 23A - Ayes: 139 / Noes: 158 - Amendment 23A disagreed.
23:11 - Division on Amendment 27 - Ayes: 11 / Noes: 126 - Amendment 27 disagreed.
Lord Burns
“Restriction on nominating new life peers(1) In the period between the commencement of this Act and the first General Election thereafter, the number of recommendations made to His Majesty for the granting of new life peerages under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages) must not exceed one new peer for every life peer who leaves the House through retirement or death. (2) Following the first General Election after the commencement of this Act, and for as long as the membership of the House of Lords exceeds the membership of the House of Commons, the number of recommendations made to His Majesty for the granting of new life peerages under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 must not exceed one new peer for every two life peers who leave the House through retirement or death.(3) Once the membership of the House of Lords is equal to or less than the membership of the House of Commons, recommendations made to His Majesty for the granting of new life peerages under section 1 of that Act must not be such that they would cause the membership of the House of Lords to exceed the membership of the House of Commons.”
Lord Burns (CB)
My Lords, I welcomed the statement from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, at the beginning of Report and her proposal to establish a dedicated Select Committee to undertake future work once the Bill becomes law. She highlighted two specific proposals in the Government’s manifesto—on retirement and participation—on which she would like to make progress in the Select Committee. She suggested that there seemed to be consensus in the House on these issues and I think many of us would agree.
However, in response to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the Leader did not include controlling the size of the House as one of the topics that might be considered by this Select Committee. She suggested that it could possibly be covered by a subsequent committee. To me, this was surprising, as the manifesto also stated that the House of Lords is “too big”, which could, at a bit of a stretch, be interpreted as a commitment. I am grateful to the Leader for several useful conversations on this matter in recent weeks.
As the House knows, my view is that if we are to address the issue of the size of the House, we must address appointments as well as departures, either in this Bill or subsequently. Both matters are important. However, during the debate on the Bill, considerably more attention has been given to measures that would increase the number of Peers leaving than to the number of appointments. The cross-party committee which I chair for the Lord Speaker concluded that these measures to increase the numbers leaving may be in vain if no action is taken also to constrain the number of appointments.
The manifesto states that the reason the House is too big is that “appointments are for life”. However, an additional and more important reason for the present size of the House is the Prime Minister’s power of patronage in the appointment of Members. With rare exceptions, there has been a persistent tendency for the number of appointments to exceed the number of leavers, on occasions by very large amounts. There are no guardrails on appointments, as we seem to call them these days. Prime Ministers can make more appointments than Members who leave, and often do. To make matters worse, they can appoint disproportionately to their own party when in office, and often do. As the saying goes, you do not have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book—or even a Select Committee report.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 23, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and I will add a brief footnote to his speech.
When this country is confronted with a controversial issue, it frequently turns to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for an answer. Those of us with long memories recall his Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in 1999 and his Independent Commission on Freedom of Information in 2015. No sooner was that completed than we had the Burns commission on the size of the House in 2016. That followed a debate on 5 December 2016, in which the House agreed, without a Division, that
“its size should be reduced and method should be explored by which this should be achieved”.
The Burns report recommended that the size of the House should be reduced to that of the other place—then 600, now 650—and that the target should be achieved over time by a two out, one in rule. It suggested that, when it reached the cap, new appointments should reflect the result of the last election and be on a one in, one out principle. The report was welcomed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place.
We debated that on 19 December 2017; 72 noble Lords spoke and there was general approval. Winding up, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said:
“The question I asked myself and members of the committee asked themselves was whether we should wait to make any progress on these other issues until we had a slot for legislation, or should try to put together a system that could be worked on on a non-legislative basis, but which legislation could be brought to bear on at a later point. That certainly remains my position, having heard the points that have been made today”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2106.]
That is what then happened. We proceeded on a non-legislative basis and it clearly has not worked—the House is bigger now than it was then. That is not because noble Lords have not risen to the challenge by retiring—or, indeed, dying—but because, with the notable exception of my noble friend Lady May, Prime Ministers have been overgenerous with their appointments.
As the non-legislative option proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has not worked, we are left with the other option—legislation—and that is now before us. Winding up for the Lib Dems, their then spokesman Lord Tyler confirmed his party’s support for legislation, if the voluntary scheme failed. He said:
“Unless the Prime Minister is willing to abide by this constraint, we might as well give up now, and without a statutory scheme her successors cannot be held to her agreement in law either”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2098.]
I then looked up what the current Leader said in that debate, when she was Leader of the Opposition. I quote:
“are any of the objections that have been raised insurmountable?”
These are the objections to the Burns report. She went on:
“I do not consider that they are but there is one insurmountable issue: the role of the Prime Minister and of the Government. This will work only if the Government play their part. It is not about giving up patronage or appointments but about showing some restraint, as it used to be”.
Since then, there has been no restraint. She concluded:
“If the House and the Government are to show respect for the work they”—
the Burns committee—
“have done, we will take this forward. I noted that a number of noble Lords quoted from songs and plays. I will quote Elvis Presley, when he sang, ‘It’s now or never’”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2104.]
Clearly, then it was not “now”, but nor need it be “never”. If we meant what we unanimously voted for in 2016, we should support Amendment 23. We may never get the opportunity again.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has come up with an elegant formulation—as he did several years ago in the committee he chaired—for a way out of the conundrum that we have. However good our provisions in terms of people leaving the House are, if we do not have any constraint—any guardrails at all—on people coming into the House, when we have a general election where there is a large majority, we will always see the ratcheting effect. We have seen that recently; there is every possibility that we will see it again in the future. It is tremendously important that we try to take some steps now.
The size of the House overall does matter. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Gove, is in his place, and I am delighted that he obviously has become deeply affectionate and committed to the work of this House. I disagreed with most of his speech, but one thing he said that was incorrect was that the House was in danger of being bullied by those outside into thinking that it was too big and had to change. That is not the situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, just said, this House has repeatedly recognised the need for it not to grow exponentially, and has repeatedly recognised the danger of it being larger than the House of Commons. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, that other second chambers across the world manage to find the right combination of expertise and experience without rising in their overall numbers to pretty near four figures—which is where we are in danger of going.
I believe it is tremendously important. There are those who say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Look at the average attendance figures. People aren’t claiming their allowances. None of this matters”. I spent five years as Lord Speaker and, in those five years, I do not know how many speeches I made about the House of Lords. The thing that most people knew about the House of Lords was not that it was brilliant at scrutiny, and not that it had fantastic Select Committees, but that only China’s National People’s Congress, in the whole world, had more members.
That issue of reputation should not be the only one that drives us; we should recognise that we need a House peopled with enough Members to do the job we ask it to do, but we do not have to have an expert on every single issue in the world. We have Select Committees that can call for evidence; we can hear that expertise. We need a House of a reasonable size and I suggest that it should be no larger than the House of Commons. Others have suggested much smaller Houses. They look at the United States Senate. They look across the world and say that other people manage with less. I believe that, as a part-time House, we need larger numbers because not everyone is here all the time and that is important—
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
The noble Baroness saw me shaking my head. I was doing so only because I always refute that we are a part-time House. We are a full-time House with long hours, but many of our Members do not have to be here full-time.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
I am rightly castigated by the Leader of the House. I did not mean what I said about being a part-time House; I meant a House that does not have Members who are expected to be full-time in performing their parliamentary duties.
I very much believe that the elegant solution that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has put before us is the right way forward. However, alongside other issues we have debated in the course of this narrow Bill, these are very wide and important issues. I also recognise that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House wants, to use her phrase, to take this in bite-size chunks, and I very much welcome the setting up of the Select Committee. But it is incumbent on us all to recognise that, with the effects of the Bill, which will reduce the numbers and the membership of the House, and the effects of anything done on retirement—whether that is based on 10%, 5% or 20% attendance, and whether it is done by age or by term limits—we will be reducing the size of the House. That is an opportunity to get down to a rational and defensible size while, at the same time, putting right the imbalance that currently exists between the opposition party and the government party in their party-political representation.
It is a big opportunity but it will be short-lived if we do not take on the responsibility of looking to the future and at how we stop ourselves getting into this situation again, whether by the unbridled use of the prerogative by a Prime Minister or because of the electoral effects of a big change at a single general election. It is incumbent on us to take that into account when we look at those other two measures that the noble Baroness has suggested the Select Committee consider. They will have an impact on the size of the House and that impact should not be short-term but enduring. We saw that the very principled and welcome attitude of the noble Baroness, Lady May, had a short-term effect, but it did not last because it could simply be reversed by the next incumbent. We need some guardrails, and I hope that if the House does not decide tonight to adopt the details of this amendment, the Select Committee will look at the issue in some detail.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Lord, Lord Burns, having added my name to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, expressed perfectly my views, therefore I will not rehearse them again.
On an earlier amendment I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who expressed a view which, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that you could go on putting people into the House more or less for as long as you like. There has to be a limit at some point; we do not want a House of 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000. Therefore, at some point, there has to be a mechanism that puts some brake on, such that what goes out and what comes in are in balance.
As the noble Lord, Lord Burns, set out so well in introducing his amendment, the problem is that each incoming Government find themselves at a disadvantage, having been in opposition, compared with what has gone before. Therefore, they have to do something to restore that imbalance if they are to come remotely close to getting their business through. I therefore think that tackling the size of the House is one of the most important things we can do.
I would make one small suggestion—it is not a quibble—to the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I might have left out proposed new subsection (1) in his amendment, which is what is happening over this Parliament. That will not come as a surprise, since my previous amendment sought to put it into the next Parliament. As I said in that debate, it would be rather unfair if we were to change the rules at half-time, as it were. I think the current Government deserve to have a reasonable number of Peers, but that simply underlines the necessity of having the guard-rails in place to ensure that, going forward, the House cannot go beyond a certain size and should be reduced, with something like the size of the Commons being broadly appropriate.
I do not know whether the noble Lord will press his amendment. If he did, I would happily support him, but I suspect that, like me, he might take a more pragmatic decision. In that case, I very much hope the Select Committee will be able to do its job, although my doubts previously expressed—that it will not be able to do enough—remain.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly add one argument in support of my noble friend’s amendment. There is widespread criticism of the competence and indeed the commitment of some of those who have been appointed to this House. Many of us think that some of those criticisms have been justified. If there is a limit on the size of the House, the leaders of the political parties will be concerned to ensure that the people whom they recommend for appointment will pull their weight in the House and do stuff for their party. That can be achieved only if there is a constraint on those appointments.
The criticisms of some of the appointments that have been made have been bad for the reputation of the House, as has been the concern about numbers. My noble friend’s amendment would deal with both these aspects, but the aspect of ensuring that party leaders want their appointments to be of good quality is another very important argument in favour of a constraint.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, it is quite clear that legislation is needed if we are to control people coming into the House. I support very much the line of thinking that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, outlined. There is just one point that troubles me, and perhaps I can dare to mention it. When this Government came in, the Prime Minister made a number of appointments to strengthen the Front Bench of the party, which was obviously going to have to deal with ministerial issues and represent the Government at various stages in both legislation and debates. It struck me that the appointments that were made—I will not mention names—were well chosen and that the Front Bench was strengthened, to the advantage of the House. The reason I say this is that there is great force in the point that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is making: that we need to discuss this in more detail.
I am very much in support of the principle that lies behind this, and I did my very best to make it work, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, did in his case. It was, of course, ultimately the Prime Minister’s patronage that made it impossible to continue to make it work—that is the real issue we have to deal with. That brings me right back to the flexibility to strengthen the Front Bench. I am not talking about broader appointments, but is it right that the Prime Minister should not be able to appoint somebody from outside who has particular expertise to enable the Front Bench to perform its function to the best of its ability?
I mention this simply as a pointer towards the point that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, made at the beginning: this really does deserve discussion, and it would be very helpful, since all these issues are intertwined, if the Select Committee could discuss it as well.
Lord Beith (LD)
I draw to the attention of the noble and learned Lord, whose interest in this matter is much appreciated, the fact that, when we considered this in the Burns committee, it was clear that there needed to be some way in which Ministers could be brought to the Front Bench—by being admitted to a peerage—and that that could be done out of the quota their party ought to have been getting in any case; that is, they should be taken from that number. The other possibility that could be considered, of course, is that, as some of those who may take such appointments do not really wish to remain here for the rest of their lives, it might be appropriate for them to be time limited as well.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I support this amendment; I feel that it is only fair to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who is smiling because I have lobbied him on this issue on most of the opportunities when I have bumped into him in the corridors.
Whatever might be said about the number of Peers who have been appointed—it is very difficult; you feel rather impolite once you have been accepted into your Lordships’ House—we have never, thankfully, had a situation where the constitutional convention has been busted that the Government have the largest group but not an overall majority in this House. All of us here I think are believers in the parliamentary democratic system, but, if we were to have people involved in politics and, perhaps, in power who did not agree with that unwritten convention, we would be in a situation where the Prime Minister of the day could, within a few weeks of coming into office, appoint hundreds of Peers, placing the House of Lords Appointments Commission—and, potentially, even the monarch—in an unusual situation. We would therefore have a situation where the Executive would be in charge, having, obviously, not only a majority in the Commons but a commanding majority in the Lords. Of course, we have never before had the situation of having a Prime Minister who does not feel bound by that convention.
Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)
Can I ask the noble Baroness something? The most important reform that ever took place in the House of Lords was caused by the threat of the Liberal Government to create hundreds of Peers. They had that right and they knew that they had that right, and the King agreed that they had that right. Had they not had that right, they would not have been able to bring in the 1911 Act. Does the noble Baroness therefore think that nothing like that should ever be repeated?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for that, but we are now in the situation where we have the Parliament Act. I was just moving on to the point that any Prime Minister of the day could reform and make the situation a unicameral situation, but that would of course require the Parliament Act and would mean a delay of a couple of years. We all know how important it is to take your time in politics sometimes, particularly when you are doing constitutional change.
This is more analogous to the situation that happened in Hungary in 2010. Hungary set up its constitution with a President, obviously, but also with a unicameral situation, with a two-thirds supermajority needed to change the constitution. It never envisaged, of course, that one party would bust that majority, but it happened. Subsequently, the EU no longer fully regards Hungary as a democracy. It would be such a shame—I try not to use melodramatic language, but it would be a tragedy—if the Mother of Parliaments ended up in the situation of having what is described now in Hungary: you govern by law, so the Executive just bring their legislation to Parliament and rubber-stamp it.
I say this to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman: it really matters that we, as a Parliament—at a time when, for very sad reasons, we thankfully have primary legislation—might not be looking at the main thing that we need to ensure. So I fully support the noble Lord’s amendment.
Lord Gove (Con)
My Lords, I feel compelled to rise again on the principle that there is no argument so impeccable that it does not deserve to have at least one voice raised in opposition. Among your Lordships, there seems to be a consensus that the House is too large and that a variety of measures should be introduced—new guillotines and new tumbrils—to ensure that the numbers are limited. The arguments, put forward in good faith by many wiser figures than me, deserve to be opposed.
One reason why it is vital that we oppose them—following on from my noble friend Lord Young’s point about Elvis Presley, I suspect that I will find myself “lonesome tonight” in making this case—is that the arguments that have been advanced so far do not stand up to scrutiny. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, talked about the sometimes foolish use of the royal prerogative by Prime Ministers who appoint people to this House who may be ill-qualified or bring it into disrepute. I am not going to mention any names or speculate on whom he might be thinking of. However, if the Prime Minister acts in such a way, the sanction of a general election, the sanction of democracy punishing that Prime Minister—as it punishes any Prime Minister for any act of folly—is the appropriate way of checking any misuse of power or the Executive not behaving in a manner consistent with the dignity of their office or with the public will.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. First, was Elizabeth I wrong when she faced a huge Privy Council and said, “It is too large for good governance”, and immediately reduced it to 30? The noble Lord says that numbers do not matter and that what matters is what we do here, but out there they are all saying that we are too large. Sometimes you do not need big bodies to do the job efficiently. Was Queen Elizabeth I right?
Secondly, nobody has said that the Prime Minister could not vote. It is not in this amendment. As I understood it, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, these promises and views that we have heard unfortunately have become promissory notes on tissue paper, put into a Trojan horse which also is made of tissue paper.
Lord Gove (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord for his intervention, but I do not believe that if we reduce the size of the House to meet the criticisms of some, the fundamental opposition of many to the operation of the House would diminish. More importantly, the principal criticism that can be directed at any legislature is not about its size but its effectiveness and the willingness with which it operates to ensure that new laws that come there are properly scrutinised, and the more voices that are capable of being deployed in that debate and the more arguments that are effectively made, the better.
That takes me to my final point. I do not believe that there has ever been a recorded set of votes in this House where when you add a Division’s Contents and Not-Contents, they have been higher than the full composition of the other place. This House is flexible; our constitution is flexible. These attempts to impose external rigidities to meet some Charter 88 rationalist view of what we should be doing is an utterly mistaken course to go down, and I urge your Lordships to reject it.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
On the noble Lord’s last quip about some Charter 88, irrational view of the size of the House, I think that if he read the Burns report, he would learn how much thought went into choosing that size as providing enough person power to do exactly the jobs that he has discussed, to which I am as committed as he is. I believe that the size of the House, and the view outside of it, are not the most important factors, but they stand in the way of appreciation of what the House actually does and that it is not defensible to those who have not studied it in any detail.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, I am ever so sorry, but given the hour, I thought it would be helpful to remind noble Lords that this is Report and any interventions need to be short, please.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his amendment and the way he introduced it. He raised four very substantial issues—much more substantial than most of the issues we have spent most of the day debating. Should there be a maximum size of the House? How do we get there? How do we then stop recidivist Governments breaching it? Once we have got there, how do we balance the new appointments between the various parties?
The first and third questions are very straightforward. Yes, there should be a limit. Yes, it will mean that no Prime Minister can then threaten to flood the House with 100 new Peers, but the last time that was tried was over 110 years ago, and it has not proved to be a necessary part of public policy-making in the interim. Is the noble Lord, Lord Gove, right when he says the more voices, the better? Clearly, there is a point at which that ceases to be the case, and what we are arguing about is where that should be. If there were 5,000 people here, there would clearly be too many voices, and we would not be able to do anything. Those of us who have spent many hours debating here, including everybody who has been involved with the Burns amendment, have formed the view that the place would be better if it had a cap on its numbers. So, yes, there should be a cap on the numbers. It should be a legislative cap. If we have that, it solves the problem of how we stop future Prime Ministers ratcheting up the numbers again—they will not be allowed to do it by law.
How do we get to that number, 650 or whatever it is? Actually, if we do what we say we are going to do in terms of retirement and participation, we get beyond that number; we get below it. In fact, one of the arguments about having a straightforward retirement age is that we are taking out too many people, so I do not think that the bit of the noble Lord’s amendment that deals with how we get to the number would be needed in practice.
If we agree that there should be a limit and that it means you cannot ratchet up again, and if we say that we get to the limit by the combination of retirement and participation limits, the difficult question that remains is: once you have got below the limit, how do you decide on the balance of appointments? The noble Lord says there is a convention that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party should have broad parity of numbers. That may be fine, but there are some others of us here, both on these Benches and the noble Lord’s. What are we going to do about all that?
In his original report, the noble Lord came up with an elegant proposal to deal with the balance that related to votes and seats over a period of three general elections. It would have had the advantage of being a stabilising force while still reflecting the fact that the House has to move with the country. I supported that at the time, as I think the Government did, and would support it again.
On how we implement all this, if we could agree on it all, given that the debate about retirement is in part a debate about numbers, one of the issues will be how quickly we do it. If we require primary legislation to deal with retirement, I do not see why it would be illogical to include something about numbers in that.
How you deal with my point about how you rebalance over time once you have got below the cap, whether you do that by convention or statute, is a matter for another day. The only thing that worries me slightly is that framing a statute that could not be amended in the light of changing political circumstances might be quite difficult.
These are hugely important issues. There is quite a lot of consensus on some of them, but I hope we are able to debate them sensibly and make progress on them during the course of the Parliament and in the context of the other debates we are having, not least on retirement.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, in many ways this is the most important amendment we are considering today, because it is the only attempt to curb the power of the Executive over Parliament. The Bill, as the Government drafted it, shifts the scales rather dangerously in their favour. It leaves the Prime Minister the sole person responsible for deciding who comes to this House and who leaves it. If we were to throw out the small number of excepted hereditary Peers in the way that the Bill as originally drafted put it, which the House has now voted against, every Member of this House would be appointed by, or subject to the approval of, the Prime Minister of the day—a situation found in no other democratic Chamber.
As we have heard from our debates in Committee and last week, the House of Lords Appointments Commission, HOLAC, has no power to insist on the nominations it makes, and no guaranteed number or guaranteed timescale. While this Parliament has already seen the introduction of 45 Labour Peers, 21 Conservatives and three Liberal Democrats, the independent commission has not been permitted to make any nominations under the present Prime Minister.
In our debate last week, the Leader of the House confirmed that the four Cross-Bench Peers announced last month were people of the Prime Minister’s own selection, not the House of Lords Appointments Commission’s. Moreover, in the statement the Prime Minister made alongside that announcement, he made clear that, like his predecessors, he would be prepared to overrule HOLAC in exceptional circumstances if it objected to one of his nominations on the grounds of propriety.
Even the Lords spiritual, notwithstanding the changes made under that great Presbyterian Gordon Brown, pass through Downing Street on the way to their episcopal throne. Crucially, the procedural changes made by Mr Brown are not set in statute and so could be undone by a future Prime Minister with a snap of their fingers.
I have served in government in different capacities under four Prime Ministers. I have seen the power of patronage and the seductive temptations it offers to Prime Ministers as their other powers wane. We have seen the current Prime Minister wielding that power already—that is not new and not unique to him, but the Bill he has sent us would leave him more powerful than any of his predecessors and leave him and those who follow him free to succumb to those temptations without, as noble Lords have put it, any guard-rails.
At the beginning of his premiership, Sir Keir Starmer began by appointing new Peers at a faster rate than any Prime Minister for three decades. I am glad that he has now slowed down, but he could change speed again whenever he wants. The Leader of the House has argued, and I can see will argue again, that that is because of the profligacy of his predecessors—following the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, about the ratchet effect that leaves us in this situation after every general election. In doing so, she and the Prime Minister have given the game away that the Bill is not just about ending the hereditary peerage but about removing a large number of Peers from beyond the Government Benches.
The Leader has told us repeatedly that, even with that excision, the Labour Party will form only 28% of the seats in your Lordships’ House. Can she tell us today, with the same clarity, that she expects and intends the Labour Party to form the same proportion by the end of this Parliament, or does she see why so many of us, like Elvis Presley, have “Suspicious Minds” about that?
More worryingly still, we have seen the power of executive patronage in action throughout our debates on the Bill. I am sure I am not the only one to have noticed the conspicuous number of abstentions in some of the Divisions so far, or to have been surprised by the arguments of noble Lords who are usually so robust in asserting our role as a revising Chamber advising that on this Bill, which has such profound consequences not just for your Lordships’ House but for our constitutional settlement, we should not make any amendment at all or disagree with the House of Commons, who have still—the majority of them—sat for only 170 days. I detect a certain nervousness, not just among our hereditary colleagues or those over or approaching the age of 80, about voting for things that might annoy the present Government. I know the Leader will want every Member of your Lordships’ House to know that they can and should perform their legislative scrutiny on this Bill, as on any other, without fear or favour, so I hope she can reassure us that no one, even those who would vote on the Bill in a way that she would rather they did not, will suffer any ill feeling or consequence from the Government.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
This is the first time I have been angry in this debate. The noble Lord is casting malign intent on me and others in my party about the Bill. I hope he will retract and rethink what he said.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am sorry if I have angered the Leader, but this comes from conversations I have had with noble Lords in other corners of the House about amendments on the Bill. They worry—and I know she will take this seriously, because she will not want them to worry—about the consequences of how they vote and how they are perceived to vote, particularly hereditary Peers sitting on other Benches with their future uncertain. I am sorry if that has angered her. It should anger and concern us all. I know she will say it should not need saying, but I know she will also not want any noble Lord to have that fear as they approach this Bill or any other.
The noble Lord, Lord Burns—who, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham has pointed out, performs his duties here without any fear or favour—has been asked to look at many important issues for our nation. He has worked harder and longer than anyone to find a way to tackle the question of the size of your Lordships’ House, not least in chairing the Lord Speaker’s committee established by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. The recommendations that he and his colleagues from across the House made show that it is possible to address the size of the House without changing the law, and the Prime Minister at the time, my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead, showed that it was possible too with the restraint that she exercised. The actions of subsequent Prime Ministers of both parties show that not all occupants of No. 10 have been persuaded to do that, and the current occupant of No. 10 has not made any commitment, notwithstanding the words that the noble Baroness used when she was Leader of the Opposition in winding the debate on the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Burns.
If the House is serious about reducing its size and asserting its independence in the face of the Executive, I hope the noble Lord will continue to press the matter that he has been pressing on behalf of a House that asked him to do it for so long, and I hope the noble Baroness will be able to give us the reassurances that I know we all want to hear. I am sorry if it has angered her to ask for them, but I think it is important that she is able to reassure noble Lords on that point.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I can reassure noble Lords on a number of items, but I will say that that is the first time in this debate that we have had such discourtesy from a Member of the party opposite, with his allegation that somehow I will punish those who take a different view on this. He should look at his words again and rethink them, because the tone of the debate has not been like that throughout. I am sorry that he descended to that level.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for bringing this forward. He has been consistent throughout about the issues of the size of the House and prime ministerial patronage. Others are perhaps more recent converts on those issues, but he has had consistency. He and his committee looked at these issues forensically in a way that the House could respect, because it was based on facts and numbers, and they looked at this in a sensible way.
On hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said earlier, I am tempted to ask whether perhaps he was thinking that I should say we should do it “My Way” and no other way. For the final time, to follow a theme, “A Little Less Conversation” sometimes could be more helpful—I just like to lighten the mood.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, in addressing some of the other comments that have been made, that I think it would be completely wrong if departures from this House, whether by hereditaries or due to retirements or participation, should merely create vacancies to be filled. We have manifesto commitments, and I think it has been the will of this House, that we should reduce the size of the House—not because of the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Gove, and the things he put forward, but because we are all looking at how we as a House do our best work. How do we properly contribute to debates? How do we ensure voices are heard around the House? When the House gets too large, there are concerns that not all Members are playing a role. When he talks about reducing the size of the House, he is right to say that temporary reductions are not what the House is looking for.
I have reflected on the comments I made when I responded to my noble friend Lady Hayter previously. I have a concern that if the Select Committee becomes a kitchen sink of issues, it becomes a talking shop and no progress is made. I think everybody is trying to avoid that happening. But I do think—and I spoke to her and the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on this—that retirement and participation are obviously two major drivers for reducing the size of the House. It is implicit in that that, if we are looking to reduce the size of the House, we do not then seek to merely create vacancies to be filled. It is an opportunity to reflect on the ideal size and look forward to that.
There is always an issue about how much you constrain the Prime Minister’s patronage, and that has to be taken into account in the committee as well. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said the Prime Minister is the sole person who proposes Members for this House. He knows that is wrong, as I know that is wrong, as the Prime Minister passes on the nominations from other parties. It was made clear in the Statement—which I think the noble Lord was quite disparaging about—that the ability to nominate Cross-Benchers will remain and, through the Prime Minister, those nominations of people who have first-rate public service can also come to the Cross Benches as well.
I will address some of the other points. The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said—and I may have misunderstood her when she was speaking, so she can correct me—that it has always been accepted that the Government would be the largest party but not the overall majority. My party is not the largest party, though we are in government. I have used these figures before in your Lordships’ House, and I think it is part of the reason we are now discussing the size of the House. The relative size of the parties—the relative numbers across the board, including the Liberal Democrats—is as important as the size of the House. After about 12.5 years of a Labour Government, my party, the then government party, left office with, I think, fewer than 30 more Peers than the Conservative Party. When the Conservative Party left office in 2024, there were over 100 more Conservative Peers than Labour. I find that totally unacceptable. It has never happened before in that way, and the disparity between parties is partly why we are discussing these issues now.
The noble Lord made it as a party-political point about hereditary Peers; it long predates that. The Grocott Bill that we tried to put forward previously was rejected by the party opposite—not by everybody, as I had several noble Lords today ask why their party did not take advantage of this before. There has to be an issue about how you get a balance of numbers across the House. I have the view that this House does its best work when the two parties of government—the main party of government and the opposition party—have roughly equal numbers and we abide by the conventions of the House. That is when I think we have the most respect, we work at our best and that works well. The only other time—
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The Leader of the House has been consistent in saying this in opposition and in government. Is that therefore a firm commitment that she does not want to see the Labour Party outnumbering the main party of opposition in this Parliament?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I am not in a position to make a firm commitment. The House absolutely does its best work when the two main parties have roughly equal numbers, but it also depends on the House fulfilling its responsibilities and abiding by the conventions of the House. The noble Lord will know that, when we were in opposition, we would never have got up to the shenanigans that we have seen from the party opposite. I do not think, for example, that we ever proposed a closure Motion halfway through discussing an amendment—that was the first time I had seen that happen—so we do abide by the conventions. The noble Lord, Lord True, used to say to me regularly that what goes around comes around; I think he was right in principle, but perhaps not in action these days.
Lord True (Con)
The Minister loves this word “shenanigans”; whenever I see a briefing in the newspapers, I know where it has come from. She cited one shenanigan; can she give another? The Opposition have made repeated offers, and we are negotiating in the usual channels to deliver the Government’s legislation. The Minister knows the commitments that we have given. We do not discuss usual channels on the Floor, but can we please put “shenanigans” to bed and get back to good relations?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I am afraid that my use of the word “shenanigans” has been copied by many others since, and it was not original on my part. To go down a bit of a rabbit hole, we have seen a lot of raw degrouping of amendments in this Session of Parliament. That aside, we are all looking for the House to do its best work, and to be treated responsibly, listened to and engaged in legislation.
The only time I recall a threat of introducing so many new Peers—we have talked about in the past—was when Jacob Rees-Mogg was Leader of the House of Commons. I had just become Leader of the Opposition, and we were threatened with 1,000 new Peers on the Brexit issue, but it never materialised. It was recognised then that the best way of dealing with things is in the way that the House normally does.
The noble Lord, Lord Butler, made a very good point about quality. Appointments should consider quality and commitment. We are not just a House of the great and the good; we are people who are committed to the work that we do, and we bring judgment to the issues we debate. The noble Lord is right to look at that. The comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, on Front-Bench appointments in particular is one of the issues that deserves further consideration. This is an issue that the Select Committee would look at more broadly to ensure that we do not just create vacancies to go back to a larger House.
I understand the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and I completely accept the purpose of putting it forward. I would say that one flaw in it is that his proposals—and I think this might have been the point that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was making—do not take into account the relative strength of political parties. Under this proposal, when a Peer departs, the party of government could always appoint a member of their party and not look at the balance of the House overall, and we do need to look at the balance of the House overall. Therefore, I understand the sentiment and I think the noble Lord is right to say that this needs further consideration, but I would ask that he withdraw his amendment. This is something that merits further discussion.
Lord Burns (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate, and indeed for the degree of support for the principle of constraints on appointments and the need for guard-rails. I appreciate the remarks of the Leader of the House, who I think indicated, as I hoped, that we would be in a position with the Select Committee to discuss the issue of the relative size of appointments and those who are leaving. I do not want to press this to a Division today, as it is not the right vehicle for such a change. The amendment also needs to be considered in the context of other proposals to encourage departures and allocate appointments, as the Leader of the House has said.
Although I did refer to it in my remarks, at this stage I have not tried to deal with the issue of the allocation of vacancies to the different parties. That was set out in the Lord Speaker’s committee report, which said that the allocation between the parties should be made according to the number of votes and seats that they achieved at the previous general election. I still believe that that is a very effective mechanism. It is one that stabilises the numbers and allows for a shift in the proportions depending upon the political success of the parties during an election, so you get movement.
Lord Blencathra
“House of Lords select committee: implementing recommendations(1) Where a select committee of the House of Lords has been established for the purpose of reporting on possible retirement ages for peers, minimum attendance and participation thresholds, and that committee makes recommendations to establish or change—(a) the age at which peers must retire,(b) a minimum attendance requirement, or(c) a participation requirement,a relevant Minister must, within 12 months of the committee reporting, take the action set out in subsection (2).(2) The Secretary of State must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, amend the following Acts, as appropriate, in order to give effect to the recommendations in statute —(a) this Act;(b) the Life Peerage Act 1958;(c) the House of Lords Reform Act 2014.(3) The recommendations in this section include a motion to approve the recommendations of a select committee, including any amendments to this.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to place changes to the composition of the House recommended by any new select committee on a statutory footing.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, despite the late hour, I make no apologies for returning to the subject of implementing any conclusions reached by the new House of Lords Select Committee in considering possible retirement ages, attendance thresholds and participation rates. The excellent announcement of this Select Committee by the Leader last week was welcomed by all sides, and I am certain that it will provide workable solutions. My amendment would ensure that these solutions are delivered into law expeditiously and without the need for new primary legislation.
The Leader said that she hoped the committee would be up and running by October and would probably report by the end of July 2026, but let us say September 2026 to be on the safe side. We all know that our Select Committees excel in what they do, and I am absolutely certain that this committee will have firm recommendations on some sort of retirement regime, possibly around the age of 85 but with various tweaks. It will most likely recommend an attendance threshold of some sort. Attendance is about those Peers who may turn up for fewer than a set threshold of 5%, 10% or 15%, whatever it might be.
Participation rates are far more difficult. Participation will need to tackle the abuse of those who may turn up for 20%, 25% or 50% of the time and then do absolutely nothing or very little. Determining what and how many contributions will be adequate will be very difficult, and the committee may not reach any conclusions or may have various options for this House to consider as a whole.
However, I believe that, by the autumn of 2026, this House will have before it a report with recommendations, which we will debate and possibly amend, so that by the end of 2026 or early 2027, this House will have agreed by a majority a way forward on retirements and attendance, and possibly participation.
I ask my noble friends not to tell the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, but I may on this occasion be in full agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Newby. If we get attendance, participation and retirements right, we may not need a fancy formula to reduce overall numbers—but that is an aside.
What will the noble Baroness the Leader do with those decisions of this House? She and her noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, said in our debates before dinner that we will attempt to use in-house measures—that is, Standing Orders—where we possibly can, and we all agree with that. They also said that we will need to consider the best legislative route for those issues where Standing Orders were not sufficient and legislation would be required. The subtext was that that legislation would be primary.
The noble Baroness would be faced with two options for primary legislation. One is that she could say to the Select Committee, “Thank you very much—very good work. We will now consult on the second stage of Lords reform, maybe consider a partly elected Chamber, possibly with regional elements, and we will add those conclusions to a Bill in due course”. We all know that, if the noble Baroness says that, the whole thing will be kicked into the long grass. The second option is that she could say, “Thank you very much. I will now go to the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee and seek approval for a specific Bill to deliver these recommendations”. For noble Lords who are not familiar with the PBL, it is a committee of the most powerful Cabinet business managers who decide which bids from departments get approval for the next stage—that is, putting a Bill team together then briefing the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, which will draft the Bill. I can tell those noble Lords who have never appeared before it that it can be quite scary at times. It is currently and usually chaired by the Leader of the Commons, with both Chief Whips, the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the Attorney-General, the Leader of the House and the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
The first question that the committee will ask the Leader will be whether the Bill is a manifesto commitment. Yes. That is a good. Is it short? Yes. That is also good. Can it be easily amended? Yes, because the Lords is much more flexible and can permit a wide range of amendments. The committee will then say, “So, Lord Privy Seal, are you telling us that all this Bill does is put a retirement age and an attendance threshold on Peers, and that they could debate a wide range of amendments in primary legislation?” The noble Baroness, being honest, will say that that could happen. The committee will ask whether there are any votes in it, and the answer will be no, not really.
We all know that the Leader is very able and persuasive, but I suggest that, with possibly just 18 months to go before a general election, she will have no hope whatever of the PBL approving a Bill to implement what our Select Committee decides, at a time when there will inevitably be the annual Home Office criminal justice Christmas tree Bill in the wings, and maybe something on health, employment, immigration and all the other big political issues that will take priority. Does anyone in this House seriously think that any Government would introduce a Bill on changes in the Lords in a King’s Speech in 2027, to be debated in 2028, maybe months or a year before a general election? I simply do not think so. That is why we need my Amendment 23A.
The amendment is self-explanatory. It would simply build in a statutory instrument power enabling the Government to implement any Lords Select Committee recommendations voted through by this House. It would provide that, if this House amends any of the Lords Select Committee recommendations, we can vote that through. It would enable the Government to amend this Bill when it is an Act, the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, should that be necessary. I do not know if it will be, but the Public Bill Office thought that we should have the power to do so, just in case it should prove necessary. Of course, amending those Acts is a Henry VIII power, but I do not think that any Government can complain about Henry VIII powers, since all Governments use them excessively in all Bills.
While it may be possible to deal with attendance through Standing Orders, as I think was hinted at earlier, I have not heard any suggestion from any noble Lord that we could invent a retirement or participation regime that we could implement by Standing Orders alone. If that were the case, the Government would have been shouting about it from the rooftops from Committee onwards. It is assumed that these things will require some form of legislation.
Without my simple amendment, we could find ourselves in the ridiculous position of having proposals on which the majority of this House agrees, and with which the Government also agree, but we can only deliver bits of them through standing orders, and have to wait for primary legislation to do the rest—primary legislation that might never come. It will be fascinating to see what reasons the Government use to reject this new clause. It does nothing to undermine the thrust of the Bill. The noble Baroness the Leader introduced the idea of a Lords Select Committee to come up with recommendations. How can the Government possibly reject this simple solution to deliver into law the recommendations of the committee she has proposed? I beg to move.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord will not be surprised to know I do not agree with him. We discussed this before and my view, oft repeated, is that we should, wherever we can, proceed without legislation. We can do that with a number of the issues we are debating. As the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, pointed out, the minimum age at which a person can be a Peer was never legislated on—admittedly, it was a bit ago that that was introduced. We need to look at whether it might be possible to introduce a retirement age without fresh legislation. Either way, I do not want to commit to giving the House of Commons the whip hand over what we do about our own rules when we can change those rules ourselves.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I am intrigued by my noble friend’s amendment. Yes, it would make good some of the failings of the Government, who have not honoured their 1998 pledge to bring forward their proposals for reform before they remove the hereditary Peers. Nor have they delivered on their promise in the manifesto of 2024 to bring forward proposals for reform on composition, in terms of retirement age, participation obligations and so on. It would perhaps be a good way of making good the problem we face, which is the removal of over 80 of the Peers who are most effective in scrutinising the Government and holding them to account. One cannot help but agree with those who see this Bill as vindictive for that reason, and a partisan attack on the ability of this House to fulfil its constitutional function.
However, dare I part company with my noble friend Lord Blencathra? I feel it is a very bad move to have government by committee—even a Select Committee of this House. By their very nature, committees do not have a sense of the feeling of the whole House, or indeed of the country, which is more important. For this reason, I would worry about such powers for a Select Committee.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am always very touched when people call for the Front Bench. I am very happy, if I am so popular, to go over to the other side, if that is what the other side would like.
This has been an important debate, although brief, on the next stage of reform. It is really a coda to the very interesting debate provoked by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. All this flows from the firm promise in the Labour manifesto that another Bill would be enacted in this Parliament to exclude Peers who reach the age of 80 before the end of this Parliament, and other promises in the manifesto to address issues of participation and conduct.
In Committee, my noble friend Lord Blencathra was tirelessly ingenious in the proposals for improvement that he put before the House. He spoke from his great creative experience as Chief Whip in another place, his knowledge, which he alluded to again today, of the often unintended, unbankability of government promises, and also his profound love of Parliament. So, I was surprised—but actually, on reflection, I was not—when the noble Lord’s carefully thought out and clever amendment suddenly appeared on our Order Paper following our debates last week.
Many noble Lords who heard the statement of the Leader of the House last week wanted to hear more detail of the scope of what is planned, and also to have more security in what will be the role of this House in determining what happens next. We have had a few advances on that, but no conclusion. My noble friend’s amendment actually offers the House a route to do that.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. I will start with the basis of why I first suggested the Select Committee, as it may help your Lordships. The noble Lord is right that it is always difficult to get extra time for legislation, but it is important that this House has an opportunity to consider how we as a House might want to implement the two proposals—I have always referred to three stages; this was the second—on a retirement age and participation.
I will not repeat things that I have said in the past, but if there is an opportunity for the House to come forward with a view, and a Select Committee to bring forward proposals to your Lordships’ House for consideration, that does not make those proposals easier. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, helpfully interjected earlier and asked me whether there were things we could do more quickly by standing orders, as indicated by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. That would be something for the committee to look at.
There is an opportunity for a Select Committee to look at those issues, to come forward with proposals for your Lordships’ House, and for us to consider those proposals and decide whether some could be taken forward more quickly. Where it requires legislation, if the House has a view on something on which all noble Lords agree, it would be much easier to persuade the Government by saying, “There’s agreement on this and we want to bring forward a focused Bill to deliver something that the House of Lords broadly agrees with”. That is why it was proposed in the first place.
The noble Lord opposite said that we may not co-operate because there are lots of other things around the issue. I am not quite sure what he means; perhaps we will debate that later. I was clear to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that it is implicit that, if we are looking to reduce the size of the House—if we are looking at exits—considerations need to be made about size. That was clear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, implied that this is being done for political reasons, to make it more difficult for the party opposite to hold the Government to account when hereditary Peers have left your Lordships’ House. Even after the hereditary Peers depart, there will still be 243 Members of her party in this House. My party before the election had 171 Members here, and my colleagues held the Government to account very effectively with that number. I am disappointed if the noble Baroness thinks that—
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
May I finish my point? Do not get too excited—I will give way soon. I am surprised that the noble Baroness thinks that with those additional Members—some 70 more Members than we had when we were in opposition—her party would find it very difficult to hold my Government to account.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for letting me put my point again. I was referring to all the contributions of the hereditaries on all Benches. I am talking about effective contributions that will now be silenced. I fear that will affect the House.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
That is actually not the point that the noble Baroness made at the time. Many Members of your Lordships’ House make effective contributions, and she should recognise those as well.
I enjoyed the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra; he is always inventive and engages well on these issues. However, I say to him that I do not recognise the veto that the noble Lord, Lord True, referred to. My reading of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is that if a Select Committee makes recommendations:
“The Secretary of State must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, amend the following Acts, as appropriate … to give effect to the recommendations in statute”.
The Government must then lay those regulations. In practical terms, if a Select Committee were to charge the House with something—if it said, “We would like the House to consider the following options”—how on earth do a Government legislate for all the options a Select Committee may recommend? That is what he would have in his—
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I hope I made it clear in my speech that the House would consider the options. The House would then come up with a firm vote on what they may be, and not give the Government a range of options to legislate on. It would be the decision of the House on the retirement age, the participation rates or the threshold. We would consider the options and end up with firm recommendations.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord’s amendment is uncertain, because I did not read it like that. It says:
“Where a select committee of the House … has been established for the purpose of reporting on possible retirement ages … and that committee makes recommendations to establish or change”
certain conventions,
“a relevant Minister must, within 12 months of the committee reporting, take the action set out in subsection (2)”.
Therefore, the noble Lord will not be empowering the House; he will undermine the House by removing it as a body from the equation. Even aside from that point, however, I disagree that matters of this importance should merely be considered by the Select Committee through a statutory instrument. I am sure our statutory instruments committee would have quite a bit to say about that power and whether it was relevant at all.
The establishment of a Select Committee is a matter for the House; if the House does not want it, it will not be set up. It seems to me that it is a good way forward for the House to provide a view on these issues. Where we can take things forward more quickly, we will do so. Where we can act prior to legislation, we could do so. Where legislation is required, an agreement from your Lordships’ House makes that a smoother process. I think the amendment before us today is unworkable in practice and risks undermining the very role of this House by trying to bypass the House. It may not be what the noble Lord intended, but it is what his amendment would do. It would bypass the House; what happens in a Select Committee is then enacted by secondary legislation. That would be an extraordinary move and one that this House has never seen before. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, in view of the hour and the mood of the House, I intend to be brief. I merely say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, who said we should pass our own rules where we could, that I agree entirely. My amendment deals with those areas where we cannot pass our own rules.
Lord Newby (LD)
Surely the noble Lord’s amendment requires a statutory instrument to cover every single recommendation of the Select Committee.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Yes, it is one way to guarantee that it happens, but if this House can bring about some of the rules we want through our own Standing Orders, so be it. The legislative power is there; it does not have to be implemented if the House has done it its own way.
It simply comes down to this: are we going to implement the recommendations of the Lords Select Committee that the noble Baroness herself has created, as we may amend them, or are going to hang around hoping we will get a government Bill in due course to do it sometime? I have said before, and I need not repeat it: I simply do not see that happening.
It was rather disingenuous of the noble Baroness to say the amendment is not technically perfect. I am talking about the general concept here of implementing what this House decides through a statutory instrument, and if the amendment is not technically correct, it is a simple—
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
Statutory instruments are not amendable; that is to say that this House would not be able to change whatever was in the statutory instrument.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Of course, my noble friend is right. I was not suggesting that we would wish to amend the statutory instrument. My amendment seeks to say that when this House votes on proposals on retirement, possibly on participation and possibly on attendance, the Government would then be under an obligation to bring forward a statutory instrument to implement those proposals. My noble friend may ask what would happen if the Government did not do what we asked for. In that case, this House would vote it down.
It is nonsense to suspect that a Government will bring forward primary legislation to deal with little things such as the age at which Peers should retire, and how often they must turn up before they will be slung out of this House. I cannot see that being in a Labour election grid for the next election; it is not going to happen. I also disagree with the noble Baroness because, in a normal Bill, these two little things would be statutory instruments. They would be secondary legislation, and the secondary legislation committee would certainly not disapprove of them. These things are important to us, and I am still convinced that my original assertion is right: the only way we will get these changes through, if this House approves them, is to have my innocuous new clause on a statutory instrument. I cannot understand why the Government are opposed to it, and therefore I intend to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar
“(3) Any peerage claim is to be made to His Majesty in Council.(4) A claim under this section must be made in accordance with such rules as His Majesty may by Order in Council prescribe.(5) Section 3 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833 (reference to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of appeals to His Majesty in Council) applies to a claim under this section as it applies to an appeal to His Majesty in Council from a court.(6) The Judicial Committee may require an applicant to give such security for the costs of the proceedings as the Judicial Committee may direct.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the future of claims to a hereditary peerage as it was originally drafted by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel for the House of Lords Reform Bill 2012.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 24 seeks to place in the Bill the Government’s intentions in respect of the determination of peerage claims. Can I say what a pleasure it is to see such a large turnout from the Government Benches when we are discussing the role of the Privy Council? It is heartwarming to see what a focus the Government Benches have on this important matter.
As I explained in Committee, the Bill removes the role of your Lordships’ House in determining peerage claims, but it leaves behind a statutory lacuna. My amendment—I emphasise this point—does not depart at all from the Government’s intentions as set out in the Explanatory Notes. It would put those intentions in the Bill. If we do not add this amendment to the Bill, the peerage claims determination process will still be undertaken by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council where the case is complicated, but it is possible that other arrangements may be made by future Governments. We need an effective system for peerage claims. Since this House has had a role in this process up to this point, it is only right that we in this House should be concerned about this debate, and we should seek to secure a proper future for that process.
Given the hour, I will not say any more about the Irish peerage issue—I made this point in Committee, and I know that the Government Benches are very focused on this—save to say that I am very pleased that we could get a confirmation from the Government that, as the Attorney-General said in Committee,
“the position will be precisely the same in respect of disputed Irish peerages”.—[Official Report, 1/4/25; col. 177.]
I am grateful to him for that confirmation.
In responding to my amendments in Committee, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General also told your Lordships that the
“power to refer claims to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council … already exists in Section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833”.
I accept that he is right about that, of course, but, with respect, I do not think that that counters the case for my amendment.
More convincingly, the Government made the case that requiring
“all peerage claims to be made to His Majesty in Council … would therefore result in a significant increase in claims already considered beyond the stage of consideration by the Lord Chancellor to be entered on the Roll of the Peerage”.—[Official Report, 1/4/25; col. 177.]
Given that question of proportionality and the impact on the work of the Privy Council, I am not going to seek to divide the House on my amendment today. However, I will take this opportunity to ask—I do not know who will be responding for the Government; it looks as though it will be the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson—whether the Minister can foresee circumstances where a body other than the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council could take over the role of determining complex peerage claims. Can she confirm whether Parliament would be consulted on that matter before any changes are made? I hope that that confirmation can be given; it would be extremely helpful.
While I am on my feet, to save time, if I may—I know that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, will soon speak to his amendments—I will say something more. Obviously, I recognise the complexity and strength of feeling that arise in any debate on primogeniture. I am aware of families that are at risk of losing their family home as a result of the rules of succession, as well as entails attached to certain properties. I am not going to explain at this hour what an entail is—Wikipedia is available—but this is a serious issue that needs to be looked at. I should say that I am grateful for the conversations that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, has had with me and with others, and grateful that he has taken a circumspect approach to these amendments in seeking to initiate a report on gender equality in the inheritance of peerages. I hope that the Minister will be able to give the House greater clarity on the Government’s position on this issue but, so far as the amendment in my name is concerned, I beg to move.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. I applaud his efforts to formalise the procedure regarding the determination of peerage claims, which I broadly support.
I shall speak to the two amendments in my name in this group, Amendments 25 and 27, which seek to ensure equality in that process. They would address gender parity in hereditary peerages once Clause 2 of this Bill for ever ends our jurisdiction to determine such claims. As I explained in Committee, equality of succession is an issue about which I care deeply, both for personal reasons and because it is a principle that Earls of Devon have championed since our inception.
Given the late hour, your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I am sparing the House my stories of the Empress Matilda and Queen Mary I, in the service of whom the earldom was first earned, then lost and recovered. We were addressing and fighting real Henry VIII powers in those days, not the fantasy ones we talk about today. Nearly 500 years later, there is still so much work to do on gender parity and I would be failing in my inherited duty if I did not pursue these amendments. I had hoped to change the law to remove the deeply embedded discrimination in the vast majority of hereditary titles, while I enjoyed the privilege of a seat in your Lordships’ House, but that is no longer possible with my pending abolition. The best that I can therefore offer is these two amendments.
Amendment 25 directs the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to exercise the functions that this Bill transfers to it in a non-discriminatory manner. Amendment 27, which I am minded to push to a vote, requires the Secretary of State to consult on the challenges that the JCPC faces in doing that and to recommend legislative changes accordingly. When we debated similar amendments in Committee, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General generously indicated that the Government approved the rationale of these amendments. He stated that the Government very much share my
“unease at the inequality baked in to so many hereditary peerages”.—[Official Report, 25/3/25; col. 1558.]
However, he raised a number of specific objections to the form of the amendments as originally drafted, not least the unconstitutional burdens that they placed upon the JCPC. I have taken those form objections on board and revised the proposed amendments, in the faint hope that the Government will accept them this time around. I fear that they may not, and that the Minister will probably revert to the Government’s oft-stated objections that this Bill is not the place to address the question of female succession, that they are not minded to amend the Bill in any form and that the issues raised are far too complex for us to address in this or any other legislation.
The Government are wrong, for a number of reasons. First, this is exactly the Bill in which to address the exercise of jurisdiction over hereditary succession, as it is the Bill that removes that power once and for all from your Lordships. If we do not legislate for gender parity in this Bill, Parliament is proactively passing to the JCPC a power and jurisdiction that all agree to be discriminatory, validating and therefore approving the ongoing exclusion of women from hereditary titles. This Bill bakes in gender discrimination.
Secondly, this is the very last chance for hereditary Members of your Lordships’ House to opine on this issue before their abolition, and thus for Parliament to benefit from the views of those directly impacted by this deep-rooted cultural misogyny. It is also therefore highly likely to be the last time that anyone will be sufficiently motivated to pursue this issue. If we do not address it now, it will be left to fester as a stain on our national culture.
As to the complexity of this issue, Amendment 27 seeks to require the Secretary of State to consult and to review how principles of gender equality should be applied when determining such claims, and to recommend legislative solutions. Any complexities will be consulted on and remedies proposed. Just because the matter is complex does not mean that it should not be addressed. As I stated before, patriarchy puts up many barriers to its dismantlement, but that should not deter us. Noble Lords may recall that the Crown once passed under the principle of male-preference primogeniture. Indeed, it did so for centuries, until the law was changed in 2013 with the Succession to the Crown Act, which altered the method of royal succession to gender-neutral primogeniture. If we can do it for the Crown, with all the complex traditions, conventions and rights inherent therein, surely we can do the same for our simple hereditary peerage. It simply cannot be that complicated.
However, this issue goes much wider than the gender of those who succeed to hereditary titles, as it is a point of general and important principle. Since the debate in Committee, in which a number of noble Lords spoke in support of my amendments, I have been contacted by an array of campaigners for equal rights, who have pointed out that our country will never have gender parity while we preserve privilege and property rights within the upper reaches of our society only for men. Those who campaign tirelessly to end violence against women and gender-based discrimination of all types note that, if we are unwilling to remove gender discrimination everywhere, we will never remove it anywhere.
By passing the Bill with Clause 2 unamended, this Government, who, allegedly, are committed to the principle of gender equality, are simply condoning gender-based discrimination at the top of our society, in effect, saying that it is okay to deny women the right to bear titles and the property rights, privileges and status inherent therein, solely on account of their gender. Is that really what the Government stand for?
As stated, I am minded therefore to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 27. It is a modest amendment that simply calls for a report into the application of gender equality. It may be that this is a quixotic campaign and that I am tilting at windmills to call a vote so late at night on the last day we debate the Bill, but if we do not seek to make a change now, it will never happen and the hereditary system will for ever remain biased. I will reflect on the debate before determining whether to move the amendment to a vote, and I particularly look forward to the Minister’s response. I once more challenge the Government to be brave, to channel Baldwin, the first Earl of Devon, who stood up for the rights of women to succeed and to lead. Please support these amendments. After 900 years, it is about time.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, on a debate such as this, the House really misses the Countess of Mar—if only she was still here. I can recall her one day bringing a delegation to a department where I was a Minister, and after she left, I told the civil servants, “One day, I will be a Back-Bencher and she is my model”. That is what I have tried to do. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, spoke, I thought back to the one-woman awkward squad in this House—the Countess of Mar. She is much missed in a debate like this.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, if I could share my recollection of the Countess of Mar, I was Agriculture spokesman for the last Government, and she had some strong opinions. Whenever I received my brief in answer to her questions, I would sit with her and she would point out where the brief was wrong, and then I could get it right before I had to answer. That made it much easier. She was a great power.
I honour the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for bringing these amendments forward. Lord Diamond was in the lists on the Labour Benches when I first joined the House. I took my turn at it. My noble friend Lord Northbrook has done the same. We have been trying for a long time to get this dealt with, never with any success. I do not share the noble Earl’s opinion that we are the upper reaches of society. None the less, I do not think that this kind of gender discrimination should be allowed to persist anywhere. That it is a tiresome, small, insignificant but none the less continually noticed bit of gender discrimination ought to allow the Government to give the issue some time to get rid of it.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Wolfson. He has already made the case about the need to clarify the process for future claims to a hereditary peerage when hereditary Peers no longer sit in your Lordships’ House. My noble friend highlighted the complexity of this process in Committee and even went as far as questioning whether the House currently has to resolve a claim in line with the recommendation of the Procedure and Privileges Committee.
From my own experience, I can assure him that the House of Lords can overturn a recommendation from the Privileges Committee. The House of Lords has the power to debate and vote on the recommendations of all its committees, including the Privileges Committee. This means that the House can ultimately choose to accept, reject or modify any recommendation made by the committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will no doubt want to understand exactly what I am talking about, so, in 30 seconds, I will give him a brief example of evidence in the Moynihan case, which was a comparison of the DNA of my late Liberal Party member half-brother who, while alive, personally left a sample of his blood with a Harley Street physician, despite not legally being allowed in the UK. This in turn needed to be released and his DNA matched to a blood sample I witnessed being taken from his alleged young son from his fourth wife, a young boy who I had no proof was the boy in question when he arrived to give a sample at the dust-filled clinic of the Makati Medical Centre in Manila. One of the three phials of blood taken stayed in my briefcase as I continued to travel to China on business, making the most of fridges in my hotel rooms. It could be argued that that became contaminated, and I am sure that had the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, sat on the Committee for Privileges at the time, he may well have raised that issue.
The fact is that the House of Lords, as a sovereign body with the power to regulate its own affairs, including the ability to review and decide on its reports and the reports of its committees, could have challenged that process. While the Privileges Committee’s recommendations are taken seriously, they are not binding on the House. The House ultimately retains the authority to decide on the course of action, including its consideration of the publication of the Privileges Committee’s report. In the Moynihan case, the House accepted the committee’s report without debate.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
Noble Lords will be disappointed that I do not have a line from the Box on one thing, so they may have to bear with me.
I thank noble Lords for this surprisingly short debate on some very important issues. To clarify, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and as he so entertained us in Committee about his family’s stories, the last complex case to be discussed by the JCPC was in 1997. There have been fewer than 10 complex cases in the last 50 years and routine claims are around 12 cases a year, which I hope gives noble Lords some context to what we are discussing.
On Amendment 24, from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General set out the Government’s position on peerage claims in great detail in Committee. To put it briefly, Clause 2 abolishes the jurisdiction of this House in relation to hereditary peerage claims. In future, it is intended that any complex or disputed claims that would have been referred to this House by the Crown will instead be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
To reiterate the statement made by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, under the power in Section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833, as was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, His Majesty may already refer matters to the judicial committee for consideration and advice. I am sure that noble Lords would agree that where it is necessary to duplicate legislative provisions, we should avoid doing so. Notwithstanding the way in which the noble Lord regaled us in Committee with his bitter experience of the Pet Abduction Act 2024, I expect the other place will be some somewhat less exercised by this matter.
The noble Lord’s amendment would result in all cases, including straightforward cases, which are usually dealt with only by way of application to the Lord Chancellor, being referred to the JCPC. This would not be the best use of its time, as there is no dispute or legal complexity in these claims. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.
The noble Lord asked me a very important question, which was whether I could foresee circumstances other than the use of the JCPC and, if we did, whether Parliament would be consulted. Having consulted my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, who thankfully was sitting to my left, I can say that we do not foresee this moving away from the JCPC, but my noble and learned friend assures me that although this issue has not been raised before—so we would have to consider it in more detail—we would seek to consult on principle if there was going to be a move away from the JCPC. If, on reflection that is not the case, we would inform your Lordships’ House at the earliest opportunity. That is as far as I can assist the noble Lord.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
To be clear, when the Minister says that the Government would seek to consult, is that consult generally at large, so to speak, or consult with Parliament? Obviously there is a difference.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
With Parliament. I am glad to be able to assist, even at this hour.
I turn to the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The noble Earl has raised an important point that was touched on in Committee by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General. Noble Lords will not be surprised that the Government’s approach has not changed on this issue since Committee, and I will briefly reiterate the rationale for that. While I am sympathetic to the noble Earl’s concerns, as is the Lord Privy Seal, the Bill deals only with the membership of this House. The Leader of the House has written to him to explain some of the complexities of addressing that.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
The Bill addresses the determination of hereditary peerages and transfers that power to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, so it is not accurate to say that it addresses only membership of your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I am not sure that I completely agree with the noble Earl but, in order to continue at this point and to give him the answers that he seeks from the Government, I am going to move forward. As I was about to say, my personal view is that those complexities should not stop us addressing the issue, but it is not an issue for this Bill, which is about membership of your Lordships’ House.
I note that Amendment 25 has been refined by the noble Earl since Committee, but it still seeks to assert how the Judicial Committee should exercise its jurisdiction.
On Amendment 27, while the Government may consult on how the principles of gender equality should apply to determining hereditary peerage claims, without legislative changes the law as it stands distinguishes between sexes, as the noble Earl is clearly aware, in the case of succession to hereditary titles, and it is the duty of the courts to give effect to it. As I have said, that is something that many Members in both Houses, including me, are not comfortable with, but I do not believe that to be a matter for this Bill. The role of the courts is to apply the law, and in doing so they treat all litigants equally. However, the law itself distinguishes between sexes, as the noble Earl is clearly aware, and in the case of succession to regulatory titles it is the duty of the courts to give effect to it.
In summary, the amendment on peerage claims is unnecessary and the amendments on primogeniture are not for this Bill. I therefore respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, especially for her reassurances. I think Moses spoke to the Almighty face to face, but I interact with the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General through the Minister, so I thank the noble and learned Lord via her. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
The Earl of Dundee
“Review: impact on the effectiveness of the House of LordsWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act comes into force, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament the report of a review detailing the effect of this Act on the ability of the House of Lords to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require a review of the impact of this Act on the ability of the House of Lords to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, within this grouping, Amendment 26 would enable a review of the impact of this Act on the ability of the House of Lords to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account.
Your Lordships will agree that the membership composition of a reformed House must sustain and continue the high legislative scrutiny standard of the present House, and thus, conversely, that future membership composition should be designed to serve that priority aim.
If, within the temporal membership of a reformed House of 600, the political Members were to be 450, the non-political representation appointed either by HOLAC or by Parliament itself would then be 150 Cross-Bench Peers.
As a result, within that total of 600 temporal Members, respective proportions could then become: the government and opposition parties at 175 political members each; next, the independent, non-political Cross-Benchers at 150; and, next, all other political parties at 100.
These respective proportions would then provide a good balance for sustaining and carrying out our present high standard of legislative scrutiny in a reformed House.
Your Lordships may well additionally consider that, rather than direct public elections, indirect elections of 450 political Members would, in the first place, the better ensure continuity of high standards of legislative scrutiny.
That is because direct elections of 450 political Members would instead lead to conflict and jockeying for position between the House of Commons and a reformed House of Lords.
In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the Leader of the House, favoured parity of numbers between the government and opposition parties, such as perhaps 175 each; while the Leader of the Opposition, my noble friend Lord True, observed that each of the Government and Opposition should have more political Members than the Cross-Benchers would have non-political Members, such as maybe reflecting an appropriate respective ratio of 175 for each of the government and main opposition party to 150 for non-political Cross Bench membership.
Also in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, pointed out in particular that a reformed House must be properly representative of the regions and nations of the UK; and that, in general, the public ought to be consulted on different options for House of Lords reform.
Does the Minister therefore concur that a key option to be put forward for public approval or otherwise should be the implied prescriptions of Amendment 26?
These comprise, first, that the high standard of legislative scrutiny demonstrated by the present House should continue in a reformed House; if so, and secondly, that indirect elections would assist that purpose better than direct elections.
Thirdly, that also assisting this aim is parity of numbers between the government and main opposition parties at perhaps 175 each; fourthly, that equally sustaining legislative scrutiny quality as well is the inclusion of independent non-political Cross-Benchers at 150, thus at one-third of all temporal and political members at 450. I beg to move.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and it is nice to see Devon and Dundee legislating until the end.
I will speak to Amendment 28 in my name. It once more considers whether the name “House of Lords” remains appropriate once we have removed the hereditary Lords from these red Benches.
Over recent months, during the passage of this Bill, we have heard from all sides of this House how indefensible is the hereditary principle within a modern parliamentary democracy. We have heard criticism of hereditary Peers, their predominantly male gender and their relatively privileged birth, and heard particular disparagement of their feudal roots. Mine has been one the few voices raised in defence of the indefensible, but, if we are to accept, as reluctantly I do, that the 1,000 years or so of hereditary presence within our legislature should draw to a close, should we not remove the gendered, privileged and feudal name of the House itself?
I am concerned that, in keeping the name “House of Lords”, along with its aristocratic nomenclature and the traditions and pretentions that go with it, we are removing the best bits—the hereditary Members of your Lordships’ House, who contribute so much—and keeping the worst bits: namely, the gendered, discriminatory name and intentions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, stated in Committee,
“Words have power and names shape perceptions”.—[Official Report, 25/3/25; cols. 1554-55.]
The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General criticised my citation of a dictionary reference for “Lord”, suggesting it could do with some updating. In preparation for this debate, I therefore consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, which confirms the definition of a Lord as a title of nobility or high rank often associated with land ownership and power, particularly in feudal contexts. It can also refer to a man who has achieved mastery or leadership in a particular field, or can be used as a term of respect. In Christianity, Lord is a title for God or Christ—in other words, a deity. Given that names shape perception, and the disparity that has been noted throughout Report between the excellent work that takes place in this House and the terrible public opinion we suffer, should we not be looking at the departure of the hereditary Peers—the Lords, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines them—as an opportunity for a rebrand? Surely it provides the perfect chance to step away from the negative associations of nobility and high rank with land and power; an opportunity to remove the rich aroma of feudal and patriarchal privilege that pervades many aspects of this venerable institution.
Lord True (Con)
I am enjoying listening to the noble Earl, although I find it hard to forgive the fact that his collateral ancestors participated in the deplorable and bogus Latin Empire of Constantinople. Some of us remember that, so he should be careful.
On a serious point, we heard earlier the great scale of confusion on the Benches opposite at the different uses of the word “Lord”. Has the noble Earl considered that a better argument for his amendment—which would appeal to the confused elements on the other side who we heard from earlier—is that it would help lift the confusion on the Labour Benches?
The Earl of Devon (CB)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, and I agree. There are many reasons why the nomenclature that we use is very significant. Perhaps, by way of concession, this issue of nomenclature could be considered by the special Select Committee that is being established to consider the constitution of your Lordships’ House. On that basis, and with that invitation to address the issue, I commend my amendment to the House.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, these amendments call for a review of your Lordships’ House to consider the effect of the expulsion of our hereditary colleagues, and indeed to consider its very name. I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. The need to reflect, scrutinise and reassess is a defining virtue of this House, and our duty is to test, examine and refine.
The amendment from my noble friend Lord Dundee seeks a review of the impact of the Bill on the effectiveness of your Lordships’ House. This is a fair challenge. If this House is to be judged, let it be judged on its ability to scrutinise legislation, revise policy and hold the Government to account. We have consistently warned of the danger of excluding in one stroke so many active, knowledgeable and experienced Members—individuals whose contributions have been vital to this House’s effectiveness.
The strength of this House has always been that it evolves over time and reflects experience and judgment. Its legitimacy is grounded in the capability and dedication of our Members. This is why we have argued throughout that it is critical that reform and review should be carried out through consensus and with full discussion, and why we seek to retain the wisdom and experience of long-serving hereditary colleagues who have brought unparalleled insight to our deliberations over the years.
Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, invites review and consultation on the appropriateness of the name “House of Lords”. As I have said before, this is an intriguing suggestion. I was interested to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—who is not in his place—was toying with this in our debate on Amendment 17 earlier, and that the former Lord Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, also brought it up in the course of today’s deliberations.
As the noble Earl says, the title of this House evokes centuries of history and tradition, and it is certainly reasonable to ask whether it still reflects the institution as it is today, but the reputation, credibility and authority of this House will never be determined by its name alone. They will be determined by its actions, the quality of its debates, the sharpness of its scrutiny and the seriousness of its deliberations. Scrutiny must lead to improvement and must not be a distraction, and I am afraid there is a danger that such a review would become a distraction from the important work of your Lordships’ House.
In conclusion, I recognise the intent behind the amendments to assess the consequences of the Bill. However, if we are serious about the future of this House, let us focus on what really matters: scrutiny, legislation and the real business of holding the Government to account.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, from Devon to Dundee: as we approach Recess, it suggests a delightful holiday we may all want to consider.
Both amendments in this group seek, in different ways, to place a duty on the Government to review the impact of legislation after it receives Royal Assent. Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce a report before both Houses, detailing the effects of the Bill within 12 months of it coming into force. Much like the noble Earl’s Amendment 96 in Committee, albeit more focused, this would place a duty on the Government to conduct post-legislative scrutiny on the Bill.
Amendment 28, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to consult with the public on the implications of the provision in the Bill on the appropriateness of the name of the House of Lords. This amendment is identical to his amendment in Committee. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury observed that amendments to require a formal review of the Bill were unnecessary and disproportionate. It will not surprise noble Lords to learn that the Government have not altered their view of these new amendments.
With respect to Amendment 26, we agree that post-legislative scrutiny or reviews can add value to the legislative process, but it would be of limited value in this case. Ultimately, the Bill does not alter any functions of your Lordships’ House; nor does it make a fundamental change to how we operate as a House.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, described the Bill as a “tidying-up measure”. On these Benches, we agree. Given the approach taken with the 1999 Act, which removed a far higher number of Members from your Lordships’ House and did not have any post-legislative scrutiny, I cannot see the case for post-legislative scrutiny of this Bill.
On Amendment 28 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, my response will be the same as the one my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General gave the noble Lord in Committee:
“The House of Lords will continue to be called the House of Lords following the passage of the Bill”.—[Official Report, 25/3/25; col. 1556.]
Save for the Lords spiritual, this House will still consist of Peers of the realm once the hereditary Peers have left.
While I acknowledge that, as the noble Lord describes, the language we use to describe ourselves can seem anachronistic to some, particularly given that neither I, nor my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal, nor the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, are Lords. But we need to appreciate that, outside your Lordships’ House, it is very clear what the House of Lords is and how it relates to the other House.
The purpose of the Bill is clear and uncomplicated, and I do not believe that post-legislative scrutiny or reviews would provide the House with any further insight. Therefore, I respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her remarks. On legislative scrutiny and holding Governments to account, perhaps there may be consensus in three major respects.
First, the high standard of the present House in achieving legislative scrutiny should carry on in a reformed House. Secondly, and conversely, if possible, future membership composition ought to be designed to serve that priority aim. Thirdly, following this consideration, our present high-quality function of legislative scrutiny should still be able to be performed by a revised House of 600 temporal Members, whether wholly elected or through some combination of being appointed directly and elected.
Beyond this consensus, there are differing views on how the reformed House could achieve desirable democratic effects in different ways.
Such divergence of opinion may be illustrated by the case for having direct elections. This was advanced with conviction by my noble friend Lord Hailsham, in the context of seeking to reduce the unwelcome effects of elective dictatorship. For direct elections to a reformed House of Lords would certainly enable it to stand up much more to the House of Commons, not least when Governments of the day there might happen to have very large party-political majorities.
However, in association with Amendment 26, as already indicated, indirect elections are advocated instead. These would be for 450 political Members within a reformed House of 600 temporal Members, of whom 150 would be non-political, independent Cross-Benchers, either appointed by HOLAC or else indirectly elected by Parliament itself. As already alleged, these respective proportions would then provide a good balance for sustaining and carrying on our present high standards—
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I am ever so sorry. Can the noble Lord clarify what is happening in terms of the next stage of the Bill? I think the noble Lord might be repeating some of his opening remarks.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
I was hoping to put this in context; my noble friend Lady Finn in her remarks did just that too, saying that we really want to make sure that we can continue the very high standard of legislative scrutiny of our present House in a reformed House.
I will just finish my remarks. As already alleged, these respective portions would provide a good balance for sustaining and carrying on our present high standards. This formula could also seek the backing of public consultation and approval to which the noble Baroness very helpfully referred in Committee.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but the debate has concluded and I think he is just about to say whether he wishes to press his amendment to the vote.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for her interest. I am not going to be tempted to press to a vote, but if I could possibly finish my remarks, we may be able to round off the context.
I am grateful too for the contribution from the Opposition Front Bench and from my noble friend Lady Finn, and within this grouping for the useful amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on post-reform House of Lords nomenclature. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 26.
The Earl of Devon
“Report: principles of gender equality(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act comes into force, undertake a consultation on how principles of gender equality should be applied when determining hereditary peerage claims which were formerly determined by the House of Lords.(2) The Secretary of State must publish a report following the conclusion of the consultation which must address—(a) the expectations of existing heirs;(b) heirs born to unmarried parents;(c) families with adopted children.”Member’s explanatory statement
In the light of the fact that hereditary peerages often pass to eldest sons, this amendment requires that the Secretary of State must, within six months of the commencement of this Act, consult on how principles of gender equality should be applied when determining hereditary peerage claims.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, given that so many have remained until this stage of the evening, I would hate to disappoint, as well as given how many resounding words of support I heard for my Amendment 27 when we debated it, including I think from the Government Front Bench. On that basis, I would like to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 27.
Lord Strathclyde
“Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation:”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is copied from the preamble to the 1911 Parliament Act to highlight that Labour's plans for “an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations” constitutes the same ambition for a popular basis for the House of Lords and that this Bill, like the 1911 Act, is another holding position because the intended substitution still “cannot be immediately brought into operation”.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, I think that some of my noble friends have been waiting a long time for this moment. It is late at night, so I assure noble Lords that I will not test the opinion of the House.
I move this amendment with a certain amount of humility, which some may feel is not my natural state, but it really is on this occasion. The words of the amendment are taken from the original Parliament Act 1911 and its preamble, and it is worth reading it to your Lordships:
“And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation”.
Those are fine words and a fine aspiration.
I said at an earlier stage that the difference existed less between the parties than within the parties, which is why I suspect that the ambition of the 1911 preamble has never been enacted. However, I rather wish that, in 1999, when we passed the House of Lords Act, that I had thought of this amendment then and sought to replicate it in the 1999 Act. I did not do so then, but I am making up for it today.
The beauty of this amendment is that it does not actually ask the Government to do anything; in fact, it does not ask anybody to do anything. Instead, it is a reminder of the original intention behind the 1911 Act. I understand that the Prime Minister has said that he is keen on an elected House in due course; he has mentioned that on several occasions. Certainly my party, over the last 20 years, has also mentioned that, both officially in manifestos and by supporting the 2012 Bill. Of course, the Liberal Democrats have stated that as well. I feel that there is plenty of support for the fundamental idea that lies behind this preamble, even though it cannot be immediately brought into operation.
So I hope that, at this last amendment, on the last day of Report on this Bill, the Government and the noble Baroness can perhaps smile beneficially on the amendment and accept it. As I said, it is moved with due humility as a humble amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, may I follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and thank him for that unusual and welcome display of humility?
I will put a question to him. He knows that, following the 1911 Act, the Bryce Commission was set up in 1917. It was essentially a conference of both the Lords and the Commons, and a large number of Members took part. The recommendation was that the Lords should be indirectly elected through regional meetings of Members of Parliament in the Commons, who would nominate people coming to the House of Lords. That died a death, and nothing happened. Does the noble Lord think that we could reconstitute the Bryce Commission in current circumstances?
Secondly, if the preamble was so helpful and successful in 1911, what makes him think that putting it in this Bill will lead to any substantive reform at all? I would observe that, in the interventions I have made arguing for substantive reform, I seem to have lacked a certain degree of support among Members of your Lordships’ House.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, described the preamble as “fine words”. He will know the saying, “Fine words butter no parsnips”. Well, these words have buttered no parsnips for over a hundred years and, personally, I have had enough of fine words on their own.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am slightly disappointed that this is the second time this evening that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, has failed to put the case for election when he was talking about the best way to deal with limiting the size of the House and prevent it growing. The best way is to have a constituted, elected House where the people decide how the numbers in the House change. Now, again, he has failed to align himself with the long-held wish of his party to see election. At this late hour, my noble friend has elicited a notable reticence from the party opposite in pursuing its electoral objectives.
Lord Newby (LD)
The noble Lord seems to forget that I moved an amendment for an elected House of Lords and, unless my recollection is faulty, he chose not to support it.
Lord True (Con)
Well, that is true. The elements are greatly mixed in us, as Shakespeare taught us. There is that terrible duo word of “PR” that always lurks around in any proposition that comes from the noble Lord, Lord Newby.
I do not think that this is a time for reflection on the progress of this Bill. We will have a chance for that next week on “Bill do now pass”. I am pleased that, in general, the conduct of the debates has been good and important issues have been raised. I fear that a more appropriate preamble for this Bill would be something along the lines of, “Whereas it is desired to create an all-appointed House, and no proposals have yet been presented to restrict growth in the power of the Executive over such a House, it is politically expedient to exclude immediately over 80 Members of Parliament who do not support the Executive”. I think that would probably be a reasonably accurate preamble.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the patience and willingness to engage with the House that she has again shown in the Chamber this evening. I liked my noble friend’s impish and humble address to the House, but I think that, when the time comes, he should probably withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord—I think it has been good natured generally, apart from one slip-up that I referred to earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is not in his place—I have scared him off. He will not do that again.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for introducing his amendment. It was the most unusual introduction I have ever heard to an amendment in your Lordships’ House. He started by saying that it does not do anything and does not ask the Government to do anything. That is an unusual way to introduce an amendment to any legislation. He seeks to put a preamble at the start of the Bill, as he said.
The substantive issue that he addresses here is introducing an elected element into a second Chamber. The recollection of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, does not fail him: only last week the House rejected that proposal, although the proposals in the Labour Party manifesto for an alternative second Chamber do not mention elections, so I fear that putting something like this in—although it would make no difference—seeks to pre-empt any outcome of further discussions.
This kind of preamble is now obsolete—although it may have happened in 1911, and I know there is a tendency in your Lordships’ House to look backwards at what happened. There have been some excellent historical references in the House this evening and indeed last week. There is a good reason why this has become largely obsolete: it is completely unnecessary, because the Long Title indicates the purpose and substantive clauses are provided in the legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, who took similar legislation through your Lordships’ House in 1999, said:
“Words that do not mean anything have no place in modern legislation”.—[Official Report, 26/10/1999; col. 276.]
Taking the noble Lord’s own introduction—saying that it does not do anything and does not mean anything—I ask that he withdraws his amendment.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, I cannot hide my disappointment that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith—the Leader of the House—have not accepted my words. But I am pleased to have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, ask some totally appropriate questions and remind us of what happened at the end of the First World War with the Bryce Commission. Of course it would be possible to recreate a Bryce Commission and, under the Labour Government that ended in 2010, a Joint Committee of both Houses sat and discussed this. Prior to that, there had been a royal commission. There have been many occasions over the last 100 or so years when people have referred to this preamble and looked at what could be done to put in place some kind of elected House—and none of them has come to anything.
My purpose was simply to continue that historical reminder that this was the broad intention. This is an echo of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Irvine of Lairg and Lord Falconer of Thoroton. So many other Peers have referred to it over the last 115 years. However, I recognise that I am beaten on this one. I said I would not call a Division on it and I will not. Therefore, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.