House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I shall make a very brief comment on the points of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, about the image of the House.

We know and accept that hereditary Peers are anomalous, but what about most of the rest of us? Let us be clear about this: we are here—the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I—because we crawled so far up the affections of a Prime Minister that we got parking rights. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

As for the idea that this is going to cause a great change in the reputation of this House, I wish that were the case. Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit at University College London has just published a new set of findings, having done some opinion polling on this very point. One point was that you could either limit the number of prime ministerial appointments to this House or get rid of the hereditaries. She said that limiting the number of prime ministerial appointments had by far the highest support among the public. Just 3% of voters chose removing the hereditary Peers without also limiting the number of prime ministerial appointments. We are not in such a bad way as is sometimes suggested.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

Does the noble Lord not think it possible to do both—to limit the number of appointees through the prime ministerial structure and to reduce the size of the House in the way that is suggested in this Bill?

[Lord Dobbs]

I had finished my remarks but will respond to say that I would love that to be the case.