House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I think we are in agreement. What I am in favour of is putting this in a statutory frame. I do not doubt that it is done in a discretionary manner, but I would like it to be statutory. I think it is a very slight difference between us, and I hope we will not fall out on the matter.

My second point—I feel sure that I will not have the agreement of the Front Bench here—I make as a permanent, paid-up member of the awkward squad, and it relates to the oath. It has been a long time since I took the oath of a privy counsellor. I did not take away a copy and I am not quite sure what it said. But I have been on the internet to have a careful look. What it actually says is that, when members of the Privy Council have a clear and informed view, they should vote and speak accordingly. I actually believe that is the duty of your Lordships—all of us. It certainly seems to be the duty of members of the Privy Council.

There are many matters—I now speak personally—on which I do not have a formed or an informed opinion. I like to think that they are the same. In respect of those matters, I am quite happy to take the guidance of the Front Bench. But then I ask myself: what is one’s duty when one has a formed and informed view? I think it is quite plain; it is to vote in accordance with one’s conscience and opinion. We are not echo chambers. This is not an echo chamber. We are not part of a chorus line; we are here to express an unfettered view in accordance with our settled opinion. I would like Members of the House to take an oath to that effect before they sit in this place. So when a member of the Whips’ Office comes along and says, “We want you to vote”, you would simply say, “My dear, I simply don’t agree with you and, what is more, I have sworn an oath that I will speak in accordance with my conscience”. That would be conclusive of the matter.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 19, in my sole name, which proposes the replenishment of the Cross Benches following the departure of the hereditary Peers with 20 appointments over five years via HOLAC, the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which is chaired so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

Currently, there are 32 hereditary Peers sitting on the Cross Benches of your Lordships’ House—an increase in the years since I joined, when I believe there were 28 hereditary Cross-Benchers. No group will be greater impacted by the impending removal of the hereditary presence. Unlike other groupings within the House, the Cross Benches do not speak with a single voice, despite being so ably convened by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and his illustrious predecessors, nor do we have any political or parliamentary machinery with which to lobby for replacements to ensure the relative proportion of the Cross Benches remains consistent after the passage of the Bill.

Contemporary political scientists and commentators —and, after this afternoon’s debate, I think the majority of your Lordships—consider that the expert, independent and ameliorating presence of the Cross Benches in this House is an essential element of its good legislative function. The Cross Benches provide considerable subject matter expertise not found on the more political Benches and tend to carry an apolitical casting vote that acts as a dampener to the political noise that emanates from the other place and is echoed here through the party-political Benches. We mess with that tempering role at our peril. I would ask the Minister to explain clearly in her closing speech how the Government propose to ensure that the Cross Benches of your Lordships’ House will not be diminished as a result of this legislation.

Your Lordships may recall that we debated this in Committee with Amendment 51, to which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, added their names. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, apologises that he cannot be here today, but he reiterated his support when we spoke this morning. He previously noted the importance of HOLAC and the people’s Peers process as a means of admitting distinguished and apolitical expertise to your Lordships’ House. The angels of HOLAC would not gain access by any other means. Think of the contributions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Lane- Fox, Lady Bull, Lady Watkins and the indefatigable Lady Kidron—the champion of our creative industries. Think of the tireless work of many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Krebs, Lord Pannick, Lord Patel, Lord Currie and Lord Adebowale. None would have been here but for HOLAC.

Amendment 19 would ensure that your Lordships’ House continues to benefit from this HOLAC appointments process, which is particularly important given the dramatic decrease in the number of HOLAC appointments in recent years. To reiterate the numbers referenced in Committee, there were 57 appointments during HOLAC’s first 10 years between 2000 and 2010. Since then, there have been only a further 19 appointments, with six since 2018.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

As a former member of HOLAC, I wonder if I might intervene briefly. In the term in which I served on HOLAC, we would have liked to have introduced two or three Cross-Bench Peers a year, which had normally been the case. I am afraid that we were prevented from doing so by the Prime Minister of the day.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

That is very helpful, because I was going to propose a possible number. As I was saying: in other words, from initially making nearly six HOLAC appointments a year, we now have only one such appointment annually.

Despite having a non-partisan, highly qualified appointments commission, we are simply not making use of it. Given that this Government are determined to honour the constitutional commitments of the Blair years with the Bill’s passage and the final abolition of the hereditary peerage, should they not also honour the Blair Government’s connected commitment to HOLAC and permit the replenishment of the Cross Benches in the way proposed by Amendment 19, which would ensure a modest appointment rate of perhaps four people’s Peers per annum?

As I have previously noted, I do not think that hereditary Peers should be converted into life Peers in any significant number. Amendment 9 should not pass. This is because our particular demographic will remain well overrepresented among the remaining Members of your Lordships’ House. I do not therefore see Amendment 19 as a route for abolished hereditaries to return to these seats, albeit that they would be welcome to apply with anybody else as common citizens. Rather, we should take advantage of the removal of the hereditary presence to increase the diversity of our membership and bring a broader array of expertise and opinion to bear upon your Lordships’ legislative efforts.

As I understood it—and as mentioned earlier—one of the main reasons for retaining a rump of hereditaries back in 1999 was that it would encourage the further reform of this House, leaving it better, not worse, as a legislative body. I am concerned that the Bill, as currently drafted, removes a group of largely independent-minded Members and increases the proportion of Members that are politically motivated. Amendment 19 would reverse that and replenish the House with a group of non-partisan and technically expert Members. It also has the benefit of diluting, if only a little, the relative increase in prime ministerial patronage that will result from the loss of hereditary Peers, which must surely be a good thing.

On that basis, I recommend it to your Lordships and look forward to hearing from the Minister why it cannot be adopted to support the continued and essential vibrancy of our Cross Benches.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, in this grouping I support Amendment 6, proposed by my noble friend Lord Hailsham.

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 this priority aim.

If, within the temporal membership of a reformed House of 600, the political numbers were to be 450, the non-political representation appointed by HOLAC would then be 150 Cross-Bench Peers.

As a result, within that total of 600, 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 continuing our present high standard of legislative scrutiny.

However, regarding life peerages conferred on independent non-political Cross-Bench life Peers within a reformed House—and as my noble friend Lord Hailsham emphasises—in the first place it must be HOLAC and not the Prime Minister of the day who recommends these appointments to the King.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, in view of the lateness of the hour, I will be very brief. I will say out of an abundance of caution that I will not test the opinion of the House. However, I think there is a very strong case for introducing peerages for a limited period and a retirement period. There are two reasons for that.

First, membership of this House needs to be refreshed, otherwise you get inflationary numbers of an intolerable degree. My two proposals, of a retirement age and limited peerage duration, address that. If one is honest about this, one’s experience decays over a period of time. When I first came into the House, I knew rather a lot about criminal law. That was about 15 years ago, and I knew a great deal more when I went into the House of Commons in 1979. But one’s knowledge changes and, while I have an understanding of the general principles of criminal law, I do not pretend I have the expertise I previously did. So my first point is that one’s expertise declines.

Secondly, many of the issues one is wholly conversant with have changed. When I first came into Parliament, we knew nothing about transgender, artificial intelligence was wholly unknown and we did not have to worry about the internet. But now we have to regulate and debate the application of these matters to try to regulate AI, social media and debate transgender in a sensible way. It is much easier for those who are more conversant with these issues than my generation are to address them. That requires, in part, a refreshing of the membership of this House. For those reasons, I see merit in a retirement age and limiting the period for which peerages are created. So I beg to move but, as I said, I will not be testing the opinion of the House.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I too see the benefits of a retirement age and therefore will speak briefly to Amendment 20 in my name, which is a variation on that theme. Whereas the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, proposes a retirement age of 85 in Amendment 7, my Amendment 20 is somewhat simpler. It proposes the introduction, only for newly appointed life Peers, of a retirement age of 80 or of a date 10 years after the Member’s introduction to the House, whichever is later.

Amendment 20 would thereby give effect to the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment to introduce a mandatory retirement age of 80. However, it would also introduce an important allowance for those who join your Lordships’ House after the age of 70. This is an important distinction, as it would do away with an arbitrary 80 year-old age limit and ensure that those such as serving Supreme Court justices, whose period of public service has a retirement age of 75, will be able to enjoy at least a full decade of service in your Lordships’ House, irrespective of the age at which they are appointed.

Noble Lords may recall the probing amendments in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and his excellent speeches introducing them, along with the famous Blencathra Excel spreadsheets calculating the impacts of various retirement ages. He noted that a retirement age of 80, if implemented immediately, would have a draconian effect on numbers in your Lordships’ House, removing up to some 327 Members. My Amendment 20 avoids that guillotine, as well as the organisational shock that would result therefrom, by imposing the age limit only on the newly appointed life Peers appointed under the Life Peerages Act 1958.

This would ensure that we do not instantly lose the valuable institutional wisdom among our more experienced Members, and it would not impact any current life Peers. Amendment 20 would thus fulfil Labour’s manifesto while tempering the age-based guillotine—at least for our existing Members—and gently introducing a retirement age that certainly seemed to find favour with the majority of those present in Committee who expressed an opinion. On that basis, I recommend it to your Lordships and look forward to the response from the Leader of the House, particularly in light of the indication she gave earlier that there may be a Select Committee convened to consider just this topic.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 20, which was ably proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Let me remind the House again of the commitment in the Labour Party manifesto:

“Labour will … introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House”.


The next sentence says that Labour

“will introduce a new participation requirement as well as strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed”.

As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, so kindly pointed out, in Committee I attempted to help the Government by putting down a number of amendments on retirement ages, giving the House three options of retiring Peers at the age of 80, 85 or 90. A retirement age of 80 would have removed 327 Peers, which was far too draconian. I think that is why the Labour Party suddenly dropped the proposed retirement age of 80—it realised it would lose 95 of its own number. A retirement age of 90 would remove just 16 Peers and would not be worth it. A retirement age of 85 would remove about 185 Peers, and I think there was quite a bit of consensus in the House that that figure was about right. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, then made this refinement, which makes a lot of sense and is a vast improvement on my suggestions. I think he also had the support of the noble Lords, Lord Cromwell and Lord Burns, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull—I hope I am not doing them a disservice by misquoting them.

I have not tried the patience of the House by tabling those amendments again tonight, but I suggest that the solution to the objections we will hear from the Government at the end of this debate explaining why we cannot do this lies in my Amendment 14 in the next group, which I will elaborate on then. The Government will reject these amendments—and next week will probably reject Amendment 18 from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, on non-attendance—on the grounds that they are too complicated for primary legislation, that there are a lot of loose ends still to be tied up, that there are unforeseen consequences, that we must consult goodness knows how many people and organisations before we legislate and, of course, that there must never be any amendments to this sacred Bill, no matter how meritorious.

Apart from the last two bogus points, there is merit in the Government’s arguments. We do not have the minutiae of how a retirement scheme at about 80, with amendments and tweaks, would work. Would it be on a Peer’s birthday or at the end of the Session or the Parliament? As for consultation, I submit that there is not any single person or organisation who knows the slightest thing about the retirement of Peers compared with all the current Peers in this House. We are the people to be consulted. I accept that we do not have the minutiae of retirement provisions ready to put in the Bill or any primary legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

The two amendments take slightly different approaches but seek to do the same thing. They have a term limit and a retirement age. The noble Earl suggests a term limit of 10 years and a retirement age of 80; my noble friend suggests a term limit of 15 years and a retirement age of 85.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

I should note that the term limit I propose is only for those who join the House after the age of 70.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl for the clarification. On the difference in ages, neither outlined why they had selected the ages that they chose, but I note that the noble Earl remains, until August, a member of the under-50s club in your Lordships’ House and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hailsham on his 80th birthday this February.

These are matters that the House or the Select Committee will have to consider carefully in the light of the very wise comments of the noble Lord, Lord Winston. We are an ageing society and hope that we will all live many years longer and be able to contribute to civic life, family life and many other things in different ways. It is inherently arbitrary. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern was mentioned and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is a great example of somebody in his mid-80s still playing a very active part in your Lordships’ House. I responded to the debate on VE Day, when we were all moved to have among us the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is very active in your Lordships’ House in his 90s and a living reminder of some of the things this country and others have been through. It is very valuable to have people of all ages in your Lordships’ House.

The other significant difference between the two amendments is that the noble Earl’s would apply only to new entrants to your Lordships’ House. Following on from debates that we have had, can the noble Baroness the Leader of the House say something about her attitude to participation thresholds and retirement ages? Does she envisage those applying to current Members of the House or to new entrants? She was opposed to grandfather rights for people who are here as hereditary Peers, but would she afford grandfather rights to those here over the age of 80 presently who came to your Lordships’ House with a certain understanding and who have arranged their lives, houses and so forth on the expectation that they would play a full part until they choose to retire? If the hereditary Peers are to find their basis here changed at the end of the Session, should the same apply on the basis of age?

I note what the noble Baroness said in an earlier group about the Select Committee and we are grateful for that information. She said that she would discuss it in the usual channels and I appreciate that there are details to be ironed out, but can she say a bit more about her thinking on its composition? What would the party breakdown be? How many Cross-Benchers might there be? Would there be a mixture of hereditary and life colleagues? Obviously there would be no hereditaries if it is set up after Royal Assent, but might former hereditary Members be able to play a role in its work? Who should chair it? From which party or none would they come? Would Bishops sit on it?

The noble Baroness said a little about timeframes and hoped that the Select Committee could be set up within three months of this Bill achieving Royal Assent, although she was a little less ambitious on the conclusion of its work. She said:

“It has been 25 years since the first stage of this reform, and I think the House would be somewhat intolerant if we took another 25 years to bring anything further forward”.


I know that that is a figure of speech, but would the Select Committee report in this Session? If the work was not completed in this Parliament, could the Select Committee be carried over into future Parliaments?

I appreciate that this is flurry of questions, even by my standards. However, what the noble Baroness said earlier begs a number of questions about how this Select Committee is going to be constituted, how it will work, and how it can really deliver on the points that my noble friend Lord Hailsham, the noble Earl and others have touched on in this group. I look forward to her response.