House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, the proposal is to set up a Select Committee to consider the issues that have been discussed with her. Those issues include offering life peerages to hereditary Peers. Is that something that the Select Committee would consider?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not imagine that that would be discussed by this Select Committee, which will look at the two specific issues that have been raised. We will debate the matter that the noble Lord refers to later on the Bill.

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[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will not be surprised that I do not agree with this amendment, for the reasons so pithily put by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. There are a number of points with which I could take issue, but I will pick up a couple from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. He implied that those of us who supported the “Grocott Bills”, in their various guises, were almost being hypocritical by not voting for this today. The truth was—with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—that the Grocott Bills were second best. They were the best that was on offer, and we saw them as a way of making some progress while believing that what is in this Bill was preferable.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

How can the noble Lord possibly argue that it was second best when the Leader of the House has told us that, had we accepted Grocott in the last Parliament, this would not have been necessary?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am explaining to the House what I thought at the time, not what anybody else might think.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said that the system of by-elections should not be thought to have been eccentric. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was very eloquent in pointing out just how eccentric they were, particularly in respect of by-elections for the Liberal Democrats. On one notable occasion, there were seven candidates and three electors, and nobody in the Liberal Democrats knew who half the candidates were. They were truly eccentric. They brought the House into disrepute, certainly in respect of those by-elections, and they were simply not sustainable in any way.

I strongly agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in pointing out that one consequence of this amendment would be to maintain over a considerable number of years—unless there was a great increase in the size of the House—a significant Conservative plurality over the Labour Benches. That seems me to be a bad thing, because the inevitable consequence would be that the Government would increase their numbers, and we would have a bloated House. Apparently, everybody agrees that the House is too big, yet this amendment, if agreed, would have that consequence for decades to come.

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[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

As far as I know, although I do not know the intricacies of the mechanism that brought me here, there were probably more than three people who thought that it was okay.

I would be dishonest to the House if I did not admit to being flattered that it seems to be universally described as the “Grocott Bill”. It is lovely to have a Bill named after you, even if it was rejected time after time. It is no longer the “Grocott Bill”. I liked the ring of that, but I very much like the ring of the new, improved Bill before the House today, so I think we ought to call the original one the “House of Lords (Grocott No. 1) Bill” and the one before the House now the “House of Lords (Grocott No. 2) Bill”. Why do I support the “House of Lords (Grocott No. 2) Bill”? It is because it is better, it does the job more effectively and it means that we can move on from this endless debate to discuss other aspects of reform.

However, I really despair at times about the inability of this House to deal with such a simple proposition: a two-clause Bill. It would have cost nothing—it might have saved money—and upset no one, but time and time again it was rejected. It was filibustered—I will not mention all the Peers who opposed it. In anticipation of this debate, I checked who had spoken against it at Second Reading on its various outings. There were two culprits—I will not embarrass them now—who were worse than any others and who persistently put down 60 or 70 amendments the day before Committee. We are powerless in this place if there are people determined to wreck a Bill in that way. Perhaps they can reflect, in the quietness of their own souls, on what might have been if they had not done that, because I believe that if a Bill like this had been passed —if not mine, then certainly Lord Steel’s Bill—most of the hereditaries now would have peacefully moved on, by whatever mechanism, from membership of this House.

It has been a bit of fun, this somersaulting by sundry Members opposite, but thank heaven that we are removing the hereditary principle as a mechanism for membership of this House. It is long, long, long overdue. It could have been dealt with much earlier, but let us not cry over spilt milk; let us just get on with this and quickly.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord said that we are now removing the hereditary principle. It is accepted, on this side, that we are removing the hereditary principle. His speeches are very entertaining, mocking the system that was brought in by his own party in government.

My difficulty is that the Leader of the House has repeatedly told us, both publicly and privately, that, had we not opposed what is called the “Grocott Bill”, this would not be necessary. I therefore have to ask: what is the principle that we are discussing? It appears to be that the hereditary principle should be got rid of—that has been accepted. However, I am concerned by the idea that we should pluck out of this House hard-working Members, who are mainly Conservatives. We heard from the Liberal Benches that they are worried about numbers. On my count, 45 new Labour Peers have been appointed since the general election. That does not strike me as being the activities of a party that is concerned about the size of the House; it strikes me as being a party that is concerned about the number of people who will go through the Lobbies in support of it. Therefore, one is left with a terrible suspicion that what is going on here is taking a group of people out of this House, who happen to have come into it as hereditaries, for party-political reasons. That is a very dangerous—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I will give way in a second.

That is a very dangerous precedent to accept. How soon will it be before people arguing for this precedent argue that other groups of people can be taken out, because they are not convenient?

I am trying not to be too partisan today, so I will appeal to the Government. To put it gently, the Government are in a certain amount of difficulty on a number of issues. The one thing I learned when I was in Government was that having a good and effective Opposition is a really good thing for a Government, because it makes you avoid making the kind of mistakes that Governments make. Therefore, it is very important—especially in this House, where we simply ask the Government to think again and we have no ability to force them to do otherwise by force of argument—to have an effective Opposition.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I will give way to the noble Lord when I have finished my point.

One-third of the Opposition Front Bench are hereditaries. They are people of enormous experience and dedication. By not accepting this amendment, the Government are damaging not only the House by creating a terrible precedent but the Opposition, as well as the number of Tory Peers that there are. That is a disgraceful thing to do.

What is the argument? I know that people on the Benches opposite have sought to argue, “Can’t you get other people to sit on your Front Bench?” I say to the Leader of the House: she should try using that argument. It is very hard, especially if they are not paid—I will come to that later—to ask people to give up the time and for them to have the expertise. You can bring in new people, but it takes a very long time to get used to the way this place operates—it has taken me a very long time.

If we do not accept the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, we are talking about disabling the Opposition and gerrymandering the composition of the House. That is a disgraceful thing to do.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for finally giving way. He talks about the disabling of the Opposition. Would he like to explain to the House what his party did in Government from 2010 to last year in terms of the numbers they appointed? I excuse the noble Baroness, Lady May, because she took the issue of the size of this House very seriously but, alas, her predecessors and those who succeeded her did not. As a party, we have put new Members of the House in since the election to try to get ourselves a reasonable balance after the disgraceful approach of so many Conservative Prime Ministers over those years.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

There are a lot of things that we did in Government that I would not like to defend. I do not disagree with the noble Lord. I understand why a number of very good and excellent appointments have been made to the Benches opposite. I understand the reason why they wish to make up the numbers. All I am saying is that to argue that the Government are not going to accept the amendment from my noble friend because they are worried about the size of the House is ridiculous when, at the same time, they are increasing the size of the House. Have a care here for the importance of Parliament, of effective opposition and of not disabling the ability of this House to carry out its constitutional duties. In the end, it will be to the disadvantage of the Government and the House.

I support my noble friend’s amendment. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Hailsham is going to vote for it, but I do not see any conditionality about it. I am going to support it because it is in the interests of our country, democracy and this splendid institution—the House of Lords—which all of us should hold in the highest regard.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

The thing I find odd about the argument just advanced, and, indeed, about the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and the way in which he introduced it—splendid though it was—is the implicit assumption that if his amendment were to pass here, the other place would say, “Goodness, that’s a good idea”, and accept it. Does he really think that would happen? If so, I have a Westminster Bridge to sell to him. If he does not, does he think that the process of ping-pong will be good for the image of this House?

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a bit of a rehash of a debate that we had previously in Committee on a similar amendment. Amendment 2 today is almost identical to the previous amendment, seeking to amend Clause 2 and return to what is commonly known as the Grocott Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, possibly alone in the House, has the benefit of consistency on this issue, in that, as I recall, he consistently supported the Grocott Bill as a way forward.

I think I understand the emotion displayed by the noble Lord, Lord True, on this issue, but he will now probably regret not taking up my offer to ensure that the Grocott Bill could have passed all its stages and got through the House as a Private Member’s Bill. I gave him my party’s guarantee that we would do that. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, frowns at me, but I gave the guarantee of my party that we would support that Bill and do our best to get it through the House. So we could have done that, but the opportunity was lost, and that is a shame, but that is where we are now. We are now debating a manifesto commitment from the Labour Party.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

The noble Baroness said that I frowned. The reason I frowned is that I do not really understand the argument that says, “You should have taken my offer but you didn’t, so we’re going to throw all these people out of the House of Lords”. If you thought it was okay for Parliament to continue, having got rid of the hereditary principle, why is it any different now?

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[Lord Newby (LD)]

Of course, that would be debated as part of that process; I accept that.

If I could proceed, I was saying that I believe that, under our proposals, people should be elected on a regional basis, so that they could look to the common interests of a wider area than a single constituency. They should be elected by proportional representation, so that we can avoid the dramatic swings in membership that we have seen in the Commons.

After the 2015 general election, I was mocked—very effectively, if I may say so—by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, because we did very badly in that election yet retained significant numbers here. After the last election, the Tory party finds itself in the position we found ourselves in. If we had the system that the noble Lord, Lord Brady, is proposing, a future Conservative Party in the House of Lords could be decimated in the way it has been in the Commons. What I am proposing here is a more balanced system that means that these wild swings, which you see through first past the post, do not persist. That would bring an element of stability to Parliament that would be extremely sensible.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Lord would stand for election under this system. I am thinking about how it would operate: I knock on someone’s door and they say, “I’m worried about the health service”, “I’m worried about housing”, or whatever, and I say, “Actually, that’s for the House of Commons, but I’m very good at revising legislation”. There might be a reaction on the doorstep that is even more hostile than we are used to—certainly those of us who were in the House of Commons. How does the noble Lord expect the voters to take us seriously if we are not able to say that we will absolutely fight for whatever it is? This division of powers will mean that we are second-order operators. I suspect that the noble Lord’s answer is that he would not stand for election, and that is probably true of most of the Members of this House. So what we will get is a whole load of party-list B-team people.