House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I will make two very short points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, knows the respect in which I hold him, but it is a subtle piece of advocacy to say that the hereditaries sit here purely because of the family they were born into, to use the noble Lord’s phrase. Since 2005, that has not been the case; it is the family plus an election. Indeed, some of them sit here on a firmer basis than many other Members of your Lordships’ House.

Secondly, on the “too late” argument, which seems to be the primary point put by the Government Front Bench, I have never quite understood why opposing a Private Member’s Bill, with all the legislative hurdles and difficulties that such Bills have, precludes you from later supporting an amendment to a government Bill which is bound to become law.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I am finding it difficult to compute exactly what is going on today, because Friday after Friday, Bill after Bill, to a three-quarters empty House, which is characteristic on a Friday, I have been faced with substantial opposition, not just from individual Members—not exclusively from the Tory party but overwhelmingly—but from the Government. The Bills got no further.

Here we are now, with a pretty full House, all agreed that these by-elections are farcical. The amendment gets rid of them; the Bill before the House—which I strongly support—gets rid of them. That was my motive for bringing the whole process in to begin with. Believe it or not, the primary motive was to stop this absurdity which the noble Lord, Lord Newby, described as the most offensive of the lot.

I did not think it would be a problem. I have been around quite a long time, but I thought, “Surely, there is no one in this House who thinks that a by-election to get into this House should be exclusively for men, both the electorate and the candidates, and it is feasible to have an electorate of three when you’ve got seven candidates”. By the way, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, did not mention the last line of that, which is that all three votes went to one of the seven candidates—so there was 100% turnout, with 100% of the vote going to the winning candidate. I mean, North Korea would not dare to do that.

I am flattered, I suppose, to find that everyone suddenly seems to be agreed on this. We could have saved ourselves so much time when I brought it in first in 2016—since when, 27 new hereditaries have come here. To those who say that we might as well do it now, I say a whole new generation has been elected since I first introduced the Bill. But I must be immodest about this—

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Will the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tell us who elected him to come to this House?

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I do not wish to still the debate, but perhaps I might, as the noble Baroness did on a wider point in the first group, intervene briefly. As a previous Leader of your Lordships’ House and now as Leader of the Opposition in this House, the remarks I am going to make, I make as Leader of the Conservative Party here and with the full assent of my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition nationally.

I say, by the way, to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, that this House should never be cowed from proposing a thought to the other place. Indeed, one of the arguable contentions that we have had on this Bill is that it must have no amendments. I am sure there have been occasions, but it is unusual in our parliamentary proceedings that the expectation should be that a Bill, and certainly one of this constitutional significance, be unamended. Would the proposition that one cannot have a conversation with the House of Commons on this matter apply to a future Bill to remove people over 80, as promised in the Labour manifesto? I hope not. I hope this House would vigorously raise questions on that.

I have been listening carefully to the debate that was initiated very ably by my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, brilliantly supported by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, and my noble friend Lady Laing. They put a proposition that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, acknowledged he owns and loves, but he is going to vote against it today. It is a proposition that I think many of us know in our heart is the right and balanced way forward. I think many of us know in our heart that if there were not a party whip applying, there would be a majority in this place to reach a balanced solution. That balanced solution gives the party opposite and the Liberal Democrats what they have legitimately wanted for a long period, which is the end of the hereditary principle as a route of entry into this House, but which does not hurt existing Members or impede the workings of this House in the way my noble friend Lord Forsyth suggested.

In case there is any doubt, I put on record beyond any doubt what those who have been following the debates on the Bill from the outset will already know, which is that my party has no plan, intention or device to block the Bill indefinitely or to delay its passage by the kind of constant ping-pong that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to. From the very outset, within days of the last general election, on my initiative and that of the Convenor of the Cross-Bench Peers, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, we recognised, regret it or not, the Labour Party’s mandate to end the entry of Peers to this place by any preferment of heredity. The convenor and I proposed—and the noble Baroness the Leader of the House graciously accepted and helped to develop—that proposal, that by-elections for hereditary Peers should be suspended. That has been accomplished, and it remains so. It is done. It is not an issue in this debate, even though the word by-elections has featured a great deal. No person has entered this place by reason of election under the 1999 Act since Labour’s victory in the last general election, nor shall one ever do so again.

That is a mighty thing under the eyes of 800 years of service here by hereditary Peers. By the end of this month, a Bill will pass which will permanently end entry here on the grounds of heredity, and if the Government should choose to send it for Royal Assent, it could be law by dawn on the first day of August. That is the position. Whatever may be implied or said to the contrary, we on this side are not arguing for the continuation of the hereditary principle as a route of entry here.

My noble friend’s amendment would not alter, detract from or frustrate that in any way; in fact, it would enable it. The sole issue before your Lordships in this debate, as my noble friend Lady Laing argued so passionately, is not who comes here in future but who goes now.

As the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, said—I think the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, slightly missed this point—if the Bill successfully affirms that any Government may expel summarily a group of existing Members of our legislature who for whatever reason they do not like, then any future Executive, using what will be the awesome power—unique, actually, in the world—of a Prime Minister to choose who comes here, and now, on this example, who goes, any future Government, of whatever colour, and heaven forfend it should be the example put before us by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, could use the same arguments—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord True (Con)]

I will complete my remarks and then I will give way. They could use the same arguments to expel any other group now among us in the future.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, this is such an absurd, fanciful and imaginative suggestion. By way of evidence, can the noble Lord explain to us how 667 hereditaries being removed overnight in 1999 raised the spectre that he is trying to put before us—that it enabled subsequent Governments to act in the completely arbitrary and brutal way that he has described? It is pure fantasy.

[Lord True (Con)]

Well, it certainly encouraged the Labour Party, which removed the Law Lords—although allowing those who were here to stay—and are now removing the rest of our hereditary colleagues.