House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, the ostensible purpose of the Bill is to dispense with what are called the ridiculous and embarrassing by-elections of hereditary Peers. If they are ridiculous, which is a subjective and therefore obviously biased view, they are embarrassing only to those who introduced them. There can be no embarrassment to the rest of us for something that we did not initiate. Indeed, I have always had a sneaking suspicion that some of those who support the ending of by-elections do so because they are worried that any criticism that the by-elections attract impacts the reputation of the whole House, and thus risks their own rather comfortable seats in it. I hope that is just me being cynical and is not actually right.

The reality is that nobody is particularly interested in the composition of this House except us. Most people know or care little about how we get here, and probably no one would ever notice if the Electoral Reform Society—a sort of Lib Dem fan club, and therefore very small and inconsequential—had not managed to wind the Sunday Times around its little finger. To put that in proportion, I say that only about 1% of the British people read the Sunday Times. We are not, therefore, debating what could be called a very hot topic.

It is important to remember that what we are being asked to do today is clear up the mess of another failed Labour policy. We are all used to Labour Governments destroying the economy—it goes with the territory—but the House of Lords Act 1999 was an unbelievably badly botched constitutional reform. All Governments legislate incompetently because that is the nature of Governments but, sadly, Labour Governments also legislate vindictively, which means against groups they perceive have done them wrong. Revenge is a very unpleasant and destructive trait in a political party.

The debates over Lords reforms have, as we all know, run into the ground over the vexed question of whether to have an elected or appointed House. That question was unresolved when Labour introduced its Bill in 1999, but it argued that, once the hereditary Peers had been expelled, the question that came to be called stage 2 would be relatively simple to resolve. We now know that this argument was a deception. We were all deliberately misled. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is sadly not in his place, has confirmed that there was never going to be a stage 2. We must therefore assume that the sole purpose of the Bill was to extract revenge on the hereditary peerage by expelling it from Parliament. It is pathetic, really.

No thought was given to whether it would be a good or bad thing; it just had to be done to satiate Labour’s class warriors. But the price they had to pay was to leave 100 hereditaries in place and the by-elections to replace those who die and now those who retire. Those 100 hereditaries act as an open sore in the side of old Labour, which is why we are here today. No one outside this House and the Westminster bubble is remotely interested. This Bill is not about improving the House of Lords; it is about clearing up Labour’s mess. For the old Labour dinosaurs, it is about completing unfinished business—another battle in the class war that is Labour’s obsession and is of no interest to anybody else in the country today. It is last-century stuff, and a poor reason to legislate.

It is important to focus on where we will be if this Bill passes. We will become a wholly appointed House by default, one of only 15 in the world—mostly small Caribbean islands and Canada, and most Canadians are not great fans of what they have. We will also become the only legislature in the world in which the leader of the party with the majority in the first Chamber has sole power of appointment to the second Chamber. That really would be ridiculous and very embarrassing for those who vote for it, particularly Liberal Democrats, who apparently favour an elected second Chamber—although, let us face it, they have always had rather flexible principles.

We will also become the only legislature in the world that is using its second Chamber as a retirement home for Members of its first Chamber. More than once the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is always the very model of courtesy, has made clear that we hereditaries should not take his Bill personally. I hear and understand that but, if it is not personal, I have to tell him that it sure as hell feels like it sometimes.

Similarly, I have many friends who are or have been MPs, for whom I have the greatest possible respect, so my concern about a preponderance of MPs in this House is not personal either. However, if the House ever becomes dominated by any one group, it will lose the diversity of views which is its strength, even more so if that group simply reflects the views of the current political establishment, which we saw during the Brexit debates.

The Bill is an indulgence. I imagine the House will give it a Second Reading, as is our habit, and after that, without government support, which it does not deserve and will not have, it will die and so it should. Your Lordships have better things to do than waste time on this nasty rubbish.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, on my way to the House this morning, I thought I would try to avoid any class warfare as far as my noble friend’s Bill is concerned. I know that it is customary in your Lordships’ House to compliment the previous speaker but, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, I find some difficulty in doing so. If there is a class warrior to be commended for his contributions so far, it would be him. I will come back to him in a moment, but I just say to my noble friend that, whatever the weakness of the system of the Prime Minister making appointments to your Lordships’ House, at least there are two sons of railwaymen on these Benches. I reflect on a recent Sunday Times article on hereditary Peers that pointed out that no fewer than 39 of their ranks went to the same school. I am not going to name the school, because we all know what it is. It certainly was not West Bromwich Grammar; I assure your Lordships of that.

I do not want to fight the class battle that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, just outlined, but we are not about to abolish him if my noble friend’s Bill gets on the statute book. We are about to abolish only this nonsensical system of election. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in all friendship, that we are offering not his abolition but a chance to join the human race. He can join us and become like the rest of us. I cannot claim that your Lordships’ Benches, even on this side, are a fair cross-section of society—

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

No. The noble Lord intervened on my last speech on this business, took a chunk of my time, then pointed to the clock when I tried to respond, so he is not getting away with it twice. I want to bring him into the fold to be the same as the rest of us, which is the key to his opposition. He does not want to be the same as the rest of us; the hereditary Peers like the elitism of hereditary peerages and do not want to be made “mere” life Peers. We would not lose the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, if we went ahead and abolished hereditary Peers, any more than we would lose the wit and oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who has kept us entertained over half a dozen attempts to abolish the system of hereditary Peers.

We are offering the hand of friendship. We want hereditary Peers to join us and be like the rest of us. Looking back at the education of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, I think that he ought to be embraced by the rest of us because of what he had to go through. I read the Sunday Times article to which I referred and looked at what happened at Eton. Imagine being plucked from the bosom of the family at an early age and being sent to that school. You get up at the crack of dawn, are given a 12-bore and go out and shoot your own breakfast before starting. You have to put up with beatings—and worse, according to the tabloids—of sadistic teachers. When you get to maturity, you dress up in a quasi-military uniform and are photographed for posterity, earning your honours battling your way through the wine lists of expensive restaurants, sorting out a few waiters while you are doing it. When you leave, at the end of this long, expensive and painful schooling, you end up in a dead-end job—a stockbroker, banker or hedge-fund operative, whatever that may be. There are no long-term prospects in jobs like that.

Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft—who after a previous debate assured me of his own grandfather the first Lord Mancroft’s humble background—ended up a master of fox-hounds. Again, there is no future in a job like that. It is one of the reasons why I want him and his colleagues who went to this particular school, all 39 of them, to join the rest of us. When he does, he can reflect on those of us who were elected into the other place. Last time we debated my noble friend’s Bill, he had a few harsh words about former MPs dominating, as he put it, your Lordships’ House. He said that they come up the corridor, make speeches and want to do things—how dare they? At least, if he becomes one of us, he can convince us that perhaps the way forward is not to do things and not to make speeches in your Lordships’ House. We can mix together and become equals. That way, perhaps we can learn from him how better to conduct ourselves while we are in this House.

There are no advantages in the present system. It brings your Lordships’ House into disrepute. I do not know whether my noble friend’s Bill will reach the statute book on this occasion; I strongly suspect it will not, because of a lack of time. I hope he will persist and stop the nonsense of hereditary Peers being elected. He has amply outlined the paucity of the electorate for the future. No noble Lord who wants a proper future for this House, however it is organised or reorganised, would pretend that the present system is ideal, but all the alternatives present various difficulties. I do not envy any future Prime Minister who decides to embark on a wholescale reorganisation, but at least we can move forward in a small way if we accept my noble friend’s sensible proposals today. I give them my wholehearted support.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we are all lobbied nowadays and I am sure that from time to time your Lordships have been bombarded with vast numbers of strikingly similar emails which are collectively less than convincing. But rarely in my time in the House have I received quite so many communications of different sorts in such a short period that have been so measured, and which have come from all quarters, as I have about the language in this Bill.

This is not a party political matter, or even really a political matter at all; I was going to say that it is about tone, but of course it is more than that because it strikes at the heart of who we are. Life is often about achieving balance between different priorities, all of which are important in their own way. I recognise that the rights of trans people are important, and perhaps the fact that they are a tiny minority and often remain hugely misunderstood adds to that importance. But I share the view of other noble Lords that in this instance, the rights of mothers trump those of the trans community.

Legislating gives us the opportunity to take a little more time and to get things right. We do not always achieve that, but the manner in which legislation passes through both Houses, in particular through this House, gives us a breathing space to make corrections where they are needed. Today is a great example of what can be achieved when the Back Benches are united and well led, and when we have a Minister who is prepared to listen to the arguments and recognise a good case—and then, perhaps more important, is prepared to fight our corner with his ministerial colleagues. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord True for the careful way in which he has addressed the debate both on Monday and today, and for the robust representations he has made on behalf of the House to his governmental colleagues. I also thank my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for their tremendous input through their amendments, in particular my noble friend Lord Lucas for achieving the amendment that has won the day.

Most of all, however, I want to thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for her leadership in this matter. It was her tremendous speech on her amendment to regret on Monday that opened the way to this debate and argument being moved forward to a successful conclusion. For that, the whole House will want to thank her.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I start by adding my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Cavendish of Furness on his splendid valedictory speech.

Despite what we were repeatedly told by those experts both within and outside this House—that there was not the remotest possibility that the Government could reach an agreement with the EU before 31 December—the Prime Minister and his negotiating team have succeeded in doing just that. In the time allotted to us, I am unable to provide much comment either on the details of the agreement, which, as your Lordships know, runs to 1,200 pages, or the Bill before the House today, which runs to some 80 pages and which I saw for the first time only yesterday.

In my experience, the exact effects of agreements or contracts of this kind are very rarely possible to discern in advance, and the problems usually emerge only following implementation. I am therefore surprised, and even a little cynical, about the detailed analysis provided by those who in the old days were called remainers, who seem not only stuck in the past but have a unique ability to predict the future—but their predictions are only of doom and gloom.

From where I sit, any deal that takes us outside the single market and the customs union, that provides for trade without quotas or tariffs, that excludes us from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, that provides protections for the UK’s internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it, and, at the same time, provides for future co-operation on law enforcement and emerging security challenges, sounds like a pretty good deal. It also sounds remarkably like the Canada-plus deal that the Prime Minister asked for last year but which Mr Barnier told us was no longer available.

What it is, undoubtedly, is an extraordinary political triumph, and I can do no more than offer my congratulations to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and his negotiating team, led by my noble friend Lord Frost. Like me, the British people can now look forward with confidence to the independent future for which they voted.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill to address the inconsistencies in the composition of constituencies. I shall keep my remarks as brief as I can in view of the inordinate length of the speakers’ list.

It is ridiculous that in a modern, vibrant democracy, we still operate elections to the House of Commons based on data from 2000, and 2001-03 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Your Lordships will be aware that the attempts to address this in 2011 were postponed until 2013, and in 2013 until 2018, because it seemed unlikely that the other place would approve any changes both to the size of constituencies and, more importantly, to their overall number.

Of course, the electorate deserve not just to be properly but fairly represented. As with any rules, there are exceptions—such as the Isle of Wight, Orkney, the Shetlands and now Anglesey—to be taken into account, as the Bill quite rightly does. However, the differentials between seats have become too great over the passage of time, and it is quite clear that change has been resisted, particularly by Labour, to seek electoral advantage. I suppose that that is not as bad as trying to seek electoral advantage by altering the whole system in your favour, as the Lib Dems unsuccessfully tried to do—which seems neither liberal nor democratic, but I suppose one should not be too surprised about that.

The significant change in the Bill from the proposals made in 2011 and 2013 is of course the reversion from 600 to 650 seats. I have listened very carefully to the debate but I still have no idea what the right number should be. Perhaps one of the next 42 speakers will enlighten us. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that it is not exactly a revolutionary change, but it is clear to me that the Government have made this significant concession to ensure that the Bill is enacted and the electorate get the fairer representation they need. The Government have justified the change in that policy by citing the increase in the workloads of MPs following our departure from the EU. I hope that the Government recognise that that increase in work at one end of the Corridor will inevitably lead to an even greater increase in work in your Lordships’ House, which already habitually sits for longer hours and more days than the Commons—as evidenced by our sitting today while our honourable and right honourable friends frolic on the beaches.

I therefore hope that the Government will ignore the currently fashionable but woolly-headed idea that this House is too large. A House whose membership is largely part-time obviously requires more Members than a House of full-time Members if it is to fulfil its role, particularly if its workload is greater. That is just simple logic. However, I suspect that that change in the Government’s policy in relation to the size of the House of Commons may have had rather more to do with the realisation that turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Perhaps the Government will remember that when they turn their attention to the future of this House.

House of Lords and Machinery of Government: Consultation on Changes

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I can only repeat what I said yesterday: that in any decision about the future operation of Parliament, the convenience of parliamentary procedure is obviously one of the factors that would have to be taken into account.

[Lord Mancroft (Con) [V]]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that it is important that your Lordships’ deliberations should take place as close as possible to the people? Would he also agree with me that it is even more important for those who actually represent the people to be located even nearer to them than this House? Could he tell your Lordships what plans the Government have for the future location of the House of Commons to ensure that it is situated as close as possible to the people?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I do not think I am going to be drawn on that one. I think that the Companion says that one is supposed to speak respectfully of the other place. However, I say to my noble friend that my right honourable friend Boris Johnson brought the other place close to the people by his devastating victory in the December election last year, which delivered a majority of 80 to the real people’s party.

Covid-19: UK-wide Discussions

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, the purpose of the devolution settlement is to enable the devolved Administrations to respond as they believe right to local needs. I repeat that I believe that there is a high level of co-ordination, co-operation and understanding between all authorities involved in fighting this crisis.

[Lord Mancroft (Con) [V]]

My Lords, in recognising the need to co-ordinate between the Government and the devolved Administrations, does my noble friend recognise that the requirement for two-metre social distancing above all else is preventing us reopening our economy? Can my noble friend tell the House what research the Government have that leads them to a different conclusion from the World Health Organization and most European Governments, which recommend one or 1.5-metre social distancing? What steps are the Government taking to reduce this from two metres, and when?

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, the Government are guided by science at all stages of the crisis; the advice we have given has been on that basis. The advice is constantly under review by SAGE, but I can give no guarantees as to when or whether any change will be announced.