House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made a very eloquent speech, but I am puzzled by it. He did not dispute the merits of what is proposed in this amendment or the mischief that it is addressing; his point appeared to be that nothing will be done by government until there is fundamental reform of this House. But we all know that that will not occur—at the very least, not for a very long time. Because of that, over recent years this House has regularly addressed specific mischiefs and improved them. This is another one, and we should act on it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: for five years, I was an unpaid Lords Minister and Whip in the coalition Government. When we have a coalition Government—we may very well find ourselves with a rather messy coalition after the next election—there may be an argument for having a larger number of Ministers, because we have to spend some of our time marking each other, so to speak.

My responsibilities were in the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office, and I did indeed spend quite a lot of time outside the country. That enabled the Foreign Office to send someone to a number of countries that would otherwise have been entirely neglected without the most junior Minister, as it were, being sent there. I was lucky enough—and still am—to have an academic pension and a wife who has an academic pension, which means that we are moderately comfortably off. Maybe if we were of the Conservative variety, we would find that we needed more to live on, but one can manage not too badly on an academic pension. I did not mind missing some of the days in the House.

We have heard a number of interesting speeches, which have ranged very widely, including on the relationship between the two Houses. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I am reading a book on the House of Lords in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when we had conferences between the two Houses; maybe he would like to suggest that we move back towards that. Here we are on Report for a Bill that has been deliberately designed to be as narrow as possible, but we are talking about the relationship between the two Houses, the way in which government is structured and how many Ministers we need.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is absolutely correct that keeping the Back-Benchers in order has led to an expansion of government patronage. He did not make as much about the expansion of PPSs in the House, as well as trade envoys, which has meant that the House of Commons has ceased, in effect, to do a lot of its scrutiny job. Indeed, some weeks ago I met a Labour MP, elected last year, and she said that she wondered what the purpose of an MP is in the House of Commons now, as they are not expected to change legislation or to get at the mistakes that their own Government are making. There are some very broad issues here, but those issues are broader than this Bill.

We all know what the impact of this amendment, if passed, would be: the House of Lords would have fewer Ministers. That would damage this House very considerably, because the current Government are highly unlikely to shrink the number of Ministers in the Commons. If we want to shrink the number of Ministers, we should be agitating, but, of course, part of what has happened is that as local government has got weaker and central government has taken on more of what used to the role of local democracy, Ministers have expanded in all the things they do.

So, from these Benches, we will not support the amendment. Yes, we do favour much wider parliamentary reform. Yes, we favour much more thoroughgoing reform of this House. Yes, we are immensely disappointed at the timidity of this Government, with respect to this Bill as in so many other areas. But here we are, with a Bill that is concerned with a small change in the nature of this House, and unable to persuade the Government, without a much longer conversation, to change the 1975 Act, to change the way the Commons operates and, in that case, those of us on these Benches will vote against the amendment if a Division is called.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I was sitting here with unusual patience, but the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has encouraged me to intervene to make just one point. The Bill says it is to:

“Remove the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords; to abolish the jurisdiction of the House of Lords in relation to claims to hereditary peerages; and for connected purposes”.


Whereas I agreed with almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, it is nothing to do with this Bill, and I do not understand, with due respect to the clerks, how they agreed these amendments. I think it is a disgrace.

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[Lord True (Con)]

That was exactly my point, and the noble Baroness has reiterated it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

If I may also correct the noble Lord, I pointed out that the consequence of this would be a reduction in the number of Ministers in the Lords, which would be extremely bad for this House.

[Lord True (Con)]

That was also incorrect; it need not necessarily do that at all. I must say that I was surprised when I heard the strictures from the Liberal Democrat Benches—“We cannot support this because this is a very narrow Bill”. Were those not the Benches that pressed two Divisions on the Bill to redesign the House on a democratic basis? They have the gall to now come forward and say that your Lordships should not ask that our Ministers be paid. The intervention was even more startling having heard the explanation from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

The intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is universally respected in this House, was germane, and I thank him too. I had not realised that he was also on the list of unpaid Ministers, which would have been 10 up until a few weeks ago. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, immediately and skilfully picked up the key point that he made. He said that there is never going to be a Bill that comes along to deal with this. Frankly, as I said, we have had the Employment Rights Bill—

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Thinking of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I trust that no wives of these new Lords will take the title “Lady”. That just creates a whole lot—we have wives of Knights who call themselves Ladies, we have wives of noble Lords who call themselves Ladies, and now we have some of us who call ourselves Ladies. If this was to go through, I trust that the new Lords—who I am against, by the way—should not be able to give that honorary title, unless my husband could become Lord Hayter.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the combination of titles with membership of the second Chamber is one of the many things that we have inherited from the medieval period and the 16th and 17th centuries. It is very pleasant, most of us enjoy it and I particularly enjoy the title that I have, because the village in which I live is a special one, a world heritage site, and people love to come and visit us. But I am occasionally confused—some years ago I was at a conference in Japan from which I had to return early. As I shared a taxi to the airport with a senior Japanese diplomat, he asked me in a most polite way, “Are you returning to your estate”? I wanted to say, “No, to my allotment”, but did not feel that he would entirely understand the subtlety of that reply.

We in the Liberal Democrats are in favour of a working and modern second Chamber. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord True, in his quirky way, described this as a modernising move. It seems to us to be adding another area of complexity, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, to our already highly complex honours system. There are plenty of honours around: there are knighthoods, damehoods, and members of the Order of the Companions of Honour and the Order of Merit. We are not quite sure why—perhaps for the Conservative Party in particular—if one wants to award one’s more generous donors with something, the title of a peerage is particularly important.

The noble Lord, Lord True, did the honour of quoting what I said at Committee. I emphasise that, in terms of modernising the role of the second Chamber, we are in favour of thoroughgoing reform in which the title would be separated from membership of this House. What would then happen to the title is, to us, a matter of secondary importance. I know that the noble Lord, Lord True, has a particular problem with the existence of Liberal Democrats, which relates to events in Richmond in the past. It is even more difficult now that the Liberal Democrats are at roughly the same level as the Conservative Party in the polls.

I note that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, used to object to the appallingly high number of Liberal Democrats here at a point when we had, as he would point out, fewer than 10% of the number of Conservative MPs in the Commons. Now that we are at two-thirds of the number of Conservative MPs in the Commons, I look at those very full Conservative Benches and wonder whether the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord True, really wish to defend the gross imbalance between Conservatives in this House and the other forms of representation. I remind the noble Lord, Lord True, that not only in Richmond, but throughout England, the number of Liberal Democrat councillors is about to overtake the number of Conservative councillors, so there are a range of areas that are a source of underlying problems for the noble Lord, Lord True. No doubt he wakes at 2.30am and thinks about the Liberal Democrats in a devilish fashion.

What my party wishes is to separate the honours system from membership of this House. We value the work of the House as a second Chamber, we see it as a working second Chamber and we do not think it should be muddled with the honours system in the future.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I do not wish to be unkind to the noble Lord, but my recollection of the coalition Government is that every time the Government wanted to get agreement on a policy, the Liberals demanded more peerages, which is why we got those numbers. Therefore, for him to argue against this amendment is a particular example of how the Liberals behave in politics.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

That was an imaginative idea from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but it is the first time that I have heard it. I am not sure where his sources may be.

I do not wish to detain the House. This seems to us to be an unnecessary amendment, and we will not support it.

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[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment includes a separation.

Do we have such a low view of the public that we think they cannot tell one person from another? In a previous debate, the Attorney-General offered the argument that it was so confusing. Does he think that the public could not tell an Attorney-General from a major-general? Are they so confused?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

A constant argument of the Conservatives against any changes to our electoral system has been that the public would be unable to understand a voting system in which one put “1”, “2”, “3” and “4”, rather than simply “X”. If that is the Conservative view of the public in relation to voting, I think the noble Lord would find it hard to argue that, without much more complicated citizenship education, the public would be expected to understand the distinctions he is making.

[Lord True (Con)]

I am again startled, as always, by an intervention from those Benches. The noble Lord may remember that we had a referendum on proportional representation; the public well understood the proposition being put to them and they rejected it. For the noble Lord to say that the public would not understand this, he is digging a bigger hole for himself. As for the Lib Dems, I love the Lib Dems. One of the most beautiful things about Britain is its eccentricities, and we love the Lib Dems’ charming eccentricities. All we ask is that they are always charming—which is not always the case, although they have been today.

Let me return to the case in point. My noble friend Lord Blencathra skewered it when he pointed out, very fairly and properly, that this matter was put to the Burns committee. It is in tenor with the way the House is going in trying to find ways not to swell our ranks artificially. It is therefore an extraordinary idea—we have heard it already—that the Government support something but cannot support it today, and yet they might support it sometime in future. That is a nonsensical argument, as is the argument that the public might be confused.

I remind the House that this is not an unheard-of thought; many people have argued for it over a period of years. It would be a useful addition to the honours system. It would prevent the House being burdened and embarrassed by those who, frankly, do not want to come here but who deserve a high honour. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.