House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 21 is substantially the same amendment that I tabled in Committee and seeks to achieve the same purpose but with one substantive difference, which is in timing. The amendment I tabled in Committee would have come into effect during this Parliament, whereas this amendment would come into effect in the next Parliament. I will explain briefly in a moment why I came to the decision to change that.

The amendment itself is the same, so I will not repeat the explanation, save that it seeks to create term limits of 20 years. I am not hugely hung up on 20 years, 15 years or 25 years. I am concerned with the principle that nobody should have the right to sit in this place for ever. There is obviously a discussion to be had around retirement, which we have had. I listened very carefully to the comments of the Lord Privy Seal in that debate last week, and think that around that the Select Committee will do a good job. However, I am not sure that it will entirely be able to do the job that is required.

The reasons why I have gone for a new timing are, first, that it would be only fair to allow the current Government the freedom to do what they wish during the lifetime of this Parliament and to perhaps make up for some of the more egregious excesses that happened in the last Parliament. It is a little unfair to remove the current system and, as it were, at half-time change all the rules. That was the first reason, which may just be me being a bit overly fair, but I thought that it was. Secondly, if during this Parliament there is further reform, and if the Government are able to take through legislation which gives us a different landscape, this amendment coming into force in the next Parliament could be got rid of or scrapped.

I want to make it clear at the outset that my primary choice would be a democratically constituted House of Lords, which is what I have said in many of our debates and, on and off, in different guises for the best part of 30 years. I took part in the debates in the other place in 2012 and the consideration of the draft legislation and was happy to vote with the majority in the House of Commons for that Bill to achieve a Second Reading. But I recognise that having got that far up to the hill and been marched back down again by our then leader, there is little chance of anything substantive happening. I rather suspect that the Select Committee will do its work and discussions will continue, but that at the end of this Parliament we will not be greatly further forward than we are now.

The amendment is a real longstop in the sense of if we arrive at that situation, and if, as has been pointed out by a number of noble Lords, the electoral results for the next Parliament are somewhat more surprising than they might have been at the last general election. Indeed, one poll I saw showed that what would be the largest party in the House of Commons would have no representation in this House—although there were one or two speeches last week that sounded remarkably like a job application from the Benches across—while the largest party in this House would be the fourth party in the Commons, which is a completely ridiculous situation. My amendment does not solve that in any way, shape or form, but it would put a burr under the saddle and make sure that if we were in that circumstance, the Government of the day would need to do something about it.

My amendment very much ties in with Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, which I hope to speak to briefly later, with one exception which I will leave to that point. However, there is an opportunity in this legislation, which may be the only legislation that would affect no one in your Lordships’ House during this Parliament or any of the operation of this Parliament or fetter the Prime Minister in any way during this Parliament but that, if none of the hoped-for reforms came through, would in the next Parliament take effect and oblige, I rather suspect, some action.

I will say two other things in moving the amendment. The first is in response to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his comments earlier about how function should come before form. I take the diametrically opposite view and always have done, and it was a point that was thrashed out in the Committee of both Houses when we looked at it in 2012. I think the function comes from the form; if you introduce a democratic element, the form will change. That also follows the history of what has happened in the relationship between the two Houses over the years. If you have long discussions about the function, you will end up never changing anything and never changing the form. But, most of all, what I would say is—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot resist intervening. How on earth can one go ahead and say we will elect the House of Lords without looking at the powers the House would have? We have the conventions, which, in essence, are voluntary constraints on what we do. The conventions would not last one second with an elected House. It would be wholly irresponsible to simply go ahead with an elected House without sorting out the powers, and particularly what we do when there is a dispute between the two Houses. Would the courts have to be involved? What other mechanism would you have to decide on? You cannot go for an elected House without sorting that out.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, one of the great joys of being a chalk stream trout fisherman is to land a fly on top of the fish and watch it take with such vigour. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for having done so. I am not going to engage with him in this debate on my amendment, because it is not part of it, as I did not engage when he made the point earlier. If he would like to meet me in the Bishops’ Bar at any time, I will take him through the detail with the greatest of pleasure.

I say to the Lord Privy Seal that if by any chance she were to make me an offer as generous as that which she made to the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, earlier, she would not have to repeat it and I would grab it with both hands. I genuinely hope that the Government might reflect on this. It has been put to me that this is not necessary because if we get our elected House, we will not need to have this form of term limit. That is absolutely true, but my amendment is not about if we get an elected House; it is about if we do not get an elected House.

Finally, I agreed with the Lord Privy Seal when she said, as she once agreed with me when I said it, that we are here not for our expertise but for our judgment. I do not have vast expertise other than in running hotels and trout fishing, but I think I have good judgment. My judgment is that if we fail to do this at this juncture, we may well end up regretting it and not having the kind of reform that we all really would want to have. I beg to move.

ECO4 and Insulation Schemes

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord because he speaks with such expertise in this area. In a sense I should have reflected on that in my answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I am not going to commit myself in terms of what the future is going to look like, but I will take his remarks and make sure my ministerial colleagues see them. As I said, our first task must be remediation and responding to the concerns of 65,000 people who will be very concerned. Obviously, they are going to get the letter from Ofgem; some of them are already getting it. We will then be reflecting very much on how we need to develop a more robust system.

I, too, have experience. I remember being a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions when King’s College reviewed the work of gas installers, and, again, they found a great number of problems. As a result, the whole gas regulation process was shaken up. So we have to look at these things very seriously, because the credibility of the net-zero programme and the decarbonisation of our homes depends on public trust. If we cannot gain the public’s trust, they will not take the necessary action, so we really have to work hard on this.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, further to the answer the Minister gave to my noble friend Lord Foster regarding skills, I sit on the Industry and Regulators Committee and we had a very good presentation regarding the Government’s skills strategy and the formation of Skills England, but there was some concern expressed as to whether sufficient weight would be given to those in the construction trades, which is where many of those who are required will come from. I hope that the Minister and his ministerial colleague will put some pressure on Skills England to make sure that those skills are given the weight they should have, because without them we will not get the benefits of growth in that industry.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Viscount. I will take that away in terms of the work we are going to be doing. Within the energy sector there are some fantastic examples of industries that really have invested in skills and training. To take EDF as an example and looking at Bridgwater and Taunton College, where it has invested hugely and where the quality of education and skills training is phenomenal, I say that it is things like that I would like to see across the whole sector.