House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

We have been and will be talking on other amendments about attendance and criteria of participation and that this will mean that people who have other responsibilities cannot be here. As I said on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, we have a wonderful comprehensive school teacher who contributes, but he lives in Hackney. If he lived in Middlesbrough or Burnley, it would be a bit more difficult for him to be here. We need to think about intersectionality when we think about diversity, and that will mean thinking very hard about our procedures and systems in a way that we have not done before.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke extensively about HOLAC in Committee, and noble Lords will probably all be grateful that I do not intend to repeat all I said.

I know that there are many different views across this House on HOLAC, but I think we can all agree that we want a House that serves with integrity and commands public trust. HOLAC provides a non-statutory safeguard within the process for appointments to your Lordships’ House, and its recommendations are currently advisory and do not bind a Prime Minister.

Amendments 5 and 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, seek to prevent life peerages being conferred when HOLAC recommends against their appointment. Amendment 6 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hailsham proposes that HOLAC, in place of the Prime Minister, should propose peerages and any recipient should be fit and proper as well as committed to participating in your Lordships’ House. The effect of these amendments would place the power of nomination to this unelected Chamber in the hands of HOLAC—an unelected quango.

As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, reminded the House, and this was reinforced by many of my noble friends this evening, HOLAC was created as an advisory committee; it was created to advise, not to dictate. To make its recommendations binding would fundamentally change its remit and transform it from being a source of counsel to being a gatekeeper for your Lordships’ House. That would be a profound constitutional shift.

The power to recommend appointments to His Majesty should rest where it does now: with the democratically elected Prime Minister, who is accountable to the people. I am glad that the present Prime Minister, who was very critical of former Prime Ministers who ignored the views of HOLAC, has now said that he might, now that he is in power, do the same. My noble friend Lord Parkinson has already quoted from the Written Ministerial Statement, but it is worth saying again:

“In the unlikely event I, as Prime Minister, were to proceed with a nomination against HOLAC’s advice on propriety I would write to the Commission and this letter would be published on gov.uk”.


As a slight digression, I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Parkinson for bringing the attention of the House to the Prime Minister’s words on the directly appointed Cross-Bench peerages that were referred to in the same Written Ministerial Statement. My noble friend Lord Parkinson reinforced the concerns and referred to the Statement from the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I remember this Statement because I had to dig it up when we were trying to work out how the Prime Minister made Cross-Bench peerages. At the time, these Cross-Bench peerages were limited to 10 per parliamentary Session or per parliamentary term.

[Noble Lords]

Per Parliament.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I thank your Lordships. So there were to be only 10 of them per Parliament, and they were meant to be for public service; I think they were meant to allow Cabinet Secretaries to be appointed here—which is marvellous, of course—and various others. But there has been a slight change in approach, and I would be very interested in the Minister’s views, following the comments of my noble friend Lady Stowell, on this idea that there might be a two-tier Cross-Bench peerage process: those that HOLAC judges suitable versus those that the PM judges suitable. It is interesting, because this raises a new question of what the criteria for suitability are, if these appointments are supposed to be non-partisan. The more Peers the Prime Minister appoints to the Cross Bench, the more he risks potentially undermining the status of that section of the House. I think that is worth bringing to the attention of the House. As I say, I would be interested in the Minister’s views. That was a small digression, I suppose.

To refer to the amendments in the group, although I have sympathy with the two conditions proposed by my noble friend Lord Hailsham, particularly the latter, in light of the Bill’s move to expel some of the most active participants of our House, I point out that the current system balances expert scrutiny with democratic accountability. HOLAC exists to advise, and the Prime Minister decides. I am sure that the Prime Minister, like his predecessors, will continue to place great weight on the commission’s careful and considered advice, but HOLAC must remain an advisory committee, and its remit should not take the place of a Prime Minister.

Finally, Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, like his amendment in Committee, seeks to encourage HOLAC to recommend 20 new life peerages for the Cross Benches. I appreciate the sentiment of this amendment. Your Lordships’ House is set to lose a considerable amount of experience and expertise from the noble Earl’s Benches—not least his hugely respected convenor, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull—if the Bill passes unamended. Other amendments are still to come from various noble friends, and they seek to resolve this problem in a similar way but for the whole House. I hope that colleagues on the Cross Benches will consider lending their support to these amendments.

In conclusion, I appreciate the strength of feeling across the House on HOLAC and appointments to your Lordships’ House but, as I said in Committee, the balance we have preserves scrutiny and responsibility, and we must be wary of trading one form of discretion for another, particularly when it moves away from democratic oversight.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and to those who tabled amendments. We have had a very thoughtful and helpful discussion.

I will pick up on a couple of points, because a range of views has been expressed this evening and questions asked. The point about what is your Lordships’ role in this House has come out quite clearly. There are those who said we are a House of experts, while the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, was quite clear in asking what is wrong with politics and political parties, even though she does not represent a political party. It just strikes me that, yes, we have a number of experts in your Lordships’ House and we value their expertise, but we are not all experts. The reason we have a number of experts is that we listen to their advice and the information they give, but we are all here to exercise our judgment. That judgment is what we should all bring, and that is the seriousness with which we take our role.

I have considerable sympathy with the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. I think we are trying to get to roughly the same place, to ensure that those who are appointed to your Lordships’ House will have the confidence of this House and the public that they are here to do a role and exercise their judgment in the right way. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, goes further than that, because he is seeking to completely remove the Prime Minister or any democratic accountability from the process of giving the sovereign advice on appointments, instead giving it to a commission that has no accountability—he is nodding; that is the correct interpretation. I think that I and a number of other Members struggle with the idea that that is appropriate. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, is looking to give the commission a new power to advise the sovereign on 20 new non-party-political appointments over the next five years.

Let me address some of those points. The Statement that the Prime Minister issued really clarified the role. This comes to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell. There is no change in the arrangements for HOLAC for appointments to the Cross Benches. For those appointments that come through the Prime Minister, whether to the Cross Benches or from the political parties, but go through the Prime Minister, HOLAC is asked to assess for propriety.

It would be totally wrong for any Prime Minister to use that route to make party-political appointments, and I have spoken to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, about this, giving an absolute assurance this Prime Minister would never do that. It would be completely inappropriate. There is no change: it is exactly as it always has been. The rules are those that other Prime Ministers should have followed—and have in most cases, I am sure—for that route through to the Cross Benches via the Prime Minister. There has been a slight change. I think that originally it was for public servants, but both the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and the current Prime Minister said that it was for people who have a track record of proven public service. Our recent appointments show dedicated public service. Four excellent appointments have been made to the Cross Benches. They are not necessarily public servants, but public service is important. That was a wise move by the now noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and by the Prime Minister to reconfirm his interpretation of that. HOLAC has a role on suitability in the appointments made by HOLAC to the Cross Benches.

Those are the appointments where HOLAC will also look at suitability, as well as propriety. The Prime Minister also mentioned in his Statement a pretty unlikely event which reminds us of the prime ministerial prerogative on this issue, something I think some noble Lords are seeking to remove. It would be a very serious and almost completely unprecedented step, but there has been one occasion when a Prime Minister has gone against HOLAC on propriety. We have set out the process that the Prime Minister should follow and been transparent about that. I think it is quite a serious step to take.

If the Prime Minister were to make an appointment against HOLAC’s advice on propriety, he would be completely transparent on the reasons why, and he would be held to account for that decision. He would be held accountable—that accountability is the issue that has been raised. He would write to the commission to explain the decision and HOLAC would write to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee to notify Parliament that that advice had not been followed. The key there is accountability, as set out in the ministerial Statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I appreciate that, at this late hour, there will be a keenness for everyone to go, but I want to remind the House of its history in opposing amendments such as that proposed by the noble Lord.

One has to remember that, without the right of the Prime Minister exercising the royal prerogative, we would not have had the Parliament Acts and, perhaps more importantly, we would not have had the Great Reform Act 1832. It was because of the royal prerogative and the ability of the Prime Minister to appoint Peers that we were able to move forward to our current democratic state.

I will quote from the debates that took place in this House—but of course not in this Chamber. Speaking from the Opposition Benches, the Earl of Winchilsea

“said, he suffered a pain of mind greater than he could express in thinking that he had lived to that hour to witness the downfall of his country. That night would close the first act of the fatal and bloody tragedy. It would close the existence of that House”—

the House of Lords—

“as one branch of the Legislature, for its independence, which was its brightest ornament, had fallen, and without that independence it might be considered as having ceased to exist”.—[Official Report, 4/6/1832; col. 349.]

Well, we still have the Earls of Winchilsea on the Opposition Benches forecasting total catastrophe from this move towards a more democratic House. Earl Grey, the Prime Minister—at a time when the Prime Minister was in this House—said in response that

“if the House of Commons should, after their Lordships rejecting, for a second time, a Bill sent up from that House, persist in asserting the opinion expressed by it with reference to that Bill, and that it should appear that in the event of an appeal to the country, it was not probable that another House of Commons would be chosen less zealous for Reform, then, in his mind, the emergency had arrived which would justify that exercise of the prerogative by which only a serious collision between the two Houses could be prevented”.—[Official Report, 4/6/1832; col. 362.]

I think the point persists almost 200 years later that the right of the Prime Minister to subject this House to the appointment of Peers is part of the process by which we achieve our present democratic freedoms, which I think would be a great loss to the country as a whole.

My promise, when I was appointed to this House by the leader of the Labour Party, was to vote for the abolition of this House, and I am still of that opinion—the sooner the better. Unfortunately, in making the promise I was not told exactly what should replace the House, but I am in favour of abolition and I think the power of the Prime Minister and the royal prerogative are important and certainly should not be lost, because we would end up with either a fully democratic House—which I oppose, because of its effect on the Commons—or this House, which is subject to democratic control through the Prime Minister.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a short but important debate and I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing the House’s attention once again to an unavoidable consequence of this legislation. We are heading towards a fully appointed House, with all the appointments made by the Prime Minister. I appreciate that political parties nominate, but the ability to decide the number and timing of appointments rests solely with the Prime Minister. It is therefore of some concern that the Prime Minister, with such powers of patronage, is attempting to remove more than 80 parliamentarian opponents through the Bill.

We will have a debate—another one—on the size of the House next week, so I will not comment specifically on numbers at this point. However, when the Lord Privy Seal spoke on this amendment in Committee, she was critical of the “We have the numbers and can get this through” approach that she felt previous Governments had taken, and encouraged the House of Lords to adopt a more deliberative approach. That is exactly the approach that we are seeking to take with this Bill and others, and we should not be criticised for doing so.

Having heard me speak in the HOLAC debate, noble Lords will be aware of my views on retaining the discretion that Prime Ministers have to appoint the Peers they wish to appoint. But my noble friend Lord Lucas is right to bring back this important issue of the balance between the parties and to seek further assurances about the responsibility of the Prime Minister to behave reasonably.

I am sure that the current Prime Minister will continue to do so, and I hope that this amendment will never be necessary, but legislation should seek to look to the future and anticipate that future Prime Ministers might not behave in such an appropriate way in terms of appointments. It is a shame that we find ourselves in this position, but I look forward to hearing the Leader’s response.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I listened to the noble Baroness with increasing incredulity. Even she had a smile on her face as she came up with some of that. I thank my noble friend for his points. In terms of history, he did not go back nearly as far as many other Members of the House have this evening, but it is always worth looking back at the Great Reform Act 1832 and what was achieved for this country by that legislation.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I are very much of the same mind on this one, but I do not agree with his mechanism for getting there. He talked earlier about the relative proportions of the House. He is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, talked about the Cross Benches. This is probably about right. But to put into legislation a proportion for just one group of the whole House is not necessarily talking about relative proportions. I know that he understands that. I stand by previous comments that I have made. This House works at its best when both parties have roughly equal numbers. This depends very much on the normal conventions applying and the way the House operates, but that is when the House does its best work.

The noble Baroness talked about “holding the noble Baroness to that kind of view”. I remind her of the last Government’s actions on this. Even with this Bill, the Government will comprise only 28% of your Lordships’ House. Part of the reason for that is that when we left office in 2010, we had 25 more Members of the House than the Conservative Party; I used these figures earlier in the debate. At the end of the parliamentary Session before the election, before we came into office, there were over 100 more Members of the Conservative Government than of my party. That does not serve this House well.

The noble Baroness is right that I said that the House should be more deliberative. That is when the House does its best work. A couple of weeks after I became Leader of the Opposition, about 10 years ago, I was in Victoria Street having a pizza when I got word that Jacob Rees-Mogg, as Leader of the House of Commons, had issued a statement that he intended to appoint 100 Members to this House to force the Brexit legislation through. That is not in the best interests of this House. He did not do it in the end.

I stand by the House being more deliberative in its approach. Members should be more active, participate properly and not just turn up to vote when they have not been around and participating in the work of the House. There is a better way forward on this. Even if the party opposite has come to this lately, I genuinely welcome that conversion. We should operate in a more collaborative way. I agree about the relative proportions, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, but I ask him respectfully to withdraw his amendment.