Procedure Committee

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, decided to move this amendment—

[A noble Lord]

He has not.

[Lord Grocott]

Even if he did not move it—

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

This may confuse things even more, but I am informed by bush telegraph that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, did not move his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

I feel worn out already. As I said, I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has decided to raise the issue of hereditary Peers’ by-elections. However, although it is unrelated to the report, it gives me and others an opportunity to speak on the subject, as these are current matters that urgently need the attention of the House.

This time last week, we had the announcement of the result of a by-election for the Cross Benches. We had only minimal information from the Clerk of the Parliaments, which is perfectly in order. I sought to get more details and am happy to say that the full documentation is available in the Printed Paper Office and it provides a wealth of information, which I will distil for the benefit of the House.

It reminds us that for that by-election—that is, for a place in Parliament—there were 31 electors and 19 candidates. I now know from this document that 10 of those candidates did not receive any votes at all. I should say that one of the candidates stood in the hereditary Peers’ by-election for the vacancy on the Cross Benches and the same candidate will be standing in the current election for a Conservative vacancy—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Grocott]

So he is a man of few permanent political convictions. The voting was based on the alternative-vote system. There were six rounds of balloting and the winner won by a margin of 12 votes to five—a majority of seven. I have fought a lot of elections but I do not know, on the basis of the votes given, whether that would be a marginal or a safe seat. As far as I know, no psephologist has analysed the figures in any detail to see what significance, if any, they have in terms of swing or the likely outcome of the next general election, or anything of that sort.

However, I say to the House that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is trying to do the impossible. He is trying to make a system work when it is fundamentally flawed and deserves to be scrapped. If I dare say so, I think that he tests the patience of the House by persisting in blocking a Bill which would solve this problem very simply and would hurt no one.

The noble Lord’s proposal, which, in my view, the Procedure Committee very wisely decided not to proceed with, was simply that the whole House should take part in these elections. I do not want to weigh everyone down with statistics but, just for information, the last time the whole House took part in a by-election for the replacement of a hereditary Peer was in March 2017. Then, the electorate—the whole House—was 803 and 346 people turned out to vote. That was a turnout of 43%, which, for interest, was lower than the lowest turnout for any of the 650 House of Commons seats at the last general election, so I am happy to say that there was no great enthusiasm among Members of this House even for an electorate of the whole House. However, of course that does not deal with the fundamental problem, which is that the only people eligible to stand are hereditary Peers. There are 92 reserved places and, of the 211 people on the official list, 210 are men, although all that is unaffected by the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. This matter is urgent, not least because two by-elections are pending.

There is one rather sombre piece of information that we all have to consider at some stage. There were 92 names on the original list in 1999, when the exempted hereditary Peers remained in the House. Of those 92, 33 have been replaced since then in by-elections. That leaves 59 still potentially pending. However, the inevitable consequence of Father Time is that those elected in 1999 and still here are getting on a bit, which I think is the actuarial term. The by-elections of the 59 still pending from the original 92 will inevitably come up with monotonous regularity, and that monotony will be exacerbated by me repeating this speech on numerous occasions every time this occurs—for which I apologise to the House, but it needs to be dealt with soon.

All I ask of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is that he stops playing King Canute. These by-elections will cease—the House wills them to cease. Please do not block the Bill any more but allow it to pass through and achieve something which virtually the whole House knows is both inevitable and desirable.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question about transparency. Would it not be within the bounds of possibility that whatever is discussed in something like the Procedure Committee is noted for us? If this matter had not been raised, one would not know as a Back-Bencher what had been discussed. Surely it would be quite easy to say that this matter was discussed but not agreed to.