House of Lords: Membership

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. It has been an excellent debate. I have to say to my noble friend Lord Lea that I plead guilty as charged, although I hope that the Minister will also plead guilty. I notice that he left the Conservative Party office charge sheet, which rather disappointed me, but perhaps he just felt short of a bit of time.

I thought that the Clerk of the Parliament’s report was excellent, particularly paragraphs 36 and 37 in relation to a strengthened leave of absence scheme, including minimum levels of attendance and enforced leave of absence. Will the Minister state clearly what the Government actually intend to do to progress this? As noble Lords have said, the Leader of the House has already indicated that he is not in favour of it, but I think the House and the Committee are entitled to a proper explanation of why this should not be taken forward.

I also ask the Minister about the statement made by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, at Question Time this morning. She made what seemed to me to be a new statement of government policy in relation to the balance between the parties. I would be grateful if he would expand on what the Minister said in the Chamber.

Thirdly, I come to the point raised by my noble friend Lady Hayman. We have what I think is a ludicrous coalition agreement policy of saying that in one Parliament the membership of the House should reflect the votes cast at the last election; clearly, we have seen lists of new Peers being announced in order to make progress towards that. Our estimate is that the Government will shortly have a political majority in the Chamber of more than 100. What is the point of it? We are a revising Chamber; if the Government cannot be defeated, revisions cannot take place. In my own experience as a Minister, as my noble friend Lady Hayman will know—

[Baroness Hayman]

The noble Lord is definitely my friend, but in procedural terms in this House he is not my noble friend.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am duly dealt with on that. The noble Baroness was also a health Minister. I would have expected to lose five or six votes on any health Bill that I took through, and I took through rather a lot. This does not happen any more, and I want to ask the Government whether they expect to win every vote. Is this the intention? If it is the intention, frankly, I do not see the point of your Lordships’ House. If the Government are not defeated on a fairly regular basis, we cannot send matters back to the House of Commons and there is no point to us. I am increasingly of the view that in that scenario the only way out is to get rid of the House. I do not think that the Government realise the significance of this. We cannot revise unless the Government are defeated a healthy number of times.

We should look at other reports, as well as the Clerk’s. My noble friend Lord Foulkes has given the game away, in the sense that there is a Labour group looking at some of these issues. The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has produced a very interesting report, with a number of suggestions as to how we might deal with these issues. We may not agree with all of them, but I particularly draw your Lordships’ attention to recommendation 10, on determining the relative numerical strengths of party groups in the House of Lords. In the end, surely we need to have sensible discussions and reach an agreement which will enable us to get a proper balance, allow the House to do its proper job in revising, and keep the numbers at a reasonable level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is for the first time a coalition Government and part of the issue is whether you count the entire coalition of both parties as one or as two. The Government do not have an overall majority in this House because we have a large number of Cross-Benchers. If I may say so, one of the first things I learnt when I entered this House was that if you want to defeat the Government, what you need is a speaker from each of the four main groups, because at that point the Government will recognise that they are about to lose. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is occasionally very good at being part of those groups which challenge his own Government. That is the way the House of Lords behaves.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

With respect, my Lords, there is one Government and the numbers are clearly added together in your Lordships’ House. I should like to put a question to the Minister. What would happen in 2015 if the Labour Party were to win the general election with a majority? It would be faced with a majority of 100 Conservative and Lib Dem Peers over the Labour group in your Lordships’ House. There would then be a dissolution list, to which I assume both Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg would contribute. What advice would the noble Lord give to a Labour Government about the number of Peers they should appoint?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are getting into very difficult constitutional questions here. Again, I have heard discussions about this among some of my noble friends. A Labour Party that wins a majority of seats in the House of Commons on perhaps 35% of the vote and a 60% turnout raises the question of whether that is really a majority or not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We need some quiet discussions among the parties and I am glad to hear people suggesting that what we need is another committee. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would love to serve on another committee looking at some aspects of Lords reform; he has a great appetite for it.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, nothing would give me greater pleasure.