House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for the thoughtful way in which he introduced his important report. In doing so, I declare my interests as chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission and of the Judicial Appointments Commission.

The task taken on by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his colleagues—looking at the size of this House—was inevitably going to be a very difficult, complicated and fraught matter. Yet it was vital for them to come to a practical solution that would deliver what was required: achieving a size for your Lordships’ House that would meet the important challenge of public perception—an issue touched on by many of those who have already contributed. Having initiated this process in a debate last year and having supported the establishment of the Lord Speaker’s committee to look at these matters, the reality is that there would be tremendous harm to the standing of your Lordships’ House if your Lordships were not able to reach a conclusion in supporting an essentially irrefutable argument: this House is too large and does not enjoy the respect of the public more generally. Whether or not that is fair, it is the held perception.

I will deal with issues in the report that touch on the work of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. I remind noble Lords that the commission was established in 2000 as an advisory body to the Prime Minister. As a non-departmental advisory body, it has continued its work since then with two principal remits: to make nominations to your Lordships’ House for independent Cross-Bench Peers—undertaking both an assessment of candidates’ suitability for service in your Lordships’ House and vetting checks—and to undertake vetting responsibility for all other nominations. In that regard, some 10% of party-political nominations made to the commission since 2015 failed to meet the vetting test and have not proceeded.

The Burns report suggests that we enhance the responsibilities of the House of Lords Appointments Commission in a number of respects. The first is that, beyond continuing our current nomination function for independent Cross-Bench Peers, the commission should facilitate the extended leave of absence that will be available to Peers nominated under the new scheme. The second is that it should, for want of a better description, keep the spreadsheet generated after every election, looking at the size of the House of Commons and the proportion of votes, and therefore the size of the political Benches for the forthcoming Parliament.

The third, as we have heard, is to provide a clear understanding for all those nominated to serve in the House of Lords of the commitment that would be required and the obligations that attend membership of your Lordships’ House. This is something that the commission pays special attention to with regard to Cross-Bench nominations. An analysis undertaken between October 2016 and January 2017 identified that of the 67 nominations by HOLAC since 2000, 90% participated in some way in that period, either through voting, contributions in the Chamber or work in committees.

Clearly, the commission would be happy to assist as requested in providing the narrative of the expectation of contribution and service once appointed to the House of Lords, but it would be vital that the political parties heard the response of each candidate to that description because, ultimately, so as not to fetter the Prime Minister or party-political leaders’ opportunity to make political nominations, they would have to be clear that the response received was suitable to those political parties.

Ultimately, under the scheme, beyond hereditary elections, there will be three routes to the Cross Benches: the independent nomination rate through the House Of Lords Appointments Commission, the appointment of Prime Minister’s exceptions—10 in any given five-year period—and a new judicial appointments route for Supreme Court justices on appointment to the Supreme Court. It would be essential to understand how the balance between those three routes will be achieved over any given Parliament.

One of the important duties of the House of Lords Appointments Commission has been to try to achieve greater diversity in this House. Of the 67 nominations made since 2000, 37% have been of female candidates and 19% of members of ethnic minorities. It is essential that that ability to look more broadly at the membership of the House is not lost as we look at the different routes to contribute to Cross-Bench membership in future.