House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, who said almost everything I was about to say in the next group, but it is no less welcome for that. I just want to pick up the point about us all voting for each other. I was here in 1999, and it was a very unpleasant experience to have people constantly sidling up to you, who had never spoken to you before, and urging you to vote for them because they were such a good chap, to use a phrase. I really hope that we do not go back to that, but let us get on to the next group and we will talk more.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I must declare a conflict of interest in this respect, because I am not quite certain—I have rather forgotten—but I think my 85th birthday is next weekend. I have to say that I am still employed; I am still producing experimental work, which is being published; I am still teaching; I am still training post-doctoral students and younger students; and I am still talking to children’s schools. The fact is that we are discussing a biological problem, which your Lordships seem to have neglected. If we had a rule that we only had people of a certain height in this Chamber and that, let us say, less than 5 foot 10 would not be acceptable, we would actually forget the Gaussian curve of normality and the statistics.

The fact of the matter is that, if we look historically, in the last 20 or 30 years of this House of Lords there were many people in this Chamber who were actually demented in their 60s, and far more in their 70s and 80s who were actually clearly not suitable mentally to be taking judgment on legal issues and issues of social care. The fact of the matter remains that medicine is changing, and there is no doubt, if we actually get successful medicines in future, as we in the Labour Party hope—we will have to see about that, of course—that we will see ages increase and people being mentally competent for longer. I suggest that an arbitrary rule at any age is probably inappropriate biologically, and we should find a more sensible way of considering how we might encourage people to retire when they are no longer competent to be Members of this House.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

I cannot resist responding to that, because I agree with it. One of the problems we have is that the Whips do not have sufficient power to tap people on the shoulder and tell them it is really time, whatever age they are, if they are infirm. From that point of view, I agree: it is a matter not of age but of capability, and I think participation is the way to go to address that.