House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Second Reading

Moved by

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, it is my pleasure to present to the House a simple, two-clause Bill that costs nothing and hurts no one, and which would scrap once and for all the ludicrous system of by-elections for hereditary Peers.

This is the fourth time in five years that I have introduced a Bill like this. It is barely believable to me still that we have a system in the 21st century whereby 90 places in our legislature are reserved for hereditary Peers—all men—who, when they die or retire, are replaced in a by-election system in which only hereditary Peers can stand and, for the most part, only hereditary Peers can vote.

My previous attempts to change the law were filibustered by a tiny minority of Peers, led by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. But, despite the setbacks, I relish the opportunity to bring this Bill forward again, buoyed as I am by the overwhelming support I continue to receive from Members in all parts of the House, not least among many of the 90 hereditaries themselves. Inevitably, the day will come when the tiny minority opposing the Bill, who insist still on playing King Canute, will lose the fight. Let us hope, for the reputation of this House, that it is sooner rather than later.

As the House knows, the by-elections were introduced as a temporary measure in the House of Lords Act 1999—so we are 22 years on and counting. Colleagues who have been good enough to attend these Second Reading debates in the past could be forgiven for thinking that they know my speech pretty well by heart. But I have good news: for those of us with a taste for satire, the by-elections are a gift that keeps on giving.

I need to bring the House up to date. Just 10 days after we discussed this issue in March last year, I was both surprised and delighted when no less a person than the Leader of the House herself presented a Motion to suspend all by-elections for hereditary Peers. The Motion carried in minutes without debate. The suspension lasted for just over a year, until April 2021. In truth, the Leader had no option, because virtually all elections were suspended during the lockdown. When we were suspending council elections, it would have been rather odd if the only elections going on through the pandemic were by-elections for hereditary Peers. But, from the point of view of those of us who want the by-elections scrapped, a wonderful precedent has been set: a 12-month experiment with no by-elections. I am able to report to the House that no adverse effects were reported. The House continued to function. There was no sense of loss, no petition for their resumption. The nation remained calm.

The 12-month suspension of the by-elections inevitably resulted in a number of them building up, so in the summer and autumn of this year we have been treated to no fewer than seven of them—let us call it a “glut” of by-elections, or perhaps a better collective noun would be an “absurdity”. They brought with them yet more rich material for those who want them scrapped. For example, the one on 16 June, following the retirement of the Countess of Mar, marked the departure of the last remaining woman hereditary Peer. When the system was established in 1999, there were five women among the 90. One by one they retired and were replaced in each case by a man. Need I say that in the by-election to replace Lady Mar, all 10 candidates were men? Steadily, over 22 years, this ridiculous system has not just remained ridiculous, it has actually become more ridiculous—and by the way, among the many hereditary Peers who supported my Bill was the Countess of Mar herself, and I was always grateful for her encouragement.

One from Wales.

Sorry, there is one from Wales; I will correct that. There is one Peer from Wales, the West Midlands and the north-east combined and there are 19 from London and the south-east.

If we look at occupational backgrounds, we find just one who is an engineer and 27 from business, industry and finance. If we look at educational background, we find that 21 of those Peers, or 45%, went to Eton. I hear much approval for that from some sections of the other Benches. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister when he winds up how all these facts assist the Government with their levelling-up agenda.

The truth is that the few Members of this House who still support the by-elections are bereft of any credible case. The one argument they have kept repeating for 22 years is that a deal was done in 1999 which promised to keep the remaining hereditaries until such a time as there was a fully reformed House of Lords. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in his place, and no doubt he is itching to make the same point in today’s debate.

Well, I really am delighted to tell the House that that argument has been blown completely out of the water by no less a figure than the Marquess of Salisbury. I remind the House that he was the Leader of the Opposition in the run-up to 1999 and led the negotiations to protect the 90 hereditaries. I will quote from an interview he gave to the Financial Times on 11 November this year.

He told the FT he had warned Tony Blair—who was, let us not forget, a Prime Minister with a majority of over 150 in the Commons—that, unless some hereditaries were retained, there would be carnage in the Lords which would wreck the Labour Government’s whole legislative programme. He said:

“My whole tactic was to make their flesh creep … I threatened them with the Somme and Passchendaele.”

My Lords, I have not chosen to speak on any of the previous occasions that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has sought, with his usual skill and humour, to tempt the House with one of his many Bills. It is an honour to follow him, and what really worries me is that I enjoy listening to him and he often talks a lot of sense but, unfortunately, I cannot support his Bill. He has made his “the nation remained calm” joke several times before—again, with his usual skill.

First, I make it clear that I am not particularly keen to die in the ditch over by-elections. I am exceptionally keen to preserve the system of appointments, not elections, to a House whose role is to advise on legislation, be an additional check on the Executive and, perhaps most importantly in today’s context, to be a source of expertise. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, when he follows me, will have a slightly different view.

I fear that the Bill may be a catalyst for all sorts of undesirable and unpredictable outcomes. It is of course essential that the Government of the day can be defeated in Parliament, although, eventually, the elected House usually predominates. With the current leadership of this Government, I read my whip only out of curiosity. I can do that because, in respect of my position in this House, I owe nothing to anyone who is alive.

It seems to me that many want to consider the composition of this House without considering its role. If it is desired to dispense with an upper House with its existing role, it is essential to consider how the House of Commons could be rejigged to provide our current role within its system, but I do not think that is an easy challenge. We have only to look at the United States, where it appears that its abortion laws are determined in its Supreme Court and sensible gun control laws cannot get past that court.

I rather think that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in pursuing his Bill, is fiddling while Rome burns. Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010 have been stuffing this House so full of Peers that we are now being unhelpfully compared with the Chinese National Congress, and there is little that we can do about it. The current Prime Minister has made appointments against the advice of the Appointments Commission. Furthermore, the House is becoming hideously London-centric—although I take the point made by the noble Lord in respect of hereditary appointments and admit that I am slightly a part of the problem, because I live in southern Hampshire. Even if all the hereditary Peers left, without a statutory appointments commission, Prime Ministers would still soon fill up the available space. I accept that the noble Lord seeks to get rid of the by-elections, not necessarily to get rid of me—at least not now. We urgently need an appointments commission that has a duty to return to and maintain a House of a reasonable size and, most importantly—following his point—with regional and political balance.

My Lords, in 1909, Lloyd George put forward the People’s Budget, proposing measures such as the introduction of the first ever old-age pensions in this country. The then Liberal Government planned to finance them by increasing taxes, including the basic rate of income tax, which would rise from the equivalent of 5p in the pound to 6p in the pound, and a tax on the wealthiest landowners. Opposition from such landowners was so strong, however, that in November of that year, the Finance Bill was rejected by the House of Lords by 350 votes to 75.

The issue of constitutional reform and the role of the House of Lords was then centre stage in the January 1910 general election. Following it, there were then 70 days of debate and 554 Divisions on the Budget before the House of Lords was forced to accept it.

A second general election was required in the same year to give authority for a Parliament Bill to curb the powers of veto by the House of Lords. The Parliament Act 1911 did not attempt to change the composition of the House of Lords, but the preamble to the Act stated the intention

“to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis,”

although it recognised that,

“such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.”

We have been very patient in seeking to bring an end to the hereditary route to membership of this House over these 110 years. Perhaps only in this place could more than a century be considered too short a timescale in which to agree necessary changes. Yet it is clear from previous debates and votes that the overwhelming will of this House is to end the farcical process of holding by-elections to provide for more hereditary Peers.

On this issue, the great efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, follow those of my late and much respected noble friend Lord Avebury, who introduced a Private Member’s Bill on the subject in 2006. Why have we not made more progress on an issue which had overwhelming support in this House and in the other place when it was last tested?

My Lords, for a fourth time it is my pleasure to give a very warm welcome to my noble friend’s attempt—successfully this time, I hope—to get this measure through Parliament.

The last time I spoke in your Lordships’ House on an earlier version was in March last year. Before that, it was in March 2019 and on a Bill that had had its Second Reading 18 months earlier, in September 2017. As I said early last year, that was quite some foot-dragging, and still we make no progress while, as we have heard, the by-elections roll merrily along, bringing—this is the serious bit—this House and democracy into disrepute. This is all at a time when, rather than bringing in more white, male hereditary Peers, we need to reduce the size of the House and increase its diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity and background.

It is bad enough that we outnumber the democratically elected House next door, but to do so with 90 of our Members being here by virtue of their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers or, sometimes, their great-great-grandfathers is a source of shame to a 21st-century legislature. To those women who have approached some of us during our preparations for this debate and who, unbelievably, want to entrench inherited privilege further by adding an extra cohort of white hereditary people to this House—the daughters of hereditary Peers—I say this: that is no way to tackle gender inequality.

What they are asking is for a group of women who have not managed to be appointed here through their own skill, achievements or talents to become legislators in this great Parliament. They want women who have not managed to be appointed here on their own record to have the right to come here on the deeds not even of their grandmothers but of their grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers. It is hard to imagine what these people are thinking. This is not feminism, and it is nothing to do with equality. If those women object to male offspring being able to be catapulted into this House, surely they should join my noble friend Lord Grocott in his campaign to end the by-elections for male offspring. Of course I want to see more women in here, but on their own merit—that is, on where they have contributed to our society in public, political, artistic, medical, academic, charity or creative life. I want women here for what they have done, not for what their great-grandfathers did.

Perhaps Mr Tony Blair should have invited me when he was leader of the Opposition. He is so charming, he could have convinced me to join the noble Baroness’s Benches. Who knows what the outcome would have been?

We will try again.

Just between us two, when they do not hear, the offer is still there.

The one advantage—the only one, I think—of the Government having a majority of 80 in the other place is that it now has the chance to grasp the nettle, safe in the knowledge that its working majority down there will not be threatened by any pesky Lords.

This modest measure would make change very gradually. We are not seeking to say farewell to any hereditary already here; indeed, we look forward to their contributions for many more years. However, the credibility of their work and of this House is undermined by how membership can still be achieved through by-elections, producing a self-perpetuating selection of new Members chosen by a tiny electorate. Let us get rid of this silly nonsense and waste no more time on it.

My Lords, I begin with a declaration of interest. In last month’s by-election, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, my cousin, Thoby Young, alias Lord Kennet, stood unsuccessfully for the Labour vacancy. He may well want to stand again in future by-elections, though for which party he will want for stand next time, I cannot say.

I believe that I am one of a small number of noble Lords, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who have sat through every single minute of the previous discussions on his Bills over the past six years. This was not a wholly voluntary decision. I did so mainly in my capacity as government spokesman on the Bill—a job discharged today by my noble friend Lord True, clutching a folder that bears my fingerprints and may well contain a similar form of words. However, I am now free to express my own view, rather than the Government’s —although, when I did express the Government’s view, I confess to stretching to its limits the concept of ministerial responsibility by toning down some of the passages that were hostile to the Bill and eliminating others.

To those who criticise the Government for not being more supportive of the Bill, I refer, as I have done before, to Hansard. On 30 November 2007, the House was considering a Bill introduced by Lord Steel, which, among other measures, intended to abolish hereditary by-elections. The then Government set out their objections to that proposal and, referring to the pledge given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, that the hereditary Peers should remain until the second stage of reform, the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said:

“I do not believe it can be argued that the Bill could be considered to meet the terms of that pledge.”—[Official Report, 30/11/07; col. 1479.]

I support the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but the decision is a more balanced one than he implied. Of course, Conservative Peers attach more weight to the pledge given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, than do Labour Peers. It was a commitment sought by our former leader, Viscount Cranborne, and reluctantly conceded via the Weatherill amendment by the then Government. It means more to us than it does to other parties, and not just because we have more to lose.