My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to open today’s debate on Lords reform. It is an issue that is often discussed and debated by noble Lords across the House, because we take great pride in our responsibilities as a scrutiny and advisory Chamber. Through tabling this important debate, I welcome the opportunity to listen to the considered views of your Lordships. That follows the engagement I have undertaken since I became the Leader of your Lordships’ House and, indeed, previously as Leader of the Opposition.
Like other noble Lords, I value the work that we do, and it is of great pride to me to have been appointed as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of your Lordships’ House. It is not a role I ever anticipated holding when I was introduced to this place 14 years ago. I also recognise that this position is different from others in Cabinet because, as the Leader of the House of Lords, I am the Government’s representative in this Chamber but, just as importantly, it is my responsibility to ensure that our voice is heard in government. We—that is, your Lordships’ House—are all custodians of the principles and customs that make this House unique. I take the responsibility of representing the interests of the Lords seriously. I also consider that, at its best, this House is not just complementary to the other place but an asset. It is because of my respect for the work we do that I share the view that this House should continue to evolve and is not merely preserved in aspic. I want to ensure that we are seen as a part of our Parliament that is both highly relevant and highly regarded.
We offered this debate today not just because of the legislation in the other place but because the Government’s manifesto commitments in this area have brought about a renewed focus, inside and outside the House, on Lords reform more generally. There is growing consensus on the need for a smaller Chamber, with a greater focus on active contribution and which is more representative of the country we serve. My sense is that many share that vision. Of course, there are a range of views on how those objectives might be achieved. That is why I have facilitated today’s debate: to provide an opportunity to discuss these issues and to listen to the views of this House. I am grateful to those noble Lords who have already shared their thoughts and ideas with me.
We are more than aware that, when it comes to meaningful reform of this place, there is a track record of stagnation and stalled attempts. There are those who argue that we should not do anything until we do everything but, with no common consensus or agreement on what “everything” means, we have ended up doing nothing. That is why a more incremental approach is an appropriate way forward.
It is why the Government introduced the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, delivering on the first of our manifesto commitments, to remove the right of the remaining hereditary Peers to sit and to vote. This ends the transitional arrangements and completes part of the reform that we started a quarter of a century ago. I want to be very clear that this in no way diminishes the respect for individual colleagues or the recognition of the valuable contributions that many hereditary Peers and their predecessors have made.
I will finish the sentence. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, has been a distinguished servant of this House, serving on the Front Benches in government and in opposition since 1991. I also pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who has diligently served as Convenor of the Cross Benches and as chair of various committees of this House. These noble Lords are just two of the many hereditary Peers who have served the House so well.
The Bill that is due to complete its passage through the other place later today is very specific and focused. It will come before this House to be scrutinised in due course. The Government set out plans for further reforms to the House of Lords in their election manifesto. As I have said, there is an acknowledgement across the Chamber that the House has become too large. At almost every meeting I have had with noble Lords, this has been raised. I have had very thoughtful conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and with a number of other colleagues, on this matter quite recently. That is partly why our election manifesto referenced a retirement age.
That manifesto included a commitment to strengthen the circumstances in which disgraced Members can be removed and to introduce a new participation requirement, to encourage active participation among Members to support our scrutiny and revising functions. There was also a long-term commitment for an alternative second Chamber that is more representative of the nations and regions.
Given the nature and potential scale of these reforms, the Government will consult further. We will continue to listen to and engage with the views of the House on these proposals; that is why we are having this debate today. I appreciate that there is a range of views, as the manifesto has focused minds on this issue. I think I am right in saying that our manifesto may have been the first to recognise the importance of the work of your Lordships’ House. How we deliver these commitments is important. Some have preferred to express their views to me privately, while others did so during the debate on the King’s Speech. Today’s debate is a further opportunity to hear those views.
My Lords—or perhaps in this new era I should say, “Fellow working people”, because we are fellow hard-working Peers—I am grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for the opportunity of this debate. It was the right thing to do, and I am grateful for the way she opened it. Like her, I will listen carefully to everything people say. However, it is regrettable that the business managers in another place have chosen to schedule the passage of a Bill to expel 92 of our fellow Peers on this very same day. How much better, I submit, would we be governed—even, candidly, under Governments in which I served—if those in another place sometimes listened to the advice and opinions of those in this one before they rushed into action.
In my response to the gracious Speech, I spoke about the plans that the Labour Party sprang—that is probably the word—on your Lordships in its manifesto. I need not repeat all I said then, but I stand by it. The plans have three broad characteristics. First, they are sweeping. Overall, between the excepted Peers and those over 80 in 2029, they would remove 375 Members of your Lordships’ House and 60% of the independent Cross-Benchers, and they would increase the weight of prime ministerial patronage.
Secondly, the plans are ill-thought-through. There is no clear statement about what the Government want this House to be or to do, although there is a declaration that the replacement of the whole House is the intended destination, with broad hints that the new House should be an elected one.
Finally, frankly, they are partisan in intent. That is quite legitimate, whether we like it or not. The aim of the Bill now in another place is partisan—it is to remove 88 Peers who do not align themselves with Labour and four who do. We should at least be honest about that. Declared principle cannot mask deep political purpose.
Aside from the partisan, another aspect is notable. It will be unpleasant and some may not like to hear it, but there is no evading it: the execution will have to be done at close quarters, brushing shoulders in the Lobbies as we go to vote for the removal of much-respected colleagues. You can just imagine it—seeing the Long Table and sidling down the other side to avoid sitting next to a colleague we have just voted to expel. That is not who we have ever been. It is not who we are.
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. He has gone on for a long time about consensus. I agree with him on that. Will he therefore explain why he did not support the very good 2016-17 report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, which would have reduced numbers on a two-out, one-in basis and was approved by the House in a debate? That was consensus. Why did he not support it?
I am speaking of numbers at present. I have addressed that question. The noble Lord understands the principles of collective responsibility; I was a member of the Government and successive Prime Ministers—the noble Baroness, Lady May, and her successors—all made it clear that the Government could not assent to those proposals. Our urgent need is to address the future of this House and potential threats to it. There is shared ground across the House to find the best way out of this impasse which will secure the continuation of service to it of the best people here.
I have been slightly distracted. I will reach a conclusion. When I was Leader, I reached out, as did the Convenor of the Cross Benches, in a valuable series of papers on conventions, to suggest discussions to refresh the conventions that guide this House—as the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, did in 2006—to preserve your Lordships’ freedoms and give security to all Governments. I believe that to be the best course. Once again, I ask the Leader, who has intimated that this might be possible, and perhaps those in Whitehall behind her, to move off the narrow ground of composition and on to a broader discussion about how we keep the best of this House and how the conduct of His Majesty’s Government will be guaranteed by convention, as it properly should.
My Lords, politicians and political parties are often accused of being inconsistent and opportunistic. It is sometimes difficult to rebut such charges, but on House of Lords reform these Benches have been steadfastly consistent for over a century. I cite as supporting evidence the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, passed under a Liberal Government, which states:
“And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation”.
That stated policy of having an elected second Chamber has been Liberal, and now Liberal Democrat, policy for the intervening 113 years. It is arguably the longest-lasting piece of party policy that has never been implemented, and it is still a live issue. Sadly, the assertion that such substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation remains as true now as it was in 1911.
I reassert the Liberal Democrat position that the House of Lords should be elected. It should be elected on the basis that, in a democracy, laws should be passed by people chosen by the people to act on their behalf. It should be elected because the unelected House leads to a geographical imbalance of membership, in which London and the south-east are greatly over- represented, and the north, Scotland and Wales are underrepresented. It should be elected because it would then almost certainly be more representative of the ethnic diversity of the United Kingdom. It should be elected because it would then be more politically representative. It would contain members of the SNP and almost certainly more members of the smaller parties.
Even Reform—what arrogance that we think that, because we dislike a party, it does not deserve to be in your Lordships’ House. I would welcome the opportunity to have Reform in your Lordships’ House and to debate with its members, rather than them sniping from the sidelines.
This House should be elected because it would then be more effective in holding the Government to account and strengthening Parliament in relation to an overpowerful Executive. There was a chance during the coalition to achieve an elected House of Lords—probably the best chance since 1911—but that was cynically scuppered by the Labour Party, which refused to back a guillotine Motion on the Bill, and many Conservatives, who were genuinely hostile to the principle of an elected second Chamber, whatever their manifesto said. The chances of moving to an elected Lords in this Parliament are nil. There was a point when, with the appointment of the Brown commission, it looked as though Labour might move towards a firm plan for such a fundamental reform. But the Brown proposals were so half-baked that no one in the Labour Party supported them, and no other elected alternative was then even contemplated by the party.
For the remainder of this Parliament, we are faced with the imminent Bill to remove the remaining hereditaries, and a consultation, to be followed by legislation on a retirement age. We unambiguously support the proposals to remove the remaining hereditaries. We have huge respect for the part that individual hereditaries continue to play in our proceedings, and we hope that the Government will find a way to enable some of those who do so to return as life Peers. However, in our view, the hereditary principle itself can no longer be justified. Of course, it was not justified by the Blair Government, but the compromise deal negotiated by the wily Viscount Cranborne leaves us with the current unsatisfactory situation.
I was a new Member of your Lordships’ House in 1999 and served as the Liberal Democrat Whip on the then House of Lords reform Bill. A lot has been made of the commitments at that time about the future of the remaining hereditaries. One thing that was made crystal clear by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, whom I am pleased to see in her place, as the then Leader of the House, was that the Government saw no long-term role for the remaining hereditaries and envisaged that they would be removed at the next stage of reform. We are now at that next stage of reform, and although it does not introduce an elected house, it ends an anomaly shared only, among all the parliaments of the world, with the constitution of Lesotho, in having a hereditary element in the second Chamber. In the case of Lesotho, the hereditary element is drawn from the tribal chiefs, and while many of our remaining hereditaries would make splendid tribal chiefs—although I am not sure there is a Strathclyde tribe—this is not the basis on which we organise society.
My Lords, I too add my thanks to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for bringing this important debate to the House today, and for her warm words personally to me just now.
As I have remarked before, the British constitution is a three-legged stool, one each for the Executive, Parliament and the judiciary. Major change by the Executive to the legs of the stool needs to be undertaken with great care, especially if the net effect of those changes is that more power is accrued to one or other of the legs. I underline also the importance of ensuring that, following any major change, the Salisbury convention runs smoothly. I will come to that in greater detail shortly.
The constitutional reform section of the Government’s manifesto contains six separate propositions that involve this House. The first two are in the same paragraph, and are the proposals to remove the hereditaries and restrict the age of Members of the House. This second proposition says:
“Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords”.
I remind people that, if enacted, these two propositions would see the departure by the end of this Parliament of about half the Peers present at the start of it—by any measure, a major change. The number for the Cross Benches, given our slightly older average age, is closer to 60%.
In giving evidence to the PACAC committee in the Commons in May, I commented that there were three unfairnesses in the current make-up of the membership of this House: the hereditaries, the Bishops, and the unlimited and unfettered power the Prime Minister has to make appointments to this House. The greatest unfairness, I continue to feel, is this last one, which is both very powerful and vested in one person. The changes proposed in the Government’s manifesto would add power to the Prime Minister, so that what is already a very large power without precedent in any other liberal democracy is increased. Indeed, the vesting of great power in one person is at the core of the problems we face with authoritarian regimes around the world. However comfortable we might feel with our freshly elected Government today, this is not a satisfactory state of affairs going forward for a major liberal democracy.
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity for a meaningful debate on this matter. The Lords spiritual have a long history of constructive engagement on the question of reform. I pay tribute especially to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who served on the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords, which produced the Wakeham report in 2000. That commission encouraged
“a broadening and deepening of religious representation in the second chamber”
to reflect the diversity of our multifaith society, a principle that these Benches have supported before and since. We stand ready to assist any future appointments commission in that task.
The Lords spiritual see our role in your Lordships’ House as bringing an independent and non-partisan presence, and a voice for faith and for our local communities. It is an expression of our vocation to service in all communities that is core to our constitutional status as an established Church. Our presence in this House is only one component of the wider Church-state relationship. Service in Parliament on the one side is matched by our accountability to Parliament on the other, epitomised by the weekly opportunity for Questions specifically about the Church of England to the Second Church Estates Commissioner in the other place.
I suggest that this House makes three specific contributions to our parliamentary democracy: independence, expertise and a voice from civil society. First, as perhaps the most significant performer of checks and balances on Government, it must not become merely a mirror to reflect the all too familiar landscape of political parties. Secondly, this House must continue to provide a forum for measured, evidence-driven legislative scrutiny. As Wakeham put it:
“The second chamber should engender second thoughts”.
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I admit that I am slightly uncomfortable about singling out individuals, but I am sure we can all agree that, in particular, the noble Earl, Lord Howe—
In addition to points that noble Lords wish to raise, I would welcome comments on a number of other issues, including how we ensure that all those who sit in this place participate sufficiently in our proceedings. We all have an instinctive view of what participation should involve—and a number of suggestions have been made to me of what that should be—but these views can quite reasonably differ from one noble Lord to another. Obviously, not everybody has to be here all day every day, but we all recognise and expect a commitment to the work of this House. Leave of absence is another area where we can consider whether the rules are currently fit for purpose or there is a case for change.
I would appreciate views on how the House welcomes incoming Members and treats departing Members following retirement. For example, we should consider how we can best introduce new colleagues to our work. We may also wish to consider how best to recognise the contributions of outgoing Members and how to ensure that former Members who wish to do so remain connected to each other and to the House more generally. I have already sought opinions from a number of colleagues as to whether we should set up an association of former Members, as they have in the other place.
I have always felt that this House is at its best when noble Lords, using their experience and professional expertise, often of national or international standing, work together to scrutinise and improve legislation for the betterment of the country and the people we seek to serve. This House has deep historical roots. Our role of scrutinising and revising legislation, holding the Executive to account, has developed over centuries. Change has not always been legislative. This is a House that is also built on norms and conventions, such as the Salisbury/Addison convention and the convention not to veto secondary legislation. There is widespread agreement on the ongoing importance of these conventions, which are recognised and respected by all Members.
It is important that this House continues to reflect on our role as the second Chamber in a legislature that continues to evolve and adapt to reflect the country we serve. It is a collective endeavour to ensure that Members enter this House with the desire to make a valuable contribution and that they are supported to play an active role. We need to ensure that the House is able to replenish the breadth and depth of skills and expertise, and, crucially, that newer Members are given the opportunity to develop their skills and experience as legislators. There will be further discussion about these issues, but the central question is about purpose. How do we ensure that this House can do its best work in complementing the role of the elected Chamber?
Although we should always avoid the temptation of change just for the sake of it, that does not justify endless stagnation or drift. There are careful balances on all these issues. I look forward to hearing what will probably be a range of views and suggestions. I am confident that some will be very ambitious and that others will perhaps be more cautious, but I am sure that this will be a spirited and interesting debate. I hope it will also be useful. I beg to move.
There can be no doubt that the Bill being discussed in another place will cause some great hurt, and it will almost inevitably issue in conflict—conflict that may well spill out in quite unpredictable directions. All that is avoidable; there must be a better way. If the pretext for throwing out colleagues who are here under the 1999 Act or those born in the 1940s is not, in fact, partisan, it is often said to be—and has been said again today to be—related to numbers. As noble Lords know, I am not a believer in the numbers crisis; in the quarter century since 1999, there have been only 40 Divisions in the House where more than 500 Peers were here to vote. The average vote in whipped Divisions so far this Session has been 283, with a maximum of 419. Average daily attendance has never surpassed 500 in any Session in the post-1999 House—so call me a sceptic on overcrowding as a pretext for expulsion.
Even supposing that I am wrong and that we should aim for the number of 600, which many have advocated, would any sensible institution wanting that do it by expelling some of the most hard-working and effective Members in its ranks? How will that improve our effectiveness? Out among the 1999 Act Peers are the Strathclydes, the Kinnoulls, the Addingtons, the Howes, the Vauxes—I do not know how you say the plural of Vaux—the Courtowns and the Grantchesters, and out among those born in the 1940s are the Jays, the Blunketts, the Howards of Lympne, the Reids and the Winstons. These are all Peers with a proven capacity for hard work over many years, and there are dozens more on all sides.
If numbers are the issue, there must be a more discerning way than this. Of course, as I have said before, I believe that the fundamental answer is convention—the route that enabled Clem Attlee, outnumbered 10 to one here, to transform Britain for Labour in the 1940s. Perhaps participation is another route, as some have argued—although I would hate to see a House where worth was measured in quantity rather than quality of speeches. My problem is that Labour has never explained how its participation requirement would work and who would measure it—and the noble Baroness did not do that today. When she sums up, will she say what measure of participation was planned when Labour wrote this into its manifesto? She must at least know that. I can see that, if one wanted to reduce numbers, participation would potentially be a more fruitful basis for consideration than removing the best and most active. But both on exclusion—all exclusion—and on participation, it is clear that we would benefit from further reflection and discussion.
This great House is no longer the deposit of ages in which hereditary Peers once inherited a right to sit; it is a House that we created, with massive majorities in both Houses, by an Act of Parliament in 1999. It was created then with an understanding that it should subsist until agreement on reform of the House should be reached. No such reform proposal is on the table. Of course, the Labour Party has a political right to remove former hereditary Peers and people born in the 1940s, but I believe it has a constitutional responsibility to say what follows. It did not do so in 1999 and still has not done so today. All we have is an indeterminate commitment to replace all your Lordships with an alternative House. The implication, clearly stated by the Prime Minister in December 2022, was that this should be “democratically elected”. Sir Keir then said that it should be done quickly. There has been some back-pedalling since, with the Leader of the House back-pedalling particularly furiously—particularly, I understand, in private conversations. But that is still the proposition before us in Labour’s manifesto.
As it happens, having fought seven elections as a candidate in my life and, I regret to say to my Liberal colleagues, having won them all, I have no particular issue with the election principle, and nor does it trouble most other advanced democracies. But there are many, perhaps a majority in this House, who do not want to see that and who believe that nominating Peers under the 1958 Act is the most effective way to constitute a revising Chamber. I think everyone, including me, who knows and loves this great House thinks that, curious though it may seem to others, this House of experience complements the House of Commons and does the vital job that the other place has relinquished over time of scrutinising and revising legislation. Would the exclusion of these Members in the two proposals put forward by the party opposite improve our ability to perform that role? I doubt it.
Whatever one’s view, we can surely agree on one thing: this House is part of our sovereign Parliament and a vital, indeed profound, part of our ancient parliamentary constitution. It has protected many liberties and safeguarded countless citizens from hasty and ill thought-out law. Do we alone not deserve to be safeguarded from hasty and ill thought-out law? Should we not know the details of the fate the Government intend for our House and our Parliament before we begin to vote parts of it through? Should constitutional reform on the scale involved in Labour’s proposals—the progressive purging of this House and its planned replacement by we do not know what—not be the subject of cross-party consideration, whether in a Joint Committee or another consultative process? I submit that it should.
Labour says, “Trust us. Once you agree, albeit with kind words, to remove the noble Earls, Lord Kinnoull and Lord Howe, and 90 others like them, then we will discuss with you. We will discuss with you abandoning our manifesto promise to throw out everyone born in the 1940s at the end of this Parliament. Trust us. If you behave and ease the passing of the 92, then we will consult you on whether we will really implement our manifesto commitment to replace everyone in this House with an alternative Chamber”. What kind of constitutional principle or good practice is that? I am not the totally trusting kind as were, perhaps, the farmers, small businesses, savers, charities, nurseries, shopkeepers and care homes. They were the trusting kind and, in a matter of months, they found their trust broken by the Labour Government. I think we should see the colour of all Labour’s constitutional money before we accept some of its silver.
There must be a better way, a way that satisfies the wish of the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches to prevent anyone coming here in future under the 1999 Act. This has always been a House of consensus, compromise and convention. When the Irish peerage was removed from your Lordships’ House in 1922, those who were already Members were allowed to stay. When the appellate jurisdiction legislation was passed in 2009, existing Peers under the 1876 Act were allowed to stay. That is why we continued to have among us the late lamented Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood or the continuing presence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and others. The House denied a category of Peer future entry but retained its valued Members, valued their experience and continued to benefit from it. That gradualism, I submit, and not the guillotine, is the House of Lords way. It has served us before and it could serve us again.
After the election, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and I made an offer, in the spirit of compromise, that the process of by-elections under the 1999 Act should be suspended for this Session, given the Labour Party’s mandate. We have both been criticised for that by some in our groups, but it was intended to recognise the mandate of the new Government to close the gate to new entry under the 1999 Act, but also to create space for constructive discussion about a consensual way forward in which the Government could be assured that their programme would not be disrupted and in which the House would retain the benefit of its best.
The response so far from the party opposite on the 92 has been to offer no compromise and to stampede to build a guillotine. They are at it down the Corridor as we speak. We can surely do better. What guarantees that a Government’s programme passes is not numbers but convention. As I said on the gracious Speech, I thought it wrong that this House defeated the last Government on record numbers of occasions and with record rounds of ping-pong. Equally, I would think it wrong that the Labour Government should suffer in such a way. In normal circumstances, it would be wrong under this Government.
The other principal measure of reform we are promised in this Parliament is a retirement age. Again, we support this principle. Other professionals in the UK have a retirement age, including lawyers and bishops, and there are good reasons for it. That is not to say that many extremely elderly Peers do not make a valuable contribution to proceedings in your Lordships’ House; they obviously do, but many more do not, and the lack of a retirement age inevitably means that the House is denied much relevant contemporary experience which a younger House would bring.
These two reforms in themselves, of course, do not address the issue of the eventual size of the House and the balance of parties across it. What is the Government’s view on this? Do they, for example, still support the principle that we should move towards equality of representation between Labour and the Conservatives, despite the Conservatives’ current shrunken Commons representation, and if so, over what time period? Do they think that the Burns principle of two out, one in should be pursued, or that a combination of the abolition of the hereditaries and a retirement age will, by themselves, get the House down to a satisfactory size? Do they have any plans to reduce the number of Bishops in your Lordships’ House? However much one might value the contribution of the Bishops’ Benches—I certainly do—it surely would be perverse in our increasingly secular age if the only group whose proportionate size increased as a result of the proposed reforms was the Lords spiritual.
When the relevant reform legislation comes before your Lordships’ House, we on these Benches will not seek to delay it or to bog the debates down with unnecessary amendments. There is one area, however, where the system could be strengthened within the spirit of the upcoming legislation. This relates to the role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. At the moment, the commission can recommend against the appointment of an individual, but this objection can be overridden by the Prime Minister, as it has been in recent years. That seems to us unacceptable and could easily be rectified.
There are times when I think that it could be another 113 years before the Lords is truly reformed in the spirit of the 1911 Act. We on these Benches, however, remain optimists and will continue to push for this. In the meantime, the measures the Government propose to bring forward in this Parliament will go some way to improving the composition of your Lordships’ House, and on that basis, they deserve our support.
In 2017, the noble Lord, Lord Burns—he says, looking for the noble Lord—and his committee produced their seminal report about the size of the House and, by implication, some sort of conventional cap on the Prime Minister’s prerogative powers. We unanimously endorsed it. Many of those who were part of that endorsement are on the Front Benches of the major groupings present today. In any event, we all remember our agreed target of 600. We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, shortly.
The third Labour proposition concerns addressing participation. My office estimates that changing the requirement for Members to attend from at least one day per Session, which is pursuant to Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, to 10% of the days sat in a Session would affect around 20% of the House. Some Peers would choose to sit a few extra days, clearly, but I still believe that such a new required level would reduce our numbers—and quickly—by at least 12.5%, or 100 Peers. I am in favour of this.
I feel that the introduction of an age limit for newly created Peers would be a good idea. It would mean amending Section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958. As my figures on the percentage of the existing membership of the House who would be affected show, introducing age limits on the existing membership would be a large organisational shock that is not necessary and should be avoided. A transitional arrangement is clearly called for.
For similar reasons, this route of implementing a new retirement age on newcomers only was chosen by the England and Wales judiciary 40 years or so ago. In that case, only newly promoted senior judges had the new retirement age; existing judges were unaffected. The exercise was deemed a success. It turned out that some of those who could have continued retired at the new limit in any event, and I would expect that to happen here. If only one in five of those protected stood back, I estimate that an additional 50 colleagues might retire in this Parliament. The three changes—participation, age limits and the hereditaries Bill—could thus represent 240 or so Members leaving this Parliament. We would have a House at or below our target of 600.
I turn to conventions. Last year, my office produced a series of papers on the Salisbury/Addison convention, which is at the core of a successful relationship between the Lords and the Executive. The modern version of this convention came into being post war to assist a Labour Administration facing a non-Labour House of Lords. It has served us well, but it will need to be renewed as part of our reform process, in particular to address the upwards trend in ping-pong. We have been playing ping-pong on more Bills, with more balls and longer rallies. It is a trend, and the trend is still rising. We must tackle it.
For Parliament to come willingly into this programme of reform, the Prime Minister’s power of appointment must also be addressed. The proportionate thing would be for the Prime Minister to enter into a new convention whereby 600 Members was our conventional limit and the Prime Minister agreed to take advice on propriety and suitability from HOLAC. I know that others will develop the theme of HOLAC, and I will listen with great interest; but I believe that there is an appetite here in the House today for an ambitious programme of reform along my four lines—hereditaries, participation, age limits and conventions—and we should grasp the opportunity. However, as we seek to navigate these difficult waters, we must at all times balance constitutional security, the proper relationship between Parliament and the Executive, and the words of the Government’s manifesto.
For that purpose, it must maintain the high calibre of professional expertise across all sectors for which its Members are renowned. That is a core strength. Thirdly, your Lordships’ House is composed of voices from across the breadth of civil society which might otherwise not be easily heard. We especially celebrate the opportunity to learn from our colleagues whose distinguished careers and excellence in their respective fields have earned them a place in this Chamber. This House achieves its work not least because it is not composed exclusively of the partisan.
These Benches have no single view on reform except to agree that some reform is overdue, not least to deal with the increasing size of the House and the exercise of patronage. I welcome this debate and the opportunity to hear a diversity of views.