Peerages: Recommendations

Question for Short Debate

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the resolution of the House on 31 October 1917 which required that any recommendation for a new peerage sent to the Crown be accompanied by a statement of the reasons for the recommendation, what plans they have to ensure that (1) any person nominated for a peerage has been approved as a proper person by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, or any other appropriate vetting committee, and (2) the assessment of the Commission accompanies the recommendation to the Crown for the grant of the peerage.

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this short debate. It is a bit of a raffle, is it not? You put in your subject and about four out of 20 get drawn, so I am probably lucky to be drawn.

This comes out of my long-term interest in history, particularly the history of the way Britain has developed. When I first got here, some nine years ago, I was quite fascinated to be told that we were a self-governing House. I think I have discovered over the last nine years that our definition of “self-governing House” is something like that of a self-governing colony. We have no rights other than the right the governor-general wishes to accord to us, and she does not seem to want us to do very much at all.

When I was looking back in the history books, quite by accident I chanced on a debate from 1917, which quite clearly demonstrates that this House has the right to ask the Government to do something. People have said that we cannot ask the Government and can only petition or request, but we can take a decision. That is why the rather obscure reference to 1917 is at the beginning of this Question.

The second thing is that my studies of history have led me to somewhat different conclusions from many people’s about certain aspects of British history. One of them is that George V is probably the most underrated monarch of the last 200 years. He did a huge amount to bring Britain from Victorian England, which was really his father, to an England of George VI, which was his son. His almost 26 turbulent years transformed Britain. Together with probably our greatest Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, he not only probably saved Britain from revolution but put it on the path it is on today as a constitutional democracy.

We are quite unique in that we survived many buffetings without going down very extreme paths. If you look at the resolution of 1917, and one before it from 1914, you find at the base of it a general perception that the House of Lords was in need of some reform and that the Lords had got out of touch with the people. I think that is the case today.

My Lords, I am very happy to speak in Comrade Balfe’s debate. Now that I know his true provenance, I feel that he has hidden virtues I was unaware of.

I rise to speak wondering why there is a debate about this at all. It seems so self-evident that people who have undergone due process should have what has happened presented transparently in a proper form to the Crown, and if there is a divergence then the alternative case should be put. I cannot really see that anybody could take a position other than being in favour of all that.

I am, of course, completely new to the world of politics. The wiles and Machiavellian goings-on that I have vaguely become aware of over the years will, I am sure, fit me for that final deliberation at the pearly gates, when I wonder whether or not I am going to get in. Granted that I have, relatively speaking, a naivety on these things, I cannot understand how we are where we are. In 2004, when I was admitted to your Lordships’ House, Tony Blair’s Government had a very considerable majority in the Commons. When I came into the House of Lords there were, roughly speaking, 200 Labour Lords and 200 Conservative Lords. I rejoiced at the fact that someone from my background could come into a debating Chamber where cases had to be won, majorities had to be put together and arguments had to be presented that won the approval of those assembled. No Government, simply because it had even a whacking majority, as the Labour Party did then, could simply assume that it would carry the day all the time in the Lords.

Then, of course, we became aware that things were going on that got into the newspapers. We put together a committee, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. Its task was to try to introduce some order as it was sought to bring the numbers in the House of Lords roughly into equivalence with the House of Commons. The formula was simple; it was debated on the Floor of the House and it was agreed, and I thought that we had something that would sort out some of the excesses and wrongdoings of the Chamber as it was.

My Lords, one of the glories of this House is the wide range and diversity of its Members. If you wished to divide them up into categories, you would find that difficult. There are all sorts of opinions and views, and hurrah for that.

I recall, when I was on the Opposition Front Bench, going through Bills, and however late in the evening it was there would always be a number of Back-Bench Peers on all sides of the House. They had huge knowledge of the matters being discussed and were articulate in expressing their views. They made huge contributions to debates. Frankly, they made my own attempts to call the Government to account as a Front-Bench spokesman seem rather puny. I mention this because a number of those doing such sterling work would have been extremely unlikely to have passed the rigours of a vetting committee. Almost by definition, they had become such experts in their own fields that, on occasions, they might have appeared slightly odd when not discussing their own subject.

In a recent letter to the Times, Paul Dacre, that most eminent and distinguished newspaper editor said—oh, I have lost it.

Maybe he did not say it.

Well, I think he did. He said—the noble Lord will enjoy this:

“To anyone from the private sector, who, God forbid, has convictions, and is thinking of applying for a public appointment, I say the following: the civil service will control (and leak) everything; the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal-left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job.”

I do not think for a moment that the committee suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to give approval to anyone nominated for a peerage, would be in the least bit biased or show anything but the most even-handed and scrupulous attitude, and nor would they be likely to take a year. However, members of committees change and the new members may not always show such admirable impartiality.

Even if that was the case, it is inevitable that, as time goes by, the views of committees are reflected in those selected. This House could end up losing its independent thinkers and eccentrics, and those prepared to challenge the fashionable groupthink of the day. As things stand, there may be appointments that raise eyebrows. But rather that and retain the individuality of the Members of this House, and their willingness to call the Government to account, than the dreary sameness which would result over time from these proposals.

My Lords, I welcome the invitation to wash our dirty ermine in public that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has presented to us. We had a Bill a while ago on the status of the Appointments Commission and why it should be made statutory and so on—I think it was a Private Member’s Bill. I said at that time that one difficulty is that we have no legitimacy; our legitimacy comes from the fact that the Crown nominates us, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

The Appointments Commission is neither here nor there. It is not statutory; it is there as a respectable front, but it does not matter. What matters is what the Prime Minister recommends to the Crown. That is the only basis of our legitimacy. We are almost like a colony. We have more like dominion status—a little bit further—but we are not self-governing. We may be in our internal affairs, but our appointments are entirely determined outside the House of Lords. That has to be absolutely clear.

Even if we followed the proposition that the noble Lord has assiduously found from reading the history books, it would not be acceptable, nor would it have any constitutional position. His example was of the commission making various recommendations which were completely ignored by the Prime Minister—whoever the Prime Minister, it has been ignored.

In a sense, our problem lies not within us but outside us. The problem of reforming this House is very simple. If the House was reformed, the House of Commons would lose its primacy. The day the House of Lords becomes legitimate would be the death of the primacy of the House of Commons, so the House of Commons has an immense interest in not having us reformed. It is very important for the House of Commons that we be thought of as figures of fun, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said.

Whenever the Daily Mail writes about us, it always uses a picture from when Her Majesty comes to open Parliament, because then we are in our ermine. It says, “These are people prancing around in ermines, they do not do any work, they are called Lords, they get lots of money—millions of pounds—and isn’t it ridiculous?”. I am trying to write a book to tell people what we actually do in our daily work, so they realise that we do not just come on one day of the year.

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, much as I disagree with a number of the points that he made. We do not have much time, so let me begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Balfe on obtaining this debate and the manner of his introduction. I endorse entirely what he said about George V. In doing that, I commend to your Lordships the recently published biography of George V by Jane Ridley, which is an extremely well-written, well-documented life and completely underlines the points made by my noble friend Lord Balfe.

I must declare an interest in that I am one of the joint founders and the chairman of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. I set it up in 2000, when I was in the Commons and with 10 years in that House still in front of me, with my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who is a great constitutional expert. We were concerned about the way in which reform appeared to be going, because we believed very much in an appointed, non-elected House chosen for its varied expertise and not too party political because of the presence of Cross-Benchers making up around 25% of it. We thought that this was something worth preserving, not least because if we had an elected second Chamber there would inevitably be the constant threat of deadlock between the two Houses.

We have had a reasonably successful run over the last 20 years. Out of our deliberations came the Steel Bill, which allowed for retirements, and the Hayman Bill, which allowed for a rather more serious and sad thing: expulsions, if necessary. I am glad that it has not been needed up to now. We were also very much behind the former Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, setting up the Burns committee. We endorsed its recommendations, as did your Lordships’ House—particularly on numbers. We should not be bigger than the House of Commons, which has 650 Members.

Of course, in effect we are not. Look at the voting figures for this week. Most Divisions had fewer than 400 people vote in them. If we look at those who are active in your Lordships’ House—of whom the noble Lord, Lord Desai, is notably one—we find that there are many who say nothing and just vote. Here we are in the midst of the largest international crisis since the Second World War, and the one Russian-born Peer, ennobled just a few months ago, has not sought to utter a word or make an appearance. This is not a personal attack on the integrity of the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev; rather, it is a regret that he has not used his unique position to come here and talk to his colleagues. He made a maiden speech, but he did not make it here. I am told that he made it on his yacht; I do not know whether that is true, but it was certainly not made in your Lordships’ House. It was remote.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for tabling this Question for Short Debate, as it raises some interesting challenges and thorny dilemmas for all of us, eliciting a range of interesting contributions so far. In its own terms, I rather like the intention of making justifications for appointed peerages more transparent, with all that information published in the public realm. As a believer in sunlight being the best disinfectant, I believe that the more the public can see all the aspects of the inner workings of Parliament the better. However, I will raise several caveats about whether this would really lead to greater public trust in this House.

As someone whose appointment here was relatively recent and, to say the least, contentious and elicited widespread media comment and speculation—although I note that conspiratorial misinformation is not just a preserve of trolls on social media but alive and well in the mainstream—I have every interest in a more open system. But as an outsider before I entered this place, I always thought that the opaque way people were offered peerages inevitably fuelled suspicion. It was always far clearer to me why hereditary Peers were here than appointed Peers.

The truth is that none of us is here legitimately in terms of democracy. I appreciate that the main public concern is often the notion of cash for honours. Buying oneself into the legislature is obviously unconscionable, but even this accusation can be a lazy trope in our cynical times. For example, as we speak, plenty of people are saying that my peerage and those of several other recent non-party appointments were paid for by dirty Russian money—because, you know, Brexit was a Putin plot, et cetera. This conspiracy theory nonsense is confined not just to the crackpot fringes but given respectable support by mainstream commentators. I am equally wary of concluding that if someone happens to be wealthy or Russian and ends up in this House they are inevitably dodgy.

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in the gap. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for bringing this interesting Question before us from 1917, although I do not commend the Question itself because it seems to draw the monarch into vetoing, or not, a proposal put to her.

Unfinished business from 1917 is one thing, but we have unfinished business from 2017 and the Burns report, as the noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Cormack, pointed out. Despite being a believer in more fundamental reform of the House, I happily took part in the Burns committee to try to find a way forward without legislative change, which we all thought was unlikely. That way forward commanded wide support in the House. It was a scheme for new appointments and retirements that depended on trust between the parties and the Cross-Bench group, and an understanding that each would comply with the broad principles. They would provide the retirements to make the numbers right, except in cases where deaths had taken place, and, in the case of the Government, not put the numbers up in defiance of the principles behind the report.

I am afraid that that trust has not remained. We are in a situation whereby, unlike the previous Prime Minister, Mrs May, the present one does not recognise any need for restraint of that kind. That is changing the whole situation and making the Burns proposals non-operative.

I should add that we also had views about the role of the Appointments Commission in making people realise what was involved in becoming a Member of the House of Lords, and asking them questions as to whether they understood what would be required of them—but of course without any power of veto.

If we stay as we are, the Executive get the best of both worlds. They can put unlimited numbers of people into the House of Lords and then discount the opinions expressed by that House on the grounds that it is an appointed House. How does that serve our democracy? We need an effective second Chamber. Quite a lot of the time, our second Chamber is as effective as the limitation that I have just described allows us to be, but it will not continue to be if it becomes a Chamber in which every Government come along and put in a whole lot of new appointments, not even on the basis of the contribution that they can make to this House.