Amendment 67
I support Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Laing of Elderslie, which I have signed.
As a stalwart participant in debates about the future of your Lordships’ House, in particular on the principle of its hereditary membership, it has been a source of constant frustration to me that the House has been unable since 2015 to make even minor and sensible reforms to our composition, until now. There are several sensible amendments to this Bill that go beyond removing the hereditary basis for membership, and I support the principle of this one.
I have looked at ministerial appointments made by way of creating a new peerage since 2015.
- There have been 29 in this period, of which nine—or approximately one-third—have lasted as Ministers for less than a year.
- Only seven of the 29 new Peers created in this way have lasted as Ministers for more than two years. Therefore, 76% of them have not lasted as Ministers for two years, but all of them have been granted lifetime membership of the House.
I then looked at the record of those appointed Ministers in this way after they ceased to be Ministers:
- Of the 29, 11 have gone on to make fewer than 10 spoken contributions and only 12 have made more than 50.
- Fifteen did not serve on a committee.
- Only eight took part in more than 100 Divisions.
It is a great source of frustration to many in the House that we have seen so many ministerial appointments which involved the granting of a life peerage, with the newly appointed Ministers lasting only a very short period of time in office and then mostly disappearing without trace from our Chamber but without choosing to resign from it.
If ministerial appointments created in that way continue at the same rate over the next decade, we will add another 30 Members to the House. That would make the cull of the hereditary Members less justified, if it were simply about numbers. One ministerial Peer would be created for every three hereditary Peers removed, and the ministerial Peers are likely to be of less value to the House in the long run.
The House of Lords is too large
All the evidence suggests that peerages created to enable ministerial appointments inflate our size while not invariably providing Members who are very active beyond the term of their ministerial office. We need to end the practice of a peerage for life being granted simply to enable ministerial appointments to be made from outside the membership of the House of Commons. Almost everyone agrees that the House of Lords is too large and that it is not well served by having Members who inflate our numbers without properly participating in our work.
Therefore, I hope that the Government will look favourably at ending the link between a life peerage and ministerial office. They could, at the very least, expect any new Ministers appointed in this way, at the end of their term of ministerial office, either to remain as active in the House as expected by the standards of the House of Lords Appointments Commission or to resign immediately from membership of the House. A public statement from the Prime Minister that this will be the case would be a welcome step, pending more wide-ranging reforms of the House. It would make an amendment such as this less necessary and avoid further debate.