“Whereas it has not been expedient at present for the Government to bring forward legislation to reform the House of Lords, the purpose of this Act is to provide that the Lords Temporal are peers appointed under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.”—(Alex Burghart.)

This new clause describes the purpose of the Bill.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee divided: Ayes 98, Noes 375.

Question accordingly negatived.

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Third Reading

King’s consent signified.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I thank right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House for their scrutiny of the Bill throughout its passage. I am grateful to all those who contributed in Committee, as well as those who contributed to the lively debate on Second Reading last month. I also thank you and your colleagues for their chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I thank Members on both sides of the House for their contributions, including my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards), Sir Gavin Williamson, my hon. Friend Phil Brickell, Pete Wishart, my hon. Friends the Members for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker) and for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), Sir Ashley Fox, the right hon. Members for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), and Iqbal Mohamed.

This Bill is a matter of principle. It has been introduced to address an outdated and indefensible feature of our legislature, rather than as a criticism of any contribution made by individual Members. The Government have listened to the debates in this House with interest and I look forward to following the Bill’s passage in the other place, where I am sure there will be further thoughtful contributions. I thank my officials and the whole team who have worked on the Bill.

This House will send to the other place a Bill that fulfils a manifesto commitment, and our manifesto was very clear:

“The next Labour government will…bring about an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords.”

That is precisely what the Bill does. It has a clear and simple purpose, a single focus, and it completes a process that started a quarter of a century ago. It sends a powerful message to people growing up in my constituency —in Blaenavon, Pontypool and Cwmbran—and beyond, right across the country: “You do not need to be born into certain families to make our laws.”

On Third Reading of the Parliament Bill—that landmark reform of the House of Lords—on 15 May 1911, the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, said:

“I repeat, as I began, that our first duty, in view of the electoral and Parliamentary history of this measure, is to place this Bill on the Statute Book. It is stamped, if ever a measure was stamped, with the authority and approval of the electorate of the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 15 May 1911;
Vol. 25, c. 1699.]

In that spirit, I commend this Bill to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

I echo the words of the Paymaster General in thanking everyone who has spoken this afternoon. It has been a good natured and interesting debate.

I want to echo some words of my right hon. Friend Sir Julian Lewis in praise of the House of Lords. When I first came to this place, I bumped into Lord Young of Cookham, who I had known a few years previously, and I said, “How are you getting on in the upper House as a Minister?” He said, “It’s rather harder there than it is down your end.” When I asked him what he meant, he said, “Well, you see, when I stood up as a Minister in the House of Commons, I normally felt that, with the support of my officials, I was probably the best informed person in the room. But when you get to the Lords, you face five former Secretaries of State, three former heads of the civil service and people with expertise from across the sector, and what you find there is real scrutiny.”

I love this place and I do not wish to take anything away from it, but I do not wish to see it replicated; one of us is enough. That is why, despite the fact that the Opposition disagree with many of the things that the Labour Government are doing, we have been pleased to see that they have edged away from their long-standing commitment to an elected upper House. An elected upper House would replicate this place unnecessarily. It would inevitably get in the way of the primacy of the Commons and make the passage of law harder. It was very significant that, on 5 March, Lord Mandelson made an intervention with the Lord Speaker—on his very popular podcast—and said that the proposals of the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for constitutional reform had

“barely been put in the oven…let alone…baked.”

I am very pleased that the Labour Government have taken that on board.

That said, the Bill in its present form cannot have the support of the Opposition. The Labour party has reneged on the solemn promise it made in 1998 not to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers until it brought forward a comprehensive plan for a reformed upper House. Many Government Members have said that the hereditary peers sit in the House of Lords by duty of right; well, that is not entirely right. The reason the remaining hereditary peers are in the House of Lords is that the Labour Government put them there. That was the agreement that was reached in 1998.

The remaining hereditary peers—who already sit in the Lords and scrutinise, night after night, the legislation introduced by this House—should not be treated in this way. Had the Government respected their position and made provision for them in a reformed Chamber, it would be very hard—not impossible, but very hard—to oppose this legislation. However, as it is, the Government are seeking to remove established scrutineers in order to replace them with Labour appointees, and we cannot support that.

The Minister’s argument that the Conservatives can nominate replacements is obviously not entirely genuine. Although we can put people forward, we cannot guarantee that they will go into the upper House. The Government could make that commitment tonight, but they have not done so. They have said nothing about the 33 Cross-Bench hereditary peers who will be removed by the legislation. Labour has broken its promise from 1998, and it has broken its promise to bring forward all its reforms immediately. The Conservative party will not support it.

I will endeavour to be brief. I think that the Bill is to be welcomed. It is many things, but it is not, I fear, what the Government have tried to dress it up as. It is the fulfilment of a manifesto commitment, but one that was made, as my hon. Friend Alex Burghart made clear, back in 1997. Blair blinked because my friend Robert Salisbury did what all Cecils have done since their appointment by Queen Elizabeth: he did a bit of deal-making and they found a solution.

If you are very quiet and listen, Madam Deputy Speaker, you can hear the voices of Labour radicals of the past muttering to themselves, “Is that it? Is that what all the intervening years since 1997 and the 14 years of Labour navel-gazing in opposition, as it contemplated its radical programme for government, have produced—removing 92 people who would have been removed in any event had Blair not blinked? No democratisation at all of the House of Lords? What a wasted opportunity.” What a wasted period of opposition that was—something I hope and know that our Front Benchers will not replicate. This timid church mouse of a Bill says, “We will take away some people who we would have taken away more than a quarter of a century ago.”

The Paymaster General, who I always consider to be one of the stars of the Treasury Bench and who is a good friend, told us that the principal motivation behind the Bill is for young constituents of Torfaen to say, “Ah, a glass ceiling has been removed,” as if they have sat there thinking, “You know, I would love to get involved in public life, if it wasn’t for this roadblock to my advancement”—namely, the 92 hereditary peers. With the greatest of respect to those on Treasury Bench, I think that a greater percentage of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and constituents of all Labour Members—are probably asking themselves when the Labour party will crash the glass ceiling of having either a person of colour or a woman lead it.

I, too, congratulate the Paymaster General and his ministerial team on getting the Bill through Parliament at such pace and so early in the parliamentary calendar, as he has said on several occasions. I really hope that this will not be it. As the Conservatives have said, this really is a timid pipsqueak of a Bill.

The Paymaster General quoted Herbert Asquith’s words about the House of Lords, but could he not have quoted Keir Hardie, who pledged over 100 years ago to abolish it? Could he not have quoted Gordon Brown, who said only a few months ago that Labour would bring forward a new democratically elected second Chamber to represent the nations and regions of the whole of the United Kingdom?

Instead, what we have is the low-hanging fruit of the hereditary peers. Is it not remarkable that it has taken until 2024 to remove the earls, the barons, the dukes—all the assorted aristocrats—and we are to give Labour great credit for doing so? This should have happened several centuries ago, not in 2024.

I hope that Labour Back Benchers are not going to be disappointed, because we have heard several contributions, on Second Reading and today in Committee, suggesting that further reform is going to be coming; that these are the first stages of a whole package of reforms that will come before this House. I have to say that we have heard it all before from successive Governments, particularly Labour ones. We were promised a succession of reforms to the House of Lords, only for nothing to be delivered, so what we need to hear from Government Front Benchers is when those further reforms are going to come. We need a clear road map for their ambitions when it comes to the House of Lords, and that has to start with ensuring that that circus down the corridor is properly reformed and that we get to a position where it will be a democratically elected House.

Well done to the Government on getting this Bill through. I really hope that Labour Back Benchers have not been sold a pup and that they will get the further reform that has been promised to them, but what we really need to hear from the Government now is about solid progress on proper reform of the House of Lords.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

The House divided: Ayes 435, Noes 73.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read the Third time and passed.