Part of House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill - Report (1st Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords at 10:07 pm on 2 July 2025.
The Earl of Devon
Crossbench
10:07,
2 July 2025
My Lords, I too see the benefits of a retirement age and therefore will speak briefly to Amendment 20 in my name, which is a variation on that theme. Whereas the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, proposes a retirement age of 85 in Amendment 7, my Amendment 20 is somewhat simpler. It proposes the introduction, only for newly appointed life Peers, of a retirement age of 80 or of a date 10 years after the Member’s introduction to the House, whichever is later.
Amendment 20 would thereby give effect to the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment to introduce a mandatory retirement age of 80. However, it would also introduce an important allowance for those who join your Lordships’ House after the age of 70. This is an important distinction, as it would do away with an arbitrary 80 year-old age limit and ensure that those such as serving Supreme Court justices, whose period of public service has a retirement age of 75, will be able to enjoy at least a full decade of service in your Lordships’ House, irrespective of the age at which they are appointed.
Noble Lords may recall the probing amendments in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and his excellent speeches introducing them, along with the famous Blencathra Excel spreadsheets calculating the impacts of various retirement ages. He noted that a retirement age of 80, if implemented immediately, would have a draconian effect on numbers in your Lordships’ House, removing up to some 327 Members. My Amendment 20 avoids that guillotine, as well as the organisational shock that would result therefrom, by imposing the age limit only on the newly appointed life Peers appointed under the Life Peerages Act 1958.
This would ensure that we do not instantly lose the valuable institutional wisdom among our more experienced Members, and it would not impact any current life Peers. Amendment 20 would thus fulfil Labour’s manifesto while tempering the age-based guillotine—at least for our existing Members—and gently introducing a retirement age that certainly seemed to find favour with the Majority of those present in Committee who expressed an opinion. On that basis, I recommend it to your Lordships and look forward to the response from the Leader of the House, particularly in light of the indication she gave earlier that there may be a Select Committee convened to consider just this topic.
The house of Lords is the upper chamber of the Houses of Parliament. It is filled with Lords (I.E. Lords, Dukes, Baron/esses, Earls, Marquis/esses, Viscounts, Count/esses, etc.) The Lords consider proposals from the EU or from the commons. They can then reject a bill, accept it, or make amendments. If a bill is rejected, the commons can send it back to the lords for re-discussion. The Lords cannot stop a bill for longer than one parliamentary session. If a bill is accepted, it is forwarded to the Queen, who will then sign it and make it law. If a bill is amended, the amended bill is sent back to the House of Commons for discussion.
The Lords are not elected; they are appointed. Lords can take a "whip", that is to say, they can choose a party to represent. Currently, most Peers are Conservative.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
