Lord Lucas:

Moved by Lord Lucas

11: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—“No Majority for one party in the House of LordsAfter section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958, insert—“1A No majority for one party in the House of Lords(1) An appointment may not be made to the House of Lords if it would have the effect of taking the total number of peers from parties forming part of the Government to more than 40% of the total members of that House. (2) If at any time the number of peers from parties forming part of the Government exceeds 40% of the total members of the House of Lords, no appointments to the parties forming part of the Government may be made until that number is reduced below 40% either by resignation, new appointments or leave of absence.”” Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment seeks to limit the unfettered power of Prime Ministers to make appointments to the House of Lords.

My Lords, when considering the future of this House, one of the most important parts is what the relative proportions of the parties should be. The Government, when in Opposition, quite rightly complained about our habit of adding Conservative Peers well beyond the point that would ordinarily have been considered acceptable.

If this House is to have a long-term future, we must get away from the idea that the Prime Minister can tip us over any day he wants just by appointing a lot of new Peers. We must have a degree of solidity in our independence. During all my time here, there has been a recognition that we should have a rough balance between the Government and the Opposition, with the Cross Benches holding the balance. As a concept, that has worked well, although it has been very hard to hold to it, given the actual appointments of Peers. I very much hope that this will be an area that the noble Baroness’s committee will cover. I beg to move.

I appreciate that, at this late hour, there will be a keenness for everyone to go, but I want to remind the House of its history in opposing amendments such as that proposed by the noble Lord.

One has to remember that, without the right of the Prime Minister exercising the royal prerogative, we would not have had the Parliament Acts and, perhaps more importantly, we would not have had the Great Reform Act 1832. It was because of the royal prerogative and the ability of the Prime Minister to appoint Peers that we were able to move forward to our current democratic state.

I will quote from the debates that took place in this House—but of course not in this Chamber. Speaking from the Opposition Benches, the Earl of Winchilsea

“said, he suffered a pain of mind greater than he could express in thinking that he had lived to that hour to witness the downfall of his country. That night would close the first act of the fatal and bloody tragedy. It would close the existence of that House”— the House of Lords—

“as one branch of the Legislature, for its independence, which was its brightest ornament, had fallen, and without that independence it might be considered as having ceased to exist”.—[Official Report, 4/6/1832; col. 349.]

Well, we still have the Earls of Winchilsea on the Opposition Benches forecasting total catastrophe from this move towards a more democratic House. Earl Grey, the Prime Minister—at a time when the Prime Minister was in this House—said in response that

“if the House of Commons should, after their Lordships rejecting, for a second time, a Bill sent up from that House, persist in asserting the opinion expressed by it with reference to that Bill, and that it should appear that in the event of an appeal to the country, it was not probable that another House of Commons would be chosen less zealous for Reform, then, in his mind, the Official Report, 4/6/1832; col. 362.]

I think the point persists almost 200 years later that the right of the Prime Minister to subject this House to the appointment of Peers is part of the process by which we achieve our present democratic freedoms, which I think would be a great loss to the country as a whole.

My promise, when I was appointed to this House by the leader of the Labour Party, was to vote for the abolition of this House, and I am still of that opinion—the sooner the better. Unfortunately, in making the promise I was not told exactly what should replace the House, but I am in favour of abolition and I think the power of the Prime Minister and the royal prerogative are important and certainly should not be lost, because we would end up with either a fully democratic House—which I oppose, because of its effect on the Commons—or this House, which is subject to democratic control through the Prime Minister.

My Lords, this has been a short but important debate and I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing the House’s attention once again to an unavoidable consequence of this legislation. We are heading towards a fully appointed House, with all the appointments made by the Prime Minister. I appreciate that political parties nominate, but the ability to decide the number and timing of appointments rests solely with the Prime Minister. It is therefore of some concern that the Prime Minister, with such powers of patronage, is attempting to remove more than 80 parliamentarian opponents through the Bill.

We will have a debate—another one—on the size of the House next week, so I will not comment specifically on numbers at this point. However, when the Lord Privy Seal spoke on this Amendment in Committee, she was critical of the “We have the numbers and can get this through” approach that she felt previous Governments had taken, and encouraged the House of Lords to adopt a more deliberative approach. That is exactly the approach that we are seeking to take with this Bill and others, and we should not be criticised for doing so.

Having heard me speak in the HOLAC debate, noble Lords will be aware of my views on retaining the discretion that Prime Ministers have to appoint the Peers they wish to appoint. But my noble friend Lord Lucas is right to bring back this important issue of the balance between the parties and to seek further assurances about the responsibility of the Prime Minister to behave reasonably.

I am sure that the current Prime Minister will continue to do so, and I hope that this amendment will never be necessary, but legislation should seek to look to the future and anticipate that future Prime Ministers might not behave in such an appropriate way in terms of appointments. It is a shame that we find ourselves in this position, but I look forward to hearing the Leader’s response.

My Lords, I listened to the noble Baroness with increasing incredulity. Even she had a smile on her face as she came up with some of that. I thank my noble friend for his points. In terms of history, he did not go back nearly as far as many other Members of the House have this evening, but it is always worth looking back at the Great Reform Act 1832 and what was achieved for this country by that legislation.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I are very much of the same mind on this one, but I do not agree with his mechanism for getting there. He talked earlier about the relative proportions of the House. He is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, talked about the Cross Benches. This is probably about right. But to put into legislation a proportion for just one group of the whole House is not necessarily talking about relative proportions. I know that he understands that. I stand by previous comments that I have made. This House works at its best when both parties have roughly equal numbers. This depends very much on the normal conventions applying and the way the House operates, but that is when the House does its best work.

The noble Baroness talked about “holding the noble Baroness to that kind of view”. I remind her of the last Government’s actions on this. Even with this Bill, the Government will comprise only 28% of your Lordships’ House. Part of the reason for that is that when we left office in 2010, we had 25 more Members of the House than the Conservative Party; I used these figures earlier in the debate. At the end of the parliamentary Session before the election, before we came into office, there were over 100 more Members of the Conservative Government than of my party. That does not serve this House well.

The noble Baroness is right that I said that the House should be more deliberative. That is when the House does its best work. A couple of weeks after I became Leader of the Opposition, about 10 years ago, I was in Victoria Street having a pizza when I got word that Jacob Rees-Mogg, as Leader of the House of Commons, had issued a statement that he intended to appoint 100 Members to this House to force the Brexit legislation through. That is not in the best interests of this House. He did not do it in the end.

I stand by the House being more deliberative in its approach. Members should be more active, participate properly and not just turn up to vote when they have not been around and participating in the work of the House. There is a better way forward on this. Even if the party opposite has come to this lately, I genuinely welcome that conversion. We should operate in a more collaborative way. I agree about the relative proportions, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, but I ask him respectfully to withdraw his Amendment.

Does the Leader intend this to be a subject for her Select Committee?

I do not think so, not directly. However, if the committee is looking at retirement and participation, we would want to ensure that, post any decisions that it takes and actions that this House might take on legislation, we maintain a balance around the House. It would be completely inappropriate to say, “This group is losing more than that group”, and for any party to use that as a way to gain a political advantage. Maintaining the proportions must always be in the minds of the Government and the Opposition, and I would ensure that.

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her reply and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.