House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have not so far participated in debates on the reform of the House. That has been, in part, because I feel that as a hereditary Peer I should leave discussions and decisions about the future of the House to those who are here in their own right and will remain after the next stage of reform when we, the surviving hereditary Peers, are finally phased out. This short Bill, however, deals directly with the remaining hereditary Peers, so my participation is relevant. The Bill proposes gently and painlessly to get on with the phasing-out process. As we wellknow, the Weatherill/Cranborne agreement by which 92 hereditary Peers were exempted from the 1999 Act, pending the next stage of reform, was a deal which ensured the relatively smooth passage of that Act. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointedout, that exemption was clearly understood to be temporary. The replacement of deceased hereditary Peers, added, as I recollect, to the package at a rather late stage, was agreed to by the Government very reluctantly because it perpetuated a significant hereditary presence. Seven and a half years have passed since the 1999 Act. During that time, 10 of the original 92 have died and been replaced. Clearly, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointed out, if they had not been replaced, only 82 would remain. As we age, the mortalityrate will accelerate, so that in 10 or 20 years natural wastage will have gone a long way towards eliminating those 82. Eventually, of course, they will all die, but that might take 50 years or more—I look across the Chamber to one of our younger Members. Natural wastage was proposed during the 1999 debates as a humane method of bringing to an end the right of all hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House. But this is not why the noble Lord has brought in this Bill. The replacement of deceased retained hereditary Peers, particularly through bizarre by-elections, is an anomaly when the ending of their right to sit in the House is accepted as part of all serious proposals for the next stage of House of Lords reform. There is no mainstream view which advocates the retention of hereditary Peers in the legislature in the 21st century. My use of the word ““bizarre”” is fully justified when considering an election such as the one in which I was involved in 2003, which has already been mentioned. There were three electors—that is, hereditary Labour Peers—and 11 candidates, most of whom had no previous Labour Party connections. There were almost as many electors as candidates in five other by-elections—a strange form of democracy, to saythe least, and one which makes a mockery of the proceedings of your Lordships’ House. It was an opportunity for ridicule not lost by several commentators in the media. When the 1999 Act was passed, it was expected that the next stage of reform would probably take place in the next Parliament. But now we are half way through the one after that, and despite the decisive vote in the other place in favour of a totally or mainly elected House, it is extremely unlikely that our new Prime Minister will wish to use the remaining two or three years of this Parliament to engage in a full-scale with your Lordships’ House which has, as we all know, voted clearly in favour of a fully appointed House. Incidentally, the form which that House might take is well outlined in another Private Member’s Bill, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall and others—that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel—which is sitting I the wings waiting for its Second Reading on 20 July. It is in the context of the unlikely event of stage 2 coming soon that we should consider this Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The replacement of retained hereditary Peers on death is against the modernising spirit of House of Lords reform. It was only agreed to as a temporary expedient. As the date for the next stage of reform seems to stretch further and further into the future, is it not time for this anomalous temporary measure to be ended? To pass this Bill would be a simple way of doing it and I commend it to my noble friend Lady Ashton on the Front Bench.