House of Lords — House of Lords, 2015-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
John MacGregor (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I welcome this debate, which gives us an opportunity to discuss some of these issues yet again. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for giving us that opportunity We have talked many times about an elected House. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, that issue is in the long grass due to the other place waking up to what it would mean for that House. However, after an elected House, the size of this House is the next big issue in terms of your Lordships’ office. I admire the noble Lord’s objective but strongly doubt the practicality of his proposal and believe that there are better alternatives. As chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers, in the past two or three years I have been involved in a lot of discussions about not only an elected House but the size of the House; whether it is in formal or informal conversations, that issue almost inevitably comes up, after the issue of an elected House. This demonstrates that there is concern in this House about its size and that it may make us look increasingly unattractive, and certainly out of date, if we go on growing at the pace we are. This debate therefore gives us an opportunity to assess the state of opinion on the merits of the various proposals and to see whether there is some way forward. I very much support my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s remark about conducting an analysis of some of those proposals. Indeed, the Clerk of the Parliaments produced a limited paper indicating some quite technical and more modest proposals for reducing the size of the House. However, my noble friend would intend that to go further, and I support him in that I want briefly to use this opportunity to indicate where I stand on the question of size. It cannot be defended that we are the second largest assembly in the world, only behind the Chinese National People’s Congress; and we are, even at that, an assembly with limited powers. There is, of course, the impact on facilities and costs, to which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, referred, and I have seen the document produced by the Clerk on this, which indicates that introducing a modest proposal by which people can take retirement voluntarily could be done at additional cost; but I will come back to that point later. Certainly, the effect on the facilities and the costs of the House overall are considerable There will always be occasions when our numbers will be added to from the dissolution and resignation honours, additional arrivals proposed by the Appointments Commission, and so on. Inevitably, there will be new appointments at the end of a Parliament and sometimes at the beginning of one. On the one hand, we are constantly going to have new people coming in—I will talk about fresh blood in a moment—but there is also the slow pace at which we deal with size at the other end. So where do I personally stand? I want to spend my time going briefly through the alternative ways to reduce the numbers to compensate for the fresh blood. It is, of course, extremely important that we have the fresh blood, and we should recall that experience and expertise can get out of date as the years pass, and the issues that involve experience and expertise are very different. That is why we definitely need the fresh blood First, the question of the hereditaries should be allowed to wither on the vine and we should no longer have the process of an election for another hereditary Peer to replace one who dies Secondly, establishing an age limit is also a proposal put forward by the Labour Party working party. This, in fact, I strongly support. That paper was correct; in every other occupation and profession there is an age limit, and we should be no different. There will always be the argument, "Old so-and-so still contributes enormously to the House and we want to continue to have that benefit". That may in part be true, but it could be argued elsewhere in other professions and in every occupation for which there is an age limit. However, as I said a moment ago, it is important in this context to recognise that experience and expertise can become out of date. Human rights have sometimes been put forward as a reason for not introducing the proposal but that has not been an objection to proposing age limits elsewhere. If we are to reduce numbers to compensate for the fresh blood that comes in, we should establish an age limit. As the Labour Party proposed, retirement should take place at the end of the Parliament during which one has reached the age of 80. In other words, there would be automatic retirement not at the age of 80—it could be 84 or 85 for many—but at the end of the Parliament in which one becomes 80. That is the right proposal; that is what I would support. I have seen other proposals suggesting that the parties should attempt to maintain the party balance but have elections among themselves as to who should be retired at the end of the Parliament. That is not only impractical and would lead to all sorts of different attitudes being taken by different people, but divisive. The proposal of an age limit in the Parliament in which a Peer turns 80 has the merit of simplicity and fairness all round. I would certainly be happy for that proposal to be put forward as an alternative in the Clerk’s paper, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde suggests Finally, on compensation, I have seen the arguments in the Clerk’s paper that indicated, in the proposal he put forward, that there would be a saving in public expenditure if modest compensation was given to people who wished to retire. That paper had a lot of other ingenious ideas that would be well worth exploring, but the argument about public opinion is very difficult to defend on compensation, when people are here not in an occupation in the normal way, but as a great privilege. If we look for compensation for when people retire, I do not believe that that will help the image of the House. In conclusion, I have always, both in this House and for 27 years in the other place, been opposed to an elected House of Lords, but we must recognise our defects and valid criticisms made of us. If we go on growing and ageing, there will inevitably be such criticisms, which will grow, not least in the media. We should grapple with this issue. Therefore, I support what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde suggests: a paper should be drawn up, not just with the limited proposals that we had before, but that covers all the different alternatives so that we can deal with this ourselves and be seen to be doing so.