House of Lords — House of Lords, 2015-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I promise not to speak about the catering department. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, particularly as at last I may have found someone in the House who can tell me how it works, which he claimed to know I am in agreement with the direction of travel put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, but I want to concentrate on his proposal regarding the 75% mechanism being chosen in relation to past attendance, first on a point of principle and then on two matters of detail. My principal, and principled, point is that attendance is not enough to justify a weighting of 75% in whatever selection takes place. It is also important that the mechanism for that selection must have a clear connection with both the overall representativeness of the Chamber and, as the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, put it, the recency of the experience from which individual Members inform the debates in your Lordships’ House One thing that matters is how this place appears to the electorate, and that, as others have said, brings us to the vexed question of age. As a callow youth of 61, I do not dissemble when I say that I have been deeply impressed by the contributions of many Members of the House much older than me. However, can attendance alone justify the retention of the situation at present, in which the average age of the Members of this House yesterday was 70—these statistics are from the House of Lords Library, and I am grateful for them—146 Members were aged between 75 and 80, 101 Members between 80 and 85, and 73 Members 85 and over? Can attendance alone be justified, were age to be completely ignored, as an indicator of the relevancy of experience of ordinary lives? I am not suggesting a blanket ban on a certain age, but I cannot believe that any future arrangement would not specify appropriate measures to ensure that a reformed House reflected the citizenry of the United Kingdom in terms of gender and ethnicity, so why should it not in some terms reflect the age of the population Before I get into terrible trouble for this temerity, let me call in aid the speech made last month to mark his retirement by Lord Jenkin of Roding, a speech which was well received on all sides of the House. He said that he had responded to questions about why he was retiring as follows: "In recent weeks, I have been approached by a number of noble Lords from all parts of the House asking, sometimes with some asperity, why I am retiring. After all, I am getting on a bit and I realise that, but I have two answers; one is very short and the other is slightly longer. The short one is that after 50 years in Parliament—a number of noble Lords have already made reference to that—and at the age of 88, I feel that I have done enough. I have done what I can offer, and it is best to bow out and let others carry on The slightly longer answer is that, if this House is to continue to perform its hugely important functions in the running of this country, I totally believe that there has to be a constant infusion of new blood introduced into the House, with people who have current experience and whose experience of business or whatever field they have operated in is completely up to date".—[Official Report, 16/12/14; col. 141.] I really agree.