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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, pending general consensus on the composition of the House and whether it should be 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected, we certainly need to tighten up the appointments system. In so far as the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, does that, I welcome it. I do, however, have four or five small and large reservations about how the Bill attempts to do so. First, the Bill suggests that the members of the Appointments Commission should be appointed for seven years. That is too long. I cannot think of many organisations to which people are appointed for as long as seven years. University heads of department are appointed for about five years, as are chairmen of quangos. A period of seven years does not allow sufficient rotation of the membership or new ideas to emerge. There is also the danger that the members of the commission can over time build up a kind of power base and create suspicions about the process of appointment that needs not occur. Secondly, if we are really going to tighten up the appointments system, this commission, like all other commissions, should be required to submit an annual report to your Lordships’ House, explaining how many people had applied, the breakdown of the applicants, how the appointments were made, and whether in the light of the process of appointment the commission thinks that some changes need to be made. If all other commissions regularly report to your Lordships’ House, I see no reason why this commission, which is so important to the structure and operation of this House, should not be required to do the same. My third reservation has to do with the criteria of appointment to your Lordships’ House. The Bill mentions two: conspicuous merit, and the capacity and willingness to contribute to the work of the House. I am not entirely happy with the words ““merit”” and ““conspicuous””: conspicuous to whom, and what does merit mean in this context? Does it include a nurse or a trade union leader? What are the criteria by which we decide? Who defines merit and whether someone meets that criterion? I have even more difficulty with the second criterion: the capacity and willingness to contribute to the work of the House. If someone has the merit, he obviously has the capacity. Capacity therefore seems to be implicit in the idea of merit and therefore redundant. Nor does the Bill do anything to spell out what willingness is. What does it mean to ask someone, before he or she is appointed, whether he or she is willing to contribute to the work of the House? One of the things that one might ask is whether they are prepared to attend the place fairly regularly. If that is too demanding in certain circumstances, a minimal commitment to attend at least a fifth or a quarter of the sittings of your Lordships’ House should show in earnest whether someone is willing. Unless we spell out these things, either in this way or some other way, there is a danger of misunderstanding. I am also a little uneasy about the fact that a person who has been sentenced or ordered to be in prison for more than one year may be eligible after a lapse of time. If someone has been in prison, the legitimacy of the House and public confidence in it requires that that person should not be considered for appointment. I also have unease about the overall membership of the House. The commission says that its membership should not exceed that of the House of Commons, but that does not tell us anything. It does not tell us what the maximum membership of this House should be, which should be decided on what this House is expected to do. A further difficulty is that the House of Lords has 100 Members more than the House of Commons. The commission says that that number should be reduced in eight years. It would mean that there should be about 12 fewer appointments each year, which would be considerably fewer than at present and bound to deny new blood as well as frustrate talent. Reducing the number to 100 is important, but rather than simply requiring that over eight years 12 fewer Members should be appointed, we should encourage more Peers to take permanent leave or to allow retirement. My final point is partly conceptual and partly linguistic. The Bill states that Members who have taken permanent leave of absence shall no longer be Members of the House of Lords. I think that only Members can be on permanent leave, an outsider cannot be. If I am on leave, I am on leave as a Member of this House by virtue of being a Member of this House. Therefore, I would formulate the wording slightly differently. I suggest that those Members who are on permanent leave of absence should not be ““active”” Members or should not be ““considered”” Members of the House of Lords, rather than simply saying that they are not Members of the House of Lords.