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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on the promotion of this Bill. It is a genuinely workable solution to the much-discussed second stage of House of Lords reform. It does not compromise the supremacy of the elected House of Commons and it maintains this House as a fully appointed revising Chamber with its unique reservoir of experience and expertise. It is an approach that we should all support and fight for in the months and years to come. In the short time available, I should just like to raise a few issues which need to be discussed. First, on the choice of members of the statutory Appointments Commission, I agree that there should be nine members and that members of the commission should be formally nominated jointly by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker of this House. But their decisions should be based on one nominee each from the three major parties in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, with the remaining three members to be nominated by the independent Cross-Benchers in the House of Lords. One of the Cross-Bench nominees should be appointed chairman. This arrangement would create a commission composed of six Peers and three MPs. Unlike the present commission where there are two outside members, there would be no outside members, which is right. Outside members might harbour ambitions to join the Upper House, which it would be difficult for them to realise. The same is partly true for MPs, but as political party representatives, they would need to persuade only their political backers. There is also the issue of whether members of the commission should be Privy Counsellors. The Bill states that at least four should be, which is probably about right. The Bill requires the commission to, "““have regard to the need to achieve a membership not exceeding that of the House of Commons””," a subject which has been raised by other speakers. Given the fact that we are all living longer, it will be difficult to achieve this, while still making a reasonable amount of new annual appointments. This difficulty could be remedied by instituting a retirement age of, say, 80, or a fixed period of service of, say, 15 or 20 years. Of those alternatives, my preference would be for a fixed period of service, which should be set at 20 years. If a Member were making a significantly valuable contribution at the end of his or her 20 years, it could be made possible for him or her to claim a further, say, five years, to be decided by a secret poll of fellow Peers. The introduction of a 20-year fixed period of service would need to be spread over a number of years to avoid a mass exodus of long-service Members from the present Chamber. I believe that there are 191 Peers with more than 20 years’ experience—or about 25 per cent of the total. I fully accept that the arrangements for the 92 hereditary Peers are an anomaly and that the present system of election to fill vacancies should be ended. However, for historical reasons, a special case should be made for the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain. Part 2 is entitled ““Exclusion of Hereditary Peers””. This title is a bit harsh and could be changed to ““Future of Hereditary Peers””. The section should include specifically a clause stating that hereditary Peers will not be excluded from future nomination by the Appointments Commission. I fully support the Bill and trust that it will become the accepted second stage of House of Lords reform.