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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, looking at the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, overall, I approve of the establishment of a statutory Appointments Commission, Clause 12 excluding from the House Peers who do not attend during a Session, the facility for a permanent leave of absence and measures to exclude Peers who have committed a serious criminal offence. However, amendments are necessary to all the above. The Appointments Commission proposed in the Bill would do little to take the influence of the Prime Minister and political parties out of the appointments process. Why, in Clause 2(2), should the four members—who are commendably not to be affiliated to any political party—be nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker? They should, in my view, be nominated by another independent body. I would like to see an additional clause to make the commission mindful in the selection process that there should be a balanced House in terms of wide expertise in, for instance, industry, commerce, finance, law and the arts. That should be a major criterion for the non-political appointments. Clause 5(2) is too vague, mentioning only ““conspicuous merit”” and, "““a willingness and capacity to make a contribution to the work of the House of Lords””." I declare an interest as a hereditary Peer. I cannot support Clause 10 on the removal of the by-election procedure. I will not bore the House by repeating the well argued reasons given by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. If the promoters of the Bill are saying that it does not preclude a stage 2, why not wait for that to happen before changing the by-election procedure? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, made that promise during the passage of the Bill that became the House of Lords Act. That promise must be honoured, particularly with respect to those hereditaries who were so unfairly kicked out in 1999. The Bill leaves a significant number of questions unanswered on the composition of the House, including how to control the size of the House, notably if political support were to fluctuate over short periods. There would be a risk that the House would grow rather than contract, even allowing for leave of absence. There is the question of how to determine the balance between the Government and third and other parties. What would be the size, as opposed to the relative balance, of the government and opposition parties? I now turn to the clauses on permanent leave of absence. When a Member seeks permanent leave of absence or dies, should there not be an automatic top-up procedure rather than one that just leaves the matter to being dealt with once a year under Clause 8(1)? It is still unclear that Clause 15 is not retrospective. I find Clause 17 rather bizarre. If such a person was renominated, would he not be automatically excluded, even if his appointment was confirmed? Overall, here we have a Bill that has good points but which needs careful examination in Committee. On the other hand, the Government’s insistence on ploughing on with proposals for a fully or partially elected House will only lead to trouble. It is naive to believe that, just because there is consensus on the Front-Bench working group of all the parties, the Back Benches here will sit idly by. I welcomed the letter received in July from the Leader of the House inviting Back-Bench Members to suggest ways of having input into the cross-party group. The only trouble is that nothing concrete has resulted from it. In conclusion, there still remains the key issue that by far the majority here does not want the Government’s proposal of a fully or mainly elected House. The current House, which we have by default, is working very well. The Cunningham report stated that, if we had an elected House, there would need to be a review of its powers. An elected House of Lords will wish to have a stronger role in the legislature. Is that what the Government want?