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House of Lords Reform

My Lords, it is now 99 years since the passing of the Parliament Act 1911. I think it would have considerably surprised the supporters of that Act that, a century on, the question of how people should become Members of your Lordships’ House is still undecided. To use for a moment the story that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, raised about the man who said that everything that could be said once on a subject has been said but not everybody had said it, the situation here is more than that. Everything that could be said on this subject has been said and, what is more, everybody has said it. The trouble is that not everybody has said it more than 20 times. I shall therefore concentrate, perhaps slightly as a form of light relief, on other aspects of reform, just pausing to say that I support strongly the 80:20 per cent formula. There have been many important changes since 1911 in the way in which your Lordships’ House operates. Notably, we have had the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the House of Lords Act 1999 which between them have fundamentally altered the nature and membership of the House. In 1911, Members of your Lordships’ House were mainly grandees, the hereditary aristocracy, the great landowners and the descendants of great landowners. That had been so ever since Parliament had first come into being 600 years earlier. But that is very far from the present membership. No new hereditary peerage, I believe, has been created since Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton in 1984. It is several years now since any peerages have been included in the New Year’s or Birthday Honours.