Contribution
My Lords, in preface, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her readiness on that amendment. We have reached a good point as a result of that discussion, and I thank her for that—though there is no doubt in my mind that there is a matter to resolve.
Amendment 17, in my name, seeks to amend the Life Peerages Act to place absolutely beyond doubt what I and many others consider probably is beyond doubt: the untrammelled power of the Crown to create a peerage that does not bring with it a summons to attend your Lordships’ House.
Throughout the passage of this Bill and over many years, if not decades, we have heard arguments about the size of the House, complaints about people who take peerages and then do not attend the House, reference to people who accept a peerage and then very swiftly retire, and on many occasions criticism of previous Prime Ministers’ extensive peerage creations. This one is not doing too badly, and I have no complaint—it was perfectly reasonable, to my mind, that the Labour Party should create more Peers in this House. That has always been my position, and I stand by what I said when I was in government and at this Dispatch Box. We welcomed all these new Peers in the good spirit that is customary in our House.
However, we all know that not all who receive the supreme honour and dignity of a peerage for life in many walks of service—business, the Armed Forces, the arts or even sport, and many others—want to be working Peers in this place, or even feel that they may be equipped to do so. Some come and then swiftly retire. Some very rarely pass those brass gates but, in the statistics, they still count among our number. Neither of those things serves the interest of the House as a whole.
This is one of many reasons why I submit to your Lordships that there is an overwhelming case for a modernising reform of our system of peerages, so that those who are worthy of being honoured in this way for their services to public life, with this extraordinary high degree of honour, but who do not want or may not be able to fulfil the obligations to attend here, may receive a peerage for life without being required to take a seat here.
He is not in his place, but I have often heard the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, make this point and I have always agreed with him. My noble friend Lord Lucas argued it very ably in Committee, and I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, supported the sentiment in Committee. He argued that
“separating the honour from the obligation is an important part of how we should be moving forward”.—[Official Report, 12/3/25; col. 796.]
I agree with him, and I hope that now the Bill is going back to the other place he will be as good as his word and support what he called this important part of moving forward—though, having heard earlier that the Liberal Democrats’ policy on the Bill is to vote against principles they support, I wish I could be more confident that he would follow me if I chose to divide the House. I will obviously listen carefully to the debate.
As I argued in Committee, it is probable that the right to create a life peerage of this type already exists. Indeed, such a life peerage was created as recently as 2023 in the case of the present Duke of Edinburgh, and there are many historical precedents, as I explained in Committee. When we hear a new Peer introduced in the House, we hear our clerk intone these words every time, after the reference to the Life Peerages Act:
“And of all other powers in that behalf us enabling”.
These affirm the undoubted and full range of powers inherent in the monarch to bestow peerages and other honours.