Lord Burns (CB)

My Lords, I welcomed the statement from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, at the beginning of Report and her proposal to establish a dedicated Select Committee to undertake future work once the Bill becomes law. She highlighted two specific proposals in the Government’s manifesto—on retirement and participation—on which she would like to make progress in the Select Committee. She suggested that there seemed to be consensus in the House on these issues and I think many of us would agree. However, in response to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the Leader did not include controlling the size of the House as one of the topics that might be considered by this Select Committee. She suggested that it could possibly be covered by a subsequent committee. To me, this was surprising, as the manifesto also stated that the House of Lords is “too big”, which could, at a bit of a stretch, be interpreted as a commitment. I am grateful to the Leader for several useful conversations on this matter in recent weeks. As the House knows, my view is that if we are to address the issue of the size of the House, we must address appointments as well as departures, either in this Bill or subsequently. Both matters are important. However, during the debate on the Bill, considerably more attention has been given to measures that would increase the number of Peers leaving than to the number of appointments. The cross-party committee which I chair for the Lord Speaker concluded that these measures to increase the numbers leaving may be in vain if no action is taken also to constrain the number of appointments. The manifesto states that the reason the House is too big is that “appointments are for life”. However, an additional and more important reason for the present size of the House is the Prime Minister’s power of patronage in the appointment of Members. With rare exceptions, there has been a persistent tendency for the number of appointments to exceed the number of leavers, on occasions by very large amounts. There are no guardrails on appointments, as we seem to call them these days. Prime Ministers can make more appointments than Members who leave, and often do. To make matters worse, they can appoint disproportionately to their own party when in office, and often do. As the saying goes, you do not have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book—or even a Select Committee report.