Lord Moynihan (Con)

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Wolfson. He has already made the case about the need to clarify the process for future claims to a hereditary peerage when hereditary Peers no longer sit in your Lordships’ House. My noble friend highlighted the complexity of this process in Committee and even went as far as questioning whether the House currently has to resolve a claim in line with the recommendation of the Procedure and Privileges Committee. From my own experience, I can assure him that the House of Lords can overturn a recommendation from the Privileges Committee. The House of Lords has the power to debate and vote on the recommendations of all its committees, including the Privileges Committee. This means that the House can ultimately choose to accept, reject or modify any recommendation made by the committee. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will no doubt want to understand exactly what I am talking about, so, in 30 seconds, I will give him a brief example of evidence in the Moynihan case, which was a comparison of the DNA of my late Liberal Party member half-brother who, while alive, personally left a sample of his blood with a Harley Street physician, despite not legally being allowed in the UK. This in turn needed to be released and his DNA matched to a blood sample I witnessed being taken from his alleged young son from his fourth wife, a young boy who I had no proof was the boy in question when he arrived to give a sample at the dust-filled clinic of the Makati Medical Centre in Manila. One of the three phials of blood taken stayed in my briefcase as I continued to travel to China on business, making the most of fridges in my hotel rooms. It could be argued that that became contaminated, and I am sure that had the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, sat on the Committee for Privileges at the time, he may well have raised that issue. The fact is that the House of Lords, as a sovereign body with the power to regulate its own affairs, including the ability to review and decide on its reports and the reports of its committees, could have challenged that process. While the Privileges Committee’s recommendations are taken seriously, they are not binding on the House. The House ultimately retains the authority to decide on the course of action, including its consideration of the publication of the Privileges Committee’s report. In the Moynihan case, the House accepted the committee’s report without debate.