Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, there has been quite a lot of talk about the reason for His Majesty’s Government’s moves on this Bill, and I want to go back to the beginning of it. I shall go back to when the Minister for the Constitution, the right honourable Member of Parliament for Torfaen, Mr Nick Thomas-Symonds, speaking in a very blasé kind of Cabinet Office video, expressed the Government’s motivation for this legislation in these terms. He said that the legislation was needed because: “I want young people growing up … in my constituency, and indeed in every part of the country, to feel that they have the same chance as anyone else … in making the laws of the land”. In other words, his point was that the existence of the category of hereditary Peers contains within it a bar to public service because, as the young people in Mr Thomas-Symonds’ constituency, and indeed every other constituency, look at the option of public service by means of serving as a hereditary Peer, that option is of course by definition closed to them unless they are from a tiny minority of people who happen to have a parent or grandparent who carries a hereditary title. I understood that the Government’s aim in this was to create a United Kingdom in which there is no reason in principle why membership of the Lords, for the purpose of making laws, should not be open to any UK citizen, subject to the other parameters in paragraph 1.2 of the Companion to the Standing Orders, and to give everyone the right in principle to be considered for appointment to the upper House. However, the Cabinet Office video and the Government’s stated intention regarding the hereditary Peers Bill cause some considerable concern to not just me but the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, who has signed the amendment, and others in Northern Ireland. We have received, as other Peers may have, a letter from 15 young people on the subject that has moved me to table this amendment, after a great deal of discussion with the Public Bill Office. The signatories all live in Northern Ireland and for the most part are students or have not long left university. They are all young. They begin by referencing the Cabinet Office video and the Minister’s reason for the Bill, which I have just read out but will repeat: “I want young people growing up … in my constituency, and indeed in every part of the country, to feel that they have the same chance as anyone else to play a part in making the laws of the land”. In response to this, the young people state: “It is quite extraordinary that the Minister should have uttered these words at the same time the Irish Sea Border was affecting the most dramatic reversal of UK citizenship in our history, removing from us all means of making the laws to which we are subject not just in relation to one law or 300 but 300 areas of law. The truth is that the presence of 92 hereditary peers in the House of Lords in no way threatens our right, along with the rest of the population, to be considered for Life peerages. Similarly, they do not impact in any way our right to stand for election to the House of Commons or Northern Ireland Assembly. The Irish Sea border, by contrast, not only threatens that right; it nullifies it completely in 300 areas of law, denying us the rights enjoyed by our peers in Torfaen and everywhere else in the country to make the laws of the land. The Government cannot, on the one hand, lecture young people about the importance of active citizenship and yet, on the other hand, say, it’s so unimportant that all the people of one part of the UK should be happy to lose it in relation to 300 areas of law. There may be some people in Government who don’t think Northern Ireland matters but they should think about the wider messaging implications of their actions for young people across the whole UK. How can something that is vital in one part of the country be vital in that part of the country if in another part of the country it can be dispensed with? Consistency is important. ‘Do as I say not as I do’ never really works”. Their point is simple. The Windsor Framework effectively denies them access to any legislature making the laws to which they are subject in a staggering 300 areas, and removing the hereditary Peers will not change that. It feels as if we in Northern Ireland are subject to a classic conjuror’s illusion, where our eyes are being led away from confronting the greatest ever assault on the integrity of UK citizenship and towards a comparatively minor adjustment in the opposite direction that it hopes will capture our attention. These young people have not been taken in by that illusion and have asked me to table an amendment for two reasons: first, to expose the injustice and hypocrisy of the Government’s position and to challenge it; and, secondly, to warn that the erosion of UK citizenship as a whole is inherent in its erosion in Northern Ireland, and we kid ourselves if we pretend that is not the case. The UK’s position as a strong polity depends on people being active citizens—voting, standing for election and making themselves available to serve as Peers. That in turn depends on people believing that our citizenship matters. That is quite impossible to do if your Government tell people that their citizenship is so unimportant in one part of the United Kingdom that it can be dispensed with in a staggering 300 areas of law. You cannot do that in one part of the country without it undermining the value and importance of UK citizenship generally. The Government have shown that, far from being essential, citizenship can at least in part be dispensed with. I acknowledge that increasing the number of Northern Ireland Peers provides no answer to the injustice created by the Windsor Framework. There is nothing to be gained by having more people in place here to exercise the more limited citizenship that has been imposed on Northern Ireland people. We need the restoration of our full citizenship so that the young, and indeed all people in Northern Ireland, have the right in common with the rest of the UK—the common right that validates that we are one country, a body politic—to stand for election, to make themselves available for nomination to your Lordships’ House and to make all the laws of the land. After that letter was sent to some Peers, a cross-party letter appeared this morning in the Daily Telegraph, signed by a number of these young people—some members of political parties, some not. We have had quite a lot of support come in already from young people in Great Britain. I name some of them who have spoken out this morning: Jacob Watts from Cambridge, Tom Gartside from Newcastle, Kane Blackwell and Scott Lewis from Cardiff. In the same way that young people in Northern Ireland are feeling about this, it is not going to take a lot to get young people across the country to realise that their citizenship and all the talk about getting young people involved are a nonsense when it comes to something like this. The important thing is that sometimes—and this happens with individuals—you live in denial and keep pretending that if you just ignore it, it does not matter. It is the same with Governments. The Government should—and, if they wanted to, they could now—go back to the European Union and tell it that the Windsor Framework is not working, because it disrespects the territorial integrity of the UK in violation of international law, partly disfranchises 1.9 million UK citizens and is, as such, unsustainable. My amendment says, “Think behind this”. This is not just about getting rid of hereditary Peers. What we have done in Northern Ireland is a disgrace to the citizenship of our citizens, particularly to the young people of the future. I am moving my amendment to get that debate, but I hope that both the Government and the Opposition will not try just to deal with the actual amendment. Of course we would like more Peers from Northern Ireland, but that is a very different matter from the crucial issue I am trying to raise today. I beg to move.