Lord Caine (Con)

My Lords, I can say without fear of contradiction that our former colleague the Countess of Mar would have been incredibly voluble over the past 35 minutes or so. I rise to make my first contribution to proceedings on this Bill from the Opposition Front Bench. Speaking as somebody whose origins are in the city of Leeds, some 200 miles away from north London, I hasten to add that my origins are about as far removed from the world of hereditary Peers, stately homes and landed estates as it is possible to be. I put on record my strong opposition to the measures contained in this legislation, and indeed the motivations behind it. The Bill, should it go through unamended, will sweep away centuries of unique British heritage and tradition from Parliament and our national life. The House that remains will be a fundamentally different institution, and not for the better. I intend to pay some lip service to the Standing Orders and actually speak to the terms of the amendment on the Order Paper before the House this evening. However, while preparing to speak to the amendment, I could not help but reflect on the role and representation of Northern Ireland Peers in your Lordships’ House and the contribution that Peers of Ireland over many centuries have made, which continues in a small way to this day. Some of these titles in the Peerage of Ireland predate the Act of Union. My noble friend Lord Courtown and the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, who was in his place a short while ago, are two examples. Their forebears would have been entitled to sit in the pre-union Irish House of Lords in Dublin. Incidentally, the Chamber of the Irish House of Lords is preserved intact inside the Bank of Ireland, the old Parliament House, opposite Trinity College on College Green, should noble Lords wish to visit it. I would very much recommend that they do; it is well worth it. After 1801 and the union, the Peers of Ireland, around 100-strong, did not gain the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. Some, such as Lord Palmerston, spent their entire careers in the House of Commons. It might be argued by some that, under the union, when it came to the hereditary peerage, there was an Irish Sea border. Instead of the automatic right, as my noble friend Lord Northbrook reminded us, under Article 4 of the union, a fixed number of 28 Irish representative Peers were elected from among the peerage of Ireland to serve here for life. Some Peers of Ireland were also given peerages of Great Britain or the United Kingdom. This practice continued into the 20th century. For those who think that by-elections to your Lordships’ House are a recent innovation, they actually have a much longer pedigree. As has been pointed out on a number of occasions during earlier debates on this Bill, the secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom in 1922 did not lead to the ejection of the 28 Irish representative Peers from this House. They were, wisely, allowed to stay, though their numbers were no longer replenished until the last one, the 4th Earl of Kilmorey, died in 1961, thus allowing the Irish representative Peers to disappear from this House gradually with good grace and dignity.