Sir Oliver Dowden

I will give way in a moment. I shall prove my point. Before the election, Labour sources admitted that “we’re going to need to appoint a dozen peers on day one to do big junior ministerial jobs that the MPs shadowing them aren’t up to doing.” In 1999, Lord Strathclyde, the then shadow Leader of the Lords, presciently warned of “the return of an almost medieval executive power—a noisome bramble-patch of presidentialism, patronage, private pressure, preferment and place”— past words that speak truth today. One central argument evinced by the Paymaster General is that no one should be in Parliament by “an accident of birth”. Yet, today’s Labour party reeks of the hereditary principle—the elevation of the nepo babies of north London, the coronation of the red princes: the Goulds, the Falconers, the Kinnocks, the Benns, the Eagles, the Reeves. Many of them are distinguished Members, but under Labour’s closed shop, it is hereditary peers out and hereditary MPs in. The question this House must address is whether a wholly appointed Chamber and waves of new Labour peers will improve the governance of our nation. Will they mean a proper impact assessment of the cuts to the winter fuel payment? Will there be better scrutiny of the proposed French-style union laws? Or, as Michael Foot told the House in 1969 when opposing Harold Wilson’s Lords reform Bill, will it become just “A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs”?—[Official Report, 3 February 1969; Vol. 777, c. 88.] The Labour party apparently wants to apply that phrase to this House, given the diktat from the Labour Whips banning their Members from tabling amendments without permission. The Downing Street boys do not want dissent from either House of Parliament.