Contribution
My Lords, I agree that the committee has done a very good job in answering the questions that it was given. The report is thorough and persuasive, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and her committee for their work. She and I worked together on the Lord Speaker’s committee and I know how hard she has worked on this whole subject for many years.
I shall take the retirement age first. If a retirement age is to be introduced, I agree that 80 is a sensible retirement age for new Members. I think any older retirement age would be extremely difficult to sell to the public. I also support the proposed transitional arrangements for existing Members and the suggestion to begin with a fixed date. Together, these eliminate the uncertainty of any proposal tied to election dates and avoid too many existing Members leaving at the same time. The committee has also reached a sensible conclusion on the issue of participation. It is a blunt mechanism, but the reality is that there is no other solution that is not excessively complex and probably unworkable. I looked at many of them during my time working with the Lord Speaker’s committee.
However, while the report provides good answers to the exam questions in isolation, my view is that the proposals do not solve the underlying problem. The Prime Minister has said that he is in favour of problem solving rather than point scoring. I was taught that before making changes you should ask two questions: what is the problem you are trying to fix, and what are the causes of the problem?
The Labour Party manifesto in 2024 said that the problem was that the House of Lords was too big. Of course, there are two important reasons for the present size. The first, and the one that we are discussing today, is that Members are appointed for life unless they choose to retire. The proposals in the report would help with that. If they were implemented, there would be a one-off reduction in the size of the House, and subsequently the numbers leaving would be slightly higher than they otherwise would be.
The second and more important reason for the size of the House is that Prime Ministers are under no constraint about the number of Peers they appoint or the party balance of the appointments they make. Whenever there is a change of Government, we see a pattern of leapfrogging as Prime Ministers appoint disproportionately to their own party. The manifesto also said:
“We will reform the appointments process”.
Yet the Government have not gone anywhere near this, as far as I am aware. Consequently, there will be no obstacles to Prime Ministers appointing any number of new Peers to fill the space that will be created by the retirement proposals.
We need a package of measures that will reduce and contain the size of the House not just for a year or two but for the longer term. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, pointed out, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, agreed, such a package should include a commitment by the leaders of the main parties to exercise restraint in making new appointments and to maintain a fair balance of appointments between parties. The Leader of the House has often said that the House works best when the two parties are of a similar size. As the noble Lord, Lord True, pointed out, we are now approaching that position, with the gap between the two main parties closing. This is the ideal time for some kind of movement on the question of appointments and a fair balance of appointments between parties.
In my view, the package should also include a generous term limit for new appointments. I do not want to rerun the argument of age limits versus term limits, but I think we could have both. A retirement age on its own would encourage younger appointments. Surely it can be no part of a reform process if it means we could have Members here for 40 years or maybe more; I find that quite astonishing.
To summarise, I am content with the participation proposal. I am not in favour of a retirement age on its own or for its own sake, but I can envisage that it could play a valuable part in a more comprehensive and wider package to reduce and control the size of the House.