Contribution
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has gone somewhere, but I congratulate her on presiding over this report. I would have thought it was almost impossible to get an agreement. From time to time, people ask me what is unique about the House of Lords, and my answer is quite simple: it is the only pensioners’ Parliament in the world. We have in this House a lot of experience, a lot of age and most of us have been in some area of the public realm. That is why it works: because there are a lot of former MPs, MEPs and trade union officials here, but, basically, people have worked within the system of the rule of law, and that is part of our success.
Briefly, I would like to remind people that this week we welcomed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, to the House—he is 77 years old. I am sure he will make a distinguished commitment, as he has during his working life, but to bring him in at 77 and throw him out at 80 does not seem to be sensible, friendly or well thought out.
My next point is for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who is also not here. He mentioned the difficulty of having an emeritus association and the difficulty of it representing Scotland, where a lot of people live a long way from London. I was the person who established the European Parliament Former Members Association. It now has members stretching from the north of Norway right through the continent to Cyprus. It can be done, but it is not cheap. One of the problems our former members always had with the Brits was that they were always trying to do things on the cheap, not pay their subs and get away with things. If we want a proper former Members of the House of Lords association, we are looking at £300,000 to £400,000 a year to build a structure that would actually work and keep people in touch.
Next, I will touch briefly on compulsory retirement. I just do not agree. We have had many speeches, and I agree with them all. It is the wrong way forward, and I certainly will not be voting for it. One problem with a compulsory age of retirement, quite simply, is that it does not distinguish between people. I have been a member of the group run by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for many years, and I have consistently said there, “If you want to get retirements, you’ve got to give people some form of financial recompense”. We pretend that everyone in here is a millionaire. There are many Members of this Chamber who rely on their daily allowance to keep their standard of living up. I think that after a period of years here, we should be able to rely on some sort of termination payment. If we wanted to retire people at 80, we could make 80 the peak year and let it then fall back, but we cannot just throw people out.
I began life as a trade union officer, long before I was in politics, and we never expected people to work for nothing. We always regarded that people should be paid and should be paid fairly. If people come into this House and they get an income, frankly it should not just be taken away from them, leaving them deprived of any financial recompense. If you want retirements, get yourself a financial proposal which enables people to retire with some sort of pension, and, if you like, base it around 80 and then bring it down, but do not just throw people out. I do not believe that that is fair or acceptable.
I hope these thoughts have been of some value. If we move to the next stage, I may well table an amendment about a pension or financial recompense for people who are thrown out.