Contribution
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I am very much in support of this report, and I congratulate my noble friend, as so many other people have already. I do so with the privilege of having been in this House for 27 years. I appreciate enormously the vast range of expertise and experience in this House, but I have always thought that there should be a retirement age, not as an expulsion but as a matter of course. I am grateful now that we have the responsibility ourselves as a self-regulating House to decide, if we take the opportunity, what is best for the House as a whole in the future.
I am very impressed by the work of the committee and for the careful and very inclusive way that it listened to so many opposing, passionate views, many of which we have heard around the House tonight, but it still agreed on what I think was a fair and practical solution. We have to consider the context. The committee has done its work in very heavy weather. Democratic politics can no longer be taken for granted. Much as we cannot expect this House to survive without radical intervention, the rule of law, as we have debated in this House recently, is under siege. The guardianship of the constitution is at issue. It is all the more important that Parliament retains respect and is truly effective and fit for purpose.
The House cannot be defended against change, but a retirement age creates the opportunity to think not just about the size and composition of the House but about what it needs to match the huge demands on it in the future, not least the changing nature of expertise, as well as perpetual questions about credibility and dignity as Members of the House grow older and more frail. Capacity varies enormously; we know that. I accept and am grateful for the phasing of retirement between 80 and 85, just as I am grateful that the ludicrous notion of a mass exit at any point, with all its perverse and undignified consequences, was put down.
I am also relieved that the idea of a participation bar was rejected. There is no fair way of doing that. Given the present size of the House and the way that, frankly, we do not make full use of our current expertise, a participation measure would have been bizarre as well as impossible to enforce. Much better to have attendance as a standard.
Therefore, the committee avoided the two huge bear traps, but it has come to the difficult but rational conclusion that age has to be a factor in future. I agree with that, just as I agree that our older Members have a unique and impartial wisdom and an invaluable institutional memory. Even if that institutional memory is rarely called upon, it is an aide-memoire for what can go wrong, alongside all the missed opportunities that might still be there. It covers not just the revision of legislation and scrutiny but how we manage the House and our relationships within it. But there is no doubt that institutional memory can also have a chilling effect on change. We in this House are past masters at arguing the case for unripe time.
We must be brave in recognising that the time is ripe. Judgment may improve in ways with age, but I do not think that the other value we hold close—our expertise—is of equal measure, and I speak from experience. Knowledge has never moved more quickly; nor has it raised such hard, ethical or existential questions. We must look at the scope for a continual renewal of knowledge in this House, whether it is the regulation of AI, hard choices over scarce resources or providing what young people need for a very different future. I agree that we must look at the way in which noble Lords come into this house.
That brings me to the size of the House. I do not think that there is any one right size; nor can we predict the future size of this House, but it should be smaller and nimbler, and we achieve that only if we have the courage to radically think hard about how we do legislation and scrutiny. Indeed, we do not have to wait to do that; I think the House is already too large to be effective in many respects.
I profoundly believe that the House has a duty of care to older Members but at the moment it is difficult to exercise that. Phasing in retirement gives us predictability and safety for the future.
As so often, I have turned to Trollope for a perspective. In his final book, The Fixed Period, he foresees a future British colony. A young unicameral parliament decides that the national lifespan should be 67 to improve productivity. The only recompense is that at age 66, in the final year, citizens will be provided with all their hearts’ desires. His prescription goes even further than the Labour Party manifesto, and I am not recommending it, but I shall certainly be taking advantage of what that last year holds.
Most importantly, let us, for goodness’ sake, decide for ourselves what is best and embed that decision within the practices and principles of this House. We do not need legislation to bring change.