Contribution
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, apologies.
Participation is more important than age. There is certainly no age limit on becoming a Member of Parliament, and there are plenty who intend to continue to be an MP after the age of 80, but of course, that is the decision of their electorate.
On the leave of absence, I suggest to the House that it should be available only for people who are ill, who are still working in the Diplomatic Service or who are working in the Royal Household. I do not see why anybody else should have a leave of absence at all. If they want to be part of this House—it is the second House and has a legislative purpose—they should be here or at least turn up. If we are not intending to remove the leave of absence from those people who choose to not spend their time here at all, we should apply the full declaration and registration of interests, just the same as anybody else. There is no reason why they should be any different.
I am a great believer in voting—of course, I would be, when I consider how many times we voted in this House in the previous Session. There are 16 people who never voted and never spoke in the previous Session, and half had joined the House since 2019. Some 25 Peers did not vote at all, 89 Peers voted fewer than 10 times, and so it goes on. I appreciate that there are several people, particularly Cross-Benchers—and this is recognised in paragraph 108—who do not necessarily feel comfortable voting, but that is why we are here. We are legislators. So I would like to see a little more about participation—perhaps there could be a requirement to participate in at least 10 votes in a Session, which is a modest number.
I was disappointed earlier this year when, in March and April, two Peers turned up just a few weeks before Prorogation. One Peer had served in this House for 20 years, the other for 30 years. They turned up on that day—I am not sure that I have seen them since—just so that they could meet that one element.
I turn to the fewer than 20% of sitting days. Again, on the figures I was given by the Library for the 2024-26 Session, 116 Peers were here for fewer than 20% of the sitting days for which they were eligible. I am not talking about Peers who arrived in March this year, or whenever it was; it is about what they were eligible to do. There were 48 Cross-Benchers, 28 Conservatives, 10 non-affiliated, 10 Labour, including a Minister, three Liberal Democrats and 17 Bishops. Of those, 28 were over 88 years old, 15 were less than 55 years old, and so on.
Why are we here? I believe it is for more than just to give an opinion. We could ask people to give that to a Select Committee and invite them to be a witness. It is really about the scrutiny of what the Government are doing, their legislation and the manifesto that they are trying to deliver. I respect, as has been said, that the age of 80 is in the manifesto. I remind noble Lords that one Parliament cannot bind its successor, but that is a matter for us to consider carefully, because I am conscious that in future we do not just want manifestos the length of War and Peace on exactly what a Government want to do or not.
I was struck by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, yesterday, though I appreciate that it was a repeat of one he had given earlier. There is an issue about how much legislation is suddenly going through on Report. It is not new, but I genuinely believe it has got worse. I used to be a Whip in the Commons, and I did some comparisons. The Commons were taking twice as long to do Bills of a similar size, and the impact was that this House was doing far fewer days than it is at the moment. We have the Lord Privy Seal and the Government Chief Whip sitting on the Cabinet committee; I encourage them to think carefully about how we can get that balance right for the future. I appreciate that, in the first two years, Governments want to get their legislation through quickly, but they will continue to appoint people here if they keep losing votes. There is no doubt about that. We need to be mindful as we move forward on these big changes. Again, I come back to the point that participation is more important than age.