Contribution
My Lords, this has been a considered debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for the careful way in which she opened it. However, the fact that we have once again spent an entire day of precious parliamentary time debating our future as a House will be surprising for those outside this Chamber. Businesses and employers might have expected us to be debating national insurance, the job-killing Employment Rights Act and some of the highest energy costs in Europe. Farmers may have expected us to be focusing on food security and the family farm tax, and, most importantly, hard-working families might have expected us to debate energy bills, personal taxation, housing delivery and rising unemployment.
But the future of this House is important. Any change to the rules by which we govern ourselves, no matter how important the issue it seeks to resolve, must be weighed against the imperative that we must preserve our ability to do our duty as a House and hold any Government to account.
We have heard from across the House a number of themes begin to emerge in our debate today. We have heard how these proposals will have a disproportionate impact on the Cross Benches. If both rules were applied as of today then 30.5% of the House would be affected, but that rises to 46.6% of Cross-Benchers. My noble friend Lady Eaton raised the important issue of the effective running of this House and particularly about effective committees in the House, should many of our experienced Peers be expelled.
A number of Peers raised the lack of clarity about the problem that we are trying to solve with these proposals. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising reminded us just how many Peers are actually present in the average Division. By that measure, the House is clearly not too large.
Sadly, the Labour Party manifesto gave no evidence for its claim that the second Chamber of Parliament has become “too big”. It merely gave its unevidenced diagnosis and prescribed a mandatory retirement age. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne told the House that it is not for this House to obstruct the Government’s manifesto commitments but it is not incumbent on us to expediate the Government’s measures by amending our own rules in this House.
The bitter taste of discrimination has been remarked on by many noble Lords. In the last Session, Members of your Lordships’ House were expelled simply because they were the wrong sort of Peer. In this Session, we are being asked to expel noble Lords because they are the wrong age—not because they have a lack of capacity to do the job, as we have heard from so many noble Lords today. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, spoke eloquently on this point. I hope his noble friends will listen to him. Why can we not find a way to deal with capability? Why do we have to use age?
Two tests are proposed in this report—age and participation. The participation proposal is born of understandable concerns. The committee was right to reject a speaking requirement, which would serve only to encourage performative contributions. Mandatory attendance is not without its negative consequences either. Fundamentally, it is a good thing that noble Lords who are experts and still working at the top of their respective professions may come to the House when they have something to say without having to clock in to retain the right to do so in future. Equally, some Peers come to the House so infrequently that they make no real contribution to our public life. The principle of participation is not unsupportable, but its implementation must not weaken the House.
I turn to age. A mandatory age limit for sitting Members of your Lordships’ House was a commitment made in a discredited manifesto of a discredited Prime Minister who no longer holds high office. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us of how the manifesto was broken on the day the Chancellor moved to freeze the tax allowance. I wish Sir Keir Starmer well, of course, but his departure should give us pause for thought about how we go forward now.