Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)

I will ignore that comment. We have not sought to agree a collective position across our Benches. It is for noble Lords to come to their own view. Of course the Front Bench has a view, but we must always respect the views of our Back-Benchers. It is not for a single House of Parliament to expel parliamentarians. This is a proposal that has been brought forward by the Government. Let them bring forward a Bill. It is for Parliament to decide. As my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition said earlier in our debate, Parliament may wish to implement grandfather rights without opposing the Government’s plans for a mandatory retirement age. That was the solution when the Irish representative Peers were expelled. It is what the House voted for during the progress of what is now the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026. We also know that a resolution of the House would not prevent Peers refusing to leave in line with the committee’s proposals. Peers may fairly argue that the test should be the competence, not the age, of the Peer. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred to earlier, age is being mistaken for capacity. Peers may also argue that the other place has no mandatory age limit, so why should their departure not be voluntary? All this is a recipe for a continuing, rumbling discord in this House. If we are to have a mandatory age, let the Government bring it forward and allow both Houses to scrutinise it thoroughly. Perhaps the most painful part of the committee’s report is the proposal that Peers be expelled from the House mid-Session, once they reach the age of 80. Grandfather rights would avoid that. Transitional arrangements are proposed in this report, but these do not mitigate the real impact that mid-Session expulsion would have on the work of Peers. If a Peer knows that they are expected to leave the House in the middle of a Session, that will disincentivise them from being involved: from speaking at Second Reading and tabling amendments in Committee in those final months of their public service. Our most experienced Peers might step back sooner than they should, depriving the House of their wisdom and good judgment. We must carefully consider all these issues. In the case of previous expulsions, which themselves caused real acrimony and unpleasantness, Peers saw out the Session. We opposed those expulsions, but the House at least accepted that Peers must be given the opportunity to complete their current work before being forced to leave the House. Surely that is the least we can do. We know that the average retirement age is not much over 80 at present, so why are we doing this? We must balance the negative effect that mid-Session expulsion will have on the scrutinising work of Peers against the reality that these measures are solving a problem that exists in theory but will have very little impact on average. The impact of this change will not merely affect an average; it is not just a question of numbers. Behind the statistics that we have heard today are noble Lords who have dedicated their lives to public service—noble Lords we have known, worked with, agreed and disagreed with—and they are the people alongside whom we have voted for many years. The moment of their expulsion marks the endpoint of a long and distinguished career in public service, and we must consider the individual impact of these proposals and how that affects our work as a House. They should be given the opportunity to complete their work as parliamentarians rather than being expelled suddenly as the guillotine falls. That would allow noble Lords to bring their contribution to public life to an end in the way that they wish, as they deserve, rather than being bound by an arbitrary date. As we have heard, the Government’s plans mean the departure of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. We have heard how he won the House’s support for his amendment to the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill earlier this year. As my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising reminded us, the noble and gallant Lord was 96 when he won that Division. These plans will mean losing the expertise of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral from the Opposition Front Bench. We have benefited from his extensive ministerial experience, and he helped lead the House in challenging the most damaging elements of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill. Under this proposal we will also lose distinguished noble Lords from the Government Benches, such as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, who were both singled out for special praise by the Prime Minister in his first speech as leader of the Labour Party in July. We will lose the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who has so ably demonstrated his reputation as a defender of parliamentary scrutiny in recent weeks. The loss of noble Lords across the House is not just a point of personal pain, although we on these Benches ask the Government what these friends of ours have done wrong. Their loss also has an impact on our work. Losing the expertise of long-serving noble Lords risks the quality of our scrutiny. It is this effect that we should put at the forefront of our minds. My noble friend the Leader of the Opposition has set down four tests that we should consider in our deliberations. Will what we do improve the ability of the House to hold the Government to account? Will it enrich the experience of the House? Will it enhance the independence of the House from recent or present Governments? Lastly, will it enable the House and its committees to do their revising work better? Those are the tests we must apply before taking any decision on the future of our House, and we believe the proposals before us fail those tests.