Lord Lucas:

Moved by Lord Lucas

36: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—“No majority for one party in the House of LordsAfter section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958, insert—“1A No majority for one party in the House of Lords(1) An appointment may not be made to the House of Lords if it would have the effect of taking the total number of peers from parties forming part of the Government to more than 40% of the total members of that House.(2) If at any time the number of peers from parties forming part of the Government exceeds 40% of the total members of the House of Lords, no appointments to the parties forming part of the Government may be made until that number is reduced below 40% either by resignation, new appointments or leave of absence.””

My Lords, it seems to me—and this is certainly something that I would want to take through to Report—that, if we are to have a House that is totally appointed by the Prime Minister, one of the really important things is to have some control of the consequences of that for the House of Lords. It is in our memories the threat that was made in 1911 to flood the House with Peers to support the Government. I think that would be a disaster. I am glad we avoided it at the time. The Lord Lucas at the time was a Liberal, and therefore sensible.

I do not think it is the right basis for a second Chamber in a democratic country that the Prime Minister can, if they are sufficiently upset with the second House, effectively flood it with their own supporters and have done with it. Moving, as we are, to a House where the Prime Minister has total control over who comes in, we ought to have some recognition of the current settlement, which is that the Government do not have a majority in this House. I beg to move.

My Lords, my noble friend does the Committee a significant service by putting forward this amendment. It encapsulates the arguments around a fully appointed House and this extraordinary situation that we find ourselves heading towards—a fully appointed House, with all appointments made by the Prime Minister, and a ratchet, in effect, in numbers, going upwards and upwards, when there is a change of Government. I think my noble friend’s amendment, which sounds so simple and straightforward, throws up any number of difficulties, and we could spend the next two or three days of Committee, if such things existed, talking about how this mechanism might work.

My noble friend Lord Lucas is absolutely right to raise the question of the balance between the parties and the Prime Minister’s ability to introduce, unchecked, large numbers of Peers into the House. I was very taken —on Monday, I think it was—when we were talking about the question of elections, when a hushed silence went through the Committee and there were some shocked faces. I felt like I was in a Bateman cartoon: the man who dared to mention elections in the House of Lords—shock, horror. But here we are, discussing one version of an archaic situation versus another.

It is quite clear that there is no rational defence of the Prime Minister being able to appoint, without any check on numbers, to this House. The question of coalitions—parties that might come together and then split apart, parties that might themselves divide—would cause all sorts of difficulties. I suspect that this amendment that my noble friend has put forward is a legislative hand grenade, designed to illustrate the difficulties rather than necessarily put forward a carefully worked through solution.

The noble Viscount will not be surprised at me saying again that the only way to deal with the problem that this amendment seeks to address is to have an election.

I quite agree with the noble Lord.

My noble friend’s amendment to ensure that no one party has a majority in the House of Lords is a relatively new idea. In the pre-1999 House of more than 1,000 noble Lords, there was often a majority well-disposed to the Government of the day. I remember observing, as an adviser in the Conservative Government after 2015, that this was perhaps the first Conservative Government in history who did not enjoy a majority in the House of Lords. What we are confronting here is a relatively new phenomenon.

Of course, it was a problem that the Labour Party faced much earlier, and had to contend with under the leadership of my noble friend Lord Attlee’s grandfather, after 1945. Out of that arose what we know as the Salisbury convention, though really it should not be called that. Viscount Cranborne had not acceded to the marquisate at that time, and poor old Viscount Addison never gets remembered.

Under that convention, your Lordships’ House agreed that it would not seek to thwart the main lines of Labour’s legislation provided it derived from the party’s manifesto for the previous election. Sadly, the then-future fifth Marquess did not tell us what to do about full stops or other punctuation in Labour manifestos, but it was a convention that certainly helped the Attlee Government get its business through and make all the changes that it did to this country. It echoed the referendal theory, which was developed under the third Marquess, in relation to legislation that was brought forward by Liberal Governments, but it is clear there was a lack of clarity on this convention.

I remember the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal arguing to your Lordships’ Committee on the Constitution, when I was in Downing Street advising my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead, that it was far from clear that the Salisbury-Addison convention was ever intended to apply to minority Governments and that was not an eventuality that was foreseen by the Marquess of Salisbury in the 1940s.

There are clearly a lot of gaps to fill. There was an attempt by your Lordships’ House—indeed, there was a Joint Committee—to look at the conventions and the two Houses’ understanding of how they operated, back in 2006. I wonder whether the noble Baroness or the present Government have any intention of repeating that exercise, in looking to codify or clarify the convention or to point out other unforeseen circumstances, such as minority Governments in another place.

In the 1997 Labour manifesto, there was a sentence that said:

“No one political party should seek a majority in the House of Lords”.

There was no such statement or commitment in the 2024 manifesto. I think the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal has been clear from the Dispatch Box before that it is her view that no party should seek a majority in your Lordships’ House, and I would be grateful if she would expand on that in a moment.

But I think my noble friend Lord Hailsham, who has spoken a few times—

Briefly.

My noble friend, who has spoken briefly and enjoyably on every occasion, is keen to hear from the Lord Privy Seal, as are we all, so I leave it to her.

I am grateful. I was wondering what the chuntering was—I did not quite catch what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, was talking about.

It is an interesting proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I cannot recall—and I think the noble Lord had this right—the last time any political party had an overall majority in this Chamber. He talked about an overall majority, as the Conservative Party has been the largest party for a very long time; before the passing of the 1999 Act, it had over 40%, so it was the Conservative Party that had that majority prior to the hereditary Peers leaving at that time. Since their removal, no party has ever had more than 40% of the seats. Even when this Bill is passed, the Government Benches will still only be 28% of the seats of this House.

I was not quite sure what the noble Lord meant by a “ratchet effect”. The noble Lord will know that I have decried that. It worked very badly under the last Government, where it seemed that every time the Government lost a vote, they would put more Peers in, even though they had a much larger group than any other party and still lost votes. The issue of losing votes is often to do with the quality of the legislation; it is never just about numbers in this place.

The purpose behind the amendment from noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is to address the fact that it has been said, in the media and in the Chamber, that today’s Government are trying to remove hereditary Peers to create vacancies and bring in more Labour Peers to create a majority. My very strong view is on record—in Select Committee in the other place and here—that this House does its best work when there are roughly equal numbers between Government and Opposition.

I would like to see a House of Lords that is more deliberative. We got into some bad habits under the last Government, where a system of “We have the numbers and can get this through” came about. That largely started during the coalition Government, when there was a very large majority for the coalition. Almost anything the coalition Government wanted to do would get through. When we have roughly equal numbers between the main opposition and government parties, we do our best work, because we are more deliberative in our approach and more engaged in how we work. We are not just thinking it is all about vote; it is about the quality of debate and the quality of advice we can offer.

The noble Lord mentioned again about the Prime Minister making appointments. The Prime Minister does not make all appointments; appointments go through the Prime Minister, but political parties nominate. The noble Lord smiles at me, but he will know that under the last Government the proportion of new appointments to the Opposition was significantly lower than the proportion the Government took to themselves. I have given this figure before but, at the end of the 2010 Session, when Labour had been in government, we had 25 more Peers than the Conservative Party. After the same period of time, but a period of Conservative Governments, there were more than 100 more Conservative than Labour Peers. That imbalance does not serve the House well, and I would like to get back to having a better balance between parties.

Perhaps an indication of our good faith on this is that, despite the disparity in the parties, at the last round of appointments I know that the Conservative Opposition did not expect any new Peers to be appointed. However, on top of the resignation honours list that is still to come from the previous Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, we suggested to the Opposition that there could be six or seven new Peers, even given the disparity in numbers. I say that in some good faith, because I do not want to play the numbers game; it does not serve the House well.

I recognise the good faith that the Government have shown so far, and we have acknowledged in our previous exchanges the different records of previous Conservative Prime Ministers in this regard. The noble Baroness has been very kind about my former boss, my noble friend Lady May.

Once she gets to the roughly equal numbers of the two Benches facing one another that she sees, does she see a case for putting in a protection so that future Prime Ministers, who may not behave with the same discretion that Sir Keir Starmer is currently behaving with—I am sure with the noble Baroness’s support and encouragement—are not able to do what previous Prime Ministers have done before, to her dismay? We have talked about the need for some check on the number or the rate or regularity with which Prime Ministers can recommend people: they go through the Prime Minister, but at a time of the Prime Minister’s choosing and in the number of his choice. Should there be a protection there?

The noble Lord tempts me—I wonder whether he is trying to tempt me against a future Cameron or Johnson premiership, because that was the time when the numbers were increased. I have had the same pressure from some of my own colleagues after the behaviour of previous Conservative Governments. I would hope that there would not be a need for it, but I think it is something we would look at in future, if Prime Ministers were behaving in a way that was inappropriate in terms of appointments. However, we are not at that point at the moment and it would be wrong at the moment to put that in.

The Norton Bill also talked about 20% for the Cross Benches. While I think that that is a fair and appropriate percentage of the House for the Cross Benches, I would not define that in statute, because defining only one party or group in statute does not help the balance of the House—it is rather mixed, then. In saying that the governing party cannot have more than 40%, you then have to look at the balance for the rest of the House and not just at one particular group.

I agree with the noble Lord on conventions; they are important and have stood the test of time. I remind him that it is not just the Salisbury convention—it is the Salisbury/Addison convention, because there was a Labour and a Conservative leader at the time who agreed on conventions that have served this House well. They served us through the 1999 legislation and will serve us well in future. I think that we would all want to abide by them, because we do our best work when we abide by the conventions, as we did in opposition.

So I understand the sentiments behind the noble Lord’s amendment and have a lot of sympathy with it. I think that the House works best in that way—but the amendment is too restrictive at present and I respectfully ask that he withdraw it.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Privy Seal for that comprehensive answer. We clearly agree on the state of parties that makes this House work best. We also agree as to who has pushed those percentages in a way that perhaps they should not have done, and it has not been the Labour Party. My concern is to produce a system which preserves the sort of balance that she and I agree we need in the face of a future Prime Minister who does not behave well—of whatever colour; probably our party given the precedence—but, either way, my concern is for the House more than party. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 36 withdrawn.

Amendment 37 not moved.

I am not able to call Amendments 38 or 39, as they are amendments to Amendment 37.

Amendment 40 not moved.

I am not able to call Amendments 41 and 42, as they are amendments to Amendment 40.

Amendment 43 not moved.

Amendment 44 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

I am not able to call Amendment 44A, because it is an amendment to Amendment 43.

Amendment 45 not moved.

I cannot call Amendment 46, because it is an amendment to Amendment 45.

Amendments 47 to 51 not moved.

Amendment 52 not moved.

Amendments 53 and 54 are amendments to Amendment 52, so I cannot call them.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 10.07 pm.