Part of House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill - Committee (3rd Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords am 9:45 pm ar 12 Mawrth 2025.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Shadow Minister (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), Shadow Minister (Culture, Media and Sport)
9:45,
12 Mawrth 2025
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—
The house of Lords is the upper chamber of the Houses of Parliament. It is filled with Lords (I.E. Lords, Dukes, Baron/esses, Earls, Marquis/esses, Viscounts, Count/esses, etc.) The Lords consider proposals from the EU or from the commons. They can then reject a bill, accept it, or make amendments. If a bill is rejected, the commons can send it back to the lords for re-discussion. The Lords cannot stop a bill for longer than one parliamentary session. If a bill is accepted, it is forwarded to the Queen, who will then sign it and make it law. If a bill is amended, the amended bill is sent back to the House of Commons for discussion.
The Lords are not elected; they are appointed. Lords can take a "whip", that is to say, they can choose a party to represent. Currently, most Peers are Conservative.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
During a debate members of the House of Commons traditionally refer to the House of Lords as 'another place' or 'the other place'.
Peers return the gesture when they speak of the Commons in the same way.
This arcane form of address is something the Labour Government has been reviewing as part of its programme to modernise the Houses of Parliament.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
