There are three noteworthy features of the appointment of Peter Mandelson, Stephen Carter and Paul Myners to ministerial rank and the elevation of all three to the peerage.
First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform means that the Lords acquires a major departmental minister, something it has not had for many years.
Second, it demonstrates that a person can be appointed to ministerial office without necessarily sitting in either House of Parliament. All three have been appointed as ministers. The Queen has signified that she is conferring peerages on each of them, but none has yet taken his seat. They thus appear in the list of Her Majesty’s Government as the Rt Hon. Peter Mandelson, Stephen Carter CBE (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in Peter Mandelson’s Department as well as in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) and Paul Myners CBE (Financial Services Secretary, Treasury).
Third, it reinforces Labour as the largest single party in the House. Labour is the governing party, so I have no particular problem with that. The recent appointment of two new cross-benchers also reinforces the ranks of the cross-bench peers. When I ask student audiences, as I did last week, which party they think has a majority of members in the Lords, they normally reply ‘Conservative’. I now point out that the Conservative Party ranks behind Labour and the cross-benchers in the House.
One might add a fourth feature. Once Messrs Mandelson and Carter take their seats, the new Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will be unusual in that three of its six ministers will be peers. (The other peer in the Department is Baroness Vadera.) Excluding the Law Officers’ Department, no other Department will be so well represented in the Upper House.
Sorry to bring up yet more trivia, but I’ve heard the point made before that the composition of the Lords better reflects the way people voted in the last election than the Commons, due to the way first past the post voting distorts things. As most new party-political peers are chosen by the prime minister of the day, the House should always slowly evolve towards having the party of government as the largest. Perhaps an appointed upper house isn’t such a bad idea after all!
I think what’s particularly interesting about the new ministers is that, despite the Government’s avowed belief that the upper house should be elected, Gordon Brown seems to have no problem taking advantage of appointees when it’s convenient to get his chosen people into the cabinet.
However, I’m not complaining, because I’m all for an appointed upper house. Say what you like about Mandelson, he has a wealth of business and trade experience and this is a great way to get that experience into Parliament.
How does the scrutiny of the house work when Ministers are peers? I
assume the ministerial question time occurs in the Lords but what
about MPs asking questions? Does it all fall to junior ministers in
the department to take the mantle of their boss and face the MPs in
the Commons? When the committees are scrutinising are they made up of
members from both places?
This raises a few additional questions. Does any department have to
have at least one minister who is a sitting MP to answer to the
Commons? I assume president would mean the Prime Minister would always
have to be an MP as I suspect the grilling of PMQs would be a lot more
respectful where it ever held in the Lords?
Sorry for the flurry of questions, you are however the constitutional
expert here 😉
Thanks for the comments. Jonathan and Jonathan Hogg: I agree completely with the sentiments you express.
Alex Bennee: A minister in the Lords is subject to scrutiny in the House the same as a minister who sits in the Commons. We have a Question Time: it is shorter than that in the Commons but we limit the number (no more than four in the half-hour available) so that we can go into greater depth on each question than is possible in the Commons. Ministers make statements and will see a Bill through in the same way as ministers in the Commons. Ministers, whether in the Commons or Lords, can appear before select committees in either House. The fact that they are MPs or peers doesn’t really matter in this context: they appear as ministers before the committees.
Most ministers in each Department are MPs. As I mentioned in the post, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is distinctive for having half of its ministers in the Lords. No other Department has a ministerial team with more than two peers. Indeed, not all Government Departments have ministers who are peers. (In that case, one of the Government whips in the Lords speaks for the Department in the House. The Deputy Chief Whip, for example, speaks for the Treasury.) Overwhelmingly, senior ministers will be MPs – that is why Peter Mandelson’s appointment is unusual – and by convention the Prime Minister sits in the Commons. This has existed since 1923 when the King sent for Stanley Baldwin to be PM rather than Lord Curzon. When the Earl of Home was summoned to be PM in 1963, he renounced his title (possible under the recently enacted 1963 Peerages Act) and was elected as an MP in a by-election in Perth and West Perthshire.
Question Time in the Lords is less adversarial than in the Commons, but – because of the time given to each question and the experience and expertise of the members – it can be a daunting experience for ministers.
Jonathan Hogg says, “Say what you like about Peter Mandelson”, but you see, we cannot do that. I miss greatly the true role of the Hereditary Peers in the House of Lords. I regret very much contributing to those that presently sit in that Hall.
As a reader of Lords Hansard before and after the undignified and disgraceful removal of the Hereditary Peers, I could not help but notice a difference in the debates. Sadly, it was not an improvement.