Anyone interested in the way the House of Lords currently works – and should work in future – must get hold of the interim report titled Consultation on Members Leaving the House.
In brief the case for reducing the number of Peers is compelling: increasing costs, not enough room for all to get into the Chamber or have desks, excessive size compared with the Commons and (most persuasively) “damage to the credibility of the House occasioned by the large number of members who take no active part in proceedings.”
Ever since I arrived here I have been appalled and embarrassed by the number of Peers, even including a few former Cabinet Ministers, who use the place as a convenient private club, with good parking and subsidised catering. They never speak or even ask a question, let alone contribute to a debate. Whether they draw a daily allowance for turning up I do not know.
This report gives some hard figures. In 2009/10 289 Peers attended on 75% or more sitting days, 135 on 50% to 74% days, 103 on 25% to 49% days, 67 on 10% to 24% days and 68 at least once but less that 10%. BUT 79 never attended on a single day ! It could be interesting, too, to examine the relative attendance rates of crossbench Peers and each party, but this report tactfully omits this information.
In the circumstances I cannot take seriously some of the suggested remedies to this serial non-attendance. Giving retiring Peers “dining rights”, let alone offering the opportunity to speak but not vote, seems totally inappropriate. As for the idea that they should be awarded an honour “on the lines of the armed services’ Long Service, Good Conduct medal”, or that their “life peerage might be converted into a hereditary peerage”, I can only suppose that somebody was taking the mickey.
One thing is certain. The sooner we disentangle the supposed honour of a peerage from the responsibility to work in the second house of the UK legislature the better. The draft Lords Reform Bill now under construction in the all-party group cannot come too soon.
Meanwhile please don’t just respond to this blog, but get hold of this report and submit your own assessment of the issues on which it invites comment.
“As for the idea that they should be awarded an honour “on the lines of the armed services’ Long Service, Good Conduct medal”, or that their “life peerage might be converted into a hereditary peerage”, I can only suppose that somebody was taking the mickey.”
As opposed to the favoured option that keeps coming up from the channels of paying peers to retire. I guarantee the public would regard that idea more than any other as ‘taking the mickey.’
I see most of this discussion as besides the point. As long as the PMs’ can’t restrain themselves from scattering peerages like confetti the problem will continue. As soon as an Act of Union (1800) like restriction see article four (2 extinction for 1 creation) is introduced the problem would melt away with or without further reform.
My noble Lord Tyler, rarely do I agree with you but on this occassion I can say I broadly do.
Looking at the interim report it seems the House itself is unable to deal with issue without legislation from “the other place” and respondents to the Consultation do not seem to be of a consensus.
This issue has been going on far too long now, it is intolerable and unworkable for reasons of finance, space and many other reasons. I have no wish to see an elected Lords but continuance as it is can no longer be justified. I have stated before that what is occurring could infact be a masterplan by the other place to replace the House with one it deems suitable to itself. I do not feel this in anyway is right, that one particular executive would have the right to alter our system of Government.
The House of Lords HAS to make it`s own decision in the interest of the Nation and our system of Governance. This is looking all but impossible given the legislation and it is highly unlikely any executive will put forward new legislation without it leaning very much toward what they wish to achieve.
The House is becoming untenable,the Government unlikely to allow self reform by the House without it`s input which possibly would be bias. Something needs to be done and quite quickly, though I`m of the mind that Government intends to implement a form of elected House of Lords which in my opinion would be wrong and bad for the Nation. Either way something HAS to change and reasonably quickly.
I must say it does appear that a lot of the suggestions were tongue-in-cheek. I think proposals for compulsory redundancy are worthy of consideration.
I wonder if there’s a correlation between age and attendance? I would imagine older noble lords would find it more difficult to summon the energy to attend as often…
The first and most obvious measure would be to allow members who wish to resign or retire to do so. It seems bizarre that the only people who are allowed to resign permanently from the Lords are non-doms who do not wish to lose their tax status. I don’t see why this can’t be extended to everyone immediately.
I’ve always favoured forced retirement for anyone who doesn’t attend above a certain threshold. I know the report says that this might mean losing some members who have outside interests but can provide a lot of expertise. Yet if the threshold was low enough, I don’t think it would matter. Perhaps an expert who just gives one or two speeches a year isn’t that useful after all. They need to be there often enough to engage in all the other business that takes place in the House. So retiring everyone who attends less than 10% of the time seems reasonable, and that would remove around 150 peers immediately.
No compensation is necessary. Anyone who just attends 10% of the time can’t be living off it anyway.
One interesting point to note is that, although there are complaints about the present size of the house, it’s only as large as it was in 2005-06 (the website says 777, so identical in size, in fact).
Incidentally, are excluded hereditary peers really still allowed to use the library and dining facilities? I know this was suggested in the debates in 1999, but thought the government rejected it. Can they still sit on the steps of the throne to watch debates? And do these provisions apply to peers who succeeded after 1999?
appalled and embarrassed by the number of Peers, even including a few former Cabinet Ministers, who use the place as a convenient private club
This was the original purpose of the place, when it was designed and built, not being appalled at it, but the use of it.
If you were a member of the Garrick club for example over the years, you would have had preferential terms for the purchase of wine from their vinyards.
Of the RAC club in Pall Mall, another shareholding ball game altogether.
It is therefore not surprising that Members of the HofL claim Allowances.
I deplore it too, but it is not surprising, if it is there to take.
I happen to know that excluded peers have no access to the facilities of the house; and in particular do NOT have access to the Library which provides research services to support parliamentary business. An excluded peer no longer takes part in business, is no longer a member of the House of Lords, therefore no access.
It used to be that Irish Peers could sit on the steps of the throne; I do not know whether that is still true. But of course that is not taking part in business, if it is still allowed.
appalled and embarrassed by the number of Peers, even including a few former Cabinet Ministers, who use the place as a convenient private club
This was the original purpose of the place, when it was designed and built, not being appalled at it, but the use of it.
If you were a member of the Garrick club for example over the years, you would have had preferential terms for the purchase of wine from their vinyards.
Of the RAC club in Pall Mall, another shareholding ball game altogether.
It is therefore not surprising that Members of the HofL claim Allowances.
I deplore it too, but it is not surprising, if it is there to take.
Lord Tyler
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Paragraph 20 of the Link to the debate,merely because they are no longer members does not prevent them from making valuable contributions to any Committee discussion they choose to present papers to, any more or less than any other Citizen of the UK.
They confuse status and wisdom, imagining that because they HAVE status they are wise!
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldselect/ldleader/48/48.pdf
On the subject of turnover of membership surely the French method of Lord Mayors going to parliament as of right would be a highly succesful method of selecting and deselecting
members, and even having people in the chamber who are right in the thick of political debate throughout these islands, practical people elected to office by hard grind and local graft!
I’ll bet your bottom dollar that NO such suggestion was made to the committee!
Here it is! Gar’s Campaign for the Causes of
City Mayors as Members of the house of Lords during their tenure of office as Mayor.
In your Carriages and sedans, Mayors!
Lord Tyler: Thanks for posting the link – I saw a summary yesterday but not the full report. However, you say “get hold of this report and submit your own assessment of the issues on which it invites comment.” My reading of the report (and the summary) is that it only invites comment from members (page 5). Like the all party group it does seem to not encourage comments from others.
Election (para 33) seems to be summarily covered but the arguments against all seem to fail to realise that election from within could provide the democratic legitimacy sought by reformers and could thus head off the more radical proposals for reform (proposals which would cause all of things they complain of writ large).
Malden Capell: there could well be a general correlation but not all older lords have failed to summon sufficient energy. To take one example, Lord Wilberforce regularly attended over 100 times a year, even when in his mid 90s.
Your post begs the question. What is the role of the House of Lords? We shouldn’t be responding to HL Paper 48 without going back to that fundamental question, otherwise we’ll just be rearranging the deck chairs.
Wikipedia puts it this way: The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom’s national legislature. [my emphasis] If that is the prime role, then what does it do in support of that “prime” role? I not that since this government came into power, from May 2009 to Oct 2010, the Official Journal of the European Union states that 1884 Regulations, 217 Directives and 1730 pieces of ‘Other Legislation” have been passed. Of course the House of Lords has not debated them because they cannot be stopped, because the EU has competence or power in almost all areas of legislation.
So if 3831 pices of legislation have been passed about which the House of Lords can do nothing, what does it do in support of its prime role. I stress prime role. I’m sure that it performs many other worthy functions but should they be down by such a body? If we now have so little legislative power that hasn’t been handed to the EU government, then do we really need a House of Lords? That question should be looked at very seriously.
Of course if we took back power over those competencies, eg agriculture, fisheries, competition, VAT, environment, and increasingly foreign policy and law, then the House would have a noble and worthy role, but until that time, someone should be asking that question and not concerning itself with attendance figures.
I served on the committee which produced this report. We can all get cross over the non attenders although actually there are remarkably few who never come at all. Many of them will be very old and frail and remember they don’t cost anything. I’m more worried about those who come but who make very little contribution. It does seem to me however that the House of Lords should behave towards its members as a good employer would even if we have no actual employment status. Too many Members have given up jobs and pensions to make a contribution to parliament to make it a reasonable proposition to act in an unkind way towards them.
There are disparities between party members and crossbenchers on attendance but not as great as you might imagine. Crossbenchers attend a little less on average and vote less. But you have to understand the terms on which they were appointed and many have serious jobs outside the house which will take them away during their time in office. Frankly there are some bills and debates (such as those in my own field of mental health and social welfare) where there would be few people participating at all if it wasn’t for the crossbenchers.
Any mechanisms to reduce the size of the House will only make progress if they are done with the consent of the majority. It is only in recent years that the concept of the ‘political working peer’ was extended to include crossbenchers appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
The answer to your question about whether the evicted hereditaries are allowed to use the dining and library facilities is yes they are, although many do not do so. I don’t think it applies to descendants of former Members. It’s also worth remembering that any changes are likely to take effect over an extended time period, we don’t necessarily need one solution but several which can meet individuals circumstances. Just as it is possible for a sitting MP to ‘apply for the Chiltern Hundreds’ it ought to be possible for peers to have an honourable, permanent way out. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds).
“It could be interesting, too, to examine the relative attendance rates of crossbench Peers and each party, but this report tactfully omits this information.”
I think it could be interesting too, so I’ve submitted a public FoI request for the full figures for each member:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/attendance_record_of_members
Matt Kane: You are aware that the attendance figures of each member of the House are published?
I assumed they would be, but I couldn’t find any recent figures. Do you know where they are available?
Lord Norton: I thought I remembered looking through those attendance figures before. I wish people would realise the FoI Act was intended to make information public that would once have been kept secret, and not to provide a free research service for people who can not be bothered to do the leg work for themselves.
Incidentally, Paul Tyler (sic) has now cross-posted this to the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/06/house-of-lords-reform-bill
Thanks Jonathan. If it’s available elsewhere then they’re welcome to close the request with a pointer to the location of the information if it’s already public, and likewise if you’ve looked through the figures yourself then I’d be more than grateful if you could point me to them. However, I’m unable to find any comprehensive figures more recent than 1999. It’s hardly a case of not being bothered to do the legwork: if it was publicly available I’d much rather get it myself than wait a month for an FOI response.
Have a look at
http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/members-allowances/house-of-lords/holallowances/hol-expenses04/
Attendance and Expenses from 2008/09 and back to 2001 (it didn’t seem to be as easy to find as when I looked a few years ago)
Thank you! It’s a little counter-intuitive that the attendance figures are in the “members expenses” section, but that does seem to do the job. I’ll withdraw my FoI request.
Thanks JH, it was certainly a while ago when I last saw the figures. I have to say the Parliament website is not as easy to navigate as it used to be, and seems to contain many broken links. I can understand why Matt and others may have had trouble locating things. Sceptics might suggest they have something to hide!
Thanks for all these comments. I thought I should post two clarifications:
1 as far as I can tell (the Committee don’t specify) the total non-attenders figure does NOT include those Peers who feel too ill or infirm to be active Members, and have therefore “taken leave of absence”.
2 since this Report is a published Parliamentary document every citizen – and taxpayer – SURELY has a right to comment in response: after all, we are here to serve the public, and they will pay for any retirement package which is eventually agreed !