Gareth Snell MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not agreeing with him. There is a lot of wisdom and experience in this place that can be used to improve our legislation. Even with the removal of the 92 hereditary peers, there will still be 650 peers, who have incredible insights and specialisms. The Bill removes a group of people whose only entitlement to be in the House of Lords comes from, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson said, a birthright many hundreds of years old, and from being selected by their friends to sit with them. The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) may not agree with me, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford pointed out, the election process in the other place is a farce. There are often more candidates than electors. It is almost akin to the Tory party leadership election.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your guidance on acceptable conduct in this place. I think it is very important, and I am grateful to be able to make what I hope will be a relatively brief contribution to the debate on this Bill. It will come as no surprise to Conservative Members that I fully support the Bill in front of us, which I think is a sensible, rational and timely first step towards reform of the other place in a way that gives us time—as the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) has so eloquently argued for—to consider other things as we go along. There is a time for evolution and a time for revolution, and at the moment, it is time for evolution in how we amend the House of Lords. It is a question of how we take the first steps towards removing the most indefensible part of that House and of our constitution, while allowing ourselves the time and space to consider the other issues that have been raised and the commitments we made in our manifesto. I gently remind Conservative Members that that manifesto delivered a majority Government—you could say that consultation was had, and therefore we enact our policies. I enjoyed the contribution of the right hon. Member for Hertsmere. I do not ask him to speak for his party because it is in flux. However, I ask Conservative Members not just to complain about the scope of the Bill, especially the lack of reform—I welcome their support for reform of the upper House; it has been a long time coming, but better late than never—but to consider whether they can defend the right of 92 people to sit in the upper House by virtue of their birth. Those 92 peers have been almost exclusively white men. When the House of Lords Act 1999 was passed, five women were allowed to continue as hereditary peers in the House of Lords, the last being the Countess of Mar, who retired in 2020. As my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) said, whenever the opportunity for a by-election arose for one of the seats held by women, the woman was replaced by a man. More than 200 candidates are on the roll of eligible peers who could stand in by-elections for those seats, had the House of Lords not amended its Standing Orders. I will take an intervention from any Conservative Member who can tell me how many of those on that roll are women. Anyone? No. The answer is two. Fewer than 1% of those eligible to fill those hereditary seats are women. I have no doubt that Conservative Members share my concern about the inequality that arises if we say that a white man has a potential privilege when he is one of the 92 or when he is a member of the 200 families who, by 100-year-old letters patent, have been in a position to secure one of those seats. To me, that is the most indefensible aspect. It is not necessarily about who those people are. I do not doubt that every single member of the hereditary peers group, whether in my party or not, has expertise and a skillset that they can bring to bear. However, if, upon their expulsion, they wish to continue to contribute to public life, all parties will have nomination lists during this Parliament. They can use them, if they wish, to bring back their best and their brightest. Of course, when those hereditary peers are no longer Members of the House of Lords, they are entitled to do what we have all done and present themselves to the public for election to this place, with a mandate.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman tempts me to stray outside the scope of the Bill. Madam Deputy Speaker has been clear that the Bill is specifically about hereditary peers. The Government have committed to reform the appointments process for the House of Lords. Everything does not have to be done in the same Bill. As the former Deputy Prime Minister pointed out, the pace needs to be considered, so that there are no unintended consequences, about which he is rightly concerned. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) can chunter at me from a sedentary position, but when we are considering hereditary peers, we are looking at the 92. If anyone wants to justify reserving seats in the House of Lords for 92 white men, I will take an intervention now. Conservative Members do not want to do that because they do not want to defend the indefensible. They want to complain and bellyache that they do not like what we are doing. They dress up their complaints as process concerns about unintended consequences and make spurious arguments about the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain. That all shows that the Conservative party has simply run out of steam and ideas. All Conservative Members can do is chunter and complain about what we want to do.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if my suggestion that he did not look a day over 60 was ageist—perhaps I should have said “over 50”. I find it difficult to take an argument from Conservative Members about crony patronage and the House of Lords when the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson put hundreds of people in there. He did so against the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, yet Conservative Members said nothing at the time and were happy about it. Now, all of a sudden, it is an absolute problem that needs to be resolved. I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has made it clear that, after we have completed the process of removing the excepted hereditary peers, the Government will move on to other parts of House of Lords reform, which will make the appointments process more transparent. That will allow us to have a considered debate about the way in which that process can happen. While we have prime ministerial patronage, it must be transparent. Frankly, Conservative Members can give no lessons to any of us about transparency in prime ministerial patronage. Boris Johnson packed the House of Lords with his friends and cronies against the advice of officials, and Conservative Members had nothing to say about it.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. He has diligently listened to all the debate this afternoon, and I thank him for that. He talks about a package of reforms. The last reform that his party brought forward in 2014 was a very small reform, with the expulsion of people for non-attendance, the right to resign or retire and the expulsion of those who committed a crime. Since then, 187 Members have retired or resigned and 16 have been expelled for non-attendance. If that was perfectly acceptable as a stand-alone reform without consideration of the consequential impacts, why is this Bill any different?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am very much enjoying the speech by the hon. Member. Is he making an argument that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), should not be entitled to an appointment list, and is he making a commitment on behalf of Members of his own party that they will forgo any appointments that they are offered under this Government?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Member give way?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman has made a number of contributions this afternoon and I have listened to them all, but I am not clear whether he supports the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Perhaps before he concludes his speech he could put it very clearly on the record whether he supports the principle of removing hereditary peers.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Again, I am surprised I have to explain to the right hon. Gentleman how legislation works. A Government do not legislate on their whole manifesto in one Bill at the beginning of a Parliament. Those on my party’s Front Bench have said, and I fully accept that this is the right way to do it, that there will be a sequence of reforms over time, starting with the expulsion of the hereditary peers. That is the simplest way to start this process, allowing time and space for considered debate about the other proposed reforms that were in our manifesto and were supported by the British people. In conclusion, all this Bill does is seek to end a 27-year anomaly that first came about when the Conservative party objected to previous reforms. By voting for it tonight, we can start to right that wrong, and we can start ourselves on a process of reform of the House of Lords. I look forward to welcoming all my new reforming friends to join us in the Aye Lobby this evening.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my Staffordshire colleague for giving way. If he carries on with this strain of radicalism, he might even have a book written about him by the Paymaster General—scant as it might be. Is he taking his point to the final degree? Is he now advocating for the disestablishment of the Church of England, because that is where that argument ends up?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman rightly talks about the Salisbury convention. Is that his way of telling us that, as the Bill was a manifesto commitment— as pointed out by the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson)—Conservative peers will be voting for it to comply with the convention that he has said is so important?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman just made the point that the hereditary peers are a bastion of independence, and the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) said that many of the Conservative peers are long-serving Members of his party’s Front Bench team. How can those two things be reconciled?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not sure that any Labour Member needs to quantify Conservative Members’ embarrassment; they do it for themselves. The hon. Gentlemen seem to be confused about whether they want more or less reform. I think we know that the answer is that they do not want any reform, but they create a smokescreen of wanting to act faster and with more zeal than Labour Members simply because they wish to ruin the Bill. They want to press amendments that are not relevant and not in the Bill’s scope. They want to make arguments about retirement ages. When the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) argued that there should be a retirement age of 80, I am sure that he had not spoken to his right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale), who is 81, although, to look at him, one would not think he was a day over 60.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support. There will be more legislation. I am not a Front Bencher, but I know, because our manifesto said that we were committed to further reform, that that time will come. I am sure that there will be legislative time and that he will have an opportunity later in the debate to put the question to Labour Front Benchers directly, or perhaps to table a business question for a Thursday morning. To draw my comments to a conclusion—

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I would rather not, if that is okay—anyone else but the right hon. Gentleman. He was only 10 votes away from potentially getting a peerage himself, so perhaps for that reason he may not want to comment on the appointment process.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Reporting Ministerial Gifts and Hospitality · Hansard source

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  I welcome the conversion of the Conservative party to transparency and ethics. Whether it was wallpaper or weddings, or Pincher, Paterson or Benton, Conservative Members were sadly silent when they thought that one of their own should get away with things. May I suggest that my hon. Friend retrospectively apply the new rules to the last 12 months of every serving Member who was a Minister? They should have to declare every piece of hospitality and gift that they received as Ministers, so that we can see exactly what their own record was compared with our cleanliness.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Higher Education: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  Keele University hosts the Uni Connect hub for North Staffordshire Higher Horizons. On average, 18% of our young people go to university; for those who have interacted with Higher Horizons, the figure jumps to nearly 64%, yet the funding for the scheme is questionable for the next year. I know that the Minister cannot comment on the Budget, but could she take back to her colleagues in the Treasury the importance of securing the funding for that scheme, so that the young people she talked about in north Staffordshire get the opportunity that they deserve?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Higher Education: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  I find myself somewhat conflicted, as a graduate of the wonderful Keele University but also representing its rival in the local varsity in the University of Staffordshire. My hon. Friend’s point about young people going to university and making their home in the area is absolutely right. I am a testament to that. But does he agree that one thing we now have to do collectively, as a group of MPs representing that part of the world, is ensure that those high-value, good-quality jobs are then brought to the area, so that the graduates we have can stay in north Staffordshire after they graduate and make a life and a family there?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Higher Education: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  Based in my constituency.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister is giving an excellent speech. Landlords in Stoke-on-Trent have told me that they welcome any move that drives the rogue landlords out of the system. That is because rogue landlords undercut the market and prey on the vulnerable and those locked into low-income jobs by offering relatively low-rent accommodation, safe in the knowledge that if they complain or seek any form of improvement, they are simply out, to be replaced by somebody else who is desperate. While my hon. Friend is talking about improvements to the landlord system, will he say more about how good landlords welcome the Bill?