Simon Hoare MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Nov 2024 · Tobacco and Vapes Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. One can nudge, prod, push and exhort as much as one can, but the Bill is probably the final stepping stone in quite a long line of stepping stones to try to wean people off their dependency on tobacco. The House has been generous with its time, as have you with your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. In closing, I echo and endorse the point made by the Secretary of State and other contributors from the Government Benches: people who have an addiction are not free. They are trapped by their addiction, and that affects many areas of their life. If someone is terribly well off, they can afford the addiction to tobacco, and it will make not a jot or tittle of difference to the household budget or income, or to their standard of life—

• 25 Nov 2024 · Storm Bert · Hansard source

  More

  It is not the silver bullet, but given the severity of the situation over the weekend, every little helps. Will the Secretary of State—he will earn huge plaudits if he is able to pull this off—convince the Environment Agency that it would be helpful to many communities in North Dorset, the south-west and elsewhere to increase the capacity of our rivers through a managed programme of dredging? We are losing capacity. Last week I saw a river where two arches of a bridge were entirely silted up. That is losing 20% of capacity. It is not the silver bullet, but capacity improvements would help.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I will endeavour to be brief. I think that the Bill is to be welcomed. It is many things, but it is not, I fear, what the Government have tried to dress it up as. It is the fulfilment of a manifesto commitment, but one that was made, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) made clear, back in 1997. Blair blinked because my friend Robert Salisbury did what all Cecils have done since their appointment by Queen Elizabeth: he did a bit of deal-making and they found a solution. If you are very quiet and listen, Madam Deputy Speaker, you can hear the voices of Labour radicals of the past muttering to themselves, “Is that it? Is that what all the intervening years since 1997 and the 14 years of Labour navel-gazing in opposition, as it contemplated its radical programme for government, have produced—removing 92 people who would have been removed in any event had Blair not blinked? No democratisation at all of the House of Lords? What a wasted opportunity.” What a wasted period of opposition that was—something I hope and know that our Front Benchers will not replicate. This timid church mouse of a Bill says, “We will take away some people who we would have taken away more than a quarter of a century ago.” The Paymaster General, who I always consider to be one of the stars of the Treasury Bench and who is a good friend, told us that the principal motivation behind the Bill is for young constituents of Torfaen to say, “Ah, a glass ceiling has been removed,” as if they have sat there thinking, “You know, I would love to get involved in public life, if it wasn’t for this roadblock to my advancement”—namely, the 92 hereditary peers. With the greatest of respect to those on Treasury Bench, I think that a greater percentage of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and constituents of all Labour Members—are probably asking themselves when the Labour party will crash the glass ceiling of having either a person of colour or a woman lead it.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman and I shared very similar concerns about the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. We feared that imports would swamp the market, but fortunately that has not come to pass; it has all been swallowed up by an ever-voracious Chinese and south-east Asian market. New Zealand lamb producers have actually reduced the size of the flock per capita. What we worried about has not come to pass, and we should be grateful for that.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Then we can think about the impact on insurance premiums, which will close businesses and put householders out of the insurance market, with the exception of the scheme that the previous Government introduced. All these things have knock-on effects. I think the Minister and his departmental colleagues have sympathy with the point I want to make. Across Government—it is not just his Department—the funding formula and the rubric that decides where these things go need to have a far more digital, contemporary account of the challenges in delivering services in our rural areas. It is an issue that I have banged on about in this place in the nearly 10 years that I have served my communities of North Dorset, and I will continue to talk about it because that is the right thing to do. I hope that there is sympathy for that argument on both sides of the House. Many Members have referred to access to housing. A lot of my constituents have invested in rental properties and so on, but we all know that quite a lot of housing in rural areas is older. It could be in a conservation area, it could be listed or it could be thatched—it could be all of those things. People are trying to meet the EPC regulations for rental properties, which is putting huge, artificial and urban-centric pressure on the rural rental housing market. The Prime Minister recently launched a very welcome initiative about skills. Again, I urge that a bespoke channel of work is carved out that looks at how we skill young people in rural areas. We suffer from a young person’s diaspora too often: the elderly retire to an area, and the young move away. Property prices go up, and people will only come back as and when they able to inherit something—that is, of course, on the presumption that the Treasury has not taken everything by that point and that the only thing they are able to inherit is a very small part of the family grave plot, although that might be taxed as well. I would urge a ruralisation of this area. I will mention two other things, both of which begin with “d”. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned dentistry. There have been too many nascent plans for a revival and renaissance of dentistry over the years. For reasons that I cannot understand, none has come to fruition, save for the entirely skewed and bogus funding formula for dentists. All Governments wed themselves to doing something; I just hope that something will be done. The other issue is driving tests. It is very hard to get a driving test in rural areas, which deprives young people of access to work, and to colleges and learning. In this debate on rural affairs, it is not just about the proposals for changing the way farmers are taxed. It is about the whole mosaic and rich tapestry of rural life, of which this Government currently find themselves the custodians. Historically, the Labour party has always been urban-centric, but it now has some rural seats. I hope that the Front Benchers listen to rural Members, hear the concerns that we, too, are hearing, and actually make some progress towards making life in our rural areas a little better.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  My right hon. Friend is a very clever former Treasury Minister and I am not, so perhaps she can help me to reconcile these two statements. In essence, and in true Harold Macmillan phraseology, the Secretary of State told us that farmers have never had it so good, yet his advice is that they will have to learn how to do more with less. I cannot make those two things add up. Can my right hon. Friend?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State has painted the most rosy picture. Why does he think that no one in the farming community can see it or share it?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  rose—

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  Some 88% of my constituency is hill, wood or farmland. It is the “Vale of Little Dairies”, in Thomas Hardy’s phrase. It is a mosaic of farms, both family-owned and estate and many of them tenanted, punctuated by villages and market towns. I would willingly swap my inbox with that of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley)—who is no longer in the Chamber—because her constituency, like those of many Labour Members, seems to be full of farmers who are, with a spring in their step, welcoming the wonderful, halcyon field that the Government are offering them. Let me make again a point that I made in an intervention earlier. I am still at a loss as to how farmers are supposed to be rejoicing, as we are told they are by so many Labour Members, with all this record investment and expenditure in rural areas, when they are being told by the Secretary of State that they must do more with less. You can have one or the other, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you cannot have both. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have spoken very authoritatively about the taxation changes. I am fundamentally opposed to what the Government are trying to do because of the damage that it will cause, in the long term, in constituencies such as mine and many others—particularly, but not exclusively, in the south-west. It also concerns me that many Labour Members have been told that the money raised will give them an oncology centre in every constituency, and that other wonderful things are going to happen. In fact, this is just a round of drinks when it comes the amount of money that it will generate in taxation for what may be required by the health service or by education, so I say to the House, “Please do not fall for that old chestnut.” The Minister and I worked very closely together on the Agriculture Act 2020 and on trade issues. Now is the opportunity—I have been very clear that we had opportunities over the last few years, but they were not delivered for a whole variety of reasons, including covid, Ukraine and other things that we all know about—to have some serious, grown-up thinking about rural-proofing policies, because, as others have mentioned, the delivery of public services in our rural areas is more expensive. Our populations are sparser, and our communities are further flung. As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) said, we do not have big teaching hospitals and so forth. The Home Office needs to give proper consideration to rural-proofing the funding formula for rural policing, and likewise with the fire service. We have the rural services delivery grant, and I hope that the Minister and his departmental colleagues are strongly making the case to both the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that the rural services delivery grant is vital for enabling rural local government to deliver the services that our communities are looking for. In an earlier contribution to the debate, reference was made to the entirely urban-centric rubric of Environment Agency funding decisions when it comes to flooding. It effectively boils down to how many chimneys benefit from the investment. The larger the community—by definition, the more urban or metropolitan—the more likely they are to be successful in a bid, compared with a scheme that will benefit many hundreds of acres of prime farmland but possibly only 200 or 300 households. There needs to be rural-proofing.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  Steve Tuckwell was a great man!

• 4 Nov 2024 · Budget: Implications for Farming Communities · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister is seeing silver linings in the clouds hanging over family farms and tenanted farms in North Dorset, but I must confess that I fail to see them. I will give ask the Minister a simple yes or no question: yes or no, will he come to North Dorset to meet farmers in my constituency and explain these wonderful silver linings that he can see in the clouds but none of us on the Opposition Benches can see?

• 29 Oct 2024 · Israel: UNRWA Ban · Hansard source

  More

  With 90% of the Knesset voting for the Bill yesterday, it is surely naive to suggest that it will not be enacted. Therefore, other preparations need to be made. Despite the strong urgings of the United States, the United Kingdom, the EU and others, the Israeli Parliament voted for the Bill, knowing full well the collective international view of that proposal. Do the Government now realise that the Israeli Government, and indeed Parliament, is effectively diplomatically flying solo when it comes to these issues? If, as we all believe, no other agency can step in at pace and at scale to deliver the aid that is clearly needed, then, as was said by the leader of the SNP—an unlikely bedfellow for me—the right hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), is this not now verging on the definition of collective punishment? The Government can no longer just either wring their hands or urge.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Postal Voting at General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful to the hon. Lady, not just for what she is saying about the issues, but for her very kind words. She has made a former Minister blush. In her conversations with the sector—she knows that those are vital conversations—will she overlay the projected figure for electors in the next election, or will she use the 2024 figures? Clearly, if the changes that the Government are suggesting are delivered, the franchise will be larger. That is an important point on which I would like clarity. I guess I probably know the answer.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Postal Voting at General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  What a delectable, delicious prospect we have before us: a two-and-a-half-hour Adjournment debate on postal voting. If the Whips thought that the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) made a long speech, I am tempted to say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” First, may I welcome the Minister to her place? I assure her from the start that this is not an attack Adjournment debate; it really is designed to be helpful to her and colleagues. I sought to secure this debate having reflected on the operation of postal voting during the general election, which I did through the prism of being the then Minister in charge of elections policy. Just for the record, I note that Mr Speaker has kindly invited me to join the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, and I have accepted. If the House will indulge me for just a moment, I want to put on record one of those things that often do not get noted when Ministers are ushered out of office by the electorate. This place, all of us who have been returned to it, all who stood in the election and represented their party interests across the United Kingdom, and all our electorates owe a debt of thanks to the elections team at the former Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—I see one or two of them in the Officials Box. The team worked flat out to deliver the policies that came from the Elections Act 2022, and they had the local elections in May and then the general election shortly thereafter. They worked tirelessly to support the delivery of those elections, and I put on record my thanks to them. I also thank David Gold and his team at the Royal Mail, and all the people at the Royal Mail who strove so hard to deliver the postal votes and all the other literature and documentation that supports the delivery of a general election. David and his team were more than generous with their time and, during the election campaign, as issues were coming to the fore that they were trying to manage and we were trying to raise as the Government, they made themselves available on a daily basis, if necessary, and certainly on a weekly basis to make sure that the ship of state was still afloat. It would be remiss of me not to thank the Association of Electoral Administrators and all those in local government who keep the electoral register and deal with the paperwork and the logistics, which certainly became more complex and demanding, as the Minister will doubtless have been briefed by her officials, as a result of the changes to the rules and regulations in the Elections Act. I had the great honour of speaking at the annual conference earlier this year—I am sure that the Minister will be invited to do it; if she can, I urge her to—and they are a great bunch of women and men who work tirelessly in our town halls and county halls to make sure that elections are delivered. Of course, we should also thank the Electoral Commission, which is the guardian watchdog that keeps an eye over all of us to make sure that the rules are adhered to. Our democracy works only when and because the defeated and their supporters—not the victors—accept the result. We saw the dangers of that in the previous American presidential election, and just how close we can get to anarchy and a complete collapse of confidence, the ramifications of which are still being felt in the States, when the people who lose say, “We was robbed. The system was against us.” We have been hugely lucky in this country that all our election results have been beyond challenge and have been accepted by the victor and the defeated, and that the legitimacy of those who have been chosen to govern has been accepted and agreed, but we cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot presume that just because that is how it has always been, that is how it will always be, and that is the spur that prompted me to apply for this Adjournment debate. My message to the Minister is that although 2029 seems a long way away, in governance and organisational terms it is effectively tomorrow. The Government and the House need to think about whether and how any changes are to be delivered to the way that postal voting operates, such as through amendments to the Elections Act or statutory instruments, to ensure that the electorate accept the legitimacy of the result. The next general election will not be fought on the same franchise that we had this year. We have an ageing population, so it is a legitimate presumption that there will be a higher demand for postal votes as people get older. There is also the potential to increase the franchise by giving the vote to 16 year olds, which could increase future demand for postal votes, and I understand that proposals may be in train about franchise rights for EU citizens, which would create another demand. If all the newly enfranchised overseas voters had registered to vote who were hitherto exempt because of the 15-year cut-off point, who would by definition be seeking a postal vote or a proxy vote, the totality of additional voters coming on to the roll—I am giving this figure from memory—would have been about 3 million. I do not know what percentage of that 3 million got on to the register and had a vote; the Electoral Commission’s report about the operation of the election will be published in November. As sure as eggs are eggs, though, as time goes by—their legitimacy to vote was accepted by my then shadow, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), so there will be no change in policy there—one can only presume that a greater percentage of those 3 million will apply for a vote as their knowledge and understanding of their ability to secure one grows.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Postal Voting at General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that all those who are entrusted with the discharge and delivery of our elections—our police, our medical certifiers and others clearly play a part—should play an active and engaged part. It should not be an option to opt out; this should just be an accepted part of the job. I will mention Northern Ireland specifically in a moment or so. I want to give the House some facts provided by the Royal Mail, which I think are of interest to put this issue into scope and scale. At the general election just gone, on 4 July, the Royal Mail delivered more postal votes and candidate mail than in any previous general election. Postal votes were up by 50% and candidate literature was up by 30% in comparison with 2019—and that was just your election literature, Madam Deputy Speaker! The Royal Mail delivered 50.8 million poll cards, 7.26 million postal votes and 184 million candidate leaflets. It did sweeps of all its 37 mail centres and 1,200 delivery offices to ensure that all the postal votes that had gone into the system were delivered to the counts, to make sure that those votes were counted. On election day itself, 70,000 postal votes were handled by the Royal Mail across the United Kingdom to be delivered. That is a huge number. This is the challenge that I set for the Minister. I am not looking for the de facto answer today, but I would like an assurance that it is on the radar and people are thinking about it. We know full well that the Royal Mail is going through a period of change. I think we feel this particularly acutely in rural areas. It is by definition, because of email and everything else, handling fewer and fewer letters, and staff numbers reflect that. One of the joys of the 2015 general election, as far as Royal Mail was concerned, was the fact that we still had the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and it could structure additional recruitment to deliver the demand—and that demand was far less than that which prevails at the moment—because it knew with certainty when the general election was going to be held. The snap elections of 2017 and 2019, and the perhaps earlier than expected 2024 election, caught the Royal Mail napping, because it had to put on a sudden spurt to recruit people to deliver all the pieces of paper that needed to be delivered. In the absence of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, that issue will remain with us. I made the point to the Royal Mail that in fact only one election was controlled by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Every other election had always been at the whim or the prerogative of the Prime Minister when the House was dissolved. However, in comparing previous with future general elections, we must consider the changes in volume that the Royal Mail is handling. I mentioned rural areas. I am still awaiting the delivery of election address 2; I am sure that I had exciting words to say, but it never came through my letterbox. Last week, a wonderful bundle of 12 pieces of mail was delivered in the one-delivery-a-week service that my part of North Dorset is currently experiencing. There will not be a Member of Parliament, urban or rural—though this applies particularly to rural areas—who has not had constituents contacting them after the general election to say that they did not receive their postal vote in time or could not get it back in time. That takes me to a point that requires possibly secondary legislation and certainly some thought: the cut-off point between the close of nominations and everything going to the printer, and everything getting bundled up in the postal vote packs at the same time as people are trying to update the register, check that polling stations are available, recruit polling clerks and so on. It is all incredibly tight. It was incredibly tight this year, but the system just about coped. I am anxious to future-proof, given the increased demand that I mentioned at the start of my remarks. The Government could go back to the old system, thus putting the postal vote genie back in the bottle, with the tight criteria that used to prevail. I do not believe that that will happen, and I do not think it would be desirable. We could introduce digital voting for overseas voters, but that has the potential for fraud and hacking. It also opens up the Pandora’s box of digital voting for everyone in the United Kingdom. There is no easy solution. There is the tightness of the timetables and the capacity of the Royal Mail—not its good will; the Royal Mail is honoured and delighted to have the contract that the Government give it. David Gold and his team were conscious of the pivotal role that their organisation played in delivering the general election, and always prepared to say so up front. The Electoral Commission noted, in a briefing that I received today in advance of the debate, for which I am grateful, that several people experienced problems in voting by post, such as delays in receiving their postal ballot. Its research shows that the vast majority of postal votes were delivered promptly, and that there were no widespread or systemic issues. However, there were voters in the UK and abroad who could not vote because of the late arrival of postal votes. Problems were prevalent in Scotland, which gave us a lot of concern because the election coincided with the school holidays there and in Northern Ireland, which created additional pressure for the postal voting system. I look forward, as I am sure that the Minister does, to the Electoral Commission’s report on postal voting, which will be published next month. Something needs to be done to give us all confidence that the result of the general election in 2029—probably—will have the same legitimacy as those held in 2024, 2019 and previously. There will be some challenges. Although our constituents are not forced to vote, they have a legitimate expectation, as part of their contract with the state, that their vote will be counted if it has been cast. I do not have the answers for the Minister. That is her job, not mine. She knows that the system needs to be reliable, robust, easy, seamless and trusted, because all of us, irrespective of party or geography, are united in being motivated by one guiding principle: the result, whatever it may be, has to command authority through the electorate’s trust in it. If it does not—if people can cry foul, say that the system is loaded against them, or that it is too creaky and analogue for a digital age—then faith in our democratic system erodes. When faith erodes, participation is likely to decline; that is when extremes always flourish, and I know that His Majesty’s Government and the Minister will not want that. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. For what it is worth, having been the Minister over the election period, I would be happy to do anything I can with her—through conversations, et cetera—to ensure that we get this right.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Postal Voting at General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  I am tempted to say that this Adjournment debate would not be an Adjournment debate—it would fail the Trade Descriptions Act—unless I gave way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

• 22 Oct 2024 · Postal Voting at General Elections · Hansard source

  More

  If my hon. Friend means alternatives to feet on the pavements, then very possibly. The benefit of using the Royal Mail is that culturally it is aware of the seriousness of the task it is asked to discharge, and it has a very good heritage of doing so. I would not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I sympathise with the Royal Mail because, in essence, it is given five weeks to recruit hundreds of people across the country to learn the rounds and deliver stuff. Those people also have to be vetted to ensure that they are not politically partial, so that my leaflets do not end up in a hedge while everybody else’s end up delivered through people’s letterboxes. Those are important issues. There is a tendency to rush off into the commercial sector, but I would not do that. Of course, there are ways to ensure vetting, but the authority and imprimatur of Royal Mail puts it at a distinct advantage. I know that it wants to continue to undertake the task, not just because the contract it has with the Minister and the Department is commercially attractive, but because it sees itself as being part of the democratic fabric and network that sustains the elections. I could have waited until 2027 to raise these issues, but then the Minister could have said, “The hon. Member for North Dorset makes some very valid points, but he will know that there is no time in the legislative timetable to address them. We will just have to try and muddle through.” The Minister has at least a few years to talk to the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Cabinet Committee, her Whip and the Leader of the House, and assess whether tweaks and changes need to be made to election cut-off dates and timetables. I will not labour the point any further, but the electoral process needs to be robust and the outcomes must be trusted by all our citizens, irrespective of whether they voted or how they voted.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  Q2. As evidenced by some earlier questions, issues surrounding SEND, local government finance and adult social care affect all of our constituents. Let us be honest: for too long, both parties have ducked and dodged taking the difficult but necessary decisions. In order to give certainty to our constituents and confidence to those who provide those vital services, does the Prime Minister share my assessment that there is considerable merit in formal cross-party working on those issues, so that we can share taking those difficult decisions in order to improve outcomes for our constituents?

• 15 Oct 2024 · Gaza and Lebanon · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). Tehran will not let Hamas and Hezbollah stop, and the lunatic right who are propping up Netanyahu will not let him sue for peace either. The western powers and everybody else can have as many conversations and urgings as they wish—those have been going on for months—but they are delivering precious little benefit, apart from more blood, heartache and tears on all sides. I know it is a difficult thing for a Minister to deal with at the Dispatch Box, but at some point, Washington, London and others surely have to realise that their current diplomatic strategy is not working and that something else needs to be tried. Otherwise, we will be standing here for months to come wringing our hands continually and expressing support, condemnation, solidarity or whatever, and all we will see are the bodies of the dead piling up on both sides.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  A significant impediment to improving adult social care is the split of budget and responsibility and policy between the Secretary of State’s Department and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Will he and colleagues work to remove that hurdle, to have better outcomes more cost-effectively delivered to improve the lives of all our constituents?

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

  More

  I am going to stay mute on the “all” point, but my right hon. Friend echoes the point I was endeavouring to make, which is that a list of conversion, as it were, from hereditary to life should be considered by His Majesty’s Government, outwith leaving it to leaders of any party to nominate for a new year’s honour or a birthday honour, because that would clog up the system for those who are new to public life—echoing the point the Minister raised—where people want to make a contribution and may have caught the eye of the powers that be in order to secure a nomination. I think there is a job of work that needs to be done. There are a number of ways in which one can land on the right solution, but it should not just be a case of, “Thank you so very much indeed for your service. Please return the ermine to the Lord Great Chamberlain. Your retirement party has been postponed because we could not find a room to have it in”, or whatever it may happen to be. I think there is a way which is elegant, which is kind, which is graceful and which has some democratic underpinning, because at least it will have gone through the appointments. I close by saying that this is a missed opportunity, and the Labour Front Bench needs to consider that. I appreciate that they have the distorting effect of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who did take up a little Labour bandwidth. We all got constrained by delivering Brexit, or trying not to deliver Brexit. And then we all had the big national distortion of the pandemic. But to offer this dance of the seven veils, after 14 years of opposition, and on an issue that people in this place and outside have been talking about for over a century, suggests to me a lack of detailed preparedness by the Government in some policy areas. It cannot have been a shock to Labour that they won the election; it may have come as a pleasant surprise that they won so comprehensively, but it really cannot have come as a shock that they were likely to win the general election whenever it came, irrespective of how hard my colleagues and I were working to ensure that did not happen: “There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”, or misfortune in my party’s case, but we are where we are. I hope that amendments are forthcoming—I do not think it is too late to work cross-party on this—to buttress this proposal and deliver some of that democratisation of the House of Lords, and to make sure it is more regionally reflective. I listened to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) talking about the number of white men. I will be careful as he is helping me on a constituency issue, for which I am grateful and I want to put my thanks on the record, but my party has given the country three female Prime Ministers, the first Prime Minister of Jewish heritage and the first Prime Minister of the Hindu faith, so I am not entirely certain that we need to take lessons from the Labour party on how to bring people who are not necessarily used to public life into public life.

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

  More

  I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I nearly called my hon. Friend because he is a friend, that I am more than likely to vote for this Bill on Second Reading. I possibly should have told my Whip about that beforehand—there is my peerage gone. Notwithstanding the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) is one of my oldest and dearest friends, I must say that his reasoned amendment seems to have been written more because of the need to write something, rather than actually to make a case to persuade, which is entirely atypical of the way he usually works. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge made the important point—I do hope that those on the Treasury Bench and the Government Whips have listened—that this is an opportunity to consider proper amendments to make this a more material exercise. We live, thank God—I say this as a Roman Catholic—in a multicultural, multi-religious society. We have an established church, and I do not think anybody would advocate for its disestablishment at this stage. However, it is surely an anachronism, just because of the sees to which they have been appointed, for the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to sit as part of the legislature. The only other country that has clerics in such a position by dint of office is Iran, which I suggest is not a country that we should seek to emulate very much. Let us have a faith Bench or faith Benches, but let those Benches be of mixed faiths and truly representative of the faith groups doing so much good in our country. A number of the hereditary peers have been doing sterling work. I think, in particular, of my noble Friend The Earl Howe and His Grace the Duke of Wellington, whom Labour Members were praying in aid just a few months ago, of course, when His Grace was leading the campaign against the then Government to improve water quality and sewerage. I suggest that his expertise in and knowledge of water quality in chalk streams and so forth should not be lost. I do take on board the sincerity that the Minister claims—this is not a personal thing or a class war; it is a matter of principle. I think the House gets him on that. I do not think he needs to make that point any more. But I do hope that there may be an opportunity for a supernumerary list outside the normal leaders’ nominations —birthday or new year honours—so that those hereditaries who wish to continue their service, and not all will, can have conferred upon them a life peerage. That would make good much of what the Minister has said with regard to his principal motivation and that this is not a personal thing.

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

  More

  Before I begin my remarks, I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have a meeting with a Minister at the Department of Health a little later, so I will have to slip out for part of the debate. I slightly hesitate to say this in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), because I would love to describe myself as a romantic old Tory who believes in the Peel dictum that we should keep the best of what we have and reform only where necessary. However, I am afraid that that ship has probably sailed and we are now full steam ahead into the 21st century, and there is much in what the Paymaster General said to support the principle that he seeks to advance. In a modern legislature, can we justify—beyond its being an attractive traditional anachronism—having 92 or whatever hereditary peers? It is frankly nigh on impossible to make that argument, apart from as a romantic attachment, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) gave it his best shot. He made some very important points, particularly in quoting Burke. I have to say that I am distressed to hear that, when our leadership issues have been settled, he will be leaving the Front Bench—he was just starting to show such promise, and I am sure great things beckoned. He is a great mate, and he will be much missed. I am afraid that the argument the Minister deployed is not the best one or what I was expecting to hear him say. He is an accomplished author: he has written a book on Nye Bevan, an award-winning book on Harold Wilson and a book about Attlee. He may possibly be able to hear those heroes of his spinning in their graves, because his approach to Lords reform would translate as Wilson having a “lukewarm heat of technology”, Attlee saying, “Well, I’ve created a little bit of a welfare state, and I think we’ll just pause there for 30 years and see how that goes, because some people may not like it”, or Nye Bevan saying, “Do you know, I’ve opened a cottage hospital in Cwmbran, and that’s quite enough: let’s just pause for a moment and see how that works.” If you are going to do it, do it! I make this point with the greatest respect and politeness, because I admire the right hon. Gentleman enormously. After 14 years in opposition, decades since Harold Wilson and over a century since Lloyd George’s price list of viscountcies—and heaven knows what else when he was selling peerages to try to keep the old Liberal party in power—the right hon. Gentleman says, in a tantalising Lords reform version of the dance of the seven veils, “I want to show you this little bit of what we’re going to do, and there’s more to come after the interval, but we don’t how long the interval will be.” My right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) is a former Chief Whip, so he knows full well the pressures on legislative time, and the Cabinet Office has done well to secure a legislative slot so early in the Parliament to deliver some constitutional change and reform. What a missed open goal to deliver the things that most of us—including, I think, the right hon. Gentleman—would like to see. The right hon. Gentleman—I say this as a fellow boy from south Wales—told us that there is nothing better than when we see men and women of good will who wish to take part in our national life having the opportunity to do so. That is what we all want to see—a socially mobile, inclusive, engaged democracy—if for no other reason than that it means that, through that mechanism, we can destroy and put away those on the extremes, who only ever fill the vacuum when those women and men of good will do not step up to the plate. Removing the 92 hereditary peers will still leave appointment to the Lords up to patronage—being a great mate of a party leader. Across the House we should be absolutely frank about how all party leaders all of the time have used the House of Lords as a way of getting rid of the awkward, the bed blockers or whoever. I have to say to Labour Members that, while we should all beware of Greeks bearing gifts—I can say that as somebody who is a quarter Greek—they should beware of a Labour Chief Whip offering them a peerage, because the Government will change the age qualification. It is the unkindest retirement present for Margaret Beckett, John Spellar and others. They said, “Please go to the House of Lords and make way for a new, young, able thruster,” and then, “Oh, we’re frightfully sorry, but you’re now too old to take your seat.”

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

  More

  One can make a perfectly reasonable argument to say it should be offered to all. One can make an equally good argument that it should be offered only to hereditary peers who are fulfilling a House of Lords duty—chairing a Committee perhaps, or if they are active on their party’s Front Bench. My right hon. Friend has made an important point and I am sure that the Minister will consider it. It would certainly be an act of good grace and it would be an act of charm, both of which I know are characteristics with which the Minister is fully imbued.