REPEALS (Hansard, 3 March 1999)

§ Mr. Forth
In the cause of trying better to understand the clause, I have had a look at the Peerage Act 1963, to establish what is affected by the schedule to which the clause refers. It would help me if the Minister were briefly to explain what the clause does and why.
I am especially interested in the reference to section 2 of the Peerage Act 1963, which may touch on the matter raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). That section is entitled Disclaimer by members of the House of Commons and parliamentary candidates", and covers the eventualities in which there is an overlap between membership of the two Houses.
That affects the matter of timing. Unless I am misreading the situation, which is entirely possible, because the Act is rather dense—no, nobody has risen to the bait—the provision may not be as relevant as it might be to my right hon. and learned Friend and to any other Member of Parliament who is in the fortunate position of being the possible inheritor of an hereditary title.
The schedule deletes altogether sections 4 to 6 of the Peerage Act 1963, which refer to Parliamentary qualifications of Scottish Peers, Irish Peers and Peeresses in their own right". For example, section 4 says: The holder of a peerage in the peerage of Scotland shall have the same right to receive writs of summons to attend the House of Lords, and to sit and vote in that House, as the holder of a peerage in the peerage of the United Kingdom; and the enactments relating to the election of Scottish representative peers shall cease to have effect. That is to be repealed. What lies behind that? I may be the only one who has not understood, and if so I offer the Committee my apologies, but if others have shared my difficulty in grasping the relevance and impact of the schedule, it would be helpful for the Minister to give us some background.

§ Mr. Swayne
I, too, have had the benefit of reading the Peerage Act 1963. I was able to follow the logic of the exclusions in the schedule, which flow from clause 2 of the Bill, save in one respect. It may show only my ignorance, but the ignorance of a member of the 1105 Committee is a proper concern for the Minister. My query relates to the extent of the repeal as it affects section 2, which states: Where a peerage is disclaimed under this Act, no other hereditary peerage shall be conferred upon the person by whom it is disclaimed, and no writ in acceleration shall be issued in respect of that peerage to the person entitled thereto on his death". That provision will be repealed, and I hope that the Minister will explain why.

§ Mr. Forth
I noticed that point as well, but I did not mention it because I did not want to make my comments any longer than was necessary. However, I wondered whether that was the very mechanism that had benefited Lord Cranborne and whether there was a sinister element in its repeal, given recent events.

§ Mr. Swayne
I hope that the Minister will be able to clear up any doubt on that score.

Mr. Edward Garner (Harborough)
I wish to ask the Minister a more fundamental question than the subtle ones that have been asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). Why does any part of the Peerage Act 1963 need to be repealed in the light of the Bill? If it does nothing else, the Bill will prevent holders of hereditary peerages from sitting, voting and speaking in the other place. It will specifically allow holders of hereditary peerages to vote in elections for this House and to become Members of Parliament. Someone who today sits in the other place could become a Member of this House and use, if they wanted to, their hereditary title. The Speaker would call—

§ Mr. Letwin
Lord Speaker.

§ Mr. Garnier
Yes, we could even have a Lord Speaker or Lady Speaker. That aside, the whole purpose of the Bill is to disable hereditary peers from taking part in the legislation of the other place and to enable them to take part in the legislation in this House. The Peerage Act 1963, in the long title, authorises the disclaimer for life of certain hereditary peerages". The whole Act will become otiose, because by implication, it will be entirely repealed by the Bill. I hope that the Minister can deal with that point.
The purpose of the Peerage Act 1963 was to allow successors to hereditary peerages—we remember the case of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), or Lord Stansgate as he was for a short time—and, presumably, unwilling peers to renounce their hereditary titles, which after all were awarded to their forebears and not to them, so that they could stand for election to this House.

§ Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)
Is it true that the Peerage Act 1963 would become otiose? What would happen if one of the Weatherill peers died towards the end of this Parliament? Would he be succeeded by his eldest son or would the other peers elect a new peer?

§ Mr. Garnier
I do not know, but I would guess that the son of a Weatherill peer, as my hon. Friend called them, 1106 would be entitled to inherit the honour and the name, and be entitled to call himself the second or third Lord Leigh of Gainsborough, or whatever it might be. He would not, as a consequence of his father's death, be able to step into his shoes as an elected hereditary peer. I do not know whether the Government have yet invented a system for by-elections within that class of hereditary peers who will be members of the new House of Lords.

§ Mr. Letwin
Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it would be extraordinary if the Government had invented any such mechanism, because they deny all knowledge of the proposal to which he refers?

§ Mr. Garnier
I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but for the very reason that the Government deny it, I would not find it in the least bit extraordinary. I have dealt, in interrogatory form, with the first part of the long title of the Peerage Act 1963. It continues: to include among the peers qualified to sit in the House of Lords all peers in the peerages of Scotland and peeresses in their own right in the peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom". By definition, the only people who are included in that class of peer are hereditary peers. Since 1963, no new life peerages that would fall within that description have been created.

§ Mr. Hogg
Hereditary peerages.

§ Mr. Garnier
Hereditary peers have been created, but there have been no new hereditary peers in the peerage of Scotland or any new creations of peeresses in their own right in the peerages of Scotland, England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, although life peeresses have been created, of course. I suggest that there are no peers in that class who would not already be caught by the provisions of the Bill and expelled from the other place.
The long title continues: to remove certain disqualifications of peers in the peerage of Ireland in relation to the House of Commons and elections thereto; and for purposes connected with the flatters aforesaid. Unless the Minister can provide me with some ingenious examples of peers of Ireland whose rights will be unaffected by the Bill, I suggest that clause 3 and the schedule are unnecessary.

§ Mr. Swayne
I apologise to the Minister. When I asked my question a few moments ago, I read out correctly the part of the Peerage Act 1963 that confused me, but I misidentified it. It is section 3(2) that contains the exclusion that I wish to be explained.

§ Mr. Hoon
Clause 3 is a simple, straightforward measure and part of a determined campaign by the Government to keep the statute book as simple and straightforward as possible. It introduces a schedule to the Bill. As a result of clauses 1 and 2, certain provisions of the Peerage Act 1963 will no longer be required—for example, those which require a peer to disclaim a peerage before he or she may stand for membership of the House of Commons, a point that the hon. and learned Member 1107 for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) reached eventually—and the schedule repeals those provisions. It is as simple and straightforward as that.

§ Mr. Hogg
Will the Minister tell us which bits of the 1963 Act are required?

§ Mr. Hoon
As ever, the right hon. and learned Gentleman goes straight to the point. Certain of its provisions are required, and I shall write to him in due course about them.

§ Mr. Garnier
When the Minister writes to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), will he not only identify which parts of the 1963 Act are required, but provide a full explanation of why they are required?

§ Mr. Hoon
I shall certainly do that.

§ Mr. Hogg
Would the Minister put a copy of his letter in the Library of the House of Commons?

§ Mr. Hoon
Of course.

§ Mr. Swayne
I suspect that the Minister's explanation was written before the debate because he has made no attempt to address my specific question. I understand entirely that the exclusions follow from clause 2, except in respect of the subsection to which I drew attention. May I also expect a letter from the Minister?

§ Mr. Hoon
Yes.

§ Mr. Leigh
My intervention was brushed aside by the Minister and the Leader of the House. May I offer the Committee a scenario that could happen to one hon. Member of this House. Let us say that an hon. Member has a father who is an hereditary peer—I can think of at least one. Let us say that the father is elected to be a Weatherill peer. Let us say that the father subsequently dies before the end of this Parliament. At present, the situation is quite clear. If one's father is an hereditary peer and one is a Member of the House of Commons, one's office is immediately closed by the Serjeant at Arms and one is not allowed to sit in this Chamber. One then makes one's choice.
Under the new arrangements, if an hon. Member has a father who is an hereditary peer, but not a Weatherill peer, there will be no problem. He will go on sitting in this House. However, what would happen if his father was a Weatherill peer? Would the hon. Member be allowed to make his choice between sitting here and being allowed to stand later for election as a Weatherill peer? If so, we should be giving that person—as I have said, I can think of at least one example of an hon. Member to whom this situation might apply—an entirely unfair position. He would be able to sit in this House, or to stand as a Weatherill peer.

§ Mr. Forth
I am beginning to regret the brevity of my remarks. I had skipped over this matter. I pointed out that the deletion of section 2 of the Peerage Act 1963 took out 1108 the bit that referred to disclaimers by Members of the House of Commons and parliamentary candidates. My hon. Friend has picked up a point with which I failed to deal adequately. The deletion of the whole section, in a way that the Minister has not yet been able properly to explain, would leave us in a serious position.

§ Mr. Leigh
That is part of the difficulty that we face. We know perfectly well that there will be a class of Weatherill peers, but the Government refuse to acknowledge that those peers will exist. They claim that it is a hypothetical situation. My point is perfectly justifiable. The Minister has argued that one cannot have one's cake and eat it, and that one cannot be a Member of the other House and be allowed to stand for this place. Why, then, should someone whose father happens to be an hereditary Weatherill peer be placed in the uniquely advantageous position of being able to choose, in his own time, whether to stay here or go to the other place?

§ Mr. Hoon
I shall repeat my earlier mantra on whether or not there are to be amendments to deal with the arrangements suggested by Lord Cranborne. It may or may not occur, and we may or may not have the kind of debate that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) referred to.
The hon. Gentleman has at least saved the taxpayer the cost of a first-class stamp, however, as I can now deal with the point made by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). I was right in my earlier comments.

§ Mr. Garnier
He is sometimes right.

§ Mr. Hoon
Every so often, that is so.
Clause 3 and the schedule are a tidying-up measure. They reduce the size of the statute book. The hon. Member for New Forest, West was concerned about writs in acceleration. Our repeal ensures, for the avoidance of doubt, the removal of writs in acceleration, which might otherwise have been available had the provision been left in. This is a tidying provision arising from the 1963 Act, which dealt, as it had to, with writs in acceleration. Those writs will no longer be possible, because they apply only to hereditary peers, who will not have the right to sit. This is simply a means of ensuring that a piece of legislation that is no longer necessary is removed from the statute book, which I am sure the hon. Member for New Forest, West would welcome.