Lords Sitting of 28 March 1963

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool

MEAT PRICES
2.35 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
1[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the present cost of meat marketing and its aim of ensuring that the housewife enjoys cheap meat in return for high farm subsidies, they will make a statement showing how much of the present wholesale price cuts are being passed on to the shopper.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, since the beginning of this year the wholesale prices for British beef and pork have fallen on average by about 20 per cent. There is no official information about retail prices, but the weekly price-lists of three large chains of multiple butchers show that their retail prices for beef and for pork have fallen during this period by up to 18 per cent. according to the different cuts. The National Federation of Meat Traders, who have been collecting returns from some of their members, inform me that their returns show reductions of the same order.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, without wishing any discourtesy to the Minister, I do not really feel that the reply he has given gets a great deal further concerning the last part of my Question. I am wondering whether the Government would be prepared to state that the fall in the wholesale price of meat compensates the taxpayer for the additional cost arising from the price guarantees to home producers. Does the noble Earl feel that that is balancing out?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I should be glad to go as far with the noble Lady as she likes, but this does seem to be a little outside the original Question. I think that, if she will look at the Answer given by the Minister in another place yesterday on a rather wider Question, she will find some observations relevant to it.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: No. With respect, I have read that. Is the Minister aware that there always seems to be difficulty in getting details of prices as they affect the shoppers? We never can get a straight answer from the Government on this particular matter. I wonder whether I might ask the noble Earl a question on this matter. Would the Government consider setting up a meat commission, on which consumers are represented, to co-ordinate imports and home-produced supplies? Would the noble Earl not agree that, if this were done, they would find out whether the benefits of lower prices were being passed on to the housewife?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I cannot say at Question Time whether it would be a good thing to have a meat commission. But I think the evidence which we have is as much as we could reasonably be expected to get in present circumstances. That showed that there have been, since the beginning of January, reductions of up to 20 per cent. in some of the cuts of beef, and of 15 per cent. in others. Of course, prices are not uniform in every butcher's shop. You cannot, therefore, guarantee that if there has been an overall reduction of a certain percentage in prices it will be reflected in every shop which you might happen to go into.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that farmers are just as worried about the present situation as we are, and with good reason? And is it not the case that the Government have no information on this subject, and should have information? For example, why is it that a forequarter of beef is ls. a lb. in Smithfield, and cuts from it are 4s. to 4s. 6d. a lb. in the shops? That is the kind of situation which the Government ought to

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look into. It is no good paying £1 million a year in subsidies if in times of glut the consumer is not getting the benefit from it.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the noble Lord need not tell me anything about the worries of farmers in comparison with ours. I have my full share of them. I think that to get an official survey of average meat prices regularly month by month would be a very expensive operation, and very difficult administratively. I should not care to undertake to do anything like that without looking into it much more carefully.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether he is aware of the complete bewilderment of the public at present? They are being told that the price of beef has fallen enormously, which they do not find in the shops; they find only that they will have to pay in taxation for the prices that the Government are paying to the farmers.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the price of beef has fallen in the shops by about 20 per cent. in the last two months.
LORD WILLIAMS OF BARNBURGH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether the real solution of this problem is not to be pottering about with detailed prices at the moment, but to do something substantial to prevent the chaos that we had last year and have this year,
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I think that is what my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is attempting and proposing to do.
LORD WILLIAMS OF BARNBURGH: When?

PRISON VISITORS AS JUSTICES OF THE PEACE
2.41 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, when appointing Justices of the Peace, they will give special consideration to the appointment as Jus-
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tices, of persons who have experience as prison visitors.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, experience as a prison visitor is one of the qualifications to which I attach some importance when selecting persons for appointment to the Commissions of the Peace.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. May I hope that he will attach additional importance to this qualification, so that future magistrates may have a better idea of the conditions with which they are dealing?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, while I agree that some importance should be attached to this qualification, I could not, of course, accept the proposition that a good prison visitor would necessarily form the best magistrate in adjudicating the guilt or innocence of the accused.
LORD STONHAM: I assure the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that I fully accept that. But, surely, among the qualities of a good magistrate is a considerable and varied experience in the matters on which he is adjudicating, and surely some knowledge of the kind of people on whom he is adjudicating would be a considerable help.

THE EASTER RECESS
2.42 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it is hoped that the House will rise for the Easter Recess after the conclusion of Business on Wednesday, April 10, until Tuesday, April 23. If, however, it should be necessary to sit on Thursday, April 11, it is proposed that the House should meet at 11 o'clock in the morning.

GREAT YARMOUTH PORT AND HAVEN BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
BRITISH MUSEUM BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
PROTECTION OF DEPOSITORS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
2.44 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE) rose to move to resolve, That this House takes note of the Report of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Resolution which appears on the Order Paper in my name. The Report of the Joint Committee was published last December, and I do not doubt has been the subject of close and careful study by your Lordships. The proposals in the Report, if accepted, will involve very considerable constitutional changes, the importance of which I wish neither to exaggerate nor to minimise. For two and a half centuries there have been constitutional provisions distinguishing between the rights of the holders of Scottish Peerages and those of Peers of the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England. In the long history of this House hereditary Peeresses have not been admitted, and it has never been possible for a Peer to surrender his Peerage. I am sure your Lordships will agree that no changes should be made in the membership of either House without careful consideration, and the reason why I am moving this Motion is these terms is to enable your Lordships to express your views on these proposals and so enable Her Majesty's Government to have the benefit of knowing exactly what they are.
I am sure your Lordships would have thought it wrong if the Government had come forward now with proposals for legislation without your Lordships' first having the opportunity of expressing your views on the Joint Committee's proposals. It would be too much to expect complete unanimity among your Lordships, or, indeed, among the Members of another place, but I hope that our debates to-day in both Houses will reveal a broad measure of agreement: for this is not a subject on which one would like to see any real disagreement between the two Houses. Views in another place may differ, as no doubt they differ in your Lordships' House, but it certainly would not be, in my submission, in the public interest that this subject should become the source of conflict between the two Houses, or lead to one House seeking to impose its will upon the other, or for this subject to become the plaything of
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Party politics. I hope and trust that such a broad measure of agreement will be revealed that it will be possible to legislate while avoiding these dangers.
I do not propose to remind your Lord, ships in any detail of the events that led up to the appointment of the Joint Committee, but your Lordships may recollect the debate in another place with regard to the position of Mr. Wedgwood Benn. I took part in that debate, and I then urged that his case should not be considered in isolation, and that if any consideration was to be given to the surrender of Peerages the position of Scottish Peers, of Irish Peers and of hereditary Peeresses should also be considered. That the Joint Committee have done, and I should like to express my admiration for the way the Committee tackled their task. It is evident that they proceeded with that care and attention to detail which we have all long associated with the Chairman, my noble friend Lord Kilmuir. I am sure that the House will join with me in expressing thanks to him, and also to his colleagues.
Your Lordships will recollect that the events which occurred before the Joint Committee were appointed showed that there was a widespread feeling, both in Parliament and throughout the country, that a man who wished to remain a commoner and to embark upon, or to continue, a political career in the House of Commons should not be debarred from doing so by the accident of birth solely by reason of the inheritance of a Peerage. I do not suggest that this view was held by all, either then or now, but I would respectfully suggest to your Lordships that it would be entirely wrong to ignore it. and also that little advantage in relation to the discharge of the Business of your Lordships' House is to be gained from the compulsory exclusion from membership of the House of Commons of those who, rightly or wrongly, desire to pursue a political career there rather than in your Lordships' House.
The Report of the Joint Select Committee shows that, while it may be easy to say that such a change should be made, there are various ways in which it could be made, and also that any such change involves consideration of a number of consequential matters. Perhaps the most important recommendations of the Committee deal with the

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surrender of Peerages. If I may, I will follow the Committee in using the expression "surrender", even though some legal purists may take me to task; for the word "surrender" has a particular meaning in legal circles.
The Committee recommended, if I may remind your Lordships, first, that all hereditary Peers and Peeresses not of the first creation, other than holders of Irish Peerages, should be entitled at their sole discretion to surrender their Peerages for life. Secondly, such surrender should be subject to certain time limits: namely—one month from succession in the case of sitting Members of the House of Commons; six months from the change in the law in the case of those who have succeeded when that change takes place; and, twelve months from succession in all other cases. Thirdly, the surrender should be for life and should involve the acquisition of the status of a commoner, including eligibility for membership of the House of Commons and the right to vote at Parliamentary elections. It also involves giving up of any titles, including the courtesy titles of descendants. Fourthly, the Committee recommended that on the death of the surrendering Peer the Peerage should devolve on the next Peer in the ordinary way.
There is clearly room for differences of opinion about such matters as the period of surrender or time limits, or the loss of titles, or the applicability of the proposals to what I may call "sitting Peers"—if the use of that expression may not sound slightly unsporting to those of us who shoot. I can well imagine that on these questions many Members of this House may have preferred different solutions. But I do not propose to say too much about this at present because I want rather to hear what the House has to say than to express my own opinions.
I have referred to the recommendations on surrender as being the principal recommendations because I am sure that they will be the ones which will be of the greatest interest to the country; but there are other recommendations which will be of particular interest to this House and which I ought to mention. First, there is the recommendation that Scottish Peers should be on an equal footing with Peers
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of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom in relation to membership of this House. In 1707 there were about as many Scottish as English Peers—some say the numbers were 165 to 161—so that the addition to the House of Lords of all the Peers of Scotland would have effected a most remarkable transformation. To-day, the Committee's proposals would mean that our numbers would be increased by only sixteen Peers and nine hereditary Peeresses of Scotland.
Secondly, the Committee have recommended that hereditary Peeresses should, in effect, be given the same Parliamentary status as hereditary Peers, and thus become entitled to membership of this House. Your Lordships will remember that this question has on more than one occasion been discussed in this House, and I think this House has on recent occasions expressed a decided view in favour of what the Committee have recommended. Again, the effect in terms of numbers would be small. Apart from the nine Scottish Peeresses, whom I have already mentioned, there are at present eight Peeresses of England and one Peeress of both Kingdoms who would become Members of this House. I have not forgotten the noble Baroness, Lady Ravensdale of Kedleston, who holds an hereditary Peerage and is happily among us in her capacity as a Baroness under the Life Peerages Act. To put the matter in perspective, although I am not sure it is entirely appropriate to refer to a percentage of Peers and Peeresses, the addition of the sixteen Scottish Peers and eighteen hereditary Peeresses would increase our membership by 3¾ per cent. —not a very large extension of the hereditary principle.
I ought also to refer to the recommendations affecting the Peerage of Ireland. I am aware that by recommending that the Peerage of Ireland should not be given any representation in this House the Committee will have caused great disappointment to many holders of Irish Peerages. While understanding that disappointment, I feel bound to say that, for my part, I see formidable difficulties in any other solution of the problem. This is a complicated and difficult question and I do not wish to go into it now, but I think it is clear from the Appendices to the Report that the Committee were left in no doubt about, although they

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did not accept, the views of those who favoured such representation and the arguments in support of their contentions.
The House will appreciate that implementation of the Committee's recommendations will involve a number of ancillary changes. We should, for example, have to devise machinery for summoning Scottish Peers to the House and to regulate their precedence here. I and my successors would need advice when it came to deciding whether a claimant to a Scottish Peerage had established his succession sufficiently clearly. Consideration also would have to be given to the question of drafting the necessary legislation in a way which would effect the minimum amount of disturbance to existing Peerage Law. We should also have to safeguard property rights which devolved on the holder of a surrender Peerage. These, and other similar questions, would have to be dealt with; but I can tell the House that a good deal of consideration has already been given to them, and there is no need for me to go into details now.
I am sure that the noble Viscount who leads the House will be pleased to answer any specific questions which may be asked in the course of this debate. But I can tell the House this: if it becomes apparent that Parliament favours the Committee's proposals, creation of the necessary machinery and the preparation of the necessary legislation will present no insuperable difficulties. Legislation will be necessary if any single one of the Committee's main recommendations is adopted. To give effect to all the Committee's recommendations, I understand that a short and fairly simple Bill of the order of six or seven clauses would be required. But the Bill, though short, may be exceedingly controversial. I want to make it clear, on behalf of the Government, that we shall do our best to secure the passage of any legislation that may flow from the expressed resolve of Parliament. The House will not expect me to be precise on the question of timing, although it would clearly be difficult to fit such an important Bill into the timetable for this Session. If, however, such legislation were desirable, we would bring it forward in this Parliament so that it might be in operation for the coming General Election. The Government therefore intend, after giving most careful consideration to the views that will be expressed today in both Houses, to put
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before Parliament a statement of our intentions some time between Easter and Whitsun, and this statement will cover the question of legislation.
I should like to refer in a little detail to the Committee's recommendations about Parliamentary elections, because I think they raise some difficulties. The House may remember that the Committee proposed, first, that a Peer standing for Parliament should be required to exhibit a copy of his instrument of surrender, and secondly, that nomination as a candidate should be deemed to imply an irrevocable undertaking to surrender any Peerage that the candidate might succeed to during the election.
May I deal with this second proposal first? I think it requires careful consideration. As it stands, it would mean this: that the heir to a Peerage, who stood for election at a time when it did not appear likely that he would succeed to the Peerage for many a year, would, as the result, say, of an accident causing the death of his father, be taken to have surrendered that Peerage at the time that he was nominated for Parliament, and taken to have done so without ever reaching a conclusion on that question himself. Personally, I do not think that this would be right. Surely it must be wrong. If the eldest son of a Peer should, by standing for Parliament when he has no reason to believe that he will succeed to the Peerage in the immediate future, run the risk of losing for ever the prospect of inheriting what may be a very old family honour. Surely, if his father dies suddenly, he should be given the same opportunity as anyone else to consider his position in the light of what has happened?
Again, one must remember that the candidate may be the nephew or a younger son, with little prospect of succeeding to a Peerage, but in these days a single motor accident or air crash may make an unlikely contingency turn into a reality. Is it right then, just because the accident happens during the election, that he should not have the same choice as he would have if the death occurred immediately after he had been elected? Speaking entirely for myself, I should not have thought that the Committee's proposals in this instance were entirely right. Succession to a Peerage while standing as a candidate for Parliament is not an event likely to occur frequently, but, should it

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happen, I do not see why it should cause any great difficulty, even within the framework of the Committee's main recommendations. For example, it would be practicable, although it might not be very convenient, to empower the returning officer to cancel the election, as is done if a candidate dies.
Alternatively, and I think this might prove a better course, the Election could proceed and the candidate, if successful, be given a short period within which to make up his mind. After all, if the chance of succession was already more than a remote possibility, he would presumably not only have decided what to do, but told the electors and his supporters in no uncertain way what course he intends to take; and if it is an unexpected event, then, as a matter of justice, I think he should be given time to decide what he is to do.
My objection to the first proposal—namely, that the candidate should be required to exhibit a copy of the instrument of surrender—is of a somewhat different character. At the present time, the returning officer, if the nomination papers are in order, has no power to reject the nomination of a candidate, even though he be ineligible for election to the House of Commons. If a candidate who is known to be a Peer presents himself to that returning officer, it may be assumed (if the proposals of the Committee are implemented) that he would not have been adopted without his supporters first satisfying themselves that he has surrendered his Peerage. But cases may occur where the candidate at the time he attends upon the returning officer has become a Peer without his knowledge and cases where the candidate does not use his title. The returning officer has no machinery for investigating whether a candidate is in fact a Peer. Indeed, such investigation can take a considerable time and there would indeed be protests if the election was delayed on this account. I mention this because I think that some further consideration will be required to be given to this piece of machinery.
Before I conclude, there is one point which I feel I ought to emphasise. The minutes of the proceedings of the Committee make it plain that, while there was a general acceptance of the proposition that a Peer succeeding to an hereditary
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Peerage should be enabled to surrender, there were conflicting views about the circumstances in which such a surrender should be possible and the consequences which it would entail.
I have no wish to prejudge the issue or to anticipate what may be said here or in another place, but my assessment of the position is that the recommendations of the Committee represent in substance a compromise on these difficult issues which has a reasonable chance of being acceptable as a compromise to the political Parties represented in the Committee and to both Houses. I doubt very much whether any course which involves a major departure from those recommendations would command that broad measure of support which most of us consider desirable if we are to make this change, or indeed any change, in our constitutional and Parliamentary traditions. While, therefore, I expect that a number of noble Lords will disagree with particular recommendations, I feel that we ought constantly throughout this debate to bear in mind that the main object of the Report may well not be achieved unless both noble Lords and Members of another place are prepared to make considerable concessions to those whose opinions differ from their own.
Moved to resolve, That this House takes note of the Report of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.8 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I have first to apologise to the House for the absence of my noble leader, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who has been taken ill and is therefore unable to be present. I had not intended to follow the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. That would have been the task of my noble leader. And I have been called in to speak at rather short notice.
I should like to express my own personal gratitude to the Lord Chancellor for the manner in which he has introduced this Report. I had hoped that he would have given us a rather stronger lead in this matter than he has done. I fully understand that he is desirous of collecting the views of Members of your Lordships' House (and, incidentally, the views of another place are being

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taken at the same time), but it would probably have been helpful if he had given a stronger lead in showing what are the views of the Government on the matter, while being prepared to listen to any representations. But I regard this as being largely a matter of emphasis, because I think that in fact the noble and learned Lord has expressed the view that if it should be the wish of this House and of another place that the Report should be implemented broadly as it stands, the Government would find no difficulty, other than the technical ones to which he has referred, in implementing them.
I would join with the noble and learned Lord in the tribute he has paid to the Chairman of the Joint Committee. He was, I would say, a perfect Chairman, in the sense that everybody who had a view to express was able to express it. He was himself perfectly objective, and I think that he collected the views of the Committee in the most efficient way. Modesty forbids me to accept the tribute that he paid to the Joint Committee, because I was a member of it; but I can say that it was one of the best Committees of which I have ever been a member. Every member of that Joint Committee had a contribution to make, and not necessarily the same contribution. We had our differences, of course, but these were resolved after the fullest discussion and in the friendliest possible way.
The Report before the House to-day is a strictly limited one. There are, of course, varying views about the House of Lords. There are some—I believe a declining number—who think that there is no need for a Second Chamber. There are many more who think that there should be a Second Chamber, but that the composition of this Chamber is quite anomalous and that the hereditary system ought to go. There are those who think that the existence of what is in fact, though not in theory, a permanent majority of one Party is undesirable, and that some means should be found of ensuring that all Parties are adequately represented. This is not the case at present, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Rea, will agree. Certainly one of the Parties is not adequately represented; and I think that my own Party also is not.
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There are many other difficulties which we might find in the composition, and even in the powers, of the House of Lords. But to-day we are not discussing that. We are discussing now a very limited aspect of the matter, and I hope that the House will be able broadly to come to an understanding of what should be done: because, whatever our views may be, I think that no Party desires to make the Constitution a constant issue. If we can settle this question in the near future, I hope that it will be settled for a long time to come. To have constant revisions of the powers and composition of the House of Lords is undesirable, and it is therefore essential that, whatever differences there may be among us, there should be a good deal of give and take in order to get the reforms which we need.
I do not want to go into the details of the recommendations of the Committee to any considerable extent, but I feel bound to refer to a number of them. First, there was complete agreement, I think, as to the desirability of enabling Peers who, for one reason or another, inherit a Peerage, and who are not willing to serve in the House of Lords, to renounce. I believe that on that point there was virtually no difference of opinion at all. The desire for renunciation, I understand, is mainly among those who would wish to have a Parliamentary career in another place. But that may not be the only reason; there are others, as we well know. After all, the normal attendance in this House (and to-day we have a somewhat abnormal attendance) is certainly not more than 100, or 150 at the most, out of a total membership of over 900.
There are many Peers who have never taken their seats in this House, and who do not intend to do so; and we have had, as a face-saving device, to establish the machinery of giving Peers the right to leave of absence. There are many Peers who are resident abroad, and whose interests are in the Commonwealth or in other places. It may be that Peers such as those would be anxious to renounce their Peerage if they had the opportunity, well knowing that they are not in a position to serve their country in the House of Lords. So it is not correct to say that this Report is concerned solely with Peers who wish to make a career in another place.

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There was, however, a substantial difference of opinion as to the basis on which renunciation should take place. There were some who took the view that a Peerage, once renounced, should be a renunciation for all time. The majority took the view that it should be a renunciation for the lifetime of the particular Peer who renounced it. If I may express a purely personal view, it is that the difference is to some extent academic; because each Peer, as he succeeds, will have the right to renounce, and, therefore, if it should be the desire of future generations of Peers to renounce their Peerage, they would have no difficulty in doing so, provided that they did it within the terms of the provisions that were made. It seemed to me that it would be somewhat unfair for a Peer to be able to renounce and completely extinguish a Peerage which had been in existence for possibly hundreds of years. But it is only right to say that a different view was held by a substantial number of members of the Committee. The Committee, however, decided by a majority that it should be a life renunciation.
There was also some difference of opinion as to whether a Peer renouncing a Peerage should still be able to retain his title. The majority of the Committee took the view that if a Peerage was renounced, and particularly on the ground that the person renouncing wished to have a political career in another place, it would be wrong to give him such psychological advantages as may exist in elections, in his appearances before the public, and generally, by the retention of his title. After all, for what it is worth, a title does mean something to a great number of people in this country, and it would be thought to be of some advantage if a candidate appeared as Lord "So-and-So", rather than as plain Mr. "So-and-So". Of course, there is nothing in law to prevent such a person calling himself "Lord So-and-So", even though he will have no legal right to do so. However, the majority of the Committee took the view that if a man renounced his Peerage he should not have the legal right to use the title and honours of the Peerage, and that this should extend also to his wife and children.
We spent a good deal of time discussing the position of Scottish and Irish Peers,
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and I am glad to say that there was no difference of opinion between us: we were able to agree unanimously upon that. The same applied (and I was particularly glad about this) with regard to Peeresses. It was felt that they should have the right to sit in this House. This was particularly welcome, because we had already accepted the principle in the case of Life Peerages, and we all felt that the House had benefited considerably from the presence of women here. These are broadly the main recommendations, and I do not think it is necessary for me to develop them. I am sure that every noble Lord who is interested in this subject will have read them.
I should like now to say a few words about the position of my own Party in this matter. It is well known that the majority of my noble friends are opposed to the hereditary system, and would desire to go very much further than this recommendation. Nevertheless, we are prepared broadly to accept these recommendations. Obviously, there may have to be some further consideration of the machinery, and particularly of the point (which I thought a valid one), made by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack as to the machinery in respect of candidates submitting themselves for election. There may be other points of that kind, and we should have to reserve our position and move Amendments when the legislation came. But we are prepared here and now to say that we would accept a measure broadly on the lines of this Report, provided that it was introduced early, and certainly within the lifetime of the present Parliament. What that lifetime is, I do not know, but the noble and learned Lord has given us some indication as to what it is likely to be. As I understand him (I do not know whether he intended us to accept that), it looks very much as if there will not be an Election before October. There are some who believe that it might be the case that there will be an Election before October. I would say this to the noble and learned Lord quite seriously. No one can really foresee when the Election might come. If it is going to be a date chosen by the Prime Minister, he may think that circumstances would justify a rather earlier Election than the noble and learned Lord forecast.
It seems to me that there should be no insuperable difficulty about introducing a

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Bill in the present Session of Parliament. The noble and learned Lord has himself explained that, although there may be some difficulties in drafting, considerable progress has been made in anticipation. As he said, there has been a good deal of consideration and preparation. The Bill itself, as he explained, would be a matter of six or seven clauses, although admittedly they might be difficult clauses. But it seems to me that, having regard to all that, if the Government could speed up their decision on the matter so that we had it immediately after we come back at Whitsun, and a Bill as soon after then as possible, I can promise the Government, on behalf of my noble friends, that we would put no difficulties in the way of getting an early decision on that Bill so that it could be put into operation before the House rises for the Summer Recess. While I do not expect the noble Viscount who is to reply to give me a firm decision, I hope that that suggestion will be seriously considered.
May I say, in conclusion, that it would be very welcome and most desirable that, when we consider changes in our Constitution, they should be carried out in the most harmonious manner possible? I share entirely on that point the sentiments of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. Here we have a great opportunity of achieving a substantial measure of justice and reform by substantial agreement, and I hope that the Government will take full advantage of it at the earliest possible moment.
3.26 p.m.
LORD REA: My Lords, if I may, I would start my comments with three personal matters. First, I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for the most objective and clear way in which he has introduced this interesting Motion. Secondly, may I express the regret of the whole House that the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, is not with us to-day, and hope he will soon be restored to health; and, thirdly, I would welcome our excellent Chairman of that Joint Committee on which I also had the honour to sit, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, who is with us to-day, and who could not have been more clear and helpful in the way he took the Chair at the meetings of that Committee.
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I think it rather important that in discussing this Report we should be clear that the title of the Joint Committee is really very misleading. Indeed, I will go much further, if I may do so without impropriety, and say that rather a serious mistake has been made in having allowed the words "House of Lords Reform" to be used in describing the objective of this Committee. The Committee, as your Lordships know, was directed to inquire into certain disabilities of the Peerage virtually in one direction only, and to suggest possible alterations in this direction only, with comments, of course, upon the actual or possible results of such alteration. It was not charged with making recommendations for the reformation or reconstitution of the House of Lords, either as regards its powers or as regards its basis of composition, except in a very limited degree.
As your Lordships know, for the last hundred years or so there have been various proposals for reform of the Second Chamber, and I would submit that, as a result of these proposals, the phrase "House of Lords reform" has really come to mean to all of us a comprehensive, basic and thorough project to investigate all aspects of the Second Chamber, and thereafter to alter such powers, privileges, disabilities and procedures as may be agreed and decided upon. But this Joint Committee had, of course, no such task. It was concerned, as I say, with one simple matter: to investigate certain restrictions of Peers and Peeresses in the present relationship between this House and another place, including, of course, the status of those Peers and Peeresses who do not sit in either Chamber; and to point out the implications of any recommended changes in that aspect alone. But this is not reform of the House of Lords; it is surely quite simply a matter of adaptation of a few matters of procedure and tradition; and your Lordships may, I hope, agree that we are this afternoon probably in some danger of going over ground which really is not covered by this Report.
May I try briefly to dismiss the wide general subject of House of Lords reform in its broad and accepted sense by reminding your Lordships that in that wider field we have not progressed beyond the findings of that very important conference of Party leaders, called

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by the Speaker at the end of 1947, and which reported in 1948 in Command Paper 7380? Your Lordships may remember that that has been referred to in most discussions on reform of the Lords. Paragraph 5 of that interesting statement summarised nine points on which agreement was reached by all Parties in respect of the composition of your Lordships' House. It was on one detailed question of powers, and not of composition, that the Conference broke down; and we on these Benches, the Liberal Party, maintain as part of our political programme our strong support of all those nine points of composition, and we continue to wish to see them implemented. Probably the most controversial of them at the time was that which proposed to abolish the right to attend and vote in this House based solely and by itself on heredity. But I think as the years have passed, most Members of all Parties would now accept that abolition, and we on these Benches really rather fail to understand why there is such an impasse and on what pretext or justification both the larger Parties fail to make any move whatever towards the long overdue reform of the Second Chamber.
One has to be careful of course. A great deal of emphasis is now given to youthful opinion. Those who do not like it call it hysterical and iconoclastic, and those who do like it call it satirical and vital, but, of course, we must always remember that if we are going to change it and take something away, we should have something ready to put in its place; and I think that just to abolish the House without thinking very carefully of what is going to take the place of the Second Chamber, which all of us seem to think desirable, must be very carefully considered. We should, therefore, be getting on with some form of House of Lords reform measure.
I now come to the much narrower issue of the Report which we are discussing to-day. As a member of the Joint Committee, I subscribe in general to its findings, and I hope that your Lordships to-day, as the Lord Chancellor has asked, will take note of the Report in a favourable way. I should like, however, to record one or two small reservations and to comment upon what I call a few crosscurrents which were apparent to me during
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the sittings of this Committee. I make so bold as to warn your Lordships, with respect, of the danger of confusing the limited task of the Committee with the much broader question of House of Lords reform in general; and that difficulty or danger showed itself to be present in the earliest stages of the Committee's deliberations.
Your Lordships who have read the Report will have noticed that the very first division arose from an amendment moved by Mr. Donald Wade, to the effect, if I may paraphrase his wording, that the Committee were put in an impossible position in proceeding with the limited Order of Reference unless they were allowed also to examine the whole great question of a comprehensive reform of the composition of the Second Chamber, on which, of course, the Order of Reference impinges but does not intrude. I think that many of us have a great sympathy with the view that it is difficult to pursue a part without taking some note of the whole, and it has much to commend it. And I would suggest that the Committee, indeed Parliament, is indebted to Mr. Wade for bringing up this difficulty so early and so clearly. But it was rejected very thoroughly by the Committee; and so, by implication, the Committee established two principles: first, that it must proceed within its limited brief and not on the wider field; and, secondly, that opinions, prejudices and beliefs relating to aspects of this House, other than those laid down in the directive, would of course be out of order and should not enter into the Committee's deliberations.
I am sorry to say that, in my opinion, this principle, which was achieved by the rejection of Mr. Wade's amendment at the start of our proceedings, was not strictly adhered to in the later stages, and that political opinions about your Lordships' House, particularly of course the hereditary question, which I do not think were within the real ambit of this Committee, were at times expressed in contexts where perhaps their absence would have been more desirable. It is understandable that if a man has a burning desire to abolish the hereditary principle it is very difficult not to slip it in and impinge it upon other matters where it is really not applicable.
I have in mind particularly the general matter of hereditary succession which, of course, until it is tackled by some specific

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Measure—as many of us hope it may be—nevertheless remains part of our existing Constitution until it is replaced or modified. This hereditary system is with us now as part of our Parliamentary system, and it was not, I submit, the function of this particular Committee to throw its weight either way in that general field. Where this feeling arose particularly, I think, was in the matter of whether a Peerage should be surrendered for life or extinguished, and those who cannot bear the thought of hereditary Peerages find it difficult not to argue in favour of extinction. The Committee, however, settled the other way. And similarly in the case of the Scottish Peers and Peeresses who do not sit in this House and may be joining us. The constitutional position is that they are Peers suffering a disability and an unfairness, and although I am no supporter of the hereditary system in principle, I would allow 120 Scottish peers, if there were such a number, to come into this House rather than that they should continue to suffer a disability, whereas the number in question, as your Lordships know, is a small one of some twenty.
Then there is a small point about paragraph (o), on page 9, which, as it stands, and as passed by the Committee, lays it down that a person who has surrendered his Peerage may, at a later stage in his career, have conferred upon him a new Life Peerage, but not a new hereditary Peerage. As I say, I am no advocate of the hereditary system as such, but while that system obtains, as it does to-day, it seems to me improper and unfair that a Peer who has elected to become a commoner should be debarred from one sort of honour or recognition which is open to every other commoner in the country. That is a selective disability which I think draws an unfair distinction between an ordinary commoner and a commoner who is stigmatised through no fault of his own as having at one time inherited and surrendered a Peerage.
If I might give an illustration, let us imagine a young man, let us say of 23, who has inherited a Peerage, and he decides that he would prefer to pursue a career in the House of Commons and so surrenders his Peerage. That particular hypothetical young man does remarkably well and becomes Prime Minister of his country. When he gives up the reins of office, a tired but successful man, it
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may be that Her Majesty would wish to confer upon him an Earldom, a Viscountcy, some hereditary Peerage. But this clause says that she may not do so, but can give him only a Life Peerage. Apart from the iniquity of singling out an ex-Peer for that particular disability, it seems to me improper that Parliament should dictate to the Monarch whom she can and whom she cannot make a Peer, and I personally would regard such a limitation as an affront to the Royal Prerogative.
There are two more points in the Report upon which I should like to touch briefly. One is in paragraph (i), which says that, in order to overcome possible difficulties in cases of disputed succession—whatever that may mean—a person who decides that he might be the successor to a Peerage can, so to speak, surrender that Peerage in advance, even during the lifetime of the current holder of the Peerage. This seems to me to have several disadvantages. In the first place it opens the door to spurious claimants, who may be actuated by motives purely of self-advertisement or exhibitionism, and thus it might well multiply, instead of overcome, the difficulties in cases of disputed succession.
Secondly, an heir to a Peerage might well have immature views as a young man which he might desire to change when actually faced with the position of taking up his Peerage; and as it is his later views which represent his final decision, I suggest that he should be protected and prevented from committing himself in advance to a course which he might regret. Thirdly, there seems to be an element of what I might call almost indecency, in disposing publically of an inheritance which is not yet, and may never be, in the hands of the claimant; and, additionally, during the life of a Peer who may for various reasons value the existence of his Peerage.
My third and last criticism relates to Irish Peers and Peeresses. Under the recommendations of this Committee, all Peers and Peeresses, except Irish Peers, will be required to surrender their titles before their nomination as candidates for election to the House of Commons. It seems to me curious that the Irish Peers and Peeresses should be exempted from this. Why should they have this exemption? We are, of course, well aware that

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up to now Irish Peers have sat in the House of Commons while retaining their titles. But I consider that under these new proposals they should be aligned pari passu with all other Peers and Peeresses who enter the other House and should not continue their special privilege, which under these recommendations becomes obsolete. I have no antagonism whatever against the Irish Peerage, who are very pleasant people, but the matter is really rather out of balance and deserves attention.
Finally, my Lords, I would only say that these are comparatively small points, but I would remind your Lordships once more, if I may, that the matter with which we are dealing to-day is also comparatively small, although, of course, very important. We are not dealing with Reform of the House of Lords: we are dealing only with methods to enable certain people, hitherto disqualified, to sit in the House of Commons. I hope that your Lordships will approve this Report as a sound basis on which to build a new Act of Parliament; and I hope that if in due course such a Bill comes before Parliament, we shall modify it in several ways, including those which I have indicated to-day.
3.40 p.m.
THE EARL OF KILMUIR: My Lords, may I first express my gratitude for the kind things that have been said about my chairmanship of this Committee. I really, sincerely feel it ought to be the other way, because the Committee showed an attention to their work, an open-mindedness of approach and a kindness to myself which was, I think, exemplary. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that we are considering relatively minor aspects of a great problem. But I do say that it is a rare thing to find that decisions on even fringe points connected with the reform of your Lordships' House are eventually agreed without a Division, as these were; and it is remarkable and hopeful, if I may use those adjectives, that the Report should have had the response from the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on behalf of the Labour Party, which we have heard to-day.
I thought that it would be most useful if I took what appeared to me the principal aspects of the Report and very
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briefly gave the reasons that influenced myself in coming to the conclusions. The first question which I think is a primary question in most of your Lordships' minds is whether there should be the right to surrender at all. I want to be quite frank with the House. I started with the viewpoint that there should not be. I have a natural inclination to people carrying out their duty where they are placed, and I also considered the potential loss to the House. But I changed that view. I came to the conclusion that it would be beneath the dignity of your Lordships' House to insist on unwilling conscripts being Members of the House. I also, as other speakers have indicated, felt that it was my duty to consider carefully the views which were so strongly held by my juniors.
There was another point which has not been mentioned but has its interest, and that is that the resignation of Peerages, although in each individual case you have to go into the facts in order to discover the reasons, is, of course, well known to the Peerage Law of Scotland before 1707. In fact, it is not without interest (if your Lordships will allow me one reference) that on page 52 of the Report, in the middle of the memorandum of my very learned friend, that great Scottish character the Lord Lyon King of Arms, he refers to the Winton Peerage case, and says:
"This is a case of a reigning peer denuding himself of his peerage in favour of his next brother, and shows how the principle of resignation in favorem without any re-grant (making the peer himself the first taker under the charter of resignation) was capable of being made the machinery for denuding the peer himself in favour of his next collatoral relative. Such a procedure is what might appeal to e.g. Lord Stansgate."
Those are the words of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, and I think it is worth bearing in mind that resignation is not something new but something which has an old, historical background.
Having come to the conclusion that there should be a right to surrender, I think that the next question which one has to consider is whether that should mean the extinction of the Peerage or surrender for life. I feel that it would be absolutely wrong for it to involve the extinction of the Peerage. The Peerage may well be part of the historical tradition of the country. It is certainly an honourable name, which in many cases

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has been held for generations, and I do not think that a tenant for life should have the power either to extinguish part of our historical heritage or to extinguish for ever the name which is honoured by a family. Indeed, there is the other view, which anyone who has studied Peerage cases will see has to be taken into account, and that is that this might well be done out of spite or for the next person into the title. I think life surrender is the right way to deal with it. It means that there is complete freedom of action for each generation; the person who wants to may give it up, but he transmits the Peerage and leaves it to his successor to make up his mind in turn.
The next question which one has to consider is whether there should be a right to surrender only the Parliamentary status. That has the logical attraction that all it would mean would he that the Peer would not apply for the Writ and would not sit and vote, but he would maintain all the other concomitants of his Peerage; and it avoids the difficulty of changes of name, which might provide sonic difficulties locally, and it prevents any possibility of misunderstanding. I considered all those points, and again I came to the other conclusion. I came to the conclusion that, unless the titles and trappings are surrendered as well as the Parliamentary status, there will be a general feeling that the Peer in those circumstances is trying to have the best of both worlds.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, I wonder whether I might ask my noble and learned friend one point on that. Does that mean that anybody exercising this option would then have to give up all his subsidiary titles, baronetcies, Irish titles, and so forth?
THE EARL OF KILMUIR: If the Report is adopted, he would have the power to surrender only English, Great Britain, United Kingdom and Scottish Peerages. I hope that answers my friend's point. To continue the point on which I was arguing, I had already said that I feel to retain the titles would mean that he was getting the best of both worlds. I think, equally, to put it the other way, that if he is to become a statutory commoner and be given a new right to enter the House of Commons, then he should do so as a commoner in the full sense.
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A number of my colleagues were worried about the question of the change of name in giving up the Peerage. I would remind your Lordships that the question of a change of name the other way is, of course, a commonplace. I need only look towards a noble Lord whom we all knew and admired for so long as Lord Pakenham, and have had no difficulty in knowing and admiring as Lord Longford. But, if I might give two examples from the holders of the office of Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool was known for years as Lord Hawkesbury; and Lord Salisbury, who was Prime Minister, was in the House of Commons both as Lord Robert Cecil and as Lord Cranborne before he succeeded and became Lord Salisbury. There are many other examples of the changes in that direction. In fact I am sure that your Lordships have been brought up on exactly the same good old, and often told, stories that have resulted from that in instances of which we are well aware.
The next question to which we must apply our minds is whether the right to surrender should apply to Peers who have applied for, and accepted, the Writ. My noble and learned friend the Leader of the House was kind enough to give us a memorandum on this point, and I accept the logic and force of what he said. But what worried me on this point (I am stating my own views quite openly to the House) was that in the case of someone who had not only adhered to your Lordships' House by applying for the Writ, but had become part of the House—perhaps by leading it, or by holding high office within it—there seemed a difference about his surrendering his position. However, the majority of my colleagues thought that equity and fairness demanded that a person who had applied for the Writ at a time when he could not surrender his Peerage should not be put in a more difficult position. I am quite ready to accept that position, and I do not wish to push further the views that I hold.
I should like, quite briefly, to deal with the remaining three points—because again I think your Lordships ought to know the reasons which have certainly influenced me. On the question of the Scottish Peers, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has already demonstrated the great change in the position from the time of the Act of

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Union in 1707. At that time there were roughly as many Scottish Peers as English Peers: something like 165 or 161, the figure which the Lord Chancellor gave—my noble friend Lord Wemyss said 170. Then there would have been a swamping of the English House. But the position to-day is that there are 76 Scottish Peers, 45 of them holding English or other Peerages which entitle them to sit in your Lordships' House. Of the 31 who are left, 16 must be elected under the Act of Union. So one is dealing with the remnant of 15 who at the present moment cannot sit in your Lordships' House, cannot stand for the House of Commons and cannot vote at a Parliamentary election. It seems to me that, if one studies the position, one should get rid of the anomaly by putting them in the position of being in your Lordships' House.
We studied the question of Irish Peerages most carefully and, as my noble and learned friend said, we are conscious that we must be disappointing the holders of Irish Peerages. But I think there are three undeniable facts with regard to the holders of Irish Peerages. The first is that some of them live in the Republic of Ireland; the second is that some of them are descendants of those Peers who composed the Upper House of the Irish Parliament, and, after all, in so far as what my noble friend Lord Rathcavan called the major part of Ireland, the present representative in the Republic of the old Houses of the Irish Parliament is the Dail and the Senate. The third category of Irish Peers is those who were made Irish Peers but had no connection with Ireland whatsoever; they were simply made Irish Peers because either they themselves or somebody else did not want them to sit in your Lordships' House. I want it known that we considered most carefully what my noble friend Lord Dunboyne put forward, that there should be representation of the Irish Peers as such and not as the people of Ireland, but I do not think that we can to-day ignore the fact that Ireland is a Republic, or ignore the development of history and take that step, with the possible consequences at the present day which Lord Hailsham states in his memorandum.
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My noble friend Lord Rathcavan suggested rather a different approach—namely, that there should be a lesser number than the original 28 representing the Irish Peers, to represent the Peerage of the Irish Peers who come from Northern Ireland. My noble and learned friend the Leader of the House gave the answer to that in what I may term, merely in admiration, Chestertonian language, because on page 35, paragraph 9, he says:
"It would be weird if the title to sit in the House of Lords depended upon the location North or South of the Border of a territorial title conferred before there was a Border to be North or South of."
One comes to the conclusion that the Irish Peerage is such a cluster of anomalies that no guidance really comes out from the various points to show any lines on which reform can be made, and we felt that it had to be left as it was.
I come to the last of the serious problems as they appear to me, and that is the question of Peeresses in their own right. I think here the case is almost too strong to require any argument at all. I think that the exclusion of Peeresses in their own right from this House has been something of which almost all of us have been secretly ashamed. Forty years ago it may have been true that some of your Lordships thought that the position of women should be the church, the kitchen and the nursery. Five years ago when we were dealing with Life Peers there were very few who took that view. To-day I hope that there are none.
I feel that the real difficulty was, as one understood, that the Labour Party did not desire to extend in any way the hereditary principle. We were anxious when we passed the Life Peerages Act to have as much general support as we could get. Therefore this matter was left over; but it is an absolutely unwarrantable piece of sex disqualification. I hope that to-day noble Lords in all parts of the House will feel that this minute extension of the Peerage (the figures given in the Report are eight Scottish Peeresses, eight English Peeresses, and one who is a Peeress of both countries) will not be considered as an extension of the hereditary principle but as the removal of a stupid piece of sex disqualification which should have been removed a long time ago.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, would my noble and learned friend allow me to interrupt for a moment? While I agree that it would make a very small increase in the number of Peers or Peeresses, would my noble friend not agree that originally it was a perfectly logical decision, because the objective was to continue the Peerage through the female line to later generations?
THE EARL OF KILMUIR: My noble friend is describing the Barony by Writ in the English Peerage. He is certainly not describing the position in the Peerage in Scotland, where, as he knows, in most of the older Earldoms there is not merely a continuance of the Peerage, but an inheritance. There has been an inheritance by females for hundreds of years. I do not see that the old position was based on anything other than the fact that up until this century it was not thought fit that females should legislate in Parliament. I am very anxious that your Lordships should give the quietus to that idea and remove the disqualification on this point.
I remind your Lordships that there was no Division in the course of our Committee, and, so far as I can remember, no feeling contrary to that which I have expressed. I regret if I have detained your Lordships too long, but I thought that it would perhaps be helpful not only to see what we have done, but to hear the reasons why we have done it.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, could he clarify still further the point which my noble friend Lord Gage made? Am I right in saying that if a Peer of the United Kingdom relinquishes his Peerage in order to become a Member of another place he cannot use any of his United Kingdom titles, even a baronetcy, but that he can sit in another place if he has an Irish title?
EARL KILMUIR: No, the baronetcy does not come into it at all; there is no question of his losing the baronetcy. As I said to my noble friend Lord Gage, the right to surrender applies to four classes of Peerage: English Peerages, Peerages of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom, and Scottish Peerages. There is no right to surrender an Irish Peerage. So that, to take my noble
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friend's own case—I think he has both a United Kingdom and an Irish Peerage—he could surrender his United Kingdom Peerage. He would then be enabled as an Irish Peer to stand for the House of Commons. If a person had not an Irish Peerage, he would still be enabled as a commoner. That is the position.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: I am very grateful.
4.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT ESHER: My Lords, I have come all the way from the South of France to make this speech, and I am an old man. I hope your Lordships will not imagine that I am conceited enough to think the speech to be a good one, or, still less, that I have the senile illusion that it will have any effect on the situation. No one listens in this modern world to anything anybody says. It is a more interesting reason—to me, personally, at any rate—that has brought me back here, and that is that for the second time in a lifetime of 82 years I find myself having a difference of opinion with the Leader of the Liberal Party. I remember the first time very well. I could not help thinking that Mr. Gladstone was much too slow in going to the rescue of General Gordon in Khartoum. And this time I cannot help feeling that Mr. Grimond has much too low an opinion of your Lordships' House.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
VISCOUNT ESHER: No doubt much of the pomp and circumstance that used to surround the aristocratic life has gone with the wind. We all know—even the noble Duke who is sitting on the Front Bench knows—that
"The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things".
Nevertheless, in these unromantic, hardheaded days, in these practical times when we pride ourselves on our contact with reality, we preserve many marks of distinction, many ancient badges of inequality which, I observe, the democrats are not at all reluctant to accept, and which give one a pleasant feeling of importance in our short and trivial journey through the world.
As a matter of fact, the philosophic notion that all men are equal has been having rather a bad time. First of all, it

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is not true; and, secondly, we do not want it to be true. Fortunately, we English are not a logical people, and we never carry our philosophies to their ultimate, uncomfortable conclusions. No doubt your Lordships cannot be logically defended. I should not care to maintain against all corners the aristocratic theory that I am the equal of the noble and learned Viscount who leads the House. I would not dare to suggest that for a moment. Because, we are wise enough to ignore the anomalies of our philosophy, no fundamental revolution has ever disturbed our national life, and no "wind of change"—to use that overburdened phrase of politicians—has ever tempted us to throw away the past. All we ever do is to tinker with our ancient institutions.
Take the new Life Peers. I thought their introduction was a very good idea and I had great expectations. But as I look around, I cannot help being reminded of an American lady who said to me:
"I married Tom Malcolm for his brains, and I have been sadly disappointed."
I expected to observe in the Life Peers a different degree of eloquence.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: But the noble Viscount is never here to hear us. He is always in the South of France.
VISCOUNT ESHER: I read every word the noble Lady says.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: That is entirely different.
VISCOUNT ESHER: I expected that we poor duffers, whose only qualifications are the blind forces of heredity, would be entirely eclipsed. Surely, I thought, a riper wisdom must dignify those who have been so long in close contact with the electorate. Not at all! I have felt none of that sense of inferiority that I anticipated. Indeed, it is impossible to tell which is which. Lady Violet Bonham Carter, with that mastery of scorn which she has, once said to me:
"If you put up a hundred Commoners and a hundred Peers you would not be able to tell the difference between them."
Surely, my Lords, that is a democratic mark favourable to your Lordships' House.
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Drafting Constitutions is very great fun. Any semi-educated sixth-former, a product of our lop-sided educational system, could do it. I have drawn up a dozen or so myself; most of them have been complete failures. Political philosophers whom we so rightly distrust in this country, from Rousseau to Karl Marx, have tried their hands at it. Hitler arranged everything very nicely for a thousand years. As for those unfortunate Americans, Alexander Hamilton extracted from the glorious words of the Declaration of Independence one of the most frustrating Constitutions that has ever worried mankind.
Fortunately for us, no conceited and presumptuous politician has ever cast himself for the role of Moses and come down to us with the Tables of the Law. It is true that Cromwell came somewhere near it, and had an affinity to Moses; but how quickly we repudiated him and turned to the licentious laxity of Charles II! For our long political experience tells us that under every plan, Right or Left, inspired by God or dictated by Satan, someone is going to govern us and control. The problem is how to limit that power to a bearable minimum, to reduce the control of the politicians and of the officials who govern us, to make it ever more difficult for top people to entangle themselves with our private lives.
Because it is obvious that the House of Lords has influence without power, it is accepted by everybody who has ever examined the question, and tried to consider how to replace it, as the best Second Chamber in the world. We are fortunate to have inherited an institution which we certainly should never have had the intelligence to create. We might have been landed with something like the American Senate. And there are people who want to land us with something like the American Senate. Custom may have made us oblivious to such things, but your Lordships' House has some very ancient assets: for instance, the fact that a large proportion of Peers do not attend, which is a tremendous asset, but when they do attend they are usually experts on their own subjects; the fact that they are not paid and are therefore free to hold most of the important posts in the country; the fact that they have no power and therefore none of the obstructive qualities of the Senate of the United

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States. Remove these assets and nothing can replace them except a replica of the House of Commons, or a nominated nuisance insisting on having the veto.
It is easy for those, who, by good fortune, have found themselves Members of the House of Commons, to pretend that the hereditary Upper House is composed of incompetent nitwits. Any of the Life Peers who believed such rubbish must have had a considerable surprise when they got here. There are some people, too, who in addition to looking upon your Lordships as antiquated fuddy-duddies of debased intellect, assume that we are unpopular. On the contrary, during the last thirty years I have always found the possession of a Peerage to be an asset, and not in the least a handicap. If Peers were unpopular, as Communists, for instance, are unpopular, people would sheer away from them; they would be reluctant to meet them in social life; they would not want their daughters to marry men not only obviously limited in intellect but with no future, either useful or ornamental.
Everybody knows that in fact the usual interesting variety of English life is just as conspicuous on the red Benches as it is on the green, and anybody who thinks anything else is the victim of a form of inverted snobbery. Therefore, it has seemed, and still seems, absurd fundamentally to alter an institution that you have not the faintest idea how to improve. Slight amendments such as Life Peers, yes Lord Stansgate, perhaps; but to make a continuous habit of snatching away from this place long-established Members of your Lordships' House the moment they show any political ability, or because chance has for some reason made it expedient, would, in my view, be fatal to the status, the reputation and the influence of this House as the Second Chamber.
The temptation to take this step is obvious. Your Lordships will remember how the Knights stood on the shore wailing for the birth of King Arthur. We are in a similar position, in that the Conservative Party is desperately in search of an heir. It is unfortunate that at a moment of this sort the rough waves of public life should have been so tactless, so illogical, as to have thrown up upon the shore an hereditary Peer. I am told by people that I ought not to welcome so
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impossible an heir as this. Yet, for centuries, Prime Ministers have sat, and have only recently ceased to sit, in your Lordships' House. I think myself that in this overcrowded, modern world it is a very good thing that Cabinet Ministers should sit in the House of Lords. It seems possible that they might actually be improved by the leisure, the time between aeroplanes, provided by your Lordships' House. Moments for reflection are good, even for Cabinet Ministers. Max Beer-bohm said somewhere that their lives are so full that they have no time for thought, the highest energy of man.
But even if the House of Commons refuses to allow this obvious improvement in our national life—and, after all, the great success of the noble Earl, Lord Home, at the Foreign Office has shown that the fears which the democrats had about it were totally unwarranted—even if I fail in what I should like to do, which is to got the Prime Minister into your Lordships' House, then there are many other ways by which, on the very rare occasions when a Peer is candidate for the position of Prime Minister (and your Lordships will remember that the last time a Peer was discarded for that reason, when Lord Curzon was not allowed to become Prime Minister because he was a Peer, the alternative was not particularly successful), it could be brought about that, for that particular post alone, the candidate could be moved into the House of Commons. I think that, whatever we do, we ought never to change fundamentally an institution which was not created by clever politicians sitting round a table but which has grown, unpremeditated and unplanned, by reason of the natural structure of our national life.
There could not be a worse moment to copy some American or other foreign Constitution. The holders of power have made such a mess of the world that it is power itself, and not rank, which is unpopular with the people: national power, with its futile and disastrous wars; commercial power, with its expensive vulgarity; Civil Service power, with its ruthless and meticulous severity; trade union power, with its wasteful and unintelligent use of the strike weapon. This affluent and educated society does not really wish to have inflicted upon it all these obsolete attributes of power.

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I am convinced that, as shown by the increase in the Liberal vote in every election, the various powers which are being used by the Conservative Party and which the Labour Party want to use are going to be taken away from them by this educated democracy. The House of Lords, from which we receive no form which has to be filled up, that never wants to know how many children we have, or whether we made a profit out of the sale of last year's overcoat, will remain because it is a popular institution, dignified by time and always ready to give unpaid and useful service to the community.
4.29 p.m.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I am sure that the House is very grateful to the noble Viscount for having made a very long journey in order to bring us the delight which he has brought to us by his speech. Unlike the noble Viscount, whose political enthusiasms and embarrassments go back to the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, I am the first to intervene in this debate who is not a member of any political Party. I am indeed one of the Members of your Lordships' House to whom the proposals in the Report could not conceivably have application; and this perhaps gives me a certain detachment.
As I wish to keep within the terms of the Motion I am going to say nothing about the wider questions concerning the composition of the House, such as, for instance, the place of the Peers Spiritual. I hope that the proposals contained in the Report will be given legislative effect; I hope that that will happen soon, and with as great an approach to unanimity as is possible. If that is so, I think it will be because in the last few years there has been in the country a very considerable change of sentiment about the two Houses of Parliament and their relation to each other. We were long familiar with the strong feeling, not confined to the Right or to the Left, that the Peers and the Commons were two estates, somewhat rigidly separated, each with its particular opportunity of Parliamentary service and each with the limitations which went with it. With very different motives there was the desire to keep each in its place.
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I believe that the rapid change in sentiment over this question has been helped by several causes. One is the keen public sympathy with Members of the House of Commons who have, with reluctance, been compelled to leave that House on succession to a Peerage. Another cause is the institution of Life Peerages. Yet another, I believe, is the increase in recent years of a prestige of your Lordships' House rather different in kind from its prestige in other times. Each of these reasons has tended to remove the sense of a rigid and impassable line and to increase the wish that men and women who have been serving the State in one form of Parliamentary existence should be eligible, in accordance with their talents and the urgent needs of the State, to serve it in another. I believe this is not only a matter of the desires of individuals to serve the State in the way they most wish to; nor is it only that Governments and political Parties need and want flexibility in which they can find the men and women eligible for office and particular service. It is also, I am sure, a widespread wish in the country. The country knows how gigantic are the problems which the State has to face and how scarce, as always, are people of gigantic stature. It wants to be sure that the Constitution does not prevent any man or woman from serving anywhere where he or she is most needed and is willing to serve.
I am sure that your Lordships share my view that we should be sorry to see the disappearance from our own number of any of those who sit in this Chamber and with whose presence and contributions we are so familiar. Yet we are convinced that no such sentiments of regret, however rooted in the past history of the Constitution, should hinder what may be the urgent needs of the State in these extraordinarily difficult times.
4.34 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Salisbury has asked me to say to the House how sorry he is that he is unable to be here today. He is in Africa at the present moment. He has asked me also (and this, I feel, is rather a responsibility) to speak for him as well as for myself to-day. I think I can do it with a clear

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conscience however, because on this topic our views are, I believe, identical on all aspects that matter. I can be brief because the Report is clear and concise; and here I would join with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in his tribute to our Chairman, because the clarity and conciseness of the Report owe an enormous amount to him. I do not know whether we were indebted to him more for his clarity or for his tact. I am sure that nobody ever handled a "mixed pack"—and we were rather a "mixed pack" (and I do not refer to the Law Lords)—with more skill than he did.
The purpose of this debate is to find out whether those who did not sit on the Joint Committee accept the views which have been put before them. There have been criticisms that we did not do this and that; but, of course, our terms of reference were very limited. To describe this as a joint Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Lords is to give it a somewhat exaggerated title. As paragraph 2 of the Report shows, we had only a very limited subject referred to us. For myself—and I think my noble friend Lord Salisbury would agree—I should have been glad of a wider field, though I do not know that we should have come nearer to agreement with others than we did when we worked together on this matter in 1947.
There are only three points to which I would briefly refer, and on all of them my noble friend and I are in complete agreement. I think we all agree that a Peer who succeeds should be able to surrender his Peerage. The most reverend Primate said that the Bench of Bishops is the only body of Members of this House to whom this right cannot apply. Perhaps it would be agreeable to him if I were to say that suffragan bishops were able to surrender their bishoprics—and I hope that that might save him some disciplinary difficulties. However, my noble friend and I were clear that, though there should be a right to surrender, it should be a right to surrender for the life of the holder only. It would be utterly wrong that a Peer who succeeds and is, as it were, a "tenant for life" should be able to bar the Peerage to those who come after. A Peerage is not a chattel or a piece of real property. A Peerage is a privilege, an honour and a trust which derives from the Crown. It is conferred
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on the Peer and his heirs; and to enable or compel a "tenant for life" to extinguish the Peerage and bar his successors would, in our view, be entirely unjust and very wrong. Your Lordships will observe, moreover, that that is wholly unnecessary to deal with the problem before us, which is whether a man who succeeds to a Peerage should have the right to surrender it for his lifetime and continue to sit in the House of Commons.
There is the question of what the man who surrenders his Peerage and goes on sitting should call himself. The majority of the Committee thought that he ought to become a commoner in name, as well as in fact; that he should not be allowed to continue the use of the courtesy title by which he has hitherto been known. I do not know that this is a very important point. It was said that it has some logic. But, thank goodness! we are not a logical people: that is perhaps why we work democracy so much better than the French do. But, of course, he is called only by a courtesy title; it is not his title at all. It is the title of his father or his grandfather and he is called that by courtesy. He is Mr. "So-and-so", commonly known as "Lord Somebody", but it is the name everybody knows him by; "Lord Somebody" is the name under which he has sat for years in the House of Commons.
To take just one example, there is Lord Dalkeith, who sits in the House of Commons. I suppose that the returning officer returned him as "John Montagu-Douglas-Scott, commonly known as Lord Dalkeith"; but everybody has called him Lord Dalkeith. Suppose that in the fullness of time (I hope that it will not be for a very long time) when my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry dies, full of riches and honour, and when that happens, Lord Dalkeith decides that he would like to continue to sit in the House of Commons, as he has sat for five-and twenty years, as Lord Dalkeith, is it really sensible that he should stop being called Lord Dalkeith and be called Mr. Scott? The returning officer may call him Mr. Scott, but I am perfectly certain that everybody else in Scotland will continue to call him Lord Dalkeith. I am certain that if Lord Hartington had been able to continue to sit in the House of Commons, nobody would have

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called him anything except Lord Hartington. Nobody would have called him Mr. Cavendish. However, I do not think that this is of any great importance. I am bound to say that, logical as it may be, it does not seem to me that there is any significant grace which attaches to this rather odd form of baptismal regeneration.
The third question that I wish to consider is of a good deal more importance—that is, whether the option to surrender a Peerage should be confined to Peers who have succeeded but have not accepted the Writ of Summons in this House, or whether it should be extended to Peers who have in fact taken the Oath and are discharging their duties in this House. During our discussions in Committee, my noble friend Lord Salisbury and I felt that this was a very evenly balanced point. We were opposed, and are still opposed, in principle, to retrospective legislation; but in a sense any legislation on this matter is retrospective.
We all agree that if legislation is passed, Lord Stansgate, who has not accepted the Writ, should be able to stand again for Parliament. But that would be retrospective; because, whatever Lord Stansgate may call himself, he is, in fact and in law, at this moment Lord Stansgate. Therefore, it is not a very substantial extension to say that a Peer who has succeeded, accepted his Writ, taken the Oath and rendered good service here, should have the right to surrender his Peerage. It would be only once. He would have to do it within a very brief time (the Report proposes six months) and there would be nothing in the nature of a continuing option. My noble friend Lord Salisbury and I discussed this point during our deliberations, and we also discussed it at some length after the Report was published. He has authorised me to say that he shares my feeling, that there is a good deal of equity in giving to a Peer already sitting in this House the opportunity to decide once and once for all. And, if that be the general view of the House, neither he nor I would wish to oppose it.
There is one other matter which perhaps, out of courtesy, I ought to mention—the question of Irish Peers, and again I speak for my noble friend
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Lord Salisbury, as well as for myself. We could not find—and we considered the matter very carefully—constitutionally or in history or in justice that in the circumstances of to-day, there was any case at all for reviving the principle of Representative Peers of Ireland. And the reasons for that view have been given to-day both by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and by my noble and learned friend Lord Kilmuir. We thought it right that there should not be a distinction in standing for Parliament at present, someone who is an Irish Peer cannot stand for a Northern Ireland constituency, though he can stand anywhere else. That seems an unreasonable distinction and we should like legislation to remove that.
May I point out to your Lordships that it is not as if an Irish Peer were precluded from coming to this House. If the Prime Minister of the day thinks that he would be a suitable Member—and a great deal of consultation takes place outside as to who should come—he can be appointed a Peer of the United Kingdom, as the late Lord Winterton was. He was my Under-Secretary—that was not the reason for his creation as a Peer of the United Kingdom, though it was as good a reason as a number of others. My noble friend Lord Rathcavan was also appointed a Peer of the United Kingdom. An Irish Peer can also be appointed a Life Peer. Therefore, if the Prime Minister so desires, there is nothing to prevent the appointment, to this House, of any number of Irish Peers.
I welcome most sincerely the speech—and the tone of the speech, if I may respectfully say so—by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on behalf of the Opposition, and the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, on behalf of the Liberal Party. I hope that this Report will be accepted and that the legislation will go through. Then the Liberal Party will really have borne their share in a reform which has neither brooked delay nor has, in fact, been involved in delay.
4.49 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it may be thought inappropriate for a newcomer to speak for the first time in your Lordships' House in a debate on the reform of an institution of which he has so little experience. But I have chosen to speak to-day in this debate for three

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reasons. First I, like all your Lordships, have a personal interest in the future of this House. Debates on the composition of the House, or on some aspect of it, are unique in that every Peer has an interest in the composition of the House. Therefore, I think that it will not surprise your Lordships if, for a few minutes, I speak more personally than I would do in any other circumstances.
My second reason is that, since this debate and the one going on simultaneously in another place are intended generally to sound out opinion, I think it will be agreed that it is important that these debates should include if possible an outside view, as it were, from somebody whose experience of Parliament is not coloured by any familiarity with the habits and traditions of either House.
My third reason is that I have recently had to decide whether I should apply for a Writ to come to your Lordships' House or whether I should continue as I was, hoping to secure at some time election to another place.
To-day, I calculated, it is not unreasonable to assume that quite soon Peers, or heirs to Peerages carrying the right to sit in Parliament will be allowed to surrender either the Peerage or the Parliamentary status attached to the Peerage at, or shortly after, the moment of succession, should they wish to do so. As it happens, in my own circumstances, I chose to apply for a Writ. But the important thing is that I had a choice. And the fact that I had a choice at all (as I hope many others similarly placed in the future will) is primarily due, in my opinion, to one man, Anthony Wedgwood Benn. I describe him in that way deliberately, since he has surely by his actions earned the right to be described by whichever part of his name he prefers.
I have no wish to go against tradition in a maiden speech, and stray into controversy over the methods that Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn used to make his protest. I am aware, as is the House, of the strong criticisms that have been made of his action. But I am sure your Lordships will accept from me my feeling of obligation towards Mr. Wedgwood Benn: in fact, I must say that I would find it difficult to speak in this debate without acknowledging that obligation. It is not an obligation based on
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friendship, or even on self-interest; it is no more than a recognition that, but for his single-mindness and determination, the sequence of events which led up to the establishment of the Joint Select Committee and the debates to-day in your Lordships' House and another place would not have taken place. Underneath all the jargon of what is or is not constitutional, I think it is worth remembering that the Constitution is really not much more than what a majority of people at any given time thought was reasonable. The result of Mr. Wedgwood Benn's actions has been to show that most people no longer regard the situation in which he found himself as reasonable, and that the law is ripe for change as a result.
The new feature of to-day's debate is that agreement now seems very near on the narrowly defined area for reform that was considered by the Joint Select Committee. It is obviously of some importance (this point has been made once or twice already) that constitutional changes should, where possible, be by agreement. The proposals of the Joint Select Committee on Scottish and Irish Peerages and on hereditary Peeresses have been generally accepted, other than, understandably, by the Irish Peers themselves; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said when he opened the debate for the Opposition, these proposals did not divide the Joint Select Committee.
I do not think this is the occasion to go back over the familiar arguments on the composition of the House and the methods of selection. I am certain that to do so at this moment would be damaging to the prospects of getting a useful change on to the Statute Book, and that to pursue any of the wider schemes that have been proposed, even if those wider schemes as a consequence remove the necessity for any form of surrender, would be to jeopardise the chance of a small and modest reform. Your Lordships may remember in this connection the hard-headed proverb of 17th-century England which advised against changing a cottage in possession for a kingdom in reversion.
There are, I think, three real issues now left on which there is room for argument on the subject matter of the

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Report. First, should surrender be for life or a shorter period, or should it involve permanent extinction? Second, should surrender be of the Parliamentary status of the Peerage only, allowing Peers who have surrendered to retain the use of their titles? Third, should hereditary Peers who have already accepted a Writ of Summons under the law as it was at the time be allowed to surrender? The arguments on each of these three points are (and the debate so far has, I think, illustrated this) very evenly balanced. In the absence of any overwhelming evidence either way, I am in favour in each case of the proposal of the Joint Select Committee, merely because it is the proposal of the Joint Select Committee, and the proposal on which most people can agree is, at the moment, the best proposal. Therefore, in my opinion, surrender should be of all rights for life, and the option should be extended to hereditary Peers who have accepted a Writ of Summons under the law as it was at the time.
In conclusion, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has remarked in connection with the 1948 Conference of Party Leaders on Lords Reform, there is a timing in these matters, and there is a tide that can be missed. What is needed now, before the tide goes out again, is Government action. This is the tercentenary year of the completion of Paradise Lost—a title which I hope will have no relevance to the present situation. It is not out of place, therefore, to look back to some lines written by Milton three centuries ago:
"When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then it is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained."
No one can say to-day that the arguments have not been freely heard. The Report of the Joint Select Committee is evidence that they have been deeply considered. Let us now look forward to speedy reform.
4.58 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am filled with joy that it should fall to me to be the first on behalf of Peers on this side of the House, and I am sure Peers on all sides, to congratulate, with far more than conventional warmth, the noble Lord who has just spoken. All those who knew his father
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well—and I as much as anybody—were deeply attached to him. Among his qualities were reckoned great physical and moral courage, and I am sure it would have pleased him that his son should have taken this opportunity of speaking so soon and, as he certainly did, in the most attractive way imaginable. I think I agree with everything the noble Lord said, but I should like to echo particularly his generous tribute to Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. I think we must all know in our hearts that, without the efforts of that one man, this topic would not be before us this afternoon. I do not say that no one else has laboured for that cause, but he has been the man who brought it forward and made it a reality of the day.
As several noble Lords have said, the reform of the House of Lords is a far-reaching constitutional subject, and on that I, along with other noble Lords, have definite views which, if necessary, can be ascertained. But we are not concerned with those wider issues to-day. I agree, for example, with my noble friend Lord Silkin, but also with the particular language used by the noble Earl, Lord Kilmuir, when he said that this is a relatively minor aspect of an important question. That is what we are discussing to-day, but it does not make it less important that it is a relatively minor topic. Nothing that I say to-day, or that I might find myself saying later, will, I hope, have any effect in disturbing or delaying by an hour the passage of the legislation which is indicated as likely to eventuate. But, having said that, I should like, briefly and respectfully, but quite starkly, to raise my own case, which might be called a minimal aspect of a minor aspect of a great question, which grades it fairly low in the order of things.
We all know that no one is a good judge in his own case, but no one knows all about one's own case except oneself; therefore there is no chance of its being considered, even for a few fleeting moments, unless one chooses to lay it bare before one's friends and colleagues. The Report is chary of giving reasons for its conclusions. A good deal of its philosophy was set out more clearly by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, than by other speakers, but I do not think that even he gave a complete prospectus of all the Committee's reasoning. The basic conclusion appears

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to be that no one in future should suffer an hereditary disqualification from sitting in the House of Commons. That seems to be the basic idea of the whole thing. It seems to be also recommended—certainly I agree with it, and everyone who has spoken has agreed with it—that those who have suffered this hereditary disqualification in past years should be given a chance of liberating themselves from this disqualification, if they are still with us.
I repeat that I entirely accept these conclusions. I am delighted that the great efforts of Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benin and, may I add, the efforts of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham—for example, in these powerful memoranda, written in a far more dispassionate way than I could have commanded in his situation—have got so near being crowned with success. My own case for liberation from these disqualifications is clearly nothing like so strong as that of Mr. Wedgwood Benn, apart from the fact that he has done all the work. My case is also distinctly less than that of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. Yet I venture to think that a case exists in respect of myself, and I will not say more than that. In 1945, at the age of 39, I accepted a Peerage from the then Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee. So far as I can make out, I was the youngest man to be created a Peer—I mention that fact because the situation is a little exceptional—since Lord Beaverbrook (who is always a law unto himself), and he was created a Peer when he was 37, in 1916. There was one other Peer who was, strictly speaking, created a Peer younger, but he took over a Peerage which had been offered to his father, who died before he could carry it through.
At any rate, there I was. I accepted a Peerage and came on to the Front Bench in this House in 1945. Two years ago, I inherited an Irish Earldom and a United Kingdom Barony from my brother. I leave out the Irish Earldom to avoid further complication on that point. My heart is with the Irish Peers, although I cannot pretend that I am joining them in their struggle, because I would not go out of my way to increase the number of hereditary Peers anywhere. But my heart is with them, and if they feel I have betrayed them, it will not be the first time that Irish Peers have
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been betrayed, and they are accustomed to taking it in good part.
When it is said that Peers who inherit titles should now be allowed to opt out, but that Peers who accept titles should not—which I think, strictly speaking, is the doctrine of the Report—one is entitled to ask: "What about Peers who are in both positions?" The Irish connection is nothing to do with this particular issue; it is not in any way be-devilled by Irish problems. So far as I can make out, the noble Lord. Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, formerly Lord Oaksey, and I, are alone in this.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: No; there is Lord Salisbury.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I have never found the Chief Whip mistaken before, but he is wrong here. It gives me enormous satisfaction. May I repeat the point: I am advised (and I apologise on my knees if the Chief Whip is right and I am wrong) that strictly speaking the noble Lord, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, who received a Peerage for much greater services than mine, and later inherited a title, and I are in the same boat. I do not see him in the House to-day and I have not wished to disturb him with this issue. I have no idea what his views may be. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, was mentioned. He and the noble Earl, Lord Ancaster, are in roughly the same position as one another. They were both raised to the Peerage in existing titles. I think it is rather an academic issue, but they are in a different position because they were raised to their Peerages while their fathers were still alive, but in existing titles. I hope the Chief Whip will allow me for once to put him right, with the utmost deference.
I am asking the Government to consider—I am not pressing anything; I certainly would not press anything at all if I thought it was going to hold up this Bill by even a few minutes—before they publish their Bill, whether it would not be reasonable to stretch the findings of the Committee or, if you like, to interpret them liberally, so as to cover this special case of mine and the noble Lord, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, if he is also interested. There is no sign—because I was not a member of the Committee—

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that this double case was considered by the Committee. Certainly I did not submit any evidence before them. There are more ways than one in which a few unobtrusive words could do the trick, if inserted into the Bill.
Is it proper that this case should be covered? When I say "is it proper" I am not raising the question of right in the abstract. One might argue that in the abstract all Peers, whether of first creation or otherwise, should, during a transitional period, be given the chance of opting out. That was the submission of Garter King at Arms in Appendix 15, paragraph 3, so it is a possible point of view. I am not asking that now, because I am taking my stand on the general outlook of the Report, and the Report in fact rejects the idea that Peers of first creation should be allowed to opt out. I am asking whether my case could reasonably be covered by the general outlook of the Report. I am not going to argue it this afternoon—I think it would be rather undignified to do so—but if I did, I should start to do so along this line. I would point out, without attempting to argue the matter, of course, that the Report of the Committee is trying to get rid of a situation under which the inheritance of a title prevents a full career in the House of Commons. I say a full career, because it clearly does not prevent all career. Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, himself had already achieved distinguished careers in the House of Commons when they were cut short in mid-career. So what one objects to—I think all speakers this afternoon seemed to do so—is that careers should be cut short in that way.
Is my case in any way similar? It is not the same, but is there any similarity? When I accepted a Peerage, my brother had been married for 20 years. He had no children, and in the nature of things, assuming I survived him, it was extremely likely that I should one day find myself here. I will not now or at any time try to go on oath as to what was in my mind when I accepted the Peerage. Lord Attlee, then Mr. Attlee, asked me to accept a Peerage to play a small part in helping the Government, and I accepted it. But I am fairly certain, for various reasons, that I would never have found myself in
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the House of Lords in 1945 at the age of 39, without experience of the House of Commons, if I had not been in effect the heir to a Peerage. I am only asking, therefore, that that point should be considered when the general matter is decided.
I must add one word, whether or not it seems to weaken any force there might lie in this appeal. I am submitting an argument on constitutional merits which applies just as much to Lord Trevethin and Oaksey as to myself, and I am submitting it without reference to the question of whether in fact I would myself take advantage of this option if it were extended. I hope that, if the option were extended, like any other Peer I should be guided by the view I formed of my respective opportunities of usefulness in the various directions that would be open to me. But, in practice, as a loyal member of the Labour Party, I should be largely governed in my attitude by that of the Leader of the Party. I have no doubt that I should also receive much wise counsel from my noble friend Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, whose absence we so much regret to-day, and from my sagacious friends on these Benches.
There it is. I am grateful to the House for listening to the egocentric observations. It may be that in the next few months or years I shall find myself fighting another Election battle with the noble Viscount opposite, like Rudolf Rassendyll's second round with Rupert of Hentzau, or, should I say, Bulldog Drummond's second round with Carl Peterson. It is not for me to say which will be which in these various dramas. I shall be very happy if that is the result of all this. It may be that I shall find myself soldiering on, whether on a Front or Back Bench in this House, where I have made so many friends and been so happy for seventeen years. Whichever way it goes, I hope that I shall abandon myself with suitable gusto to Divine Providence, or that, if I may be allowed to put it in the more secular terms of Robert Louis Stevenson:
"I shall salute the romance of destiny".
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl a question on his personal position? Did he not succeed to the United Kingdom Barony of

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Silchester? Does he sit in this House as Lord Pakenham or as Lord Silchester? If he succeeded to the United Kingdom Barony of Silchester, could he not surrender that?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: That is the title which would have to be surrendered. It is Silchester, so to speak, that presents the problem. That is perfectly true and I do not deny that this is a problem, and it is the Barony of Silchester which creates it. If the noble Lord asks me which title I sit under here, as a matter of fact I have never been quite clear.
5.13 p.m.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, I rise to support generally the proposals before the House, albeit a little sad at heart at some of the implications. But before I go on I should like, together with the noble Earl opposite, to offer my warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, on an excellent and brief maiden speech. I very much hope we shall hear him again.
My Lords, if any noble Lord is really idiotic enough to wish to surrender his Peerage it is difficult, I suppose, in this changing world to find sufficiently valid reasons for opposing such a quixotic notion, always provided that extinction is ruled out and that he relinquishes his Peerage for his own life only and that it remains dormant and immediately available for his heir and successor. To me it is incomprehensible that any noble Lord should contemplate for a single moment such a wayward and capricious step. Except perhaps in the one case which we have been discussing so much this afternoon, of Members of another place succeeding to a Peerage and being understandably—at least, I suppose understandably—unwilling to give up their seat in the House of Commons.
One has to accept, inevitably, I am afraid, the melancholy fact in these latter days of a gradual submergence of tradition and an apparent decline in public esteem of the status of Peerage. A certain noble Lord of first creation, who shall be nameless, went so far as to refer in a book he wrote a few years ago to the fact of his "relegation" to the Peerage. A graceless and somewhat arrogant expression, your Lordships might think, from one who had willingly accepted the honour of a first-creation
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Peerage. He tells us that he had (and I quote)
"stumbled into the House of Lords"
but that he had
"no intention whatever of being relegated to a dying House".
My Lords, that was in the days of the First World War, and your Lordships House seems to be taking an unconscionable time to die.
It is difficult to conceive of any Member of your Lordships' House who has once escaped from another place—and I do not mean to be controversial—contemplating for a single moment returning to that no doubt worthy but somewhat cantankerous milieu over the way; and one derives some comfort from hearing from time to time from noble Lords and noble Ladies who have found sanctuary here that under no conditions would they ever contemplate returning to their first love. I regard that as a pretty compliment to your Lordships' House, with all its anomalies and illogicalities, and a graceful recognition of this haven of refuge.
But then I am a House of Lords' man, and for many years now have looked upon this Chamber with love and reverence—in fact, almost as my spiritual home. Never having served a sentence of what seems to me to be hard labour in the House of Commons, I am, of course, quite unqualified to compare this gentle, dignified, peaceful, perhaps a little deliciously somnolent, and altogether charming atmosphere of your Lordships' House with the restless, tough, though I am sure wholly admirable, life that appears to be led by Members of another place. But I must not be led away into comparing virtues and into what might be thought to be controversial issues as between the two Houses. We are not debating any such thing.
I strongly support the admission as Members here of all Scottish Peers. And now that the die has been cast for feminine representation in your Lord-shins' House (very rightly, I now think, although I was somewhat doubtful and sceptical about such a proposition before we saw and heard the impressive part played by noble Ladies since their arrival here), I support very strongly the proposal that Peeresses in their own right should join this Assembly. I support the proposal to exclude Irish Peers from the House of Lords, and in this con-

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nection I have always found it rather difficult to understand the justification for the situation in which these Irish Peers are eligible to stand for election to the House of Commons. Since this matter obviously stands outside the scope of this present debate I must not pursue it; but I am puzzled about it.
My Lords, I am afraid that my few remarks have been more in the nature of a soliloquy than a speech, pondering upon the strange and unpredictable ways of men. I can only hope that, if these proposals produce legislation to give effect to them, the number of surrendered Peerages will be infinitesimal; that there may be an end of derogatory remarks about the hereditary Chamber and criticisms of the Peerage; that a little more publicity may perhaps be given in the future to the activities of your Lordships' House, than which I believe there is no better debating Chamber in the world; that membership of your Lordships' House may be recognised as an honourable privilege, and that no more may be heard of a dying House and an outmoded anachronism.
5.20 p.m.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot go as far as the noble Lord who has just sat down regarding the effect that possible changes may have on your Lordships' House. I think it will still remain peaceful and dignified, in spite of the changes now before us. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that the title of the Joint Select Committee is really misleading, but perhaps in view of that title we shall be allowed to stray a little from their recommendations. I personally am quite prepared to accept the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee, which will certainly correct a large number of anomalies, but I much regret that the issue which we are debating is so near to us. It is, of course, a further effort to reform the House by piecemeal legislation, and I suggest that the various difficulties would be much more easily surmounted by a more thorough reform plan.
I cannot help feeling that Her Majesty's Government will be making a great mistake if they do not seize the nettle now and put forward a more drastic reform of the composition of your Lordships' House. It would, of course, have to be a measure apart from
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what we are considering to-day, but I hope it will not be very long delayed. I suggest that the reform might well be based on the lines proposed by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, a few years ago, but I do not propose to go into the details of that to-day. I cannot help feeling that in the long run the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee which are before us to-day will have the effect of gradually weakening the House, which I think would not be unwelcome in some quarters. On the other hand, a reform of the composition of the House on a more extensive scale would undoubtedly strengthen it, and perhaps remove the gibes which are often thrown at this House.
I mentioned the possible weakening of the House if the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee become law. In the first place, vigorous young Peers with Parliamentary and ministerial ambitions will be tempted to leave this House for another place. Also, we shall lose those of another place who wish to stay in that Chamber and not take up their inheritance in this House; I would take this opportunity of reminding your Lordships that that is a duty and not a privilege. But, on the whole, I am prepared to accept the recommendations which are before us to-day, in the hope that a more realistic reform of the composition of the House will follow before long.
I am one of those who have felt for many years that something should be done to bring the active membership of this House within reasonable proportions. I believe that with the advent of Life Peers we shall very soon reach the high figure of 1,000 Members. Apart, of course, from the Life Peers, only a comparatively small proportion attend the House from time to time. I feel sure the time must come when some form of limitation must be devised, and I only wish the terms of reference of the Joint Select Committee had been drawn so that this question could have been looked at as well.
I also feel that Peers will one day have to receive proper remuneration; and again, of course, this cannot be considered or carried out unless the composition of the House is limited to those who intend to be active Members and who are actively working in the House. There is no doubt that the absence of proper remuneration is one of the factors which prevent many Peers on both sides of the

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House from attending to their duties here, because they have in many cases to earn their living. Whatever we may do in the future, I am sure that we must be most careful to encourage the attendance of young men to do what I would say is the donkey work of the House, attending Committees, putting down Amendments and so on.
It is true that it is difficult to defend logically the hereditary principle in these days, but the fact is—unless, of course, we have an elected House, and I do not think any of your Lordships would want to have that—it is the only way we can obtain the services of comparatively young men. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, for this reason alone, a reformed House must be based predominantly on the hereditary system. I think it is true to say that Life Peers tend to be elderly, as they are people who have distinguished themselves in other walks of life before they come to your Lordships' House. It is only by the hereditary system that we can get these young men to come along and give us good service. I think it was the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who said a year or two ago that in his opinion there seemed to be no reason why the Crown should not, on the advice of both Houses of Parliament, take steps to limit the number of Peers who take an active part in the House, and I hope Her Majesty's Government, in considering the adoption of the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee, will proceed further in a more radical reform of the composition of the House in the near future.
5.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I have been in your Lordships' House for about ten years, and I recall that during those ten years legislation for the reform of the House has been proposed on three occasions—this being the third. Ordinarily speaking, it would seem to me that the reason for reform is that something is not working well. So far as I am concerned, the House at this present time is working very well; indeed, I should have thought it was working better to-day than for a long time. So it seems to me that it is probably a mistake to bring in yet a further reform within the ten years. It may be argued that this is only a very small reform; that it is only to meet the wishes of a few individuals.
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To that I would say that I do not believe the wishes of a few individuals should necessarily govern something which is far more important—namely, the good working of the House.
Let us consider for a moment what might have been the case if this legislation had existed in the ten years that I have been here. During those ten years we have had the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, as one of our Leaders. He was followed by the noble Earl, Lord Home; and now we have as Leader of the House the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. I think it is quite probable that if the reform now urged had already been law not one of those Leaders would have been in the House. That is the sort of thing that can happen as a result of making some minor change, apparently to meet the wishes of an individual. In fact, it surely would have very seriously weakened the House. I think it very probable that in this time, none of the last three Leaders—either the present Leader or his other predecessors—would have helped us in any kind of way; and quite clearly the House would have been weaker.
Perhaps I may now turn for a moment to the question of the Scottish Representative Peers. In a sense, I am very grateful to the Select Committee for suggesting that we can do away with our elections; that we should be as everybody else. I do not want to be as everybody else. I do not want to see the abolition of the Scottish Representative Peers. I do not want it—for historical reasons, for reasons of tradition, for reasons of the ceremony that takes place every time at the general election at Holyrood, when we do not have anything such as a secret ballot but an election in which everybody knows who is for him and who is against him.
But, more seriously, I think it would be a great pity if we were to do away with this representative system, because, for me (here I speak personally), to be a Representative Peer for Scotland really means something. It means that I am representing certain of my constituents; I am representing Scotland, and I know that I had better behave properly and work for Scotland, otherwise at the next election I may be turned out. I do not want that. Therefore, what do we find? We find that the Scottish Representative Peers are a pretty weighty body in this

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House. They come down when there are any Scottish questions; they take part in the debates. One might almost say that there was a Scottish lobby. At all events, the fact of having these Scottish Representative Peers really means something. If we are, as it were, to become as everybody else, then I am not at all sure that something which we have been able to do for Scotland will not disappear and our value be less. That is how human nature goes.
There is one small but important recommendation of the Report which seems to me to be entirely natural and logical—that is, that Peeresses in their own right should be Members of this House. I would apply that as much to the Scottish Representative Peerage system as to the other. So I am afraid that I am one of the few who feel that this reform should not go forward. I think it will weaken the House, and I do not think it will be a good thing for Scotland either.
5.32 p.m.
LORD SEMPILL: My Lords, the matter under debate to-day has been considered on previous occasions in your Lordships' House, by Committees appointed by your Lordships to consider different aspects of this complex situation, on which much has been said, and also by the Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, which has done vital work. It would be fair to say that every aspect has its advocates. On this occasion my noble friend Lord Hailsham, who leads your Lordships' House, has stressed the need for brevity, and so, with your Lordships' permission, I propose to confine my few remarks to those affecting Scottish Representative Peers, knowing that the various other aspects have been, or will be, fully dealt with by your Lordships.
My principal recommendation relates to support for what the noble Earl who has just spoken said about the continuation of the election of Scots Representative Peers in accordance with the Treaty of Union of 1707. Having been an elected representative for over 30 years, I may modestly claim to have some experience of the system. The Select Committee of your Lordships' House and another place has recommended that all Scots Peers should be admitted to the House in the same manner as Peers of
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England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. With this I say, with respect, but most firmly, that I am in complete disagreement, though I am completely in agreement with the suggestion that the Peeresses of Scotland, at present nine in number, should be given the same rights as the Peers of Scotland under the electoral provisions of the Treaty of Union of 1707, making the number who could submit their names for election 40 instead of 31.
I would urge your Lordships most strongly, and would particularly appeal to fellow Scottish Representative Peers, to give support to this suggestion of the Select Committee regarding the Peeresses of Scotland, but otherwise and in no circumstances to allow the interesting and historic Treaty of Union to be disturbed. In form it is unique and one of the most interesting constitutional procedures in the history of Western Europe to-day. I am convinced that Scotland should strive by all means to retain this remarkable instrument.
5.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I find myself in considerable agreement with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Teynham, who said that this was a piecemeal procedure which we are now carrying out. Unfortunately, to my mind, not only is it a piecemeal procedure, but they are the wrong pieces. There is only one piece I agree with in these proposals, and that is the proposal that Members of this House should be entitled, if they wish, to leave their Peerages aside and serve in another place if the electorate calls upon them to do so. As for the rest, I cannot support it because I cannot support any increase in the hereditary principle. I have always opposed the hereditary principle; indeed, I sometimes find difficulty in seeing why I myself should sit upon these Benches. The only reason that I can find why I should sit upon these Benches is that too large a number of noble Lords sit on the Benches opposite; and if noble Lords in the same position as myself will retire from the opposite Benches I will with a shout of glee leave these Benches.
In some ways I find myself in a position of great sorrow at opposing one particular proposal—namely, that relating to the hereditary Peeresses. As your Lordships recall, there was before

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this House some years ago a Motion that the hereditary Peeresses should be allowed in. I opposed that Motion, admitting that I was ungallant in so doing because the ladies whose entry I was opposing included my mother and my aunt.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: That seems a good reason for opposing it.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: The position is now still worse in my family. My aunt having died and her three titles being scattered, I am now opposing the entry of my mother and three of my girl first cousins. I only hope that all these ladies will forgive me. Really, in these days, when heredity is universally regarded as such a poor reason for sitting in such an Assembly as this, how can we agree to extend it at all? I agree that there is apparently a sex discrimination in this matter between the men and the ladies; but I should have thought that, if the matter was to be put right, the men should be liberated to join the Commons rather than that the ladies should be elevated to join the Lords.
5.38 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is not in his place at the moment, because I, too, should like to congratulate him on his superb maiden speech. I was a great personal friend of his father who, when I came to your Lordships' House, tried to persuade me to sit on the Liberal Benches with him. Unfortunately I could not comply with that wish, and I notice that his son has now come to join us on these Benches. I do not quite know what to make of that, but it seems to me a good thing.
I, too, agree with this Report, yet I also have certain misgivings, on the lines of what my noble friend Lord Perth said about ministerial representation, and particularly the leadership of this House. He put it far better than I could possibly do, so I will not repeat it.
I cannot say that I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, about heredity. How else shall we get youth in this House as it stands at present? How, too, can we get military service representation? Certainly, no Government since the war has decided to elevate any chiefs of the military staff to your Lordships' House, to help us in our
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debates on the subject of war in general, and the Services in particular, though I notice that the chief of staff of the Foreign Office, quite rightly, comes here pretty regularly as he retires. I commend that, and think that it is a good thing for your Lordships' House. I only wish that the Government would do the same in regard to the Services, because we are rapidly running out of Service representation.
There are two points in the actual Report which I should like to mention. The first is on the question of minors. At the moment they are given a year from the time of the cessation of their minority to make up their minds. If by the age of 22 they have not decided to relinquish their title, or have decided to succeed to their title, then at the age of 25, when they are far more likely to be in a better position to make a decision, it will be impossible for them to change their minds and go to another place. I think it is a pity the Committee turned down an Amendment which was put suggesting that, instead of the age at which a succeeding Peer should make up his mind being 21, it should be 25. The other point—which I think the noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned—is this: why, when a Peer has given up his Peerage, and finally, it may be, is given another Peerage to return to your Lordships' House from another place, should it be confined to a Life Peerage?
My main theme was to have been the Irish Peerage, but the real opening batsman on this subject, whom I was going to follow and upon whom I had intended to rely for my evidence, has, for some reason, decided to stay in the pavilion. Therefore, I feel rather like the chap who has come out to bat against Trueman without any pads on. I myself, as your Lordships have heard, am in possession of an Irish Peerage, and therefore feel that I ought to try to defend my colleagues who are unlucky enough not also to have an English Peerage. We are trying, it seems to me, to put a little logicality into a quite illogical proceeding, and I cannot understand the logic of the Committee (I do not know whether it was towards the end of the proceedings, and that perhaps they felt they had had enough) in doing something for everybody else, but leaving out the Irish Peers. It is only because the body

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which elected Irish Peers to your Lordships' House happened, as I understand it, to sit in Dublin at the time Eire became a separate Irish Republic, and not in Belfast, that there are no Irish Peers elected to come to your Lordships' House.
Had this body sat in Belfast, I am sure that there would be Irish Peers elected, possibly from the Northern Irish Peerage alone, to be here. What have they done to be excluded from your Lordships' House? If none had ever been elected to this House in the past, there would be no argument whatsoever; but Irish Peers have been elected to your Lordships' House. Why, then, are they prevented from electing those of their members whom they wish to come here? It seems completely and utterly illogical. The fact that they may be on a particular side of the Border may be a reason for saying that those Peers who live in Eire and who have become Irish citizens should not be allowed to come here. But what about those of us who live North of the Border? Why should we be excluded from your Lordships' House when in the past our predecessors have been allowed to come here?
My Lords, that is the only thing I want to say. I am afraid that I have not said it with a great deal of logic, though I have said it with some vehemence. As I said, my opening batsman failed to turn up to produce the argument for me. I would ask the Government to think again about this point.
5.45 p.m.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, I certainly approve of the proposals which have been put forward to enable hereditary Peers to surrender their Peerages for life. As the noble Earl, Lord Longford, said a short time ago, this reform, if it comes about, will be mainly due to the efforts of Lord Stansgate, formerly Anthony Wedgwood Benn. He will presumably have a place in history as having been the means of bringing about a reform of this kind. I also agree that the entry of Peeresses in their own right into this House is obviously long overdue, and any attempt to keep alive sex disqualification of that kind is obviously quite out of date.
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The Joint Committee, in suggesting the abolition of Scottish Representative Peers and the admission to this House of the whole body of Scottish Peers, have certainly given to Scottish Peers all they have expected, and more. I think, therefore, that the Scottish Peers certainly have nothing to complain of in the Report of the Joint Committee. But when we come to the Irish Peers, there is a very different story to tell, and, in my view, the Joint Committee have given them a very raw deal. All they are recommended to have is the right to sit in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for a Northern Ireland constituency—they already have the right to sit in the House of Commons for a British constituency—and the right to vote at Parliamentary elections. Several memoranda on the position of the Irish Peers were submitted to the Joint Committee, one by the noble Viscount, Lord Vaughan, on behalf of the unrepresented Irish Peers, of whom there are as many as 70, and one by Lord Dunboyne, who helped in drafting Lord Vaughan's memorandum. Both of these memoranda proceeded on the assumption that the Act of Union of 1800 had never been repealed, that the right of the Irish Peers to representation in your Lordships' House still existed in law, and that it was irrelevant that part of Ireland had gone out of the United Kingdom.
I myself also submitted a memorandum, because I felt that, whatever the strict legal position might be, one had to take a practical view of the situation and face the facts as they are to-day. After all, the Irish Peers came into the House of Lords of the United Kingdom when Ireland was united with Great Britain. Could they claim the same right when that union was dissolved? I felt that they could not. The position, however, does not rest there because Northern Ireland still remains in the United Kingdom and sends members to the United Kingdom House of Commons. I therefore put forward the suggestion in my memorandum that an obviously smaller number of Irish Peers should be enabled to sit in this House by some process of election. If Scottish Peers were to sit here, because Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, then in fairness I cannot see why some Irish Peers should not sit here when part of Ireland is in the United Kingdom. From every point of view, I

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cannot help feeling that that argument is very difficult to ignore.
However, as the noble Earl, Lord Kilmuir, has said this afternoon, the Joint Committee thought otherwise. The only clue in their Report to their having considered the Northern Ireland position is in the sentence which reads:
"It should be noted that there is no peerage of Northern Ireland as such."
Frankly, I cannot quite see the relevance of this. I cannot help feeling that the real reason why the Joint Committee turned down the claim of the Irish Peers is contained in paragraph 9 of the memorandum submitted on May 25 last by the noble Viscount who is now the Leader of the House, in which he said this:
"I sympathise, but do not agree, with the desire of Irish peers to be again formally represented in the House of Lords. There is no Common Law right, and, on balance, I believe their presence would tend to spoil our relations with the Republic of Ireland."
That idea of spoiling relations with the Republic of Ireland has been so often the cause of British policy regarding Ireland in recent years. I do not believe that in this particular case it applies at all.
I think that is also the reason why, to take another example, the ancient and great Order of Knighthood of St. Patrick has now been allowed practically to disappear. I think there is only one Knight of St. Patrick remaining, and that is His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester. After his time I suppose the Order will disappear—a great Order which has always been considered on a par with the Garter and the Thistle. The reason why it is disappearing, I believe, is that there is a sort of feeling that, if it were to be kept in existence, it would be not acceptable to the authorities in the Irish Republic.
I should like now, my Lords, to read the second half of this same paragraph in the memorandum of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, which deals perhaps rather more specially with the point that I am raising. He says:
"I am, of course, aware that some Irish peers derive their titles from places in Northern Ireland, but it would be weird if the title to sit in the House of Lords depended upon the location north, or south of the Border of a territorial title conferred before there was a Border to be north or south of. If such peers exist aid are wanted in the House of Lords the correct method of getting them there
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would surely be by the conferment of an United Kingdom peerage—life, or hereditary—in the ordinary way."
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.
6.0 p.m.

ROYAL COMMISSION
The following Bills received the Royal Assent:

Consolidated Fund (No. 2),

Purchase Tax,

Drainage Rates.

House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
Debate resumed.
6.13 p.m.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, when the Business of the House was interrupted I was just saying that in these, memoranda to the Joint Committee, dated May 25, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said that if Peers from Northern Ireland were wanted in the House of Lords the correct method of getting them there would be to confer upon them United Kingdom Peerages. If this represents, or possibly will represent, Government policy, I hope that the noble Viscount, when he comes to reply, will be able to say something about it. I feel that if this could be done, then United Kingdom Peerages should be given to Irish Peers resident in the United Kingdom, with preference to those resident in Northern Ireland. But I should also like to see one or two from among the main body of Irish Peers, not now represented at all, given United Kingdom Peerages. If this suggestion, which was put forward by the noble Viscount in his memorandum, could possibly be implemented, it would, I think, go some way towards overcoming the great disappointment of the Irish Peers with the conclusions of the Joint Committee.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether I could apologise to him for giving him an incorrect answer to a question he put to me at the end of my speech. He asked me a question about my title of Silchester, and I said that Silchester was the problem; but there I was of course at fault. It is not my hereditary title which seems likely to be a difficulty but the title of Pakenham, which I accepted from the present Lord Attlee, or, rather, from the Crown on the recommendation of Lord Attlee. I say this merely to put the record right.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, on that point, may I say that if the noble Earl has two United Kingdom Peerages, one which he obtained by reason of creation and the other to which he succeeded, then I believe he sits in this House as Lord Pakenham. Could he not arrange to sit as Lord Silchester, in which case he could presumably surrender the Peerage of Silchester and be available for membership of the House of Commons?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's offer of help. This would seem to be another occasion when the South of Ireland has every reason to be indebted to the North.
6.15 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I feel that this is a good Report, and I hope that both Houses will be disposed to approve it en bloc, without too much fiddling around over matters which can be improved upon in the Committee stage of the legislation which will stem from this debate.
When this House first came into being it was obviously expedient that the hereditary principle should be untarnished in any respect. Peers in the late Middle Ages possessed a great deal of land and they were also capable of putting a great many soldiers in the field. It was obviously a good thing—to put it mildly—that they should meet from time to time and co-ordinate their actions in order not to put soldiers in the field for conflicting purposes. However, few of your Lordships now have very broad acres, and none, I think, exercises the right (I doubt whether many have it) of putting soldiers in the field. The abso-
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lute necessity of knowing, therefore, who was the son of whom, and what powers and rights devolved upon the eldest son of a sitting Peer, appears less absolute than it did in the days when this House was one of the main centres of power in the country. Lands and soldiers can with certainty be transmitted from father to son. Wisdom cannot. Some Members of our House are, in my view, extremely wise, and some of us are less wise. It is a piece of good luck that the wiser among us normally finish up on the Front Benches. We cannot be certain that it will continue like this. There is a continuing risk in this respect.
Of the innumerable Committees which have reported on the question of hereditary Peerages and whether it is possible to get out of them and stand for election to the House of Commons, I notice that the Committee of Privileges in 1961, reporting on the Wedgwood Benn case, quoted for its first authority the first of many opinions on what is a Peerage, a judgment of a seventeenth century judge called Doddridge who, in 1626, said of a Peerage:
"It is a personal dignity annexed to the posterity and fixed in the blood."
At that time, this necessity of transmitting lands and military power from father to son expressed itself in the belief that the actual physical substance of blood carried rights, carried duties and carried responsibilities. We now see the phenomenon of heredity as something rather different. There are few among us who see a picture in our subconscious mind of each one of the twenty-four paternal chromosomes wearing little coronets, matching each one of the twenty-four maternal chromosomes which do not have little coronets except in rather rare and special Peerages.
A NOBLE LORD: Twenty-three.
LORD KENNET: I thank the noble Lord for his correction, and remember his Christmas card, which said twenty-four, making 48 all told, and which aroused some interest at the time in genetic circles. I think there is little opinion in the country and little in Parliament which believes that at this moment in this Parliament we should tackle the whole question of heredity as a basis of political power. I hope that it will be so tackled in future. But, for

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the moment, let us get on with this very reasonable partial measure proposed by the Joint Committee.
I do not share the reservations of my noble friend Lord St. Davids about hereditary Peeresses. I think it is far less important to keep people out of this House than to enable those who want to get out of it and go back to another place to do so. In point of fact, there is a lot to be said for tidying up both illogicalities which presented themselves to the Committee when they commenced their deliberations: first, the little ways in which the hereditary principle was not applied. Until we can reform the House completely, let us have a uniform standard of logical application of hereditary principles. Let us have my noble friend's mother and three cousins in—and I hope they will sit on this side, like him—but let us allow Mr. Wedgwood Benn, and anybody else who wants, out and let them stand for Parliament.
It seems to me that the main argument for the adoption of the recommendation of the Committee has received singularly little attention in the national debate at the moment—that is, quite simply, the wish of the electors, whether they are in Bristol or anywhere else. They choose the man they want and everything goes swimmingly for a few years; then, in the course of nature, his father dies and they can no longer have the man they want. What restrictions should we admit on the right of the electors to choose precisely the man they want for the House of Commons and no other? I find it difficult to think of any restriction. If a man is a criminal, a traitor, an undischarged bankrupt or a minor, it seems to me that the electors can well be left to make up their own minds, and, generally speaking, they do not elect such candidates. If he is a Peer, they are not allowed to make up their own minds. I am sometimes surprised that we do not regard it as a derogation from our cherished dignities to be bracketed with undischarged bankrupts, traitors and the others, in being disbarred from the choice of the electorate.
Either we are a democracy or we are not. We are talking about a very small matter—about three or four or six men who would like to stand for the House of Commons. I submit to your Lordships that it is distasteful that we should take Our stand so firmly on this principle of a
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freely elected, democratic Parliament and should go to such lengths to defend it against suggested inroads from the Right or the from the Left, and yet, century after century, we should so blandly tolerate this small infringement of it. It is a small infringement, but it is an infringement. If we are a democracy, let us be so even in the corners.
I was very heartened to hear the opening speech from the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack. It seemed to me that he spoke like a man who means business, and I hope he spoke on behalf of a Government which means business in this matter. It is always good when we hear the little anomalies seriously discussed. It is an auspice and an indication that Government action is coming. I thought that the noble and learned Lord made a good case about the unfortunate lot of the elder son of a Peer whose father was struck by a thunderbolt during an election campaign.
I think that other things could be cleared up in any Bill which may come out of this Committee's Report. On this side, we may have one or two things of comparative weight and importance to clear up on Committee stage. But, with these reservations, I hope that both Houses of Parliament will accept this as a compromise, which has been worked out by the representatives of all Parties for that very purpose, and that we shall act swiftly, without prejudicing the chances of a more fundamental reform in the next Parliament.
6.25 p.m.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, may I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Windlesham upon his magnificent maiden speech to your Lordships this afternoon? Whatever may be said about the hereditary system, there is no doubt that if it did not exist, no Second Chamber in the world, let alone your Lordships' House, would have the advantage of hearing such speeches from a newly joined hereditary member. I hope that in future we shall hear words of knowledge and wisdom from my noble friend on those subjects on which he is an expert.
I welcome the findings of this Committee. For a change, I am entirely in agreement with the noble Lord opposite, Lord Kennet. I think that we can both

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congratulate ourselves because, after hearing so many magnificent speeches this evening, the noble Lord and I are the first to mention the wishes of the electorate. I am glad that the Committee have seen fit to press Parliament and the Government to take note of the wishes of the electorate in one constituency. That happens seldom enough in these days. I wish the electorate of Bristol, South-East and Mr. Wedgwood Benn the best of good fortune in the future. This is a new constituency, but in the past both my father and my mother represented some part of it in another place.
I am glad that in future, if these proposals are adopted, no other candidate will have to suffer the embarrassment that the Member for Bristol South-East has had to suffer. There can be no worse feeling than to sit in the House of Commons, with all the great responsibilities that that entails, knowing that there is a 32,000 majority against one's views. I think that one of the greatest services of the Committee has been to recommend removal of that embarrassment.
I am also glad that the Committee have seen fit to argue that a title should not be extinguished should a Peer take the course that Mr. Wedgwood Benn has decided to take. It would be a great tragedy if a name that is a synonym of tradition of service to the country should be struck off the Roll of Parliament for good. I hope I may be spared long enough to see another Lord Stansgate sitting on the Benches opposite in your Lordships' House, or possibly on the Cross Benches, or even, possibly—who can tell?—upon these Benches. I would take it as a great honour if I were able to tell a grandson of the late Lord Stansgate how much your Lordships loved and revered his grandfather. He was a wonderful man. We shall always remember those sallies between him and my noble friend Lord Salisbury. There could have been no kinder or wiser adviser to a young man in your Lordships' House than he, and we shall not forget his great heroism in the First World War, when he was one of the first to fight from an aeroplane in action. It is a great privilege to be able to remember such a fine Member of your Lordships' House.
Finally, I am glad that this Report is an agreed Report. I think it is great
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credit to the members of the Committee who sit on the Benches opposite, and to their colleagues in another place, that they have seen fit to issue this Report of the Joint Committee under the chairmanship of my noble and learned friend Lord Kilmuir. I am pleased that they did not decide to tinker with the corn-position of the House or with its powers. Should there have been any tinkering with that, there could only have been some anew form of Peers of Parliament, call them what you will—no doubt it would have been logical and tidy—and had that been done, had there been any restriction upon the membership of your Lordships' House, it could only have meant that some Peers of the Realm would have forgone the right to come into your Lordships' House and to address your Lordships on whatever matter they might wish. Had that right been forgone, I believe that a serious blow should have been struck against the freedom and liberty, and the protection, too, of Her Majesty's subjects. I welcome the Committee's Report, and I wish its proposals Godspeed through both Houses of Parliament and on to the Statute Book.
6.31 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, in welcoming this Report I may say that I have certain reservations about some of the details, but I think it is a step in the right direction, and possibly we cannot expect everything at once. This is a measure which has a general application. In Parliament it is not usual to legislate for individuals. We all have in mind the special case of Mr. Wedgwood Benn, as I believe he likes to be known. I have the pleasure of knowing him personally, and I know what a great asset he was to the other place and what a great loss he is to this House. Still, he feels strongly about the matter, and I think we are all glad that he will be enabled, as one hopes, to represent his electors again in the other place after this long period of retirement. I wish to apologise to the House for not having been able to come earlier to this debate, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who, I understand, made such an excellent maiden speech, which I shall look forward with pleasure to reading in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow.

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One of the contradictions in this Report, in my view, is the question of hereditary Peeresses. We on this side of the House cannot accept any extension of the hereditary principle. We accept that, like many things in this country, it may be indefensible in theory but it works in practice; but the fact is that as we move further and further into the twentieth century it becomes less and less defensible, although I realise that it has certain advantages. Therefore, we cannot accept the extension of the hereditary Peerages to include Peerages which are held by ladies. But if we are going to allow the hereditary Peeresses to sit in Parliament, I feel that the whole question of the co-heirs should be examined. Possibly it has been examined, and the noble Viscount who leads the House will have something to say about it in his reply.
I should like to declare an interest here, because I am the holder of a Peerage by Writ and have two nieces who are co-heiresses. I hasten to say that I do not approve, in general, of the admission of hereditary Peeresses. But in these days of the equality of the sexes there is surely no justification for continuing this idea which debars the elder of two sisters, if there is no son, from succeeding to a Peerage and puts the title into abeyance for some while. If you are going to allow the hereditary Peeresses to sit, why not let the eldest daughter succeed to a title that is in abeyance? In this way one could at least say that one was treating the sexes fairly, and so showing the spirit of equality which women are enjoying, and fully deserve, in every walk of life.
But, more important than this, I have a greater objection, and that is to the question of the surrender of a title for life. I think there has been far too much concentration in this Report on the use of titles. It is not really the question of titles or hereditary titles that is important; it is the matter of a hereditary title combined with the right to sit in Parliament and to legislate. The whole question of the hereditary Peerage will no doubt he tackled in the years to come, but this is a private matter for each individual. Some Peers use their titles all the time; some do not use them professionally, but use them in private life; and others choose not to use them at all. It seems to me, if I may say so with
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respect, to be unnecessarily petty to say to a Peer: "If you want to sit in the other place you have to give up your title for life." This seems to be quite unnecessary. He need not use it if he does not wish to, like Lord Stansgate, who prefers to be known as Mr. Wedgwood Benn. I think one of the effects will be that some Peers who might wish to sit in the other place will decide not to do so, because they may have an old and distinguished title of which they are particularly proud, and they may feel that they will be letting down their family if they give it up. For my part, I think this clause in the Report is quite unnecessary.
It is often said—I think it has been said in many debates that we have had in this House—that it is necessary to have an hereditary Peerage as a support to the Crown. I think that this does a great disservice to the Monarchy. The Crown, in the person of our gracious Sovereign, is sufficiently loved by all her subjects not to need the prop of an hereditary Peerage, which does not have the same reverence that it had, and I think it is perfectly possible to have an hereditary Monarchy without an hereditary Peerage to support it: in fact, any suggestion which says that an hereditary Peerage is necessary to support the Monarchy I would regard as a gross impertinence.
To conclude, I would say that we as a Party welcome this Report. We regard it as a good Report in itself, except for these small reservations that I have personally, and a step in the right direction. We realise that we cannot have everything at once, but there will have to come a time when the hereditary Peerage is no longer permitted to sit in a Legislative Chamber. It obviously has less and less justification in these democratic times. But that time, maybe, will come. For the moment, however, these proposals will enable people who do not wish to sit in this House but to go to the other place to make their own choice in the matter. On this side of the House we consider that on a long-term basis an hereditary Peerage has no justification, and for my part I think it would be perfectly possible to have a workable House of Lords composed of Peers of the first creation and Life Peers who could possibly be found from some of the existing hereditary Peers. In that way, when

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you have a sufficient number of Life Peers and Peers of the first creation, you have a working House, and it would then be possible to extinguish the hereditary Peerage altogether.
6.41 p.m.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, we have had a very good debate on the Report of the Joint Committee on the Reform of the House of Lords. I expected that there might be some disagreements; but substantially speaking there has been little disagreement among the various noble Lords who have spoken. We were glad that the Lord Chancellor, in opening the debate, gave a general blessing to the Report, though quite rightly leaving the door open on some matters, in case the Government met unexpected trouble, either within or without. That is not unreasonable. The noble and learned Lord was followed by my noble friend Lord Silkin, who gave an able exposition of the problem and made beneficent reference to the Report which registered the support of noble Lords who sit on this side.
We were glad that the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, spoke. He was a very good Chairman of the Joint Committee, and every member felt indebted for the great ability and patience with which he presided over our proceedings. The other speeches which followed have generally blessed the Report. My noble friend Lord Silkin referred to the fact that there were 900 Peers eligible to attend the House of Lords, and, quite rightly, was grateful for the fact that most of them do not come. That is very true. But we have had a very good attendance to-day, which I must say frightened me a little at the beginning, in case any mischief was meant by this rather abnormally large attendance. But it has turned out all right.
About the question of the title and the possible drowning of the Peerage, I take this view of it. I am sorry, but I do not wholly agree with my noble friend Lord Strabolgi. If a man succeeding to a Peerage decides that he does not wish to accept the Peerage in the sense of sitting in this House of Parliament, I want him to take this decision very seriously. I do not want it to be easy for him not to sit here and to be able to walk
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about with the title and the trappings, if I may so refer to them, of a Peerage. It is not desirable to make it too easy. It is not desirable in the interests of this House as part of the Legislature, and he ought to think seriously about it before he takes that step. Therefore, it would be anomalous if a Peer succeeded to a Peerage but declined to take it, and was then able to go about using the title of that Peerage. I think it is anomalous because he would not be a Member of the House of Lords. He would not be eligible to sit, having made the declaration repudiating the Peerage, and it would be something in the nature of an alias for him not to sit here but to go about with the title as if he did.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: That was not the point I was on. I agree that he should not go about with the title of the Peerage he has surrendered. If the Duke of Buccleuch does not want to be the Duke of Buccleuch, obviously he must not call himself that. My point is that for 20 years he sat in the House of Commons as Lord Dalkeith, which is merely a courtesy title, one of his father's titles. It seems to be to be rather silly to tell him that in future, instead of calling himself Lord Dalkeith, which everybody has called him as a Member of the House of Commons, he is to call himself Mr. Scott.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: If, when he sat in the Commons, that was his proper name as a commoner—which I presume from the noble Earl was the case—then I do not know that I would quarrel about it. The noble Earl has raised a fair point, which I must say had not occurred to me. But if he succeeds to a Peerage and then repudiates his noble status, if I may so put it, then I think he must do without the title.
The EARL OF SWINTON: I quite agree.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: The other point is the drowning, on which we were not able to agree. My noble friends and I took the point—again on the same argument—that if a man is going to give up his succession to a Peerage, the consequences ought to be sufficiently serious to make him think twice or three times whether he does it. We thought that when he set

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the Peerage aside it must be dropped for all time, for his descendants as well as for himself. The Committee did not agree with us about that. I am not disposed to make it a "die in the last ditch" issue as to whether or not we should accept the Report, though personally I think it right that if a Peer drops the title he must drop it for his descendants as well. Because, apart from the fact that it affects the dignity of this House, I do not like the principle of people coming in and out of the Chamber—not the same man. The inheritor of the title might refuse to come in, reject the title, and reject the Parliamentary status and what goes with it. His son might come in, and some other son might go out. I do not think that would be good for the dignity of the Chamber. But it is not a point on which we should necessarily part company.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, questioned the title of this Report, "House of Lords Reform." I agree with him. This is quite a limited point, and it is not worthy of the name of reform. I am not complaining about this, but it is such a limited area that to call it reform almost tempts one to recall the Liberal Government of 1910, which brought in the great Parliament Act of that year, and, in a Preamble declared that it would reform the Second Chamber—and the jolly old Second Chamber has been going strong ever since, except by further amendment of the Parliament Act, which the Labour Government introduced in 1949. So that promise has not been kept. If the Liberal Government had been able to go on with reform, I think it would have been reform of substance. But it is a mistake to call this a reform.
The noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, made a useful speech. I must say that the noble Viscount, Lord Esher (whom we are glad to see after some time of absence), made a witty and humorous speech which we all thoroughly enjoyed, at any rate until the last five minutes. It was a very good speech, and very enjoyable, and cheered the House up no end. I was glad that the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury supported in general the proposals in the Report, and it was a comfort and blessing to know that he was on the side
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of the recommendations in the Report. I also join with those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, on his maiden speech, which we enjoyed.
My noble friend Lord Longford made a very interesting speech, during which he stated with great clarity, and almost persuasively, the case of his own position, with which I have a great deal of sympathy. I will not say any more about it, except to congratulate him on the ability with which he stated the case, which I am sure will have been noted by noble Lords and probably considered in the right quarter. But I always think that if my noble friend Lord Longford states a case he does so with great ability, and if sometimes it is a bit of a difficult case he states it with more ability than usual, as he did on this occasion. It was a pleasure to listen to him. However, I am not going to get in his way. If he can get away with this proposition, good luck to him! I promise not to obstruct his efforts.
The noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan, who I well know comes from Northern Ireland, raised the point of the Scots and the Irish, which was quite reasonable because in Northern Ireland there are Scots as well as Irish. But he pointed out that the Scots were possibly going to get all the Scottish Peers admitted as Members of the House of Lords. I opposed this in the Committee on the principle that I do not want more hereditary Peers admitted to this House. Indeed, I put down an amendment to the Report, but unfortunately on the day the amendment came up I had a cold and my wife flatly refused to let me get out of bed, so I could not move it. As nobody else moved it for me, it "went West." But I do not like the idea of additional hereditary Peers being made.
However, the case for it was that this bother of the election of sixteen Representative Peers from Scotland, which the Scots are entitled to under the Act of Union, is a bit of a labour, and that the other Peers, the non-representative Peers, who can take part in the election of the Representative Peers although they cannot sit in this Chamber and have not got a Parliamentary vote, are not eligible to stand for election to the House of Commons. I admit that, on those

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grounds, the Scottish non-representative Peers were having a raw deal. I must say, nevertheless, that I do not like the idea of additional hereditary Peers being admitted, but the Committee thought it was best. As the number is about an additional fifteen, it will not be fatal, especially as it is uncertain whether they will all turn up. That we shall see.
With regard to Ireland, the noble Lord opposite has an understandable grievance about the Irish Peers from that most distressful country. But what can we do? The greater part of Ireland is Eire, the Irish Republic, and one does not know what sort of Peers these Irish Peers are if they are republicans.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: There are about seventy of them.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: The noble Viscount the Leader of the House says there are about seventy, which is quite a number. That would be more serious than the position of the Scots, and I do not know how you can easily draw Peers from a Republic, because I understand that Republics do not recognise Peers, or any titles; and we do not know what sort of gentlemen they are. I am afraid, although I have some sympathy with them and I think it is a bit rough for them, they are victims of the fact that Southern Ireland has become the Irish Republic. But the noble Lord himself is a distinguished citizen of Northern Ireland, for which part of the United Kingdom I have a great affection, though I wish to goodness it would vote a bit differently at Westminster Parliamentary Elections. It would be very good for Northern Ireland if they did. I have told them that over there, but it did not make much difference.
They now have a new Prime Minister. I am sorry that Lord Brookeborough has felt it necessary to resign. He and I were good friends and I like him very much. But, after all, the noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan, himself is a citizen of Northern Ireland as well as of the United Kingdom and he is here; and there is nothing to prevent the Prime Minister of to-day, or one in the future, from making United Kingdom Peers from Northern Ireland, as, indeed, he has, Lord Brookeborough and others, including, I
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believe, another Minister in the Northern Ireland Government, Lord Glenconner, whom I know very well.
Therefore, it does not say in this Report that there shall never be Peers from Ireland; it says only that the Irish Republic is in such a tangle that we cannot very well admit Peers who are from that part of the country, or indeed from Northern Ireland; the tangle is complicated and difficult. So while one sympathises with the noble Lord in what he said, I think it cannot be helped. Let him congratulate himself that he is here and not left outside over the other side of the Irish Sea.
My noble friend Lord Kennet hopes that this Report will be implemented, and I agree with him. He is quite right that the electors ought to be remembered in this business. The electors of South-East Bristol had a rich grievance and they played a real part in inciting the Government and the Parliament of the country to go ahead and see what they could do about the problem. Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, having been refused permission to take his seat in another place, stood for Parliament and won by a handsome majority, and his opponent had the rather humiliating experience of being thoroughly defeated. Nevertheless, by a decision of the Electoral Court the loser took the seat instead of the one who in the ordinary way was the duly-elected candidate. So the electors of South-East Bristol have played an important part in our reaching the position which we have reached. I am glad the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, supported the Report and gave us that help which was desirable.
I should like briefly to refer to the principles which are embodied in the Report. It is recommended that a successor to a Peerage who does not wish to succeed can, by a simple process, refuse to succeed. That makes him eligible for election to another place and gives him the vote at Parliamentary elections for the House of Commons; and surely this is reasonable. I am not in love with the hereditary principle, as your Lordships may have noticed, but I think perhaps one of the worst forms of that principle is that a son should be compelled to sit in this place when he does not want to. After all, none of us chose our own parents, and it is a bit rough

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if a young man, especially if he happens to be in politics, does not wish to come here but nevertheless is pitchforked here, as the saying is, because his father was a Peer. That applied to Anthony Wedgwood Benn and it applied also to the present Leader of your Lordships' House, with whom I have very great sympathy. The Government of which I was a member did not pick his case up, though the grounds on which he asked for action to be taken were a little different from those of Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. I do not want to make too much point of that. The noble Viscount deserves sympathetic consideration; and looking back on it, I am sorry that we did not do something to help him.
I support in this Report not only the possibility that new heirs to Peerages will be able to set aside the succession, but also the retrospective aspect, to the extent that it would cover the noble and learned Viscount the Leader of the House and anybody in a similar position. It will still, I think, cover the case of Lord Sandwich, if he wished to take advantage of it. I gather from the fact that he has sat in this House that he probably does not wish to do so; but he could still do so if he wished. Therefore I wanted them both covered; I think that is both right and fair. So the position now is that this state of affairs need not go on.
I do not like the hereditary principle. I do not want to make a song and dance about it, because this is not the day to make songs and dances; we want to get this Report through. It cuts both ways. Not only do I not like the idea of a man or a woman, who may be fitted to be a legislator or not, becoming a legislator merely because he or she is the descendant of a certain person, but I equally object to the hereditary principle on the other ground that a man is forced into the House of Lords against his will merely because he is the son of his father. To that extent this Report removes and alters that situation, and the Peerage can be surrendered for life on the part of anybody who is so minded.
On the question of Peeresses, there was some doubt in some quarters, I gather, whether Peeresses in their own right should be admitted. I think they should. I agree with the noble Earl,
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Lord Kilmuir. I think we should be hopelessly out of date if they were not admitted; especially as we have now women Life Peers who have really justified themselves in this House, as have, if I may say so without undue conceit, Life Peers generally. Certainly women Life Peers have justified their existence in this House since they were created. I cannot see why in the case of this Parliamentary institution we should say we are going to be different from every other assembly in the country, local authority or otherwise, and that women are not to be admitted. That is utterly unreasonable.
I say that, as one who takes pride in the fact that I have had a hand in creating many first women of something or other: the first woman Chairman of the London County Council; the Metropolitan Water Board (a lot of males there could not understand what water had to do with women; but they drink it and cook with it); the first woman member of the Electricity Authority (and there was the same prejudice); the first woman prison governor; and the first woman stipendiary magistrate—which was not popular at the time in the profession to which the Leader of the House belongs, although I cannot say I had any trouble with him that I recall. I take pride in having taken this part in promoting women to various things. I think it would he a terrible thing if Peeresses in their own right were not admitted to this place. It will be interesting to see them if they turn up. We shall be looking to see what sort of people they are. How many will turn up we do not know.
It is pleasing that after all the troubles and adventures, the comings and goings, about this problem we should now have arrived at the situation where there appears to be substantial agreement between the various Members of this House, and I hope that another place is in the same position. I would therefore urge on the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, that he should try to persuade the Cabinet to bring in this Bill as soon as possible. Let us pass it with expedition. It does not look as if it will be troublesome. It will not be too much of a burden on the Government's legislative programme. Having reached this stage of substantial agreement in this House, which I hope will be true also

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of the other House—the sooner it is true the better—then the sooner it is done the better. There would be more trouble about it if it were to be left over.
I hope the Government will expeditiously legislate on this very useful Report, on which a Committee of very mixed people were able to agree. We were able to do the work together and although we did not always reach agreement, because there were votes on the Committee, we were friendly and courteous to each other. That being the spirit in which the Committee did their work and in which they have reported, it would be a tragedy if Her Majesty's Government did not carry that spirit on to the expeditious preparation of the Parliamentary Bill. Let us not talk too much about it; let us put it through. It is the way in which the British do things. The House has been sticky about all these things for a very long time, but there is one thing about it: the House sooner or later comes to the right conclusion. It is doing it to-day. I hope the legislation will be passed expeditiously, so that the world may say, as Sir Alan Herbert said in his play Big Ben (I have quoted this before):
"There's a lot to be said for the Lords, the Lords,
There's a lot to be said for the Lords."
7.7 p.m.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, before I proceed on to the merits of this debate, I should like first of all to say how very sorry we were on this side of the House that the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, was unable to be with us to-day. I understand that it is only a slight indisposition which is keeping him away, but none the less we wish him a very speedy and complete recovery. I should also like to take the opportunity of congratulating my noble friend Lord Windlesham on what was one of the most successful maiden speeches which have been recently made. He is particularly welcome, both as the son of his father, whom we all remember with affection, and as a notable addition to our debating strength.
I am only too conscious that I am now speaking upon a subject upon
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which I have already expressed my opinions a very great number of times. I even inflicted upon the Committee whose Report we are discussing two memoranda of evidence. The House will realise, of course, that from my own personal point of view some of the recommendations were exactly in accord with my own beliefs, and others were less so. But my function this evening is not to expatiate on my own personal opinions but to try to sum up the debate. This I will try to do.
We are, of course, in this House, as the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, reminded us, a traditional institution, and in dealing with it and in altering its forms and ceremonies, compositions and powers, one has to be governed by this consideration: that a traditional institution, provided that it works effectively and does not involve injustice, is not judged probably by the same criteria as an institution which one is creating for the first time. The second thing which I think we must all bear in mind, and which leads me very much to the conclusion which I shall state, is that in really quite a long time now devoted to considering this subject I have never known any two adult human beings who hold precisely the same opinions on all the possible permutations and combinations which are open to discussion. I therefore reach the conclusion that approaching, as clearly we must be, the moment of truth in this matter, on the whole the broad principles must be passed as a package, every man conscious of the fact that the whole package will contain parts which for him, at any rate, are not wholly acceptable. I do not believe it is practicable to approach this problem in any other way. If we seek perfection we shall not achieve action.
What I think we have achieved as a result of this evening's debate is a most satisfactory measure of unanimity. Both the official speakers from the Labour Party Front Bench; the noble Lord, Lord Rea; the most reverend Primate; the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir (whose chairmanship of the Committee was universally commented upon with praise); my noble friend Lord Swinton, who spoke with his own unrivalled experience, and with the added authority of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who could not be with us, have all in

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principle accepted the broad lines of the Report; and a host of speakers from every quarter of the House have done the same.
Among the only profound dissentients that I thought I detected was the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, from the Liberal Benches, who appears some considerable number of years ago, on his own confession, to have stood somewhat to the right of Mr. Gladstone, and to have been moving steadily in the same direction ever since, and whom only a profound and steadfast conservatism retains upon the Liberal Benches at all. I thought he was the only profound dissentient, except perhaps my noble friend Lord Perth, who, I thought, based his disagreement with the principal recommendation of the Report with regard to surrender (if, like my noble friend, I may use the word) on a false premise. He said in clear terms, I understand (I was not in the Chamber at the time, but he was reported to me as saying), that of the last three Leaders of the House, the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, my noble friend Lord Home, and myself, not one would have remained a Member of the House had these proposals been accepted. I am quite sure that he is wrong. Although I have not the authority of my noble friend Lord Swinton to speak for Lord Salisbury, I cannot conceive of his not having served in this House and taken the title, even had these proposals been accepted at the time.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I think I can assure my noble friend that nothing would induce the noble Marquess to go back to the House of Commons.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I have often heard the noble Marquess say that he far prefers sitting in this House to membership of the House of Commons. Although have never asked my noble friend the Foreign Secretary what he would have done, had these proposals been in force when he succeeded to the Earldom and the English or United Kingdom title by which he sits here, I have myself no doubt that he would be here just the same. What I would have done is probably well known to your Lordships.
Therefore, I think the convenient course would be perhaps to look at some of the specific recommendations of the
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Committee and see whether the debate has really made any dent in them. Starting, therefore, with the question of surrender, I think that with the two distinguished exceptions that I have mentioned, there has been virtual unanimity in favour of the principle. A certain amount of difference has been expressed as to whether the surrender should be for life or should involve the extinction of the Peerage. I did not hear any noble Lord support the view which I myself hold, that a distinction should be made between a Lordship of Parliament and a Peerage. Therefore, one assumes that if the package is to go through there would have to be a surrender at least for the life of the tenant.
I thought there was a substantial agreement, too, that the extinction of the whole title would be a wrong solution, although there were two or three noble Lords who spoke up in favour of it. My own view is that the arguments against it are overwhelming. There are Peerages which are part of our national heritage, and which I think most of us would be sorry to see extinguished because it happened that the tenant for the time being of that Peerage wished to pursue a political career, or for any other reason did not wish to serve in the House of Lords. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who said that there may be several other reasons why he might not wish to do so. It was also pointed out (I think by my noble friend Lord Swinton) that it is not by any means always the immediate descendant of the present holder of the title who can succeed to the title. He might, by an act of caprice or spite, seek to defeat the claims of a brother or a cousin, or even of a remoter collateral. All these factors have to be taken into consideration in considering whether or not to extinguish a title.
Then there is the question, of course, of the name by which a Peer is called if he does exercise the option. I appreciate the force of the arguments that have been presented. I think there was a strong preponderance of opinion that the exercise of the option should involve the loss of the title. That is not, in fact, the view which I expressed. I have always thought that what you were called, or what other people called you, is a peculiarly delicate matter and is not suitable for legislation. Indeed, exactly what

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would happen if now a Peer should exercise the option just to call himself Lord Something or other is something that the Select Committee do not seem to have considered. But, at any rate, the opinion of the House, as of the Committee, appears to be that the title cannot be retained.
I was glad to notice that my noble friend Lord Swinton, and indeed my noble and learned friend Lord Kilmuir, and by proxy the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, had in the end declared their willingness to abide by the majority of the Committee that sitting Peers can exercise the option. I personally think again that that is a matter of a package, and the reasons which I submitted to the Select Committee I still think valid.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, wrung our hearts with his personal and complicated story; he was as three persons in one Peer. But I will, of course, report to my colleagues what he said on the subject, because it would be an ungenerous and churlish act on my part did I not do so, especially as I was, I fear, the innocent occasion of his accepting the first of the three titles, since I beat him in the 1945 Election for the constituency of the City of Oxford; otherwise he would have sat happily in the House of Commons until he was translated here by the present law.
On the other hand, I must tell him that I see certain difficulties in the way of his case. I think it would be difficult. He did, after all, accept a Peerage in the ordinary way of accepting a first creation. He may have done so in the belief that he was the heir-presumptive, although not the heir-apparent, to a title of another kind. But he did, in fact, accept a Peerage of his own, and held high and distinguished offices in the Labour Government on the strength of it. I think it would be most difficult to differentiate between him and any other Peer of first creation, and the mere fact that he added to his lustre by the two distinguished titles which he holds in addition, I think would not make it too easy to distinguish the case.
I turn now to the Scots. My noble friends Lord Perth and Lord Sempill still desire to retain the Scottish elections, and, by implication, to exclude the non-Representative Scottish Peers. I can
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understand the reasons, although I do not think either of them was explained. I am told that the elections at the beginning of a Parliament to the Representative Scottish Peerage are very pleasant social occasions indeed, and that those who have attended them would never wish to forgo the repeated pleasure from time to time. I think it is fair to say that some of those who are excluded feel their absence from this House and would like to come. Indeed, I gather from some of my honourable friends, and from some of the memoranda submitted to the Committee, that that was the general wish of the Scottish Peerage. I myself thought, apart from these two distinguished exceptions, that the House would have welcomed the Report of the Select Committee on this, and, as I said in my memorandum of evidence, would endorse it.
I now come to the sadder case of the Irish Peers, again a body of persons for whom I have nothing but sympathy. On the other hand, I think it is quite difficult to see how the case for them can be put. I notice that one of the distinguished members of that body submitted a memorandum of evidence to the Committee in which he claimed—and I believe it is generally claimed on behalf of the Irish Peers—that they were elected to represent the Peerage of Ireland, and not to represent Ireland. Indeed, this is the way in which their claim is put, the Act of Union not having been repealed, although the machinery by which they can be elected has unfortunately lapsed—for a variety of reasons which may or may not be technical. I do not find that my copy of the Act of Union corresponds with the memorandum of evidence as submitted. Article Four of the Treaty of Union (which is embodied and ratified by Section 1 of the Act) provides that the
"four lords spiritual of Ireland by rotation of sessions, and twenty-eight lords temporal of Ireland elected for life by peers of Ireland, shall be the number to sit and vote on the part of Ireland in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom"—
not as representing the Peerage of Ireland, but—
"on the part of Ireland".
This is exactly the same phrase which is used in connection with Members of the Lower House in the United Kingdom under the same Act.

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Although my noble friend Lord Rathcavan says that it would not impair our relations with the Republic if, after a long lapse of years, new elections were held for the election of 28 new representatives, I am not sure that that is the case. If they are to represent, under the terms of a Treaty and an Act of Parliament, a country the greater part of which has dissociated itself altogether from the sovereignty of the Crown and Commonwealth, I think that they might well feel this was an exercise of sovereignty over that country which they might resent. After all, if we started to re-summon the Peers of the Duchy of Normandy I imagine that it would create some comment across the Channel.
Again, I would be sympathetic with the plea that part of Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom; and this, of course, is true. As a loyal descendant of Ulstermen myself I am very proud to recognise the fact. But the Peerage was not a Peerage of Northern Ireland but a Peerage of Ireland, and there seems to me to be no justification for creating a new Peerage—that is to say for those whose titles happen to be in the North—and then electing from them Representative Peers. This is something for which the Treaty of Union never provided, and something which was not even contemplated at the time. It would be a purely historical anomaly created by Statute for the first time now.
I therefore cannot see any legal case for this proposal, although I will convey to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister my noble friend's suggestion that he endorses what I said in my memorandum that suitable citizens of Northern Ireland, or citizens of the United Kingdom resident in Northern Ireland, should from time to time be proposed to Her Majesty for the conferment of an ordinary Peerage. I think that constitutionally that would be a far superior device.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, thought that Peers of Ireland should be compelled to opt like Peers of England. I think that that is too savage. If we are going to deny them all title to sit in this House, it would surely be anomalous and wrong for us to deprive them of the names by which they are known before they sit in the House of Commons—which they have
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always up to now been able to do without loss of dignity. I think they have had a fair deal. My noble friend Lord Rathcavan called the deal a raw one. If we were to impose upon them an additional disability, they would have every cause to complain.
I come now, at last, to the Peeresses. Here I thought that, on the whole, the Peeresses in their own right were welcomed by the House as potential Members—with the exception of the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, who trembled at the thought of four female relatives sitting around him in this House, a situation which, I am bound to say, would intimidate any man. I had, as the House may remember, considerable doubts at an earlier stage about this. There is a complicated and just legal argument which can be presented against them, but it is too complicated to explain, as I found when I came into conflict with my noble friend Lord Salisbury on an earlier occasion. This serious defeat for myself taught me a lesson, which I think I have learned.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, asked about coparceners. I do not think I can offer them any hope at all. A Peerage is not held by the eldest of the coparceners, but is held in equal and indivisible parts by them all. The choice, therefore, is not in favour of allowing one to represent the whole; it is all of them or none. The coparceners need not be sisters, but can be as many as 125 in respect of any Peerage of this kind, although they seldom reach this very large number. The prospect of large numbers of coparceners all having to speak with one voice because collectively they hold only one Peerage, and of their all descending upon your Lordships and being introduced into this House, is not one which I think I can contemplate.
I think the answer is that this House would endorse these proposals as a broad whole if, when, after Easter, the Government have considered the matter, the Government decide that legislation is the right course. I shall—I hope correctly—convey that message to my colleagues. My own feeling is that the time has come when we must make up our minds, and that the House of Lords—and we shall see from our papers to-morrow whether another place does so—endorses

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the proposals of the Select Committee. I should like to add my thanks to that Committee.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down there is one point I would raise. Is there any chance of re-thinking about the son of a Peer succeeding in a minority: that he would be forced to make a choice one way or the other at 22, rather than at 26? I cannot see how at 22 he knows what he is going to do.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords I am sorry I did not answer that in the course of my speech. But obviously this is a matter which will be studied with other matters which have been stated in the debate. If I may just state the trouble in a sentence, it is that he may want to stand for the House of Commons at 21, and it is difficult, if you are going to carry through an operation with this kind of option, to make the date of option different from the date at which you can vote for the House of Commons and stand for the House of Commons.
On Question, Resolution agreed to.

PORT OF LONDON BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
B.P. REFINERY (KWINANA) BILL
Reported, without amendment.