My favourite hereditary peer, back in the day when the Upper House was full of proper Lords, was—to give him his full name—John Clotworthy Talbot Foster Whyte-Melville-Skeffington, the 13th viscount Massereene and 6th viscount Ferrard.
If you think that is an improbable name, I can only say it is not as improbable as the man himself. He was, literally, born to the job—Eton, Black Watch, Monday Club, Scottish estates, field sports, Carlton, Turf, Pratt's, Royal Yacht Squadron etc. And, no matter the subject under debate, he would pop up with a charming—if pointless—anecdote.
Here he is speaking up in defence of bulls during a debate on the countryside in 1981: “The only annoying thing which happened to me—cattle are very inquisitive—was when one shorthorn of mine went to investigate a hiker's tent. They were not there, and he got tangled up in the guy ropes, and somehow unfortunately got a frying pan attached to his horn. This was extremely annoying for the cows, because whenever he tried to get near them, they heard this thing banging and fled. It was also very annoying for me, because I could not get a cow served, and in the end the poor bull had to be shot.”
When he came to speak on the Brixton riots in the same year, he began by noting that he owned agricultural estates in Jamaica: “The only riots I came across were riots of joy on the estate, because when I arrived I always gave a big barbecue for all the children and the people and it was a riot of joy.”
The thing about the late viscount (he died in 1992) is that everyone knew he was a bit of a joke, albeit a charming one, and yet it was not until 1999—nearly 40 years after he first sat in House—that the Blair government finally decided to do away with automatic hereditaries, and devised a system whereby they could elect a small number from amongst their own.
This felt like a radical measure at the time, but resulted in a series of preposterous elections, such as a recent one where an electorate totalling 23 peers voted for two hereditaries—literally, lording it over the rest of us. One of them, the 28th Lord de Clifford, was eligible because an ancestor fought for Edward II. He is, in real life, a chartered accountant managing a veterinary practice.
His family has reason to be grateful for the Upper Chamber: his more recent ancestor, the 26th Lord de Clifford, was prosecuted for causing death by dangerous driving in 1935—but instead chose to be tried by a jury of his peers. He was acquitted.
More recently Lord Camoys, an Eton-educated banker, won the ballot. He seems to owe his place as a lawmaker today to Thomas Camoys, the first Baron, who commanded the left wing of the English arm at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The latest Lord Camoys is not left-wing.
Anyway, enough of the hereditaries, since they are about to be kicked out of the House of Lords altogether after this week’s King’s Speech.
That’s 92 out of 775 gone, but the speech was silent on what to do about the assorted donors, crooks, timeservers, has-beens, never-wases, lobbyists, press barons and former aides who still decorate the benches. Yes, Baroness Charlotte Owen is still there, since you ask.
The problem for Keir Starmer is twofold. Firstly, the country is in a dire mess and he has at least 100 more pressing priorities—though you could argue that a dysfunctional unelected legislature full of cronies is not a negligible problem.
Secondly, as Blair found out, the moment you propose reform up pop a thousand constitutional bores, each with their own finely worked out proposals for how it should be done. And whichever proposal you devise will—you guessed it—have to be passed by the Lords. Turkeys, Christmas etc.
Which is why I loved a recent proposal in a modest letter to Prospect magazine from a Cambridge professor, Nicholas Boyle. Professor Boyle reasonably suggested that the Upper House should be no bigger than 400—marginally smaller than the House of Representatives. So how to whittle 775 down to 400? Simple, says Boyle: hold an election. Ie, let them decide for themselves.
“Three quarters of the seats in this [new] chamber should be assigned to political parties in the proportion in which they are represented in the Commons—the remainder being assigned to crossbenchers. Some seats might be reserved for elected mayors, so ensuring representation of the country’s regions. Otherwise, individuals would be elected from the relevant caucus in the entire upper house (rather as the seats for hereditaries are currently filled).”
All this could, he thinks, be achieved by a single Commons bill regulating procedures in the other place, and thus needn’t take up months of legislative time. The beauty of the idea is that the peers themselves know full well who are the honourable grafters and who are the dishonourable grifters.
“Dubious prime ministerial appointees would be unlikely to make it through such a competition,” writes Boyle. “Lords not chosen for seats could still offer expertise as non-voting members of committees—and a separate, similar, but much smaller Chamber of Lords Spiritual could deal with church matters. “
Of course, you could set up a working party or a royal commission to decide on the future of the Upper House: there have been numerous such initiatives already and they all, in time, disappear into the longest of grasses.
But consider the alternative: one in which Starmer has just nominated an 83-year-old and a 79-year-old in order to try and muster the numbers to vote through a proposal to establish a compulsory peers’ retirement age of 80? Not that even that baby step towards reform made it into the King’s Speech.
The current heir to the title of Massesene and Ferrard is the Hon Charles Clotworthy Whyte-Melville Foster Skeffington, a 51-year-old who runs a business selling “clever gift ideas” including quirky tea towels and mugs. He will now never be able to take a seat making laws for the rest of us.
That’s progress, I suppose. The Boyle proposal is not perfect, but it would at a stroke reduce the Upper House to a reasonable size while ejecting the people who have no business making laws for the rest of us. And then, in a few hundred years when things have calmed down a bit, someone could set up a working party to finish the job.
