Tag Archives: Baroness d’Souza

We must address the House of Lords’ size, for the good of parliament

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Tomorrow the House of Lords will debate its size, which is widely criticised for having grown by almost 200 since the removal of most hereditary peers in 1999. In this post former Lord Speaker Baroness D’Souza argues that change is urgently required to contain the number of peers, including placing limits on the Prime Minister’s patronage power, in order to maintain both the chamber’s ability to command respect and the wider effectiveness of parliament.

Tomorrow the House of Lords debates a motion ‘that this House believes that its size should be reduced, and methods should be explored by which this could be achieved’. The current membership of the chamber stands at over 800 (and substantially more when those temporarily absent are included). As the Constitution Unit’s work has frequently highlighted, there has been a steep increase in size since the chamber was last substantially reformed by the Blair government in 1999 – of a kind that is frankly unsustainable.

In the decade 1997-2007 a total of 374 new peers were created (i.e. 37.4 per annum). In the six years 2010-16, a further 261 peers entered the House (i.e. 43.5 per annum). Although some peers sadly die each year, and new voluntary retirement provisions were introduced in 2014, the number being appointed by the Prime Minister has far outstripped the number who have departed.

Of course the Lords was far bigger, with over 1,200 members, before the 1999 House of Lords Reform Act which excluded the majority of the hereditary peers from membership. But attendance then was fitful with some peers rarely, if ever, participating. Today with many more younger and active peers attendance it is at an all-time high – for several years now, average daily attendance has very significantly exceeded that  before the 1999 reform.

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Parting shots from the Lord Speaker: Baroness D’Souza reflects on the House of Lords and its future

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On Wednesday 20 July the Constitution Unit and the House of Lords authorities hosted a special event at which Baroness D’Souza reflected on her five years as Lord Speaker in conversation with Professor Meg Russell. The conversation covered the highs and lows of her tenure, as well as the issues of the size, composition and reputation of the House. Raffaella Breeze and Jack Sheldon report on the event.

At an event held on 20 July, organised by the Constitution Unit and the House of Lords authorities, the outgoing Lord Speaker Baroness D’Souza reflected on the highs and lows of her five years in the role in conversation with Professor Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit. Baroness D’Souza also used the opportunity to address the pressing issues of the size and reputation of the House of Lords, indicating her own preferences for a cap on the size of the House and restrictions on Prime Ministerial patronage.

Baroness D’Souza is the second peer to hold the position of Lord Speaker, established under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Both Baroness Hayman, the inaugural holder of the office, and Lord Fowler, the former Conservative cabinet minister who will take on the role in September, were also present at the event. Baroness D’Souza recalled her objectives when she took office in 2011: to guard the reputation of the House, to expand its outreach programme outside of the UK, and to strengthen the relationship with the House of Commons. If Baroness Hayman’s role had been to create the position, hers was to develop and consolidate it.

The growth of the international outreach programme has been a particular feature of Baroness D’Souza’s tenure. She emphasised the vital importance of building institutional links with other parliaments, for example through exchanges of officials with parliaments in developing democracies, and opening up second channels of communication with countries where bilateral relations have gone sour, such as Russia and Taiwan. Baroness D’Souza spoke about how the international outreach programme had allowed her to pursue some of her other interests, such as promoting the role of women in politics. As Lord Speaker she had also pressed for more efficient, focused meetings of organisations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

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