Dr Ruth Fox: So welcome, everybody, to this first speech by the Lord Speaker since his election earlier this year. I’m delighted to welcome you on behalf of the Hansard Society, continuing the tradition of a Lord Speaker giving their first speech on a Hansard Society platform. So we are delighted, Lord Forsyth, that you agreed to do today’s speech. I should say that there’s a slight end-of-term feeling around Westminster that you may have picked up on your way in. But their Lordships are continuing for another week, so the holiday has not yet started at this end of the building. So with that, without further ado, can I welcome the Lord Speaker to talk to us this evening about his early thoughts on the future of the House of Lords. Thank you.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: It’s my first speech on the constitution. In the last five months I’ve made quite a few speeches. It’s a great pleasure to be here tonight and I’m very grateful to all of you. I’m sure you could find better things to do on a hot Thursday evening than come and listen to me. And I would like to thank you, Ruth, and also your chairman, Baroness Taylor of Bolton, who has herself been doing some work on reform of the House of Lords, and the Hansard Society for hosting this. I am planning to make a series of speeches because I think people perhaps are not as familiar with the work of the House of Lords as they should be – and quite a lot of people who are considering proposals for its future are included in that category.

Now, over the last 10 years, as all of you know, the United Kingdom has undergone a period of political turmoil the like of which has not been seen in generations.

A country which had six prime ministers in 40 years from 1976 to 2016 is about to welcome its sixth in a decade.

Surveys regularly record alarming levels of distrust in politicians and in politics generally. The parties which have been dominating political debate for a century find themselves in a deep trough of unpopularity, and polling suggests that the array of the parties represented in the House of Commons following the next general election may be very different from what we have been used to.

And amid these shifting sands, one part of our political system has remained stable, quietly getting on with the painstaking task of meticulously scrutinising and improving legislation to ensure that it works for the people of this country. And that institution is, of course, the House of Lords.

In his book How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t, the political commentator Ian Dunt singled out the Upper House as the one functioning part of our constitutional arrangements, describing it as conducting its vital work with diligence, expertise and independent-mindedness and acting with “a seriousness that is absent almost anywhere else in the political system”.

The House of Lords regularly sits later than the House of Commons – which today, as you pointed out, Ruth, begins its summer break, and I believe that we are also going to sit an extra two days in September as well.

We deliver many hundreds of amendments each year to improve legislation. Despite having more members than the Commons – and even more, it seems, today – its cost to the taxpayer is around a quarter of the Lower House.

And yet we are repeatedly told that the House is in urgent need of reform, that it is too large, that its members too old, that they need the mandate of elected status, that the system by which they were appointed is not fit for purpose.

A report produced for Sir Keir Starmer by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the unelected chamber as “indefensible” and proposed replacing it with a Senate of the Regions and Nations – an idea which did not make it into the Labour manifesto for the last general election, but appears to be once again under consideration.

So I would like to use this speech to set out a defence of the House of Lords and explain why I believe that the work it does is of enormous value to the people of our country.

I will sketch out some reforms which I believe could go some way to answering public concerns about the composition of the House, principally by reining in the growing role of political patronage in selecting new members.

And I will urge anyone who is advocating radical reform, to first do their homework: ensure that they understand the work that the House of Lords does to improve law on behalf of voters; consider whether their proposed alternative format for the House of Lords would be suited to the task of detailed scrutiny and revision of legislation; and ask themselves, if it would not be suited, then who would do this work, or would this work be done at all?

While they are pondering these questions, they might also consider whether the root of public dissatisfaction with politics lies with the Lords or with other parts of the system. With an electoral system which delivers a landslide majority and victory on a third of the vote? With an executive able to ride roughshod over Parliament? With a guillotine which denies MPs the opportunity properly to scrutinise the legislation they are whipped to support?

When considering reform, it is important not to lose sight of the central question. What work do we want the second chamber of Parliament to do and how can we ensure it is best able to do that work for the benefit of the nation?

Ultimately, the justification for the House’s existence is that its work improves the quality of legislation produced by Parliament, and thereby improves the lives of the people of our country.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a central part of the role of the House of Lords to oppose or block Government legislation. Instead, the Upper House’s principal task is scrutiny and revision – going through every bill sent to it by the Commons line-by-line to ensure that it will work as it is supposed to and that it will not result in unintended and damaging consequences.

In recent years, successive governments have asserted tight control on the timetabling of business in the House of Commons, meaning that MPs simply do not have the opportunity to apply close attention to the detail of the legislation they vote through.

In consequence, bills regularly and routinely reach the Lords in a half-formed state, with large sections undebated by MPs and riddled with flaws which could cause serious damage if they reach the statute book uncorrected.

And that is where the Lords steps in. Peers improve legislation through amendments to bills, thousands of which are tabled in every session, and many hundreds of which become law each year.

As a self-governing House, we have no time limits on debate. I have no power, as Lord Speaker, to select amendments, as the Commons Speaker does – every amendment can be debated if any member wishes to do so.

In the 2024-26 session just ended, the Lords chamber sat for more than 2,000 hours and Grand Committee for 154 days. More than 11,000 amendments were tabled and more than 2,000 were agreed.

The House benefits from the fact that its Members are not under the constant pressures of re-election, constituency work, or tightly controlled timings for debates, which are all constraints MPs have to work with. The combination of outside experience and expertise and relative lack of time pressure greatly assists the Lords in adding value by carefully checking, debating and improving bills.

Crucially, as many as 90% of the amendments passed in the Lords are tabled by the Government, often because ministers have accepted the arguments made by peers in debate and taken them into account in reframing bills.

The process of amending legislation may appear a dry and dusty topic. But changes proposed by peers and introduced in the House of Lords make a real and positive impact on the life of our nation.

Without the House of Lords, would we have got the ban on deepfake pornographic images put forward by Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge?

Without the intervention of the former reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, would journalists and other groups have escaped being accidentally caught up in a bill cracking down on state threats?

Without amendments tabled in the Lords, would we have got a ban on social media use by children aged under 16?

Without pressure from peers during the passage of the Environment Act, would the Government have added measures to tackle sewage discharge into waterways and to save our chalk streams?

Without campaigning by film director Baroness Kidron, would provisions on artificial intelligence and copyright have made it into the Data (Use and Access) Act?

Government defeats do occur in the Lords, and they often grab media headlines. There were 145 of these during the 2024-26 session.

But the Parliament Act, which allows the Government to force a bill through in the face of rejection by the Lords, has been invoked only four times since 1949.

Indeed, one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern times, Clement Attlee, established the National Health Service and the welfare state and nationalised a range of industries in the years after the Second World War despite the fact that Labour had only 16 peers in 1945 and remained a tiny minority in a House dominated by Conservative hereditaries throughout his time in office.

In the vast majority of cases, peers may push contentious amendments to two or three rounds of “ping-pong”, but they accept that in the end the elected House must have the final say.

The Upper House does not make the law. The Commons makes the law. What the Lords does is to point out possible shortcomings in proposed legislation and invite the Commons to think again.

The other way in which the Lords makes an impact is through its cross-cutting committees, which – rather than monitoring the activities of individual Government departments, as most Commons committees do – take a wide-ranging look at the thorniest issues of modern life.

These include special inquiry committees, which provide us with the flexibility to respond nimbly to emerging issues, such as the development of artificial intelligence. Lords committee reports are widely respected for their authoritative assessments of crucial problems facing the UK. They operate on a consensus basis and on the basis of the evidence they receive.

For instance, as long ago as 2015, the Lords Economic Affairs Committee raised doubts over the economic viability of the HS2 rail link – doubts which have been amply borne out by subsequent events. The committee said then that vast sums could be saved by reducing the planned speed of the trains, something which is only now being implemented after it has been cancelled.

In January 2021, the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee warned against the catastrophic consequences of the premature withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan, some seven months before their departure prompted a Taliban takeover.

The Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee made far-sighted recommendations on the regulation of AI in 2018, four years before ChatGPT was publicly released.

And last year, the Environment and Climate Change Committee forced to the top of the political agenda the issue of waste crime, which has blighted communities across the country, including places such as Makerfield.

I believe that these examples and many more testify to the value of the work conducted by the House of Lords to improve legislation, inform public understanding and make politics work better.

Indeed, public debate – backed up by opinion polling – suggests that any concerns voters have about the Lords focus not on the work it does but the on the method of appointment – not on output but input.

As Lord Speaker, elected by the whole House, I of course am politically impartial. It’s quite hard actually, but I am! But it is my duty to speak out if I see the arrangements which enable the delivery of that high-quality work being put at risk.

I want to first examine the most frequently-invoked proposal for change – a move to an elected second chamber, whether elected directly by voters or indirectly through nominations from national and regional parliaments, assemblies and councils.

The House of Lords is certainly unusual globally in being an entirely appointed second chamber. But it does not automatically follow that this unique status is inappropriate for the job which it is asked to do.

Direct elections to the Upper House are not as universal as many assume. Among the 78 bicameral legislatures worldwide, just 20 are wholly directly elected, while the rest have different proportions of appointed and directly or indirectly elected members. Germany’s Bundesrat and France’s Senate are made up of delegates selected by local and regional councils. Ireland has senators representing different industries and professions.

Those arguing for a move to a directly or indirectly elected Upper Chamber would have to answer some tough questions about the impact this would have on the nature of the House and the kind of work it would be able to perform:

Would an elected Upper House attract members with the same high level of expertise, experience as the current Lords? Or would it be dominated by career politicians using it as a stepping stone to the House of Commons?

Would elected members be subject to pressure from their party whips, limiting their independence?

Would elected members be willing to focus on scrutiny of legislation, or would they concentrate on constituency work and media appearances to boost their chances of re-election? I must say, the idea of, having spent many years knocking on doors, saying “Will you vote for me please? I’m very good at revising legislation and no, I can’t help you with your pension or any of the other issues concerning you” does fill me with some dread as to the likely response on the doorstep!

Would members of an elected Upper House accept that the House of Commons must have the final say, or would they feel free to attempt to block or kill legislation, risking the kind of gridlock regularly seen in the US Congress?

Would an elected Upper House observe the same electoral cycle as the Commons, with the likely result of two Houses mirroring one another politically? Or would their election dates be staggered, raising the prospect of two Houses led by opposing parties locked in permanent strife?

How would an Assembly of the Nations and Regions differ from the current House of Commons, whose members are already elected on a geographical basis but tend to operate along political rather than regional lines?

Is the job of scrutinising and revising UK-wide legislation best performed by an Assembly of the Nations and Regions containing delegates from regional and local authorities who might be under pressure to prioritise the needs of their own area?

It is imperative that these questions are considered very thoroughly by anyone drawing up proposals for reform to the Upper House. Past experience shows that they are not easily answered.

Attempts at radical reform by Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg all ran into the sand.

This brings me to an alternative means of boosting public trust in the Upper House: reforming the system for appointment and the vetting of members.

It is a depressing fact that the House of Lords is most likely to come to voters’ attention not when it publishes an incisive report or successfully improves a bill, but when questions are asked about the appointment of new peers or the conduct of those already in the House.

I believe that a relatively few modest changes could go a long way to enhancing the reputation of the House.

I would contend that the work conducted in the House is greatly assisted by the presence on the red benches of eminent figures such as people at the pinnacle of different fields of human endeavour, from politics to business, defence to agriculture, art, academia, religion, science and the law.

The line-up of peers includes people who have reached the top in their disciplines – judges, generals, professors and engineers; leaders of police forces, broadcasting corporations, multinational companies and intelligence agencies.

But the membership also includes trade unionists, journalists, campaigners for the rights of women and ethnic minorities, charity workers and advocates for the disabled.

If you want to hear about the formidable array of experience and knowledge they bring to Parliament, you could do worse than listen to episodes of the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast launched by my predecessor Lord McFall and continued by me, where you will find fascinating accounts of the life and work of remarkable people like former MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller, tech entrepreneur Martha Lane-Fox or prison reformer James Timpson.

They bring with them not only decades of experience on the frontline of the most urgent debates of modern life, but also an independence of mind born from the fact that for the most part they are at a stage in their careers where they are not looking for advancement, and can tell the whips where to go.

Of course, there are large numbers of peers with political experience from the Commons – I should declare an interest here, I fill the category that’s frequently called “failed politicians”! – and the devolved assemblies or local government. That is as it should be. The Government and the opposition must be able to fill their front benches, of course, and it is of great value to the House to have members with deep personal knowledge of the political system.

However, the House of Lords is not primarily a cockpit for political battle. That is the job of the Commons. The Upper House thrives itself instead on courteous and independent-minded debate founded on evidence and experience.

That ethos is underpinned by the fact that no single party enjoys a majority in the House of Lords. In almost every division, the Government must rely not only on its own troops but also on the non-political members on the crossbenches.

While votes in the Commons are won by force of numbers, in the Lords it is the force of persuasion that counts.

The prominence of the crossbenches was significantly enhanced by the establishment in 2000 of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, or HOLAC, which each year considers hundreds of applications for life peerages.

From these it nominates a small number of people on the basis of eminence in their field, propriety and ability to participate in the work of the House.

Peers entering the House through this route have included England’s first female Appeal Court judge, an Astronomer Royal, a vet, a nurse, a Paralympian, and the founder of the homeless people’s magazine The Big Issue.

Forty-two per cent of HOLAC peers have been women – compared to the current figure of 40% of MPs and 35% of members of the Lords. Around 20% of them came from ethnic minority backgrounds and several have disabilities.

In total, HOLAC has made nominations of 78 peers, all of which have been accepted and many of whom have made a significant contribution to expanding the range of experience upon which the House is able to draw.

However, in a little-noticed letter in 2012, the then Prime Minister David Cameron asked HOLAC to limit its nominations “for the time being” to two a year – down from the previous average of five or six.

Today, almost 15 years later and despite the efforts of Lord McFall, my predecessor, to challenge it, this restriction remains in place. And during those 15 years HOLAC has nominated just 19 candidates for life peerages, compared to 59 in the 11 years before.

It seems to me that the time is now ripe for the two-a-year limit to be revisited, not least because of a little-remarked – and I believe unintended – outcome of the removal of the last hereditaries earlier this year.

Prior to their departure, the 92 hereditaries were among three groups of members who did not owe their place in the House of Lords to political patronage, alongside the bishops and the HOLAC crossbenchers.

Their departure meant that, at a stroke, the proportion of members effectively appointed by party political leaders rose to 90% of the House. If we do not include the bishops, that figure rises to more than 93%.

Lifting the limit on independent nominations – whether by HOLAC or a new nominating body – would allow this imbalance to be redressed by boosting the proportion of members selected for their personal merit rather than their political allegiances.

And in order to avoid further swelling the size of the House, this would have to be coupled with restraint – whether statutory or voluntary – on the numbers of appointments made by the Prime Minister, which are currently unlimited. By coincidence, today another 27 have been nominated, which increases the size of the House by an extraordinary 3½%.

Recent polling for the UCL Constitution Unit suggests that this sort of change would be popular. Some 74% of those questioned in June last year said that an independent body should be given responsibility for nominating peers, compared to just 6% saying this should remain the prerogative of the Prime Minister.

And it has to be said that it is also likely to be popular among peers, many of whom have spoken in favour of previous proposals to enhance the independence of appointments.

If independent nominations were expanded, the Prime Minister could give the nominating body a new remit to identify gaps in expertise and tailor its choices to fill them, allowing the recruitment of experts on hot topics like artificial intelligence, autonomous weaponry, medical innovation, climate science or migration, and others to replace the knowledge of agriculture, heritage and rural life that was lost with the hereditaries.

To those concerned about representation at Westminster of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, I would suggest that a responsibility could be formally placed upon the independent nominating body to ensure better geographical balance on the red benches.

Meanwhile, public concern about the appropriateness of some of the appointments to the second chamber could be addressed by extending its power to vet political nominees.

At present, those nominated by the Prime Minister and other party leaders are checked only for propriety – effectively whether they have a criminal record and whether they pay their taxes. This could be toughened, perhaps by requiring evidence that nominees are bringing valuable talents and experiences to the House of Lords and, most importantly, are willing to turn up and do the work and contribute to the House’s activities.

Crucially, the Prime Minister could introduce a requirement on holders of his office not to overrule objections to their nominees – as has happened at least once in the past.

Of course, I recognise that no politician wants to give up powers of patronage. However, I believe it is time for political leaders of all stripes to give serious attention to measures that can build trust in our political system.

There has been talk recently about rewiring our constitutional arrangements. This is an ambition I applaud. Those entrusted with power must always ensure that the system is fit for the modern age.

But they must do it on the basis of sound evidence of what works.

Any electrician would tell you, if you get your wires crossed, you may be in for a nasty shock.

The House of Lords is a kind of constitutional trip-switch, forcing a reset on bad laws which have not been properly considered by the elected House.

Anyone advocating rewiring politics needs to consider very carefully, will their new system keep the lights on, or will it blow a constitutional fuse?

I hope that you will agree that the proposals I have briefly outlined this evening are worthy of consideration. And I would be very happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much.