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Retirement and Participation Committee Report

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for introducing her sensible report that introduces retiral. Speaking personally, I will do what is recommended in the report when my time comes to fulfil the retirement proposals.

However, today I do not want to speak about the report itself but about the consequences that it will have, particularly on the Cross Benches. As Professor Meg Russell said in the brief that she sent to us all, it will have uneven effects on different groups, and particularly on the Cross Benches.

With the help of Sam Anderson in the Convenor’s office, I have managed to get some figures to illustrate this. I am afraid that after the erudite speeches that your Lordships have just heard, mine will be a boring lot of figures—but, I hope, making an important point. I have used the figures in the report but I realise that they change all the time with new appointments, retirals and, occasionally, deaths. HOLAC appointments have been declining. Currently, among the Cross-Benchers, there are 53 HOLAC appointments, compared with 101 that are mainly prime ministerial appointments. I will come back to that later.

Paragraph 33 of the report states that at the end of the 2024-26 Session, there were 776 Members of the House in total, of whom 154 were Cross-Benchers—close to 20%, which the House has agreed ought to be the proportion of representation of the Cross-Benchers. If you look at the retirals as planned, in July 2029, of those over 85 and those who will become 85 that year, there will be 38 Cross-Benchers leaving the House out of a total of 135. That means that 30% of those who leave will be Cross-Benchers. That will reduce the number of Cross-Benchers to 116.

In 2030, when the 84 year-olds should leave, there will be 43 in total leaving, of whom 13 will be Cross-Benchers. Again, that is 30% of the total who will be leaving and will reduce the number of Cross-Benchers to 103. In 2031, when those aged 83 will be leaving, the total leaving will be 56. Of those 56, 17 will be Cross-Benchers. Again, that will be 30% of those leaving. That will, after three years, reduce the number of Cross-Benchers remaining to 86—down from 154. The total number in the House will then be 542. So the Cross-Benchers will be reduced to 16% of the total House. That is already a 4% reduction in Cross-Benchers.

To look briefly at participation, 42 current Cross-Benchers will come into the category of attendance of less than 20%, of whom 21 will already have satisfied the retiral age, but that still leaves 21 who will not fulfil the requirements of participation. Therefore, the total number of Cross-Benchers leaving in three years—and I have not looked beyond that—is 89 of 154.

After three years, if no more appointments are made, the Cross-Benchers will therefore be 65 in number, which would be 12% of the total of 542 in the House.

If you look at the appointments, 53 current Cross-Benchers were appointed by HOLAC. As I mentioned, prime ministerial appointments and some others, who are hereditaries, total 101. Since 2014, the prime ministerial appointments have been twice the number of HOLAC appointments.

The message, therefore, is clear. Unless this is taken into account, within three years, not six or seven years, the cohort of Cross-Benchers will be reduced to less than half the number that we have now, considerably less, and they will not be HOLAC appointments. Two things need to be addressed: numbers of Cross-Benchers need to be appointed, starting now, if people are going to start leaving in 2029, which will be significant numbers; and the number appointed by HOLAC needs to change compared with the prime ministerial appointments. That is my point: the message is about the figures that need to be addressed.

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