It was the autumn of 1989. I had been a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet for the past 10 years and it was time to move on. In putting this to the prime minister in her office in Downing Street, I was deluged with kind remarks– but then came a response I had not envisaged.
“I know you want to stay in the Commons, but if you want to go to the Lords then that is entirely possible.” I repeated my desire to stay in the Commons, where I had been for 20 years. But just before I left, she returned to the alternative. “You can go to the Lords if you change your mind.”
It was not until 10 years later that I was appointed to the Lords, alongside Michael Heseltine and on a party list of William Hague’s. I had a second chance, which was more than was offered my former colleague John Nott, who had been defence secretary during the Falklands. He had refused a peerage, quite rightly, to pursue a business career, and inexplicably was never offered it again.
I tell this story to illustrate both the capriciousness of the Lords’ appointments system and the power of the sitting prime minister, whether there is a resignation honours list or not. Indeed, the wonder is that prime ministers consider such a list necessary. A prime minister can simply take their own decision to reward loyalty – or tuck away an awkward customer in the Lords, where it is hoped they will do less damage.
Boris Johnson has at least done us all one great favour with his departing honours list. He has put reform of the Lords firmly back on the political agenda. For more than a decade, the government has resolutely ignored the case for change. Now, a part of that case has been set out in technicolour. Even after all the pruning of the past few months, we still have a position where seven new peers are to be added to a house that is already more than 800 strong – and added to by a man who has been judged to have misled the very parliament he is increasing.
If I was still in the cabinet, I would argue the time has come for a fundamental review of the Lords along the lines of a royal commission. There are at least three questions that need to be settled and, hopefully, debated by the parties in the election.
First, in an appointed house, is the public interest served by giving the prime minister such a pivotal position in making appointments? We should remember that a peerage is not just an honour, it is a door to the legislature. It enables the new peer to take part in all the debates on all the bills that the government provides, and vote on them.
Second, there is a wide consensus that the appointed house is too large. When I was lord speaker, I set up an all-party committee in 2016 to review the position. Their unanimous finding was that the number of peers should be reduced to 600. Had the government accepted that proposal we would be near that total today, but, of course, it was content to sleep on.
The third question is the most fundamental. Should we move from an appointed house to an elected, or at least partly elected, one? A royal commission would be entirely the right body to help settle that. The argument for an elected house has always been strong. It is self-evidently more democratic and gives representation to all parts of the kingdom in a way that the present house does not. I confess that, as a new member of the Lords in 1991 , I harboured an ambition for my role to develop to become one of the first members of an elected upper house.
Over 20 years later, that outcome seems as far away as ever. More than that, there does not seem any appetite in the government to try to get the present appointment-based system to work better. If there is another government with a more radical agenda for the Lords, I hope those ministers who have resisted moderate reform will reflect that they have no one to blame but themselves.
Norman Fowler was lord speaker from 2016-21, a cabinet minister with Margaret Thatcher for 11 years, and chairman of the Conservative party between 1992 and 1994. His diaries of the Thatcher and John Major years will be published later this year
