LABOUR AND PEERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20365, 20 September 1929, Page 10

LABOUR AND PEERS.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

CONSTITUTION OF CHAMBER,

NEW GOVERNMENT'S POSITION. ■

During the past few weeks the position of the Labour Government in Britain in relation to the House of Lords lias attracted much attention and evoked many Conservative suggestions, culminating in Lord Darling's proposal that henceforth any Minister of the Crown who is a member of the other House of Parliament shall have the right to sit and speak in the House of Lords, but vote only in the House of which he is a member. Eleven years ago the Bryce Committee on Lords reform recommended that 6uch a step should be considered.

At present there are nominally 14 peers in the Government, four being in the Cabinet, while five of the others retain the Royal Household appointments which they held in Mr. Baldwin's Government, and can hardly bo counted as Labour. For the purpose of Ministerial business Labour, peers in the Lords number nine. That is to say nine are holding official positions. In tho former Labour Government there were eight peers, apart from those filling Household appointments. Of these eight Lord Haldane has died and Lord Chelmsford and Lord Oliver have no place in the new Administration.

Daring his term of office in 1924 Mr., Ramsay Mac Donald created four peers, and since his recent accession to office he has added four others to the list, two of the latter, Lord Sankcy and Lord Passfield (Mr. Sidney Webb), being in the Cabinet. Several other peers arc believed to have Labour sympathies, says a correspondent of the London Observer, but altogether Mr. Mac Donald can hardly count upon a score of supporters in the Hons# of Lords. Yot the membership of that chamber, counting the creations of the year so far as it has gone, and allowing for extinctions, is just over 750, compared with 615 members of the House of Com* mons. I Peers o 1 Different Classes. Fortunately for the Government there is no immediate, prospect of any critical division in the Lords. It must be remembered, too, that out of the great total of peers comparatively few attend to take part in legislative proceedings. It is seldom that 200 can be mustered from all parties for even, the most important division. Last December, for instance, on Lord Clarendon's resolution for the reform of the House itself only 60 peers voted—--52 for the resolution and eight against, i With the return of the Labour Government to office one suggestion frequently made has been that Mr. Mac Donald should create a sufficient number of life peers to give his Government fair support in the Lords. One of the proposals in Lord Clarendon's resolution as originally drawn indeed was that " the Crown should have the power to appoint a limited number of life peers in each Parliament." The -words quoted Bhow that those peers cannot be created off-hand, as many suppose. Those who study the question nearly always go back to the Wensleydale case in 1856, when the Lords decided that a life temporal peer was not entitled to a seat in the House. The result was the passing of an Act enabling the Crown to elevate two Judges of Appeal into life Barons, and that continued until the Appellate Jurisdiction Act wa3 passed in 1876, when the number was enlarged to include all Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, whether still serving on the Bench or retired.

Other Suggestions.

Usually the number has been limited to six. When Lord Shaw resigned office as a Lord of Appeal in April last he was created a peer of the United Kingdom. Mr. William Watson, K.C., was appointed a Lord of Appeal in his stead as Lord Tankerton, so that the number of life peers remained unchanged. Other suggestions have been made to the effect that the number of peers entitled to sit and vote in the House bo reduced to about 300, that peers should be nominated to sit only for the lifo of tho Parliament and that Lords of Parliament should be created who need not be peers. But none of these things would be likely to give a Labour majority of peers, and it is therefore thought, that Mr. Mac Donald will elect to proceed in the future circumspectly as in the past. The power of any Minister to present his own case in the Lords would mark a considerable advance and the question of a majority might be otherwise considered. Many years have passed since a Liberal Government, for examplo, could count upon » majority of peers.