The Mandelson Affair Must Not Be Used as an Excuse To Neuter Parliament

Using the Mandelson scandal to justify stripping peers’ of their titles is a slippery slope, warns Toby in the Telegraph. Here’s how his article begins.

In the House of Lords on Thursday, Baroness Smith of Basildon, the Leader of the House and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, confirmed that the Government would be bringing forward legislation to enable peers to be stripped of their titles. This is ostensibly so Lord Mandelson can be denuded of his, but as she said, he may not be the only one.

“If standards are such that we feel that someone should not be a member of this House, do we really think it is appropriate for them to retain that title for life?” she asked. “It is not appropriate and it should not happen.”

That sounds all well and good – we need to clean the Augean stable, etc. – but it takes us on to perilous ground.

At present, the House of Lords Conduct Committee can suspend or expel a peer from the House, as per the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015, if they fail to “conduct themselves in a manner that maintains and strengthens public trust and confidence in the integrity of the House of Lords”.

But the Conduct Committee cannot strip a member of his or her title. That can only be done under the Forfeiture Act 1870, which applies to peers convicted of treason, and the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which allowed for the removal of titles from members who supported Germany in the First World War.

Alternatively, the King can do it, a prerogative he exercised when stripping Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his dukedom last year. But that was the first time someone had been forcibly removed from the peerage since 1919.

In my view, we should be extremely wary of extending this punishment, even supposing the legislation contains the safeguard that stripping a peer of his or her title would require a majority vote of the whole House.

Three years ago, the Free Speech Union, the organisation I run, had to defend a member who was investigated by the Honours Forfeiture Committee for allegedly damaging the reputation of the honours system. That Committee has the power to strip people of honours, up to and including knighthoods, but not life peerages. 

All our member had done, in reality, was to challenge progressive orthodoxy about the British Empire’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, which, needless to say, this Committee, which is operated out of the Cabinet Office, regarded as holy writ.

We prevailed eventually and he kept his honour, but it was a long and expensive process, and – for the honour holder – extremely stressful. Any comparable punishment in the House of Lords could be used in the same way, namely, to suppress dissent from prevailing orthodoxies. If not at first, then in due course. 

Worth reading in full.