Constitution Committee reports on the status of the Leader of the House of Lords

The committee says that it is not aware of any Leaders of the House of Lords who were not full members of the Cabinet and suggests this is the first time that the Cabinet has not included any representatives of the House of Lords as full members.

The committee concludes that part of the role of the Leader of the House is to give “unpalatable” advice to other ministers about the views of the House of Lords on departments' policies, and to advise colleagues on the chances of legislation passing the House or how long it might take. The committee says that if, as now, the Leader is not a full member of the Cabinet “there may be a risk that the views of the House are not fully listened to in the Cabinet.” 

The report states that it sits “uneasily” with the constitutional principle that ministers are drawn from a bicameral legislature for one House of Parliament to be unrepresented in the full Cabinet. 

The committee's short report explains the background to the current situation, the importance of the Cabinet, the legal limit on the number of Cabinet salaries that can be paid and the history of the representation of the Lords in the Cabinet.

The report does not include recommendations but the committee notes the Prime Minister's recent letter to the Association of Conservative Peers in which he undertakes to return the Leader of the House of Lords to full Cabinet status at the next opportunity. 

Commenting, Lord Lang of Monkton, chairman of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, said:

“There are strong feelings in the House of Lords about the status of the Leader and that for the first time the House will be unrepresented among full Cabinet members.

"We have a bicameral Parliament with the government drawn from both Houses. It sits uneasily with those constitutional arrangements for the Cabinet to have no members of the House of Lords in it.

“Our report does not make recommendations nor take a view on the new arrangements, but we point out some of the challenges for a Leader who is not in the Cabinet proper. A central part of the job of the Leader is to advise Cabinet ministers about the view in the Lords on legislation and the prospects of proposals getting through. There is concern that without the Leader being a full Cabinet member that advice might carry less weight.”