By Paul Bromley
Lord Lucas originally thought he would be a member of the Lords for only a short period because of impending reform – but that was more than 30 years ago.
Now the clock is ticking on the parliamentary careers of all remaining hereditary peers as fundamental changes draw nearer.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which removes their right to sit in Parliament, is in its committee stage in the Lords this week.
The 12th Baron Lucas and 8th Lord Dingwall – or Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall to give him his formal titles – is a Conservative hereditary peer with titles dating back to the 1600s.
Lord Lucas, 73, who lives in Eastbourne, is now looking at what further contributions he can make to public life and to the town.
The Eastbourne Reporter met him over tea and crumpets amid the hushed conversations in the traditional tea room of the House of Lords to find out more about who he is, what he does and how his peerage benefits the town.
What is a hereditary peer?
Hereditary peers owe their right to sit in the Lords to an ancient title given to their ancestors and passed down from one generation to the next. Some date back hundreds of years. By contrast, life peers are honours conferred on people which end when the person dies.
Tony Blair’s Labour government, elected in 1997, promised to remove all hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The majority (667 of them) were removed in November 1999 but a cross-party compromise agreement allowed 92, known as ‘excepted’ hereditary peers, to still sit in the House.
Lord Lucas is one of those ‘excepted’ hereditary peers remaining in the upper chamber. The total number remains the same, with by-elections to replace any of the hereditaries who die or retire.
What are the current Government’s plans for reforming the House of Lords?
Labour included several pledges to reform the House of Lords in its General Election manifesto last year.
The document said: “The next Labour government will therefore bring about an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords.”
Labour also said it would ensure peers met high public standards, reform the appointments process and ultimately replace the second chamber with an alternative body more representative of the regions and nations.
The first stage of the process is a piece of legislation currently going through Parliament to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords. The other manifesto promises, including the compulsory retirement age, are not part of this Bill.
Peers will continue their line-by-line consideration of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill starting on Monday, March 10. The Bill has already passed all its stages in the House of Commons.
What does he think about reform of the House of Lords?
We settle at a small table in the L-shaped tea room, which slowly fills with peers and their guests as we talk. He orders English breakfast tea and crumpets with Marmite.
Lord Lucas is quietly spoken but has strong opinions about the political system and what reform of the Lords should look like.
“I’m very much a reformer. The Conservative party says ‘we agree it’s time it happened‘ to the main reform. It’s just that if you are going to make this change, the government should make other improvements too,” says Lord Lucas.
He believes in ending the right of the prime minister of the day to create as many peerages as they wish whenever they want. “It’s not the way a democracy should be run,” he says.
Lord Lucas agrees there should be quality controls on all peerages, and clear expectations about making an active contribution to the work of the Lords, with other changes, “to make the House a more efficient place”.
What does his 37-year-old son and heir think about not being able to follow in his father’s footsteps by taking a seat in the Lords?
“I don’t think he’s fussed at all. He has grown up since the Blair reforms, so following me has always seemed unlikely and, anyway, he agrees with me that the hereditaries should leave the Lords.”
What does Lord Lucas’ daily diary look like?
Lord Lucas has brought a piece of paper listing multiple engagements for that day. He consults it regularly as we speak to remind himself of what he has been up to.
:: Breakfast meeting run by the British Business Bank whose chair is Stephen Welton who is also chair of the Towner art gallery in Eastbourne. The bank is looking at how it can better help coastal communities like Eastbourne.
:: Meeting with a group of civil servants from various Government departments to discuss an amendment proposed by Lord Lucas to the Data Bill about improving the collection and storage of information on biodiversity, a necessary foundation for looking after our environment better.
:: Conversation along with other peers with a team from University of East London about how Parliament should be using Artificial Intelligence. He is also exploring the possibility of an AI-supported environment for conversations about the future of Eastbourne local democracy as Sussex moves to a unitary authority
“I enjoy it and I think I’ve been good enough at it that I’ve not wanted to let it go without being forced out”
Lord lucas
:: Listening online to an hour-long presentation by Eastbourne Borough Council leader Stephen Holt about what the transfer to a unitary authority might look like for the town. “The more we all take an interest, the better the chance that we will get the new structure right for Eastbourne.”
:: Half-hour meeting with a farming peer about reconciling environmentalists and farmers to enable them to get things done and present a common front to government. “The Lords being much less confrontational than the Commons, it is a good place to build bridges.”
:: Preparing amendments for Bills coming before the House of Lords, particularly the Schools Bill. “The government are proposing radical changes to the relationship between them and parents when it comes to education.”
:: Hour-long interview with the Eastbourne Reporter
Lord Lucas says that is a good example of how he spends his time: “Listening to people who have ideas and experience that I can translate into proposing improvements when legislation comes through”.
He has a particular interest in education (he is the editor of ‘The Good Schools Guide’) and in the environment. He sits on the Lords Science and Technology committee.
How often does he attend?
Lord Lucas says he attends about three days a week, although it varies. The House of Lords website supports this and notes that he voted on legislation eight times in January and made 11 spoken contributions including speeches and questions.
He travels by train from his home in Eastbourne (parliamentarians are given a 2nd class rail pass) and stays overnight with family members in London or returns to Sussex. “I get home when I can, it depends how late we’re sitting,” he adds.
“It’s nice getting on at a terminus because you can always find a seat and always get a desk. It just becomes an office for an hour-and-a-half and the WiFi is good enough to work at.”
Does he claim the daily attendance allowance?
Yes, is the short answer.
The longer explanation is that most peers do not receive a salary for their parliamentary duties but are eligible to receive allowances. They can claim a flat rate attendance allowance of £361 per day.
Lord Lucas explains: “You have to clock in, you have to go and sit in the chamber. I’ve done that today – I’ve spent all of three minutes in there.
“The fact that I have actually been working on parliamentary business from 9am until now [our meeting was at 4pm] is signified only by the three or four minutes listening to a debate in the chamber that I wasn’t particularly interested in.
“It’s like clocking on at work in the old-fashioned way. I could do a day’s work at home but there isn’t any way of getting paid for it.”
Peers can also just call in to the House of Lords, attend for a few minutes and still claim their daily allowance. Lord Lucas thinks the system is due for reform.
“I think there are better ways of doing it but we’re not in charge of that, we’ve got no control over what or how we’re paid. It’s not something we vote on at all. Effectively the Commons would have to change the way we’re paid.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a proper system, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be employed, but it’s not what’s on offer.”
Does politics run in the family?
The title Baron Lucas of Crudwell dates back to 1663 and the first holder was a woman so the peerage can pass down through the female line unlike most other English peerages which go to male relatives.
The current Lord Lucas explains: “It was given in honour of her uncle who had been executed at the end of the Civil War. When Charles II came back, Sir Charles Lucas’s sister reappeared in London as Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle.
“She had a lot of money and position and was able to secure ie, buy I suspect, a peerage in her brother’s honour but, as there were no men it could be given to, her niece became Lady Lucas in her own right.
“Her niece then got swiftly married off to the Earl of Kent because the earls of Kent had been on the other side in the Civil War and needed to marry a thorough-going royalist to get back into favour.”
Many of Lord Lucas’s forebears were involved in politics, including his great-uncle, the 9th Baron Lucas, a Liberal politician who served in the cabinet of prime minister Asquith between 1914 and 1915 and, on being sacked, joined the Royal Flying Corps and was shot down and killed in 1916 .
The title was inherited by his grandmother, who died in 1958 and was thus prevented from attending the Lords (female hereditary peers were not allowed to sit in the Lords in their own right until a change in the law in 1963), then by his mother who joined the House but never spoke.
Lord Lucas says: “My parents were not political in any obvious way – and nor were their friends.”
How did the current Lord Lucas become involved in politics and end up in the Lords?
He had just sold his business selling spare parts for cars in south London when his mother died in 1991 and he inherited the title.
“At that moment in early 1992, it seemed obvious that [Labour leader] Neil Kinnock was going to win the election and he had promised to abolish the Lords so I thought ‘well, before I get involved in anything else, I’ll sign up, get my name in the books and then go back and do something sensible when we get turfed out’. And, of course, it hasn’t happened!”
In fact, John Major’s Conservatives won the 1992 general election and two years later Lord Lucas was appointed as a Government whip in the House of Lords, ensuring party discipline and the passage of legislation. When the Tories lost power in 1997, he became a backbencher again.
He thought the removal of all but 92 hereditary peers in 1999 was just the first stage and that it would only be a couple of years before the remaining hereditaries left – yet he is still there 26 years later.
“Eastbourne gains by having people living there who have really good connections well away from the coast because coastal communities can get very turned in on themselves”
LORD LUCAS
He is philosophical about what is about to happen.
Lord Lucas says: “I enjoy it and I think I’ve been good enough at it that I’ve not wanted to let it go without being forced out. And now that I am being chucked out, I’ll be 74 by the time I’ve gone and that’s probably retirement age.”
He adds: “The intention is that we shall leave at the end of this parliamentary session. I will cease coming when there is no longer anything to do that I really want to be involved in … I suspect I will fade out, just turn up less.”
What are his connections to Eastbourne?
Lord Lucas says he had no real connections to the town other than his father was at prep school here “and disliked it”. It wasn’t a place his father wanted to revisit.
But he moved to Eastbourne about 12 years ago when he was looking for a school for his daughter and the one that most obviously struck him and his wife as right for her was Bede’s. “And it was a huge success,” he adds.
Lord Lucas says that Eastbourne state schools are good but bemoans the lack of an academic sixth form, with many young people having to travel elsewhere to continue their schooling.
What does Eastbourne gain from having Lord Lucas in the House of Lords?
Lord Lucas takes a pause, a long pause, then responds: “I think I would widen that out a bit and say that Eastbourne gains by having people living there who have really good connections well away from the coast because coastal communities can get very turned in on themselves, as I saw when I was a member of the House of Lords Committee on Coastal Towns.”
He adds: “It really helps, I think, to have people who can bring ideas and people in and encourage different ways of looking at the place and people to do different things.”
What will he do when he leaves the House of Lords?
“I shall retire and do things in Eastbourne,” he replies crisply.
Lord Lucas says the town is going to go through “a really interesting patch” with the plans to replace the current two-tier system of local government with a Sussex-wide mayor and combined authority.
“There are considerable pluses to going unitary: we can look at how we can evolve the economic future of Eastbourne.”
He is chair of the Eastbourne Downland Group and was also the local representative for the Queen’s Green Canopy project to plant trees to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.
Lord Lucas describes himself as “an environmentalist of the crawling-around-the-downs-looking-for-frog-orchids school”. He grew up in Hampshire at the other end of the South Downs and had an early interest in flora.
He says: “And then at some point, I shall just say ‘well actually it’s quite nice to do nothing’. I enjoy doing things too much to want to give up; I’m sure I’ll find something else. But I shan’t stick in politics.”
Main image: Lord Lucas inside the Palace of Westminster. Photo: Paul Bromley / Eastbourne Reporter
:: Paul Bromley is a former political and parliamentary correspondent and is now part of the Eastbourne Reporter editorial team.
:: This is an independent, not-for-profit website reporting for the community. It is run by qualified, experienced journalists who interview people and ask questions.
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