Reform of the House of Lords

[RThurmont]

I myself of late have been enjoying watching, at a safe distance, the political situation in the UK, and in general it has been in my mind both entertaining and also promising, with the suggestion that some oppressive policies that had crept in in the prior decades might be rolled back.

One subject though that seems to be coming to a boil is reform of the House of Lords. Now I, as an American, for purely selfish reasons of entertainment, find myself wishing they'd leave it alone, as its elaborate ceremonial rituals are highly enjoyable to watch (for example, the manner in which they conduct votes and swear in new members, et cetera). Of course Britain should not structure its political systems in such a manner as to ensure my personal amusement and viewing pleasure, but rather, in a manner that benefits the British people. Pursuant to that, I thought I'd ask what the opinions are here on the subject of Lords reform on this forum.

The main arguments I see for Lords reform are that its undemocratic, and that an elected upper chamber would better serve the needs of the British populace. Also there exists some understandable opposition to the hereditary peers and also the Lords Spirtual, who are chosen in exclusivity from one religion. On the other hand, the counter arguments seem to be that the Lords is a forum of expertise, and that many Lords have deep understanding of specific topics, some of them having been distinguished professionals in those areas and then appointed under the life peerages act. Additionally it is argued that their lifetime appointments and non-elected nature make the Lords less subject to political pressure, and certainly there are some Lords who hold viewpoints not expressed elsewhere.

So what do you think? Is the continued existence of the Lords a grotesque insult to contemporary standards of government, or on the other hand, does it represent a meritocratic means of providing an independent voice in UK government policy, where there are relatively few constitutional checks and balances compared to other systems?

[Sea Skimmer]

People said switching the US senate from appointment by the states to direct election would make America more democratic. I don’t see much result from that, instead senators have become nearly impossible to remove from office short of death. Six years is just too long to become entrenched and throw kickbacks to all your buddies. Of course, how much democracy anyone should really want in the first place is its own topic too. In an ideal world we would be able to find and appoint officials who would just do what is right, and only worry about kickbacks in the last year in office to secure a job when they leave.. but that’s not likely to happen either.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The upper house is more a historical legacy full of pomp and circumstance than anything radically affecting the legislation of the government. At the end of the day, the House of Commons wields the real power, and a reformation act for how they represent the counties is far more interesting to me than how the House of Lords is or isn't changed.

[RThurmont]

So would it perhaps be ideal if the Lords is just left as is? Since it lacks the power to block legislation outright, merely delay it, one could argue that it might not do much harm.

The counter argument could be that a large segment of the British population might find the continued existence of the House of Lords to be highly offensive, for various reasons.

[Stark]

Do the Lords do anything in particular that is 'grotesque'? What proportion of the British population gives a shit?

[Norseman]

There's a rather lengthy quote that I think is very apropos here:

Hereditary despotism is, then, in essence and sentiment democratic because it chooses from mankind at random. If it does not declare that every man may rule, it declares the next most democratic thing; it declares that any man may rule. Hereditary aristocracy is a far worse and more dangerous thing, because the numbers and multiplicity of an aristocracy make it sometimes possible for it to figure as an aristocracy of intellect. Some of its members will presumably have brains, and thus they, at any rate, will be an intellectual aristocracy within the social one. They will rule the aristocracy by virtue of their intellect, and they will rule the country by virtue of their aristocracy. Thus a double falsity will be set up, and millions of the images of God, who, fortunately for their wives and families, are neither gentlemen nor clever men, will be represented by a man like Mr. Balfour or Mr. Wyndham, because he is too gentlemanly to be called merely clever, and just too clever to be called merely a gentleman. But even an hereditary aristocracy may exhibit, by a sort of accident, from time to time some of the basically democratic quality which belongs to a hereditary despotism. It is amusing to think how much conservative ingenuity has been wasted in the defence of the House of Lords by men who were desperately endeavouring to prove that the House of Lords consisted of clever men. There is one really good defence of the House of Lords, though admirers of the peerage are strangely coy about using it; and that is, that the House of Lords, in its full and proper strength, consists of stupid men. It really would be a plausible defence of that otherwise indefensible body to point out that the clever men in the Commons, who owed their power to cleverness, ought in the last resort to be checked by the average man in the Lords, who owed their power to accident. Of course, there would be many answers to such a contention, as, for instance, that the House of Lords is largely no longer a House of Lords, but a House of tradesmen and financiers, or that the bulk of the commonplace nobility do not vote, and so leave the chamber to the prigs and the specialists and the mad old gentlemen with hobbies. But on some occasions the House of Lords, even under all these disadvantages, is in some sense representative. When all the peers flocked together to vote against Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill, for instance, those who said that the peers represented the English people, were perfectly right. All those dear old men who happened to be born peers were at that moment, and upon that question, the precise counterpart of all the dear old men who happened to be born paupers or middle-class gentlemen. That mob of peers did really represent the English people--that is to say, it was honest, ignorant, vaguely excited, almost unanimous, and obviously wrong. Of course, rational democracy is better as an expression of the public will than the haphazard hereditary method. While we are about having any kind of democracy, let it be rational democracy. But if we are to have any kind of oligarchy, let it be irrational oligarchy. Then at least we shall be ruled by men.

[StarshipTitanic]

The counter argument could be that a large segment of the British population might find the continued existence of the House of Lords to be highly offensive, for various reasons.

How big is the segment? What reasons? Even if the Lib Dems and Labour don't necessarily like the Lords, they are still represented within it.

[Steve]

It should be noted that since Mr. Chesterton's death, the House of Lords in the UK has undergone several reforms, including permitting women to sit in it and pruning down the actual number of hereditary peers to 92, elected from amongst the other hereditary peers, while all other peers in the House of Lords are life peers (not counting the 26 Lords Spiritual).

So the HoL isn't really a body of hereditary aristocrats anymore; they make up a minority (the HoL currently has over 700 members). It's more of an upper house, with limited and mostly ceremonial power, composed of distinguished (or simply influential) former officials and persons, most of them retired politicians I imagine. (For instance, it is common practice, IIRC, for a former Prime Minister to be granted a life peerage, and thus a seat in the HoL, upon retirement from the Commons.)

[Simon_Jester]

I think there's something to be said for non-elected ceremonial officials: they allow someone other than pure politicians a chance at the political limelight. Giving them a great deal of power is usually bad because they're likely to abuse it, but giving them a few "speed bump" powers is basically harmless and helps keep a single political gimmick from allowing bad legislation to be passed through without someone examining its assumptions.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Honestly, I think an elected Lords is a terrible idea. We've already got the Commons for that, we don't need to replicate them. I'm personally in favour of a wholly appointed Lords full of life peers, selected for their contributions to various facets of human knowledge and so on. Effectively, an appointed house of experts that wouldn't have to worry about elections. If you keep the current laws of them only being able to send a bill back to the Commons a limited number of times before their block can be overridden, then you remove the biggest problem of them not being directly accountable to the public (because the Commons have so much more power), and keep the advantage of them not being affected directly by the public's whims, and thus able to tell the Commons when they're doing something stupid.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why does a body whose sole power is to say "Take a cold shower and think about it for a year" to the legislature need to be elected? Indeed, I would agree, a group of appointed experts in various fields of society would make a FAR better group that has that specific kind of power. It is not like the House of Lords has any real power at the moment--just the power to give the actual elective body the chance to stop and think after the passions of the moment have faded. Such a role should frankly not be in the hands of the people at all since the only reason for the upper house to exist at all is to provide a brief, temporary check on popular passions. The delay of legislation for a year only needs to be done if the legislation has been hastily pushed through. An elected Lords would maneouvre to use the power much more for partisan political advantage, which would negate it. So either an appointed Lords or simply abolishing the entire upper house are really the only two things that make sense.

[Plekhanov]

A major reason the Lords is so weak is that over the decades/centuries successive elected governments have passed legislation reducing the Lords ability to check the Commons with the hard to rebut argument of "you aren't elected why should you be able to stand in the way of the democratically elected commons". To the extent that the Lords now has next to no ability to prevent the Commons from ramming through all manner of rash legislation which is both poorly conceived and written.

To me atleast this is a major argument for reforming the Lords into a Democratically elected house (elected in a manner which ensures its makeup differs from the commons) as a reasonable argument could then be made as to why our upper house should have the power to seriously get in the way of the lower.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The question I want to know is why there's such an obsession with making the upper house democratically elected when contries like Germany, for example, have an unelected upper house and have done just fine with it since 1949. The Bundesrat is a highly effective institution, granted one that can't be copied in the UK since there's no corresponding concept of federalism, but nonetheless it is appointed by the second order (by the elected representatives of the lander) rather than by the people... Which is the exact same thing an appointed House of Lords would be, since the government of the time would be filling vacancies.

[Zaune]

... one that can't be copied in the UK since there's no corresponding concept of federalism...

Not quite true. We're comfortable with federalism up to a point, but we've been politically and moreover culturally unified for longer and to a greater degree than Germany. I've always been slightly dubious about federalism in principle and practice alike anyway, but that's a topic for another thread.

Perhaps life peers appointed by Commons vote would be a good compromise? It's not ideal -voting against your party line is career suicide in our system- but it would add at least make it a bit harder to sell peerages the way New Labour did.

[RThurmont]

It seems to me based on the arguments seen here that an ideal solution to the question would simply be to leave the Lords as is, but perhaps modify the process by which individuals can be admitted under the life peerages act so as to reduce the risk of peerages being given away as considerations in return for political and financial favors as occurred under the prior government.

I was also surprised to not see more resentment expressed towards the Lords Spirtual, although it was joked that the Church of England is the one church one could join without fear of it interfering in either one's politics or one's religion, and perhaps that's a manifestation of that.

On the subject of the German Bundesrat, by the way, I have seen some argument to the extent that the Bundesrat is not a true legislative upper house per se, even though it appears to be such on the outside, but rather is a different governmental mechanism altogether. I did not have time to investigate that claim to any extent.

One final note, I myself am a federalist and a strong supporter of the concept of the US Senate, which helps to ensure more participation in the political process from regions with a lower population, although I also hold the view that perhaps we might be better served if Senators were indirectly elected via state legislatures. At present the Senate is characterized by Senators of a tenure that I think almost anyone could agree was excessive, and also by an unpleasant degree of political grandstanding, particularly in the form of the inquisitorial Senate committee hearings, which in my mind seem to make a mockery of the concept of judicial fairness. I also very much hope that the House of Lords in the UK is not renamed "the Senate."

[Stark]

ITT an American doesn't understand the attitudes of foreigners when they differ from his own.

News at 11?

Since anyone with a clue can look at the commonwealth and see how you use the Westminster system without the baggage England carries this whole thing is pretty amusing.

[Bottlestein]

does it represent a meritocratic means of providing an independent voice in UK government policy, where there are relatively few constitutional checks and balances compared to other systems?

I take it "other systems" means the US? I have yet to see anyone who could rationally argue that we have more "checks and balances" than Britain. All of the arguments boil down to "Oh but Blair took Britain to war "against its will". We don't have that problem here, apparently...

How many people in Britain care about the House of Lords, or its reformation?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

On the subject of the German Bundesrat, by the way, I have seen some argument to the extent that the Bundesrat is not a true legislative upper house per se, even though it appears to be such on the outside, but rather is a different governmental mechanism altogether. I did not have time to investigate that claim to any extent.

The Bundesrat must approve constitutional amendments by 2/3rds, must approve any legislation pertaining to the Lander (about 60% of legislation these days), and may delay legislation (send it back for another vote in the Bundestag) pertaining to other subjects. That is, regardless of the exact formal nature of the Bundesrat, extensive legislative power even though they do not have the ability to draft legislation, and it furthermore is, for the purposes of this discussion, far more than the House of Lords has in the modern era.

[Bottlestein]

ITT an American doesn't understand the attitudes of foreigners when they differ from his own.

News at 11?

Since anyone with a clue can look at the commonwealth and see how you use the Westminster system without the baggage England carries this whole thing is pretty amusing.

I think a major problem is that we (Americans) tend to think we understand Britain, but it's a strange combination of 1890's and 1950's Britain, and even then focusing only on certain movements. It may be interesting to poll Americans with the question "What percentage of the House of Lords do you believe are Tories?"

[StarshipTitanic]

ITT an American doesn't understand the attitudes of foreigners when they differ from his own.

News at 11?

Since anyone with a clue can look at the commonwealth and see how you use the Westminster system without the baggage England carries this whole thing is pretty amusing.

I think a major problem is that we (Americans) tend to think we understand Britain, but it's a strange combination of 1890's and 1950's Britain, and even then focusing only on certain movements. It may be interesting to poll Americans with the question "What percentage of the House of Lords do you believe are Tories?"

Huh? How many Americans do you expect know what a "House of Lords" or a "Tory" is?

Imagine if you told the average American that their most stalwart ally in the Afghan and Iraq Wars was a country run by socialists before May of this year.