There’s no such thing as a job for life anymore
Today, as if you needed reminding, is the 94th anniversary of the 1911 Parliament Act receiving Royal Assent and passing into law.
The preamble to the bill states:
…it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis…
My emphasis. Of course, this intention of instituting an elected House of Lords became just another paving slab on the road to Hell. In his Essential Central Government 2002, Ron Fenney says this is “an objective which has still to be achieved and probably never will.”
With the death of Robin Cook, one of the most passionate and intelligent advocates of an elected upper house, this “intention” might seem as far away as ever. But all is not doomed. We might have lost one of our most important voices but the fight goes on.
Now, you can argue your case for an unelected or even partially elected House of Lords if you really want to, I’ll respect that. But, like those who continue to argue of the necessity for permanent members on the UN Security Council, don’t come around here making claims to being a democrat.
If you believe that the government is elected by the people to do the people’s bidding then a chamber of parliament appointed by both the patronage of power-hungry prime minsters and an independent body implemented by those same prime minsters should be as much of an anathema as a chamber consisting of members there solely via accident of birth (92 of whom, incidentally, still sit in the Lords after 1999’s fudged “reform”).
So far, us civil liberty geeks have had a lot to thank the present make-up of the House of Lords for, being, as it has been of late, a brake of some of the present government’s more authoritarian excesses. But we can’t rely on this state of affairs to last much longer. In June this year, for the first time since the Labour Party was created, the number of Labour peers matched the number of Conservative ones. New Labour still don’t have an overall majority in the House, but if plans to abolish the remaining heriditary peers are realised that may very well change. The vital checks and balances that serve to rein in the excesses of a Government with a rubber-stamp majority in the House of Commons will be lost. The longer the Lords remain unelected the more we risk both houses becoming willing to pass authoritarian, unpopular and just-plain-bad legislation on the nod.
Arguments for an unelected House of Lords are indefensible and also put the patronage/appointment crowd in the same camp as a Prime Minister and his coterie who have done more to undermine accountability in government and democracy - from the lowliest local Labour Party to the loftiest matters of state - than almost any other.
Just why Blair is against an elected Lords is clear for all. Why bother debating, honing and framing legislation when it can be rammed through an appointed Lords? Given a choice between the facile road and the right road Blair will take Easy Street every time. Just why those outside his immediate circle might agree with him is a mystery. Surely those of us with an interest and a care for the machinations of our democracy should want the maximum input into its processes?
Reform of the House of Lords in not some precious jewel jealously guarded by us on the Left - it is an issue that commands support from across the spectrum. In 2003 the proposal for an 80% elected upper house failed by just three votes. Such a narrow squeak for Blair is the reason why the issue was kicked into the long grass and no pledge of Lords reform was given in the 2005 Labour party manifesto.
There’s talk of Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man, being made a Lord. Who will he represent? Stupendously wealthy steel magnates? Do they need much representation? Dropping a few quid in New Labour’s coffers seems to serve just as well.
So it seems there are two ways of getting what we want from the Lords: a) we organise a whipround to make a large enough donation to New Labour in order to get one of us on the New Year’s Honours List or b) we campaign for a democratically-elected upper house.
I don’t know about you but I’m a bit skint right now so it’ll have to be Lords reform.
Support the Elect the Lords campaign.
(This post was written to fulfil this pledge. Thirty-seven other people also signed up to write about reform of the House of Lords. You’ll be able to read what they have to say here.)
File under: electthelords, house of lords
Posted on August 10th, 2005 at 8:28 am
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Elect the Lords? No way! Non! Niet!
These proposals will bring nothing but doom and destruction upon our country? Just think of the terrible things already perpetrated by the ones who are elected in the Commons, and only then does one realise what is in store if all the buggers are elected! The rot set in within our Parliamentary system immediately after King Canute asked his advisers what he should do with the ocean, as it kept coming in! The sheer stupidity of seeking advice! We see the end result of that little exercise with the likes of Alistair Campbell being allowed unfettered access to Number Ten, in the full knowledge of his fervent support of Burnley, when everyone knows that all support should in fact be given to Newcastle United, who need all the support they can get!
We should immediately get Her Majesty to dissolve Her parliament, on the grounds that they have lost their way, and replace our system of Government with one based loosely on the Islamic tradition, but without all the beards, headscarves, Semtex(TM), male domination and general stupidity! The Queen would rule by decree, and as she has demonstrated that she is dead clever, her word would indeed be law! When the unfortunate moment comes to pass that she dies, the title of “Our Kid� would automatically land on the shoulders of the member of the Royal Family who has said or done the least amount of embarrassing things. If the selection process turns to Lady Louise Windsor, the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, on the grounds that she is the only member of the Royal Family who qualifies, as she is only nineteen months old, that should be seen to be a barrier, as she couldn’t do any worse than the shower who have been in power in Parliament for the past eight odd years! She could rule through a Regency, made up of rejected parliamentary candidates for UKIP, (rejected on the grounds that they were too extreme!) and we would once more stand high in the League of Nations, (we would bring that one back as well, as the UN has been disastrous), and would once more rule the Empire! (Got to keep the fuzzies under control!)
Justin: agreed on the Lords. But this:
like those who continue to argue the necessity for permanent members on the UN Security Council, don’t come around here making claims to being a democrat.
Surely you wouldn’t be proposing a rotation system that allowed non-democratic states to have their turn at the top table, though? How would that ‘increase democracy’?
Jarndyce: I’m a fan of what George Monbiot has to say in his Age of Consent:
Abolish the Security Council and democratise the General Assembly:
“…each nation’s vote should be weighted according to both the number of people it represents and its degree of democratisation…
Rigorous means of measuring democratisation are beginning to be developed by bodies such as Democratic Audit. It would not be hard, using their criteria, to compile an objective global index of democracy. Governments, under this system, would be presented with a powerful incentive to democratise: the more democratic they became, the greater their influence over world affairs.
I personally think that a commission appointed House of Lords or at least a 50/50 appointed/elected ration would be the way to go.
As this is unlikely to happen I would usually rather stick with the status quo than have long term reform.
However in this instance I agree with you in that the current system whereby labour gradually builds up a majority in the upper house purely through appointment by the prime minister is unbearable and if an elected upper house is the only alternative then so be it!
Justin: okay, but there’s an analogy to your Lords reform post here…
Should non-democratic states have any say whatsoever, even watered down like Monbiot proposes, in setting policies and directions binding on democracies?
My answer to that is absolutely no. So, while the Security Council is imperfect, it at least gives us a veto over policies that could be imposed on us by a determined coalition of tinpot dictators and very imperfect semi-democracies. I much prefer the idea of expanding the permanent membership of the UNSC (with more democracies - Brazil, Germany, Japan, (Australia+South Africa?) and so on) and making a double-veto the requirement to stop wider consensus.
Qualified majority voting for the Security Council? We’ve seen how unwieldy the EU Council has become with the expansion of members.
One thing few people have considered is that democracy doesn’t have to equal elections. How about making at least a proportion selected by ballot - like jury service? That way part of the putative “Senate” could be truly representative (at least of the people who couldn’t find a good enough excuse to get out of it)
Obviously there are details to consider - how long a term they serve, who is eligible, how do we recompense them and their employer, and so on. But it would bring in a much wider section of society than merely “those people who actively want to get elected and have the time and money to pursue it”.
I dont think a fully elected house of lords is the way to go. That would just give the most popular party of the time a majority in both houses.
Rewind to 1997 for a moment, assuming that the house of lords is fully elected and the PM calls the Lords election at the same time as the general election. Labour proceed to win a huge majority in both the commons and the lords and any law that labour want is rushed through with even less debate and opposition than we actually had.
The benefit of the current system is that the party that comes into the power is likely to have a minority in the lords and by the time they go out of power they have a majority and the incoming party has a minority again. Say Blair quits and hands over to Brown, he has one disatrous term and then the Tories get in with a sizeable majority, by which time labour will most likely have a majority in the lords, surely this is preferable to one party controlling both houses all the time.
I am all for abolishing hereditary peers but a fully elected house will be worse.
I would like to see independent Lords, perhaps a nominating system, where members of the public can nominate people of stature in the community, or people with expertise that would make them a good lord. Then an independent panel or body will decide whether these people are suitable to become lords and if they are then they will serve a term of 5 or 6 years. It would be illegal for a lord or potential lord to be a member of a political party.
I think this could work well, Blair proposed something about a panel deciding who should be Lords but his plan was to stuff the panel full of his cronies. As long as the panel is independent then I don’t see any problems.
I don’t think you can usefully draw an analogy with the UN Security Council.
Conceive a security council that did NOT have the US, or Russia, or China, as a member. Would there be any point?
Nations with overwhelming power or influence such as those just have to be there, otherwise nothing can be done.
The same does not apply to any House of the UK Parliament.
Having said all that, I support permanent membership of the HoL, simply because permanent members are completely beyond the reach of patronage or bullying by the government of the day. This is a great strength imho: we reall don’t want an Upper House who owe their careers to Blair.
Justin, you say the Labour manifesto 2005, had no promise of Lords Reform.
“..we will remove the remaining heriditary peers and allow a free vote on the composition of the House”.
Sounds like a promise of reform to me!