Tag: Lords reform

Betty Boothroyd makes the case for Lords reform

This morning’s Radio 4  coverage of the oncoming debate on Lords reform made little attempt at balance.  They gave prominent coverage to opponent Betty Boothroyd.  A supporter may have been given airtime while I wasn’t listening – but if so they did not get a mention on the website.  But at least Baroness Boothroyd’s bluster gives supporters of reform plenty of ammunition.

Baroness Boothroyd, a former Labour MP and the House of Commons’s first (and only) female Speaker is treated as a bit of a national treasure – understandable given her remarkable life story, and the determination with which she climbed the greasy pole to celebrity.  She is deeply conservative, and loves all that fake tradition and flummery that the British Parliament wallows in.  But beyond this emotional attachment, she seems unable to give good reasons in their defence.

Her main point was that electing members of the upper house (whatever it would be called) would give it more power, and elevate its status to beyond that of a mere revising chamber that is not meant to get in the way of the Government and its whipped majority in the House of Commons.  She suggested that the reform would lead to the upper house challenging financial legislation, something which it is currently unable to do.  She also accused the reform’s proponents of not having thought things through, and insisted that it should be debated at length in parliament.

But this is mostly complete nonsense.  The reform bill does not propose to change the current powers of the upper house – which means that it would not have the ability to challenge financial legislation.  The primacy of the Commons is categorically included in the draft bill.  Debate on the floor of parliament is not grand dialectical process by which laws get improved through earnest challenge and debate – it’s a theatre for the pompous to spout off pre-conceived opinions without listening to anybody else’s.  The challenge and debate comes in the consultation process that surrounds the debate.  This has been extensive, both in this parliament and in various predecessors.  The arguments have been rehearsed many times, and solutions to the many problems devised.  Having hammered out a workable compromise it is now time to decide, subject to a bit more wheeling and dealing, perhaps.

But what Baroness Boothroyd showed was that she herself could not be bothered to find out about what the proposals actually were.  So what value does she contribute to the revising chamber that she defends, beyond a few deeply held prejudices?  The trouble with the House of Lords is that it is full of people like her – and not the valuable experts that its supporters claim.  What on earth is the point of it?  Why not just abolish it all together?

The is much to criticise in the Government’s reform proposals.  But they do deal with the two main weaknesses of the current house.  First it shrinks it to a sensible size, including the use of limited terms of office (rather staying until you drop dead, as now) .  Second it replaces patronage systems of appointment with an electoral process.  These two steps will help to professionalise it, and then make it rather more effective in its job of challenging and improving lower house legislation.  It may not succeed.  15 year non-renewable terms may mean that those elected just soak up the status and grandstand rather than doing any real work.  And Baroness Boothroyd’s fear that it may just get in the way of government without adding value is not itself complete nonsense, unlike the bluster with which supported it.  Being elected might give its members licence to be simply obstructive.

But it’s worth a try.  If it doesn’t work we can change it.  Or abolish it altogether.

The House of Lords is broken – now’s a good time to fix it

The denial stage is over.  Opponents of Lords reform have woken up to the Government’s plans and are mobilising.  But the reform plan is far from dead.

What’s the problem with the House of Lords?  It chalks up the odd success in challenging and revising legislation, without challenging the democratic credentials of the Commons.  But that doesn’t mean “It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it” – the argument used against regulating the banks more tightly before the financial crisis.  The fact is that the Lords is not up to its job and things are getting worse.

Appointment to the House of Lords is one way traffic.  Once appointed, almost nothing short of death deprives you of the right to take part in the legislative process.  This gives rise to two practical problems, never mind democratic legitimacy: size and accountability.  There is no one-in-one out rule for the Lords.  Political leaders regularly appoint new members to maintain political balance and to make sure that there are enough peers young and enthusiastic enough to do the hard graft – not forgetting the need to offer consolation prizes to victims of the political process.  There are now over 800 – compared to the Commons which has 650, with a plan to reduce it to 500.  This is a bit of a joke.

But this is less of problem than it might be because of the second issue: there is no accountability for what peers get up to after they are appointed.  That means that most of them don’t do much at all.  Many just turn up on the big occasions, make a speech, vote, and then clear off thinking that they have added to value to the legislative process.  But the Lords’s key work is detailed revision – this is the bit people say works.  Legislation that leaves the Commons often lacks detail or hasn’t been thought through.  This revision doesn’t happen in set piece debates.  It happens in and around committees, and requires a serious commitment of time – you need to get into the details, take evidence, and so on.  That the Lords does this as much as it does is one of the wonders of the British system, but only a tiny minority of peers actually get involved in this grind, and they are self-appointed, and get little logistical support.  It is distinctly ad-hoc and amateur.  This creates a lot of charm, that seems to bewitch many of those that come into contact with it But it really isn’t up to the job in the increasingly complex world of legislation.  And its failures are largely invisible.  Poorly thought through legislation happens all the time – the last government had to introduce a new act on criminal justice almost every year, since they kept failing to nail the problems – but we blame ministers and the Commons for this, not a House of Lords that was out to lunch.

So the Lords (or whatever else we might call a revising chamber) needs to be more accountable and more professional.  That means appointing professionals to it with some process of reporting back to those that appoint them, and for limited terms.  That has to mean elections of some kind.  This is what the Government’s reform is trying to do.

And that is all it is trying to do.  Many of us would like a new constitutional settlement for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, based on a constitutional convention.  The primary purpose of such a convention would be to resolve the status of the country’s constituent parts, in the face of demands from many Scots for independence.  A reformed upper chamber could play a role in any such settlement.  But we aren’t going to get a convention, because our political class doesn’t see the need, and the public at large seems indifferent – in England especially.  Meanwhile the Lords bumbles on in its current form.

Will the proposed reform do the job?  I don’t know.  It’s a messy compromise because the government needs to build consensus.  The important issue is to break through the untouchability of the Lords’s status, and bulldoze aside the biggest roadblock to change, which is the unelected Lords themselves.  We can amend later the bits that don’t work as well as they should.

And now is a good time to take the issue on.  The Government has passed most the new legislation it wanted to; it has three relatively uncluttered years to push things through.  Of course the economy is in a mess, but, God help us, we don’t need our parliament to pass lots more laws to help us out.  The economy is a matter for the executive, not the legislature.

Will it work?  It stands a better chance than changing the voting system.  Then the forces of darkness (by which I mean the conservative press and political donors) mobilised against the AV reform, making supporters look weak.  The Conservative Party was united against it.  This reform has the Prime Minister on board.  The forces of darkness have not yet mobilised one way or the other, and may be persuaded to stay quiet, given that upping the temperature could really hurt the Tory party.

But the reform’s supporters may well need to concede a referendum in order to get it through parliament, whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue.  The opinion polls suggest that such a referendum would be won comfortably – but they are near meaningless.  But if the press barons are silent, and a reasonably strong coalition supports them, with important figures from across the political spectrum and and outside it,  then it’s winnable. There’s all to play for.