Thu, 22 Apr 2010

Reform of the House of Lords

All the mainstream parties (by that I mean Liberal Democrats, Labour, Conservative) list as part of its manifesto reform of the house of lords. The subject has been brought to the forefront by people feeling that this unelected group of over privileged fat cats do not fit into the modern democratic society that we live in. They feel that the fact they are not chosen by the people, but by birth to be an afront to their sensibilities and that we must "fix" this. The problem is, we need to be very careful what we wish for, and what we want to replace our current second chamber with.

Before I go off into a discussion of the issues with electing this second chamber, I want to get across a fundamental point regarding the House of Lords. Put simply: Members of The House Of Lords are there not because they want to be there, but because it is their Duty. The key is to look at the Lords as life long Jury Duty. When you take this view, you see that their role is incredibly important.

The lords is there to act as a sanity check for the House of Commons, they are there to act *Purely* in the best interests of the nation. They do not have to worry about re-election, they don't have to worry about covering their own back. When placed in that position, the way that a Member votes changes fundamentally. Consider for a moment the House of Commons. Members of Parliament have to consider very closely everyway they vote. They need to consider firstly the way the party whip is telling them to vote, and secondly what their constituents will do in response to them voting in a particular fashion. In short, they are worried about whether or not they will get re-elected at the next election, be it because they have upset the electorate, or because their party has withdrawn support for them. Extrapolate that onto the House of Lords, an elected second chamber is no longer in the place where it can vote purely in favour of what is best for the nation, but for what is going to get them re-elected, and that is where we have to be very very careful.

This all said, there is a way forward where by we can have an elected second chamber, without having to sacrifice the national good. Put simply we need to remove the re-election issue. If the you term limit the lords to a single term, then there is no need for them to care about being elected a second time.

Term limits aren't a complete fix, if you have a House of Lords where each lord stands for election once for a fixed term, you need to make each term to have a length such that they can do some good. Anyone familiar with Americian politics will be aware of the view that the first year of a presidency is the only effective part (some say the first 100 days). With a 4 year term that means they only get stuff done for 25% of their term, it takes a while for each member to get the hang of what is going on, to get upto speed, then they have to spend some time dealing with the hand over etc... So how long do you make that single term? Well I would say a minimum of 10 years, maybe as much as 15. This provides a long enough term to serve your Queen and Country well, whilst not giving an effective life term.

It is also necessary to consider what happens if you elect all 733 lords at the same time. You arrive in the situation where 733 people all share the first day, and share a same total lack of experience (its not like any of them have already served a term.) So elections need to be held on a rolling basis, electing 10% of the total membership each year, this allows for a good mix of old timers and young blood.

Finally when discussing any election, we must consider the method by which those members are elected. The current system the uk uses (First Past The Post - FPTP) is appallingly unfair favouring a 2 party system. Put simply, if you have 5 candidates for a position, with FPTP one candidate only need get 20.01% of the vote to win, conversely, 79.99% didn't want that candidate. This is hardly conducive for providing a strong mandate. So if we are going to elect our second chamber we must do so with some form of proportional representation. Exactly which voting system to use is a rather large subject in it's own right, so I will leave that discussion to a future article.

In summary, my proposal for an elected second chamber is as follows:

I welcome feedback and comments on my articles, please feel free to email me your views on b (at) 42q.eu . Thanks.

posted at: 13:53 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 3 comments

Posted by Curious at Sun Mar 20 13:59:58 2011

So should we also elect the Commons in sections? And the cabinet?

You are looking at the role of the HOL in terms of understanding it now.

Consider the history - the HOL was representative of Feudalism in the middle ages, before being combined with a concept of achieving great respect in your/their field.

Perhaps this archaic concept should be reformed in it's entirity. Perhaps, in that approach, we should adopt an demarchy of jury-duty-checking?

Perhaps, in abolishing/dethroning the monarchy we should be inclined to avoid anything which is noted to be delivered from theocracy, and andrarchy, and by the same rule, reform the entire political system that is entrenched in archaic traditions.

Posted by Joe Jordan at Mon Mar 21 10:27:43 2011

A good article. I agree on many of the points, but not all!

Firstly, I agree that the HoL needs to remain a contrast to the commons. The House of Populists needs to be counterbalanced by the House of Geeks; they make an effective combination.

I'd say that the single term restriction is....dodgy though. I am not happy with the house losing experience so definitively. What if, for example, someone joins the new House of Lords aged 25, having won an election? Are you going to say they have to stand for the Commons when they're kicked out at 35 or 40?

Far better, I think, to allow people to stand again, but make sure the terms are longer (15 years rather than 10, say,) to maximise the "useful" time in office (not that I agree entirely that Obama is "useless" at the moment, given his co-ordination of the Libyan no-fly zone diplomatic effort.) That way the house and parties (be they political or professional bodies) can retain the legislative clout, and you can have effective organisation to block particular legislation, remembering that the government would hardly ever have a majority in the proportional chamber.

It is a complicated problem though, and this is an excellent discussion of the primary concerns, thanks!

Posted by Niklas Smith at Mon Mar 21 10:39:47 2011

A good post, and you raise the key issues.

IIRC the UCL Constitution Unit brought out a report a few years ago advocating long, single terms and Lords elected in sections rather than all at once.

My personal preference would be for 12-year terms (three four-year Parliaments, so the HoL elections would be on the same day as general elections), but since Parliaments are now fixed at five years I'm undecided between 10 or 15-year terms.

I think that the benefits of single terms outweigh the disadvantage of losing experienced people that Joe brings up. The less like "ordinary" politics it is to stand for the Lords, the more likely it is genuine geeks will stand and win places. And like Joe I think a House of Geeks is a very useful counterweight to the Commons.

I would however have elections in larger sections, like thirds (which would go nicely with a 15-year term). In fact, if you want to elect smaller sections each time you either have to have longer terms or more frequent elections, otherwise the maths won't work out and there will be empty seats.

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