Modest Proposals On House of Lords Reform

The House of Lords will stand in the way of any thoroughgoing national restoration. So it is a genuine problem that there is a very strong case against House of Lords reform. That case, facetiously, is that very much the wrong people have been agitating for Lords reform for far too long. Why would someone else risk the moral, political – and sartorial – peril of agreeing with those constitutional vandals, who meet in twos and threes, in desolate places, to pronounce ritual curses upon bicameral legislatures, First Past The Post, common law, and the Episcopalian mode of church governance?

The last time the Lords was abolished, as recently as 1649, it was described by the Commons paradoxically as both “useless” and “dangerous”. That danger has played an occasionally useful restraining role on the excesses of the executive in the Commons. Let us canvass a broad range of measures which might tame the danger without unravelling a rightly long-standing institution. Such measures would be addressed to the composition or powers of the Upper House. The Lords’ powers have been curtailed in great measure as a reaction against the Lords’ composition. The jejune leftist would have it, that the wrong people are felt to be members and thus it follows the chambers powers must be reduced. The Lords is undemocratic, or inegalitarian, or unmeritocratic, und so weiter und so fort.

They have a legitimate point here, indeed, a point about legitimacy. And that is unaccountable power tends to be illegitimate, on which we may agree even if we don’t agree about the respective arguments from equality, meritocracy or democracy. Accountability to voters is keenly felt in the Commons, but the Lords is accountable to no-one. The costs of that now outweigh the benefits.

Powers of the Upper House

If we were to roll back the clock, we would obtain an Upper House with greater powers to block or delay legislation, but also a much more preponderant aristocratic element, and before that a nearly built-in majority of Catholic bishops and abbots.

Most people’s attitude to the powers of the Lords is likely to be a reflection of their attitude towards the composition of its membership and how accountable they are, if at all. It is one thing to say an unelected chamber should not be blocking the budget and stopping the police from being paid, in a US-style government shutdown. It is quite another to say that a wholly elected chamber must never have this power, not least as it may be being exercised to block some tyrranic measure being imposed by the majority in the Commons.

Options For Electing The House of Lords

So in no particular order, here are a few options for a wholly elected Upper
House.

1. The Grand Compromise: a wholly elected, wholly hereditary chamber: all the life peers would be removed and replaced with elected peers chosen by the public from among the existing hereditary peerage. Even though this would seem to satisfy both those who want an elected chamber, and those who want the restoration of the hereditary peers, for some reason it tends to please neither
2. Contributor Franchise: electing the Lords, but restricting the franchise to those electors for the Commons who are recorded as having made a net fiscal contribution in the preceding year
3. Graduate Franchise: electing the Lords, but restricting the franchise again to electors for the Commons, but those who are recorded as holding a degree from a British university
4. Hereditary Franchise: electing the Lords, with the franchise restricted to Commons electors whose ancestors were British at the time of the foundation of the National Insurance system in 1911

The Graduate Franchise would likely have broad appeal on the Left; indeed it is likely that even a No-Deal Brexit would have passed both chambers of Parliament with little dissent if it had been packaged with such a measure. In any case, the Professional Managerial Class doesn’t really accept the post-1832 notion of a popular franchise and representative democracy, and so a graduate chamber would be a way of recognising that they will fight like lions if they are not placated with prestigious positional goods.

The Hereditary Franchise, despite its obvious discriminatory properties, is also the Social Democracy option, recognising the long-term, intergenerational commitments to support fellow citizens and their families; the Contributor Franchise is of course the actually right-wing option.

Terminology

It is a consequence of many reform schemes that the noble or ecclesiastical titles that attend upon membership of the Upper House might not “fit” well with an elected chamber. Indeed it might be better to rename it to the “Senate” under some reform schemes. But it could also be argued that conserving the name and titles really matters, and simply ennoble anyone elected to the Lords, while withdrawing their right to sit in it at the end of their term.

Conclusion

If this article achieves nothing else, it is to be hoped that it will dim the ardour of modernisers for trashing a long-standing part of the constitution. Obviously some of the “options” above are tongue-in-cheek, but broadening the discussion beyond the usual suspects is long overdue.