In defence of the Lords, again

If you are embarking on a UK politics course, you may start with an overview of the pros and cons of the UK system. Certainly if you are doing edexcel then unit 1 pretty much brings this into focus fairly quickly by asking students to consider how democratic Britain is.

An obvious target for criticism is one half of Britain’s bicameral legislative body, the House of Lords.

But a little snippet of news from today’s Indy reminds us that it is not without its advantages…

The paper reports:

“Twenty-five years after the first national campaign against Aids warned “Don’t die of ignorance,” a Lords committee has called for a new drive to curb the spread of the disease.

The number of people infected with HIV is expected to top 100,000 by next year and the numbers in treatment have trebled since 2000 at a cost of almost £1bn a year. Yet efforts to prevent the disease are “woefully inadequate”, the report says. More than a quarter of those infected have not been tested and are unaware of their condition, increasing the risk that they will pass on the infection.

Just £2.9m was spent on HIV prevention in the last year compared with £762m on treatment. Avoiding one infection saves treatment costs estimated at £280,000-£360,000.”

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I have argued before that the work of its committees is highly respected, e.g., the European Committee’s reports are read all throughout Europe and their suggestions are often debated in the European Parliament. Therefore if we are to reform the Lords we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Here also are some additional points in favour of not tinkering with the Lords too much:

• The current chamber works well. It is the most active chamber in the world. It sits for longer and meets more frequently than any other.

• Since 1999 the Lords has proved to be a useful check on the executive dominated Commons. It has defeated the government nearly 300 times since the bulk of the hereditaries were ejected, including plans to curtail civil liberties:
• 2001 and 2003 prevented plans to limit trial by jury; 2001 blocked proposal to introduce offence of inciting racial hatred; 2005 limitations on control orders; 2005 denied government power to use delegated legislation to introduce compulsory ID cards.

• A chamber with mostly appointed rather than elected legislators is not without its advantages. It provides an antidote to the lower house as it provides the opportunity to create a chamber which contains people who have experience of something other than professional politics – Charles Kennedy, for instance, was elected as an MP at just 23.

• The current chamber more closely mirrors the popular vote at the last general election than the Commons, so why do we need elections?

• Legislative gridlock would occur. An elected chamber, granted a new sense of legitimacy would see no need to bow to the Commons. This problem would be further complicated if party control in the two chambers were different.

• Alternatively, the introduction of a large elected element may take place alongside a neutering of the chamber’s power. The constitutional scholar Vernon
Bogdanor, writing in a letter to The Times, highlighted the inconsistency of the previous Labour government’s approach since the introduction of elected members is likely to take place alongside a limit on its powers. This idea is echoed in a leader in the Guardian which stated that it “would be unacceptable to use the Parliament Act to push through a bill creating an insufficiently robust upper house.’

• Problems of election excess. With the introduction of devolved assemblies and the advent of elections for Europe we already suffer from a rash of elections. Then there is UKIP’s argument about there already being too many elected officials in the UK. Even if we exclude MEPs there are nearly 1,000 elected office holders above local level in the UK. Do we really need an additional 400+?

• On a related note, this raises concerns about the quality of the new legislators. We would lose all the experience of the ex-ministers and Prime Ministers we have currently. Would ex-Chancellor Lord Howe have stood for election? It would be stocked full of the ‘has beens’ and ‘never weres’.

• As with a clutch of other potential reforms to the constitution, there is no real public appetite for reform. It is primarily an issue which motivates academics, and even then only a small minority of their breed, such as those based at UCL’s Constitution Unit. Voters would much rather see their politicians get on with the job of improving bread and butter concerns like health care, education, the economy, etc.

• Another problem in common with other constitutional reform proposals is the lack of consensus on the issue, as the outcome of a series of votes in the Commons illustrates (the most recent collapse coming in 2007). Not only can’t the parties find agreement, there is also disagreement within the parties. The respective front benches generally give the impression of favouring a primarily elected chamber, but privately they worry that this would make it harder for them to get their legislative programme enacted.

• Introducing elections would be no panacea. Voters in countries with elected second chambers, such as the USA, are not over the moon with the job they perform. And constitutional scholars in that country grumble about such things as the degree of representation afforded to states.