Very interesting statistics appeared in the the House Magazine of 23rd March this week (p11) of the attendance figures for the year 07-08. (Source: House of Lords Information Office statistics, see below). I was surprised and not a little disappointed to see how low the attendance figures were for crossbenchers, even those of us who were appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (so called People’s Peers) . I was discussing these over tea yesterday with Lady D’Souza, who is in the House almost every day as Crossbench Convenor, and Lady Howarth of Breckland, who like me manages about 70% attendance, so we are up there with the committed LibDems. Of course there are many reasons people don’t come. First reason is that they have other full time jobs and have to squeeze in their work in the Lords around availability. Second reason is that they confine themselves to matters they feel they know something about, which is perfectly legitimate for a crossbench specialist. Third is that some people are well over retirement age and don’t feel able to retire with honour, there being no mechanism to do so (and no young ones coming up behind to take one’s place) so keep coming in every now and again. And the fourth and fifth reasons perhaps I won’t dwell on, you can all well imagine. You can look up the poor attenders for yourself. I can’t help feeling let down by those who accept the title and then never actually contribute to the work of the House. The sooner we have mechanisms to create an accountablility system in the House the better.
Average Attendance, followed by Percentage of total possible attendance
Total days 164
Lib Dems 117 71%
Labour 113 69%
Conservatives 97 59%
Crossbenchers 66 40%
‘People’s Peers’ 86 52%
Have you thought of letting the actual “People” decide who the “People’s Peers” should be? Here’s an idea: We can have a system where every few years, at worst, ordinary members of the public can indicate in a secret ballot who they would like to govern them. I hereby coin the term “election” for this radical idea. What do you think?
There are probably a few other factors, the cross benchers’ have no whip so have much less collegiate sense of needing to turn up to make up the numbers for their ‘side’. As the main parties LPs are made up of close on 50% ex-MPs/MEPs they include some sent to the house precisely because they have/will vote for their party line right or wrong and many who can be persuaded on the grounds of duty/loyalty etc. I don’t see the Xbenchers can ever *or should* compete with that.
I’d assume that XBs also contain a higher percentage who have a real job which they can’t/won’t drop when entering the chamber again in contrast to the ex-politicians.
There is probably a nice Lord’s Information Office data sheet on this but I would suspect that the party attendances may also be partly reflected by the age balances. As we have seen a positive flood of Labour Peers I since ’97 I expect their average age to be lower than the average of Tory Life Peers many of whom pre-date ’97. The Lib Dems high attendance is doubtless due to their small numbers and knowledge that anyone not attending is a bigger loss than the same for C/L peers – back to collective loyalty.
If I have a criticism of the HL Appointments Commission – and I have a few but those are for another topic! – it’s that they have not taken the age of appointees, their commitments and willingness to work excessive hours strongly enough into their considerations.
The attendance figures sound reasonable to me, considering the constraints on members.
I quite agree Baroness Murphy, but given the valid reasons you give I don’t think you should beat yourself up too much.
I don’t quite agree with your separating the ‘people’s peers’ from the rest, though. From what I understand the name itself was an invention of the media and doesn’t really bare any relevance, and as far as I am concerned should be considered on a par with the other peers.
What do you think could be done to encourage peers to attend more sittings?
“Have you thought of letting the actual “People” decide who the “People’s Peers” should be? Here’s an idea: We can have a system where every few years, at worst, ordinary members of the public can indicate in a secret ballot who they would like to govern them. I hereby coin the term “election” for this radical idea. What do you think?” You mean the House of Commons. 😉 As much as I admire the Commons for being elected, I think one Commons is enough. I value the fact that there are now some people who can vote on legislation who have more of a chance of understanding the consequences of a bill.
If I’m honest, the more experts we have in the House of Lords, the safer I feel. See, the Lords have been more ardent defenders of our rights and liberties than the Commons, so I’m not about to consider scrapping them! Elections, in my view, are not the only thing that gives legitimacy. But that’s another topic entirely.
I also would be interested to see what measures could be implemented to encourage more crossbench participation. Though I understand that some might not want to vote on something they were not specifically knowledgeable on, I’m sure that their judgement is sharp enough to decide between the arguments in the debates on their merits.
@Adrian Kidney: The result is a separation of politically nominated and only vetted peers -v- the commission’s independently chosen peers. Seems a reasonable distinction to be worth monitoring their voting/participation records.
Croft, Adrian Kidney, People’s peers’ has become a convenient shorthand to distinguish those politically independent peers like me appointed by the Lords Appointments Commission and those who came in through other mechanisms. It isn’t a helpful phrase, it was invented by the tabloid press. I’m no more ‘of the people’ than anyone else in the House. I believe that who sits in the second house should follow from the functions it performs. I suspect that until people get into the House many have little understanding of the nature of the work, much of which can be tediously detailed and let’s face it, boring. Len, you raise the issue of an elected House again, I think it will come eventually but we’re a long way off. Again we will need to understand what functions an elected house would perform, which would be very different from now.
the work, much of which can be tediously detailed
It is the importance of that detail that this government seems to have lost sight. The tedious detail to one person can be a catastrophy to another, as I have recently witnessed in the Royal Courts of Justice. The unexpected consequences of ill thought out and improperly scrutinised laws actually affect real living breathing individuals.
Please keep up the, at times, tedious work.