A week last Friday, I spoke at two schools, the John Cleveland College in Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Queen Margaret’s School, York. I was initially invited to talk about constitutional change but each opted for a more specific talk on the role of the Lords. Last Friday, I also spoke on Lords reform at a sixth-form conference in Machester organised by the Political Education Forum.
One of the points I made was that the Lords was a House of experience and expertise. The distinction is an important one, which many commentators fail to appreciate. Experience comes from fulfilling a particular position. Expertise derives from formal and often extensive training in a particular subject. My expertise is in political science. My experience is as a university professor. Though one may cease to hold a particular position and become, for example, an ex-professor or ex-civil servant, expertise in some fields may remain even if ceasing to hold a particular position.
The value of expertise to the House is that it is often current. The value of experience is different. Experience may be based on activities that are highly particular to an individual. Very few people, for example, have experience as a prime minister. No one has experience comparable to that of, say, Lord Ashdown (Paddy Ashdown) in respect of the Balkans. When he speaks on developments there, I doubt if anyone is going to discount what he says on the grounds that he is an ‘ex’ EU Special Representative for Bosnia. Many peers necessarily are ‘ex’ in that one could not appoint certain public servants – such as the Chief of the Defence Staff or Cabinet Secretary – while they are in post. Given a choice between no one with experience of running the civil service and someone who has run the civil service, then I would opt for the latter.
There is also another value that is often overlooked. Some members may be ‘ex’ in terms of positions they have held, but they nonetheless retain sufficient knowledge to know what questions to ask – and how to evaluate the answers – when engaged in committee work questioning those whose experience is current. Many who have held important offices continue to contribute to the House not just in the chamber but also in committee, where the work does not register on databases. Looking at the membership list of the sub-committees of the European Union Committee, or of the Constitution Committee, is highly instructive. The Constitution Committee includes two ‘ex’ Attorneys General and an ‘ex’ Lord Chief Justice (Lord Woolf). Their contributions are invaluable and their attendance exemplary. I am all for keeping them.
Dear Lord Norton,
I have to say that any person undecided about whether to elect the Upper House should read this blog. They could note how those who believe in election and how those who don’t believe in election respond to posts from blog readers and then draw their own conclusions as to whether support election or not!
Howridiculous.
My Lord Norton,
I was sifting through this blog hoping to find an excellent article you posted once on the Lord’s Leader seminars website about the relative powers of second chambers abroad, but the link (which I found) appears to be dead. Could you try and dig it up again? I am not having much luck finding it!
Was that the one that discussed the various purposes of second chambers around the world? If so, I’ve been looking for that too. If not, I could swear I read it on here…
Len, yes that’s the one – I remember it pointing out how the strength of second chambers vary, and some completely directly elected ones continue to be meek and feeble institutions. I found the link, but the link is now dead.
Adrian Kidney and Len: The paper I gave at a Leader’s Seminar appears unavailable because at the moment the website of the Leader of the House appears to be unavailable: I am trying to find out what has happened to it. I am not sure, though, if you may be thinking of the longer and more substantive, and certainly more comparative, paper that I did entitled ‘Adding Value’. If so, a copy can be found at:
http://www.effectivesecondchamber.com/p/AddingValue.pdf
If clicking on the link does not work, you may need to type in the address or go to http://www.effectivesecondchamber.com and look under Links.
Sorry: further correction! It is under ‘Our Case for a Complementary Second Chamber’ on the effectivesecondchamber.com website.
Thanks very much, Lord Norton! Adding Value was the one I was looking for.
Len: Thanks for the confirmation. Adrian Kidney: if you are still looking for the talk I gave at the Leader’s Seminar last December, it is still accessible via the website of the Leader of the House. The Leader’s website is still available(it is in the process of being updated) at:
http://www.leaderofthelords.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp
The paper is available at: http://www.leaderofthelords.gov.uk/files/pdf/Dec_07_PN_Leaders_Seminar.pdf
If the link doesn’t work, you can go via the Leader’s homepage under ‘events’.
Are you suggesting that the House of Lords in some way aspires to Plato’s philosopher kings? Maryland’s Frostburg State University posts an interesting view on Plato’s democracy:
“This rule by society’s best minds is the core concept of Plato’s so-called ‘philosopher kings.’ Until now crucial decisions concerning war, peace, and the welfare of society had always been left to corrupt or incompetent politicians, ignorant voters, over-ambitious generals, and other people unsuited to run a state. Bloodshed, hatred, waste of resources, and deplorable conditions had usually been the result.
There is no chance for things to become better unless knowledge and reason are put in command—the best knowledge and the most competent reason that society can muster. Lovers of wisdom may not be eager to govern, as their main passions are more intellectual pursuits. But since they are the best trained and best informed minds, they must be obligated by law to run the state—as a sort of committee of technocrats.
‘Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, … cities will never have rest from their evils,’ as Plato suggests in the Republic.”
The House of Commons has seen fit to ensure that its upper will never become ‘philosopher kings’. Does this go against the wisdom of the ages?
Ref: Plato: The Failure of Democracy. Para 18
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm
Senex: We have some philosophers in the House and a Lord King but I don’t think we would make a claim to be a chamber of philosopher-kings! We benefit from having a diverse membership who can bring to bear a wide range of experience.
There was an errant ‘p’ in the web address in the document you posted.
Adding Value is at:
http://www.effectivesecondchamber.com/d/AddingValue.pdf
CRAiG: Well spotted. Thanks. That explains why the link didn’t work!
Elections are rather rich and complex subject. Legal and political theorists produce vast numbers of books and treatises of less than book length on US presidntial elections alone. Having established that electoral process is a complicated subject I would call attention to the fact that English Kings were elected prior to the Conquest, the election of the Holy Roman Emperor did not destroy its royalist, familial or monarchical qualities over the several centuries when it was most vigorously practiced. Election of the Papacy has not made it a democracy in any vulgar sense. I think conservative apologists in Lords are entitled to resist all elections but they could also come up with possible electoral plans which are conservative. These plans would have the value of securing some of the benefits of electoral discipline and publicity to the Upper Chamber and might help in time when constitutional models are needed in restoring the ever more common failed states abroad.
There can be bo excuse for what I am about to do but without a for instance my point is obscure. So I, a foreigner dare to write this to Lords:
1.Hereditary Peers who are not seated for any reason could elect a fixed number of representatives from their own number to represent the ranks of these true owners of the House.
2. The Monarch could certify a portion of each category of each Honors list as electable and all other members of that level would eligible to vote in their election.
3.Those seated directly by any means other than election could nominate a slate of military and civil Honors people as electable from Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Commons MPs from each of these could elect a military and civil liaison to Lords.
All of this would cause uncomfortable fumbling around and banging into furniture but in the end Lords would be Lords. Mixed government principles would be preserved and the energies of elections would not all be concentrated in an erosive channel against mixed (Monarchical, Aristocratic and Democratic) British governance traditions. The danger of not making such plans is in part the danger of simply crashing into some arrangement that is electoral but abolishes all the purposes and reasons for which Lords is useful and beneficial.
Frank Wynerth Summers III: Is not your point 1 already in place, the only difference between current practice and your suggestion being that it is the hereditary peers in the House who now make the selection? All hereditary peers in the House had a vote in 1999 in deciding the rentention of 75 hereditary peers and all members of the House had a vote in selecting 15. Not sure what your other proposals would deliver in terms of their acceptability. They would doubtless attract the same criticisms faced now by the by-election option for hereditary peers.
I don’t intend this note for publication. Your response is prompt and thoughtful and I am glad you have made it. The matter is one of technical debate and you have published my contribution to it which is really more than I ever would have anticipated. I will not reply to the substance of the reply because I figure that chatting with me may not be your only occupation. Hard as that may be for me to justify.