Apparently without anyone noticing the Government’s has just published its response to the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee’s recent report House of Lords Reform: What Next?
The report effectively gave cross-party endorsement for making a little progress with ‘tidying-up’ the Lords, pending more wide ranging reform. A Private Member’s Bill, which could give effect to the small changes suggested, is presently going through the House of Commons. If passed in both Houses, it would permit Peers to resign from the House, and it would evict those who either never turn-up or who have been imprisoned for a year or more on conviction of a criminal offence.
Coalition Ministers are rightly adamant that this tidying-up does not supplant the need for a much more comprehensive reform. They say “the Government is committed to a mainly elected upper chamber and it is in that context that wider and substantive reform should be pursued.” Their response also reminds us that the Coalition House of Lords Reform Bill, for an 80% elected chamber, was passed in the Commons by a majority of 338 – 462 votes to 124. Contrary to popular perception (especially amongst Peers!), this represented a majority in every party too, with both pro-reform Conservatives and pro-reform Labour MPs far outweighing their more reactionary colleagues.
However, the Government does says it is content to see the three minor changes enacted, and will not stand in the Bill’s way.
The question therefore is whether – substantive obstacles having been removed – procedural ones may now make mischief. The Commons is not due to consider the Bill at Report Stage until 28th February, which is also the last Friday on which the Lords is due to sit in this session. Special arrangements would have to be made to get the Bill through the Lords by May. There could be a motion to “carryover” the Bill into the session after the next Queen’s Speech, but there’s some doubt as to whether such a procedure can be used for a Private Member’s Bill. Alternatively, another Friday could be set aside for the Lords to sit. There is no guarantee, however, that one Friday would be sufficient since Peers may well want to argue at length about even these small changes.
And then there’s the biggest question of all. The hereditary by-elections were invented as a very temporary bridge to proper, popular elections. Since the latter has not yet arrived, there must surely be a continuing debate on the legitimacy of replacing hereditary peers when they die. On this, the Government disagrees with the Select Committee: Ministers argue that this must wait for the forthcoming comprehensive reform.
So that takes us back to the 2012 Bill, which must surely reappear after the General Election in 15 months’ time?
Perhaps we should wait for September’s Scottish referendum to be out of the way, then think in a joined-up way about a new devolution settlement for Scotland, a solution to the “West Lothian” question, and what role the House of Lords will play (perhaps moving towards a more federal system – the Lib Dems’ favoured option). That would be preferable to continuing a piecemeal approach to constitutional reform. Anything has to be better than the reintroduction of the dire Bill that seemed to have been drawn up on the back of an envelope.
I’m afraid, Lord Tyler, having now had ample time to consider this reform from many angles and from a citizens point of view in particular, in a country that repeats frequently, we are a democracy, I agree with ‘government.’
There is no other way we can make sense of the second chamber. It’s beyond reason to have unelected people, more especially, those who the public have wanted to kick out of their position in the Commons as they have failed or became detested politically, to then find they are pushed for a lifetime into the Lords. Look at it from the point of the next general election. Ministers and MP’s of today kicked out of their seats because of ineptitude and utter failure, are then cosseted comfortably in the Lords, collecting expenses and stipends, still making decisions and voting on issues we don’t want them to have any part in. Adding insult to injury, they stay for life.
We could cite a few there now who were uploaded from the Commons decades ago, yet, even voted out they remain a spectre in the midst of our so called ‘democracy.’
The House of Lords cannot continue as it is. It’s unacceptable to have people on those seats who are either born to it, there because they are the friends and cohorts of those in power long after their sell by date. The worst of all the ones who paid to be there by hook or by crook or placed in situ for politically correct nonsense because those who deserve to be there can’t be found.
An elected Lords is the only way forward.
Democracy is not what we have, not by a long shot. And it’s time we faced it and did something about it. However, in the short term, getting rid of crooks criminals and jail birds is something that must be moved on immediately. A year in the nick is far too long a time to be considered good for a seat in that place if it wishes to be respected. The no showers and the rest you mention, ditto.
“Ministers and MP’s of today kicked out of their seats because of ineptitude and utter failure, are then cosseted comfortably in the Lords,”
Regardless of their perceived ineptitude, which may be a democratic perception and not a true one, those MPs may well have work to do on public or shareholder boards for which a working and up to date knowledge of bill and act is an essential prerequisite.
No MP kicked out of office should get anywhere near the Lords to rule over the electorate.
It is not democratic.
An elected Lords is the only way forward.
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No its not. No second chamber is even better. New Zealand doesn’t need one as do lots of other 1st world countries.
If politicians haven’t got it right after 2 chambers and 300 years, what makes you think that they will in the next 300 years?
Sorry, Jonathan, whatever else the 2012 Government Lords Reform Bill was or wasn’t, it certainly was NOT “drawn up on the back of an envelope”. Instead it was fairly and squarely based on the cross-party work of a series of commissions and committees, over more than 10 years, and on the proposals in the Labour White Paper of 2008. That was probably the primary reason for the HUGE majority of MPs, of all parties, who voted for its Second Reading.
‘Dog’s dinner’ / ‘dog’s breakfast’ were epithets used at the time. There was certainly much it built on but the Bill itself was surely unusually criticised and Nick Clegg was not keen on building consensus or consultation before tabling the draft bill.
As has been remarked elsewhere:
“The draft Bill arguably transforms the House of Lords
into a democratically legitimate second chamber –
although the need or desirability for the second chamber to
be democratically elected is by no means undisputed – but
it does so at an unnecessarily high cost (both financial and
experiential) and level of complexity. The government
could meet their stated aims through a simpler and faster
change which could see many of the recognised virtues of
the current House maintained, a democratic element
introduced, the problem of a growing House solved and
reform completed, not just under way, by the time of the
next election.” ((2011) Amicus Curiae, 88, pp.2-4, 4)
An interesting take on the situation in Ireland can be found here http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/widening-of-voter-pool-for-seanad-would-be-costly-and-futile-1.1682491
I said it seemed like it had been drawn up on the back on an envelope, not that it had been. In any other field, one might say it appeared to have been drawn up by committee, although isn’t most legislation? It’s exactly because it contained too many compromises, and tried to satisfy so many people, that it was such a poor proposal. For example, the arrangements for appointing ministers; the fact that bishops would still have automatic seats; the length of appointments and disqualification period from the Commons. None of it was really that logical, it just seemed to have been made up as they went along.
Jonathen may well be right that the HofL may have more greatness thrust upon it by new arrangements with an “independent” Scotland, like the EU committees which have comprised a good deal of Lords’ business for a few years now, and which previously it did not have.
When you have a Deputy president of the EU saying that the EU should become a United States of Europe, one wonders what kind of horse, chimpanzee or dog will next be elected to high office.
EU= United (states of)Europe
USE= United States of Europe
There is no devil in that detail at all. MilesJSd seems to have resigned from the midst.
Gareth, I’m assuming Scotland votes “No”, and is then handed further devolution, with the arrangements for the other parts of the UK reviewed at some point too. Much better to consider our constitutional arrangements as a whole, not tinker with one part at a time as if they don’t have any bearing on one another.
“it would evict those who either never turn-up ”
I wonder whether that would exclude those
who do not accept the “King’s five shilllings”,
and those who only attend committee,
of whom there are a few,
which would be a pity?
You might consider that Lord Tyler like all in the House of Lords holds a sinecure by virtue of the dignity associated with the peerage.
Essentially, he has no duties of office that oblige him to turn up on a regular basis. Peers derive their income and independence from an enterprise external to Parliament which requires attendance.
As you can see without the sinecure there would be a conflict of interest between the need to attend Parliament and earning a living. Lord Tyler came from the House of Commons, a bureaucracy of paid members. He had no need to earn a living away from Parliament.
His outlook is essentially that of a bureaucrat the scourge of democracy. Sinecures are complex in nature but used to good advantage within the scheme of things.