Everyone agrees that the House of Lords has far too many members, we are already stuffed to the gills. Yet we now have 56 additional peers and the rumour of more to come. How does a perfectly obvious fact get so easily discounted?
As Peter Riddell points out in today’s Times it cannot be a question of the Coalition Government needing to secure a majority – it already has one at a whopping 50. So the answer may be either that both the Conservatives and the LibDems fear (even expect) a fair amount of dissension from their back benches on key policy aspects OR the relentless conventions of governmental processes such as dissolution and/or resignation honours come before all other considerations.
The reality is that (i) there just is no room for more peers, if they choose to contribute as working peers and (ii) there are no mechanisms in place to reduce the current numbers of peers. This is the nub of the problem – the Treasury apparently will not countenance even a small retirement package so the only route is voluntary retirement. It is entirely understandable that those peers who have faithfully attended the House (if only to doze gently on the backbenches) for perhaps 40 years are unwilling to break the habits of half a lifetime, in the absence of any inducements.
Of course the attrition rate in the HoL is quite high, due to the great age of many of its incumbents but this ‘natural’ thinnning-out is constantly counteracted by the swathes of new peers that appear to keep arriving. The majority, I hasten to add, are admirable and worthy people but this is not the point. However much they have to offer will count for nothing if they cannot find a seat from which to speak. Already a gentle row is emerging about who can sit on the two front benches on the Spiritual Side of the House traditionally reserved for the Bishops – it has not gone beyond anyone’s notice that the Coalition partners are spreading into this hallowed space.
I think that I shall have to offer prizes for those who can suggest a system whereby their lordships can step down with grace and dignity without costing the nation further expense. I realise in putting this forward that I possibly invite less than serious responses – but I shall try it anyway.
If they don’t retire, as at present, they are still costing the country money. So I can’t see why their last three years’ attendance can’t be averaged, then they can continue to be paid for that many days’ attendance in retirement. That would cost exactly the same as if they’d stayed in the Lords, but will free up the benches.
I do feel there should perhaps be some compulsion, though. Set a threshold of a minimum number of days’ attendance (high enough to stop people just attending the minimum to keep their seats) then those who don’t attend often enough lose their entitlement to sit. No pension needed as it isn’t supposed to be anyone’s main job anyway.
Incidentally, you mention the controversy over the spiritual benches. I was wondering whether crossbenchers ever sit elsewhere in the house if the crossbenches are full? Could that also cause a row?
Yes, I know! One of the new intake suffers from irritable vowel syndrome.
Dear Friend,
The answer is that we ladies should choose a desirable lap to sit on….perhaps not popular with everyone. As Lady Fritchie recently said to Lord Walton “If you sit any close, you’ll have to marry me…”
Ah but seriously I do agree. There are just far too many of us, as Peter Riddell said in the Times today, and the sheer numbers deter some peers from participating I think. I see no option but for a retirement inducement to be offered and I suspect it would cost very little. I believe the space allocation for sailors’ hammocks in Nelson’s time was 14″, I’m inclined to think the Lords Appointments Commission should insist on measuring the beam of prospective peers to insist only small ones are appointed.
Baroness Murphy,
You may have hit on the answer. With a good system of ladders there is still ample room for hammocks I think.
Simple solution.
1/ Boot out the hereditaries.
2/ Adopt the ‘one out, one in’ system which is operation at busy nightclubs at the weekend.
It would focus minds a lot more when dishing out peerages if one had to wait until a space became free. It would certainly stop the asinine nonsense of John Prescott, long time opponent of the Lords, being handed a peerage to keep his wife happy.
Baroness De Souza,
From an outside point of view it does seem that if the crowded conditions actually reach the point of contributing to what you call the natural thinning that would be a bit embarassing. In all seriousness it seems from here that there ought to be someway to avoid the article in the Times which will read “After the Noble Lords were pressed into the chamber by the newly created House Crammers under Black Rod…”. What of non British historical precedents? It gets unseemly I think. Megalopolis actually had some related issues a few milennia ago and the problem proved historic but it may never have gotten as bad as yours seems to threaten to become.
“I shall have to offer prizes for those who can suggest a system whereby their lordships can step down with grace and dignity without costing the nation further expense.”
CROFT’S IDEA OF The
“ORDER of THE LORDS” is an excellent one.
Chapel of Westminster Abbey.
The comments on Prezza’s blog are mildly diverting..
http://www.prezza.org.uk/
One possible answer maybe could be for the house to agree upon a working number, say 250, and then fill that number with the most consistent attendees. Retire the remainder. Yes, it will be unfair to some.
What is the total now? The interweb gives more than one figure. 792?
Why does euthanasia immediately spring to mind..hmmm 😉
For years Governments of all kinds have despised the Lords and attempted, even succeeded in some ways, to diminish it`s power. And yet all seem to put more and more members into it. This has to stop and a finite limit be put in place, a retirement choice and rule has also to be implemented.
The most obvious thing to do first is put a stop to political parties putting their members into the House at will,almost. We are losing the voice of the astute, educated people of life to those whose only knowledge is the skulduggery of politics.
I think “in the absence of any inducements” say`s it all doesn`t it…”What are you going to give me to go away ?” . If this the members call they have no right to be there. What happened to honour, dignity, pride and integrity, to Queen and Country before self, these things the common soldier in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have daily ?
What a shame that the European Union doesn’t have a House of Lords. The noble surplus could be promoted to Strasbourg.
Dear LordsoftheBlog through Baroness d’Souza’s post 1547Sat29May2010:
The British People constitute the British Nation sociologically; whilst the Queen, Lords, Commons, Judiciary and Civil Service (and to a certain practical extent the Economics Sector and the State-aligned NGOs)constitute the State (Nation-State of Britain)the latter both constitutionally & politically.
The People need primarily to be non-politically enabled to recognise and prioritise their Needs, to reason-together how those needs might best be met, and to scrutinise, modify, improve or reject politically-decided needs and hows directed or arbitrated downwards from ‘on high’; and to continually communicate these People’s including any individual citizen’s non-politicised findings upwards through levels of The State to the Parliament Houses and where necessary to the Queen; and each citizen has a need and a right to be thus enabled to participate especially by written need, question or submission, at any appropriate time between elections and referenda, not merely during the few seconds it takes to pencil a ‘dumb’ cross on a ballot-slip every four or five years.
Summarised, British Democracy is striving to advance into serious two-way communication between People and Parliament (as well as between Parliament and People) during the governance-period between elections and referenda.
Relevance to ‘turn-over’ of Lords in the Upper House ?
Since there has never been a sufficiency of advocative-intermediaries for such a non-political but serious Individual-citizen-to-Parliament communication Service, nor a sufficient Media service thereto, there could well be a strong argument here for at least some part-time service therein by not only outgoing or partly-impaired Lords but by prospective future Lords and by similarly placed Parliamentary/Civil Service staff, all of whom the People would have to trust would be sworn to disinterest, impartiality, and faithful representation in their processing and advocacy of the citizen’s submission.
Even if the Lords could only institute an upwards-downwards two-way sort of ‘drip-feed’, such as a ‘reverse-osmosis’ filter for pure drinking water, that would possibly be one of the very worthy innovations or radical-reforms that not only our democracy but Democracy-Worlwide rather outstandingly appears to be needing.
I beg to submit the above for serious consideration.
Why not create a new Citizen-to-Parliament reception and advocacy service, providing thousands of positions for future parliamentarians, parliamentary-officers, and two-way communication and advocacy trainees, all, of whom would need the experience and guidance of part-time Lords who for one reason or anothr are unable to be in their seats in the Upper Chamber itself ?
Why not create a new Citizen-to-Parliament reception and advocacy service, providing thousands of positions for future parliamentarians, parliamentary-officers, and two-way communication and advocacy trainees ?
All of the above would need the experience and guidance of part-time Lords who for one reason or another are unable to be in their seats in the Upper Chamber itself.
Such Lords could surely provide a great new service to Democracy, by making serious response to the serious citizen’s need, question or constructive-submission; and possibly by being its final-recommender for upwards advocacy in Parliament itself ?
I suppose the coalition may feel that as they expect to bring in an elected house a short term cramped house is not a great problem. I do wonder, and you have your head closer to the ground, if the much older average age of the Tory peers -v- Lab may have forced them to hang on in there until new peers arrived before some who may wish to retire do so.
As to the numbers, it’s hard to think of a system that is fair. I don’t like retirement ages as some of the best peers have been somewhat older than a likely cutoff. The only practical way I can see – though obviously it involves legislation – is some sort of limits on party peers tied to electoral average vote shares. With an election among each party to fill the limit from among the existing peers.
Baroness D Souza the other option is like at state opening simply to put more benches out. This could be done on the spiritual and temporal side of the house by moving the bar of the house further back. Also if the two blocks of benches on both sides of the House nearest to the bar where joined together (to make one block of benches) you would only loose one stairwell. Perhaps this could an oral/writtan question to the Chairman of Committees??
Split the right to sit in the HoL from the awarding of a peerage title.
That way you can reward people with a title, without having a massively overcapacity upper house (I’m trying to avoid the word bloated here).
Obviously some mechanism to select who should be asked to sit in the Lords would be needed – the current arrangements could be a good starting point – I’m not up to speed on them though.
The key words used here are “with dignity and grace”… the problem here is that any system of cull is going to be arbitary and some members might well feel hard done by, and it is especially harsh if, for example, there was a vote to decide who stays/goes.
The best way to do it, is to set a time limit on service – 20 years seems about right.
Obviously, it would be unfair to ask current members who have already served 20 years to stand down right now, but we probably can’t afford to wait for 20 years if we start from scratch.
So – how about :
(1) A strict annual limit on new appointments
(2) All new Peers to serve for 20 years from the date of their introduction.
(3) All Peers appointed in the last 12 years to serve out 20 years from the date they were introduced.
(4) Peers appointed/inherited between 1990 and 1998 to serve up to 23 years from the date they were first introduced.
(5) Peers appointed/inherited before 1990 to serve another 3 years from now.
(6) Special exception be made where a member has taken a temporary leave of absense.
(7) That anyone having previously held one of the offices below should be exempt from the above and should serve for Life :
Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Lord Chancellor, Chancellor of The Exchequer, Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Speaker, Archbishop of Canterbury, First Minister of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.
This would give at least 3 years notice to all existing members but would start to make dramatic reductions after 2013.
But that creates more of the problem than it solves Bedd. If you removed the HPs and blocked new creations on a 1 for 1 basis then you would actually make the Labour party the largest in the Lords; larger than the Cons + LDs combined! (Assumed upon Lab 207+29, Cons 140+16 & LD 67+9 – the + represents the 56 new peers just created but yet to take their seats) It would take the C/LD & XB to defeat Labour which can’t be desirable.
You are a thoughtful and creative lot!
Here are some of my thoughts:
You can’t in all fairness apply rules retrospectively – a fundamental principle of justice.
‘One in one out’ is great idea but would never latch on – peerages are a source of power to those in Government (and even to those not in government).
I have made some calculations and we reckon that the minimum size of the House should be about 400-450 peers if all the Committees are to be well serviced.The total number today is around 760 – it changes almost daily.Some peers may not agree to sign the declaration of tax payments in the UK and will be automatically disbarred by the end of July.
The major issue is that now we are all awaiting the Cabinet Committee recommendations on Lords reform which it is promised will come in December and include ‘draft legislation’. Until then probably nothing will happen and we will all exist uncomfortably close to one another.Blocking gangways and/or quick exits in a House of old people is not an optimum solution!
I absolutely agree with a separation between a peerage and a seat in the Lords.
A time limit, fairly and gradually imposed and above all made clear to new entrants, is an attractive idea.
I need to apologise, for having entered three comments in a row.
I entered my main concern at some length, but afterwards felt a need to summarise it.
So I prepared a paragraph as a Word.docx draft, copied it into the reply-box and went back to Word to complete the second part of the summary. But under the pressures of time, the august company, and my complete newness to this type and level of responsible public-to-parliamentary communication, I nervously clicked ‘submit’ before I had copied-in the second paragraph from my drafting place. Then in half-panic I copied-in my completed summary and hastily submitted that too.
Thus the same central message has been delivered, and verbatimly published, three times in a row.
I have been trying to get back in to delete the unnecessary parts, but I apologise, to no avail.
Since this is probably a serious generic matter for both contributors and administrative editors to be prepared for, I have thus added the point before the post closes.
And I still nedd to confess, I am tired, and don’t remember if I’ve already clicked ‘post comment’ or not for this apology.
So here goes, while LOTB tolerance and resilience appears to be still strong.
John S D Miles, not to worry – your comments even in triplicate are most welcome.
As for all other comments I am going to do a trawl and then put the more constructive ideas together and submit to the committee to be set up by the Coaliton Government to report on measures to reform the Lords. Watch this space!