The House of Lords has been in the line of fire this week. During its debate on Article 50 there were claims that peers had no right to thwart the will of the House of Commons or the referendum result. As if to emphasise the point, Prime Minister Theresa May sat in the chamber as the bill was discussed.
And then, ahead of a BBC documentary on the Lords to be screened on Monday, there were allegations about peers signing in to claim their £300 (Dh1,371) daily allowance while their taxi was running.
Never mind the fact that the chamber was never going to “block” Brexit, and that peers fiddling their expenses are few and far between, these both stirred up familiar calls for Lords reform, in some cases even for its abolition. Mention of the Lords is inevitably followed by mention of reform, as night follows day. Yet little change ever happens. This paradox is worth investigating.
Calls for change are almost as long-standing as the Lords itself — they can be traced back centuries. The Lords emerged from councils of “wise men” drawn together to advise Saxon monarchs, so predates the House of Commons. It gradually developed into a hereditary-dominated chamber which naturally favoured the Conservatives.
Vilified by the left, major showdowns over the 1832 Great Reform Act and 1909 “people’s budget” fed calls for abolition, ending in the chamber’s veto power being taken away in 1911. The Parliament Act 1911 was seen as a halfway measure, famously stating that a chamber based on “a popular instead of hereditary basis... cannot be immediately brought into operation”.
This proved to be an understatement, despite repeated proposals for large-scale reform. One dramatic example was the complex bill abandoned by Harold Wilson’s government in 1968, having got bogged down in the Commons. The Tony Blair government removed most hereditary peers in 1999, but got no further — despite a royal commission, five white papers (making wildly different proposals, in repeated attempts to assuage the critics) and two sets of parliamentary free votes on the options.
When he was deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg blundered into a near-repeat of 1968 when his ambitious House of Lords reform bill was introduced and later withdrawn, following resistance from Labour frontbenchers and Conservative backbenchers.
Complexities of second chamber reform
This catalogue of failure exposes the complexities of second chamber reform. The 2000 royal commission report proposed a new House of Lords with no more than a third of elected members. The 2001 white paper trimmed this to 20 per cent. Both were widely rubbished as too timid, for not proposing a chamber with adequate democratic legitimacy.
By 2007 the government was suggesting a 50/50 elected/appointed chamber — a compromise which succeeded in pleasing nobody. The Clegg proposals, like those of the Gordon Brown government in 2008, sought to replace the Lords with an 80 per cent elected chamber. But rather than appeasing the critics this just attracted new ones, for different reasons: after years of arguments about the need for democratic legitimacy, the chamber was considered too democratic. MPs feared an elected chamber would be less likely to defer to the Commons, resulting in US-style gridlock.
Lords reform could proceed more smoothly if the public cared more about it. But this is a distinctly nerdy issue to most people, who are focused instead on key questions such as the economy or NHS. And when pressed, the public proves as conflicted on Lords reform as are MPs. One poll found that over 70 per cent agreed the Lords should be largely elected to give it “democratic legitimacy”; but over 70 per cent also agreed that it should be largely appointed, to ensure “a degree of independence from electoral politics” and include “a broad range of experience and expertise”. In facing two ways on the question, politicians are at least reflecting public opinion.
It may seem that the UK is uniquely troubled on these questions, but similar parliamentary conundrums are reflected around the world. Second chambers are common in large, complex political systems; but their central purpose — to challenge the government and elected first chamber — makes them controversial. If they are too different to the first chamber (eg by being unelected) they’re liable to criticism; but if they’re too similar they can be seen as pointless. If they challenge the first chamber, they’re branded “troublemakers”; if they don’t, they’re “rubber stamps”.
Coming a cropper
Countries such as Spain, Canada, Australia and Japan frequently debate how to reform their (variously constructed) senates. But even where the public criticises such bodies, politicians seeking to reform them can come a cropper. In 2013 Ireland voted to retain its (relatively weak, partly appointed) senate in a government-sponsored referendum proposing abolition. Last December, the Italian referendum to significantly reform the (powerful, elected) senate was lost, forcing Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to resign.
This points to another paradox: that overzealous reformers can often inadvertently be the enemies of reform. During the centuries of debate in the UK no major reform package has ever succeeded. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to see the Lords as “unreformed”. Our history is one of small changes, which together add up to a lot.
In 1900 the Lords was still overwhelmingly hereditary, overwhelmingly male and Conservative-dominated. Today most members are life peers, and the chamber is increasingly diverse in gender and ethnic terms. Its party membership is more proportional than the Commons, and non-partisan expert members are selected by an independent commission. It uses its delay power to recommend policy changes to the Commons, which often accepts them. Since 2015, for the first time, a left-leaning coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrats have been able to use the Lords to challenge a Conservative government.
This transformation was achieved through a series of small steps, often seen as inadequate when they occurred. In 1958 life peers were introduced (around a century after they were first proposed); in 1999 most hereditary peers were removed. Small changes matter.
Big change will continue to be debated — some hope a reformed second chamber would help to unite the increasingly fragmented UK. But a key question is what the next small changes will be. Here there is cause for optimism. Following pressure inside parliament, two committees — in the Commons and the Lords — are now focused on controlling the size of the chamber. From about 650 members in 1999 it has swollen to over 800, and grew particularly under David Cameron’s premiership. There is no cap on the size of the Lords, or the number of members who can be appointed. Nor is there any agreed principle for sharing seats between the parties.
Pressure on these issues has grown to the point where there’s cross-party agreement that something must be done, making the prospects for small-scale reform better than they’ve been in years. Reaching agreement on even “timid” measures will be difficult. History teaches us that reformers must embrace achievable opportunities where they can, rather than pursue overambitious goals that cannot be met. In the long term, the benefits can be significant.
— Guardian News and Media Limited
Meg Russell is professor in British and comparative politics and director of the Constitution Unit at the department of political science, University College London
