
[ad_1]
You certainly wouldn’t give prime ministers the right to appoint any number of friends or give automatic seats to Church of England bishops. You might replace the ermine robe with faux fur or ditch the garment altogether.
But, as the famous tennis player Arthur Ashe once advised, “Start where you are; Use what you have; Do what you can.” And so from time to time, there are vigorous debates in Britain about whether and how the Lords can be reformed. Another feverish period of Lords reform debate is now heating up. If only it will produce some results.
There are obvious arguments for why change is necessary: the current precarious size, the desire for democracy, the demand for representation. How absurd that Britain is the only country other than Lesotho to have a completely unelected upper house, Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader who governed with the Conservatives after the 2010 elections, tried to get the ball rolling. His reform plan fell on deaf ears, including that of his coalition partner, then Prime Minister David Cameron.
There are less obvious but quietly powerful arguments against reform: namely, that the House of Lords, along with the monarchy and the House of Commons, is the three-legged stool on which the edifice of British constitutional life rests. The current system, for all its anachronistic quirks, has generally worked well. Many Lords are in-depth experts in their fields and bring that knowledge to bear on examining government legislation.
Another often-cited argument against major change is that a reformed body could compete with an elected House of Commons, which could be disorganized due to Britain’s unwritten constitution. The country tends to look smugly at the legislative mess in the US, and perhaps an elected upper chamber would be a step in that direction. Then there are legitimate concerns about whether the transition to a directly elected upper chamber would be unstable.
But opposition to the change is also political: it gives the Commons an upper chamber service that seems ludicrous enough not to pose a real threat — and which many MPs want for their next gig.
And so, for all the reflection and pledges of modernisation, the House of Lords has resisted major reform. If this time is to be any different, it must be because of cross-party support and some level of public enthusiasm, because it is not a short process. That still seems unlikely, though that doesn’t mean Lords can afford to stay as they are today.
It is possible that people may be more busy this time. Boris Johnson went to town appointing nearly 100 friends and supporters to the Lords during his three-year tenure, including some controversial choices. And Lord’s has been in the news recently, thanks to allegations that Michelle Mone, a former lingerie entrepreneur made a peer by Cameron, secured lucrative government contracts to supply personal protective equipment during Covid. (Baroness Moon has denied allegations that she benefited from those contracts or acted improperly.)
All of this has contributed to an emerging sense that what is broken in Britain requires systemic, constitutional reform, not just a change in leadership.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was called out by Labor leader Keir Starr, recently published a report on constitutional reform that drew attention to, you guessed it, the House of Lords. The Brown Commission envisages an elected chamber of 200 members to act as an unifying body for different parts of the UK. Its powers would be limited so that it would be clearly subordinate to the House of Commons, but it would take on additional roles, including protecting the constitution and norms in public life (not forgetting the Curtaingate, Partygate and other scandals of the Johnson era).
However, the devil is still in the worked-out details. Starmer did not specifically commit to putting a new elected assembly in Labour’s election manifesto. He’s going to counseling, which might be code for kicking him into the long grass.
Politically, it would be smart. Voters have no feelings for the enrobed Lords, but most people don’t think of the Chamber at all. If people are feeling happier at the next election, then abolishing the Lords suddenly seems like overkill. (“What’s next, a monarchy?” the Tories would sneer.) If Britain is still in the league of slow growth and feeling down about itself, then it might seem cheerful to embrace such a major constitutional change rather than focus on bread-and-butter issues. .
That doesn’t mean there is no potential for change. Brown is correct: the current setup is “unsafe”. As part of a much larger decentralization drive, the Lords reform may stand an even better chance than past efforts.
But the possibility of additional changes is still more. Some have suggested that the Lords could be thinned out by voting a number of sitting members to remain, following the precedent of the 1999 Blair reforms, in which hereditary peers vote to fill seats.
Philip Norton, or Lord Norton of Louth, a Conservative peer and professor at Hull University, has long argued that an elected upper body should put expertise at the heart of its most valuable work, but thinks the current chamber could be improved. To overcome his loss. His latest amendment bill seeks to change the appointment process to raise the threshold for nominees and increase transparency in the process. He wants to reduce the size of the Lords to no larger than the House of Commons and ensure that no political party gets a majority.
Such ideas are now taken more seriously. In a speech last week, Lord Speaker John McFall (known as Lord McFall of Ulcluyth) said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was open to discussing the details of the reforms. A conservative government that championed downsizing and few meaningful changes would make it harder for Starr to argue that the only option is abolition.
And yet it can also quietly please the Labor leader. Starmer’s party has always shied away from radical reform of the Lords because an elected upper body could potentially undermine a Labor government’s agenda. In the end, it suits all sides to worry about the Lords’ nonsense, but mostly leave it alone.
More from Bloomberg Opinion:
• Britain’s House of Lords is a national dilemma: Martin Evans
• Can Keir Starmer’s Labor Party Destroy London Power?: Therese Raphael
• The Decline and Fall of the Tory Empire: Adrian Wooldridge
This column does not reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering health care and British politics. Previously, he was editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.
More stories like this one are available at bloomberg.com/opinion
[ad_2]
Source link