The absurdity of how the House of Lords currently operates has been thrown up in technicolour over the last few days. Several issues have been garnering media attention as the end of recess approaches and efforts to reform the upper chamber get back underway.
Most prominent has been the hereditaries as they gear up for a last stand over the bill to remove them, as it heads to the “ping pong” process between the Commons and Lords. Media reporting suggests the hereditaries are digging in, in the hope of being given life peerages so they can remain in the Lords.
Over the weekend, hereditary peer Lord Strathclyde was quoted in the FT complaining the government is removing them while offering “nothing in return” and warned that there could be delaying tactics used on the rest of the government’s agenda by Conservative colleagues as a result. He added: “inevitably, there will be repercussions. They (the government) are storing up huge problems for themselves.”
This displays the upside-down nature of our democracy, where unelected politics are attempting to delay and thwart a bill that is clearly democratically backed by a manifesto pledge. Even the leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, Lord True, has admitted that principle of people being given seats in Parliament due to birth-right has been vanquished. Yet supporters of the hereditary peers are arguing that the existing hereditaries should be gifted life peerages as a quid pro quo, this would mean the UK would still have active hereditary legislators for decades to come.
Unrestrained and undemocratic
Last week another row also detonated over the Lords when Nigel Farage demanded the right to nominate Reform peers, pointing out that the Greens, who have the same number of MPs as Reform (four) have two peers and the DUP, which has five MPs, has six peers. The intervention threw a spotlight onto the arbitrary way peerages are created and dished out, with the Prime Minister effectively able to decide on a whim who gets a job-for-life in Parliament.
This row over the next inevitable list of new peerages also spotlighted the other huge absurdity of the upper chamber, it’s sheer bloated size. At 830 members, the Lords is the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress. So understandably this week Labour’s leader in the Lords, Baroness Smith, outlined in a letter to the Telegraph government plans to bring those numbers more in line with the 650-member Commons by enforcing mandatory retirement for peers over 80 and sacking those who do not attend or speak enough in the chamber. These measures are envisioned as part of the second tranche of reform of the Lords, following the removal of the hereditaries.
What is immediately evident is that these reforms in isolation would be woefully inadequate sticking-plaster solutions compared to the scale of the problems with the Lords. Not only is it farcically large, but it is utterly undemocratic and completely fenced off from the British public. Merely trimming off a few members here and there would be like giving a haircut to a patient that needs major surgery.
At the heart of all these issues is a central question: Who decides who sits in our Parliament? We would argue that those best qualified are not a prime minister, or political parties but the British people. Yet, the public are the one element conspicuously absent in all the political debate and media coverage over Lords reform, which is strange as what happens in the Lords impacts every aspect of the public’s life.
Sticking-plaster solutions are not enough
In 2022, Keir Starmer was clear when he lambasted the Lords as ‘indefensible’ and pledged to turn it into an elected chamber. The way the Lords operates today is as indefensible now as it was when the Labour leader made those comments. Removing the hereditaries and ending birth-right legislating is a long overdue and much-needed reform, and efforts to reduce the size of the Lords are understandable considering its ridiculously bloated membership.
But ultimately, the fundamental problem at the heart of all this is the unrestrained and undemocratic way peers are created. Until the government addresses the patronage fire-hose that means PMs and party leaders can stuff unlimited peers into the Lords, the benches of the upper chamber will continue to strain under the weight of an ever-ballooning membership.
The real answer is the one Keir Starmer originally proposed: turn the Lords into a smaller democratic chamber with a set number of members. As the politicians who sit in Parliament making our laws should be democratically elected, not self-selected.
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