A common argument from defenders of the unelected Lords is that ministers should dedicate the entirety of their time to bread and butter policies that more immediately impact voters. The implicit basis here is that we should wait until all the policy and legislative challenges the country faces are solved before we can even contemplate any political reform, in which case we’d still be waiting on the Great Reform Act and universal suffrage.
This ‘mañana’ approach mainly reveals that opponents of reforming the Lords struggle to argue in favour of our undemocratic upper chamber, and therefore resort to delaying tactics instead.
Yet, the substance of this argument also doesn’t make much sense, as everything that voters care about from schools to hospitals, their employment rights and even the manner in which they could die are materially impacted by the work that happens in the Lords.
Recent events have been a clear illustration of this. Peers have been in the headlines in the past few weeks for their interventions and amendments to hugely significant legislation such as the government’s workers’ rights bill and the assisted dying bill. In changing those bills, many peers are merely doing what they were put into the Lords to do – refine and amend legislation that comes from the Commons.
However, their interventions into such sensitive and heated areas often reopen the debate over what the basis is for unelected peers making important decisions that impact every person in the country. We saw this debate reach a particularly bitter peak during the Brexit years.
The heart of this problem goes back to the Lords’ completely undemocratic nature.
“Very aggressive procedural action”
The Prime Minister himself has described the wholly undemocratic Lords as ‘indefensible’ and pledged to turn it into an elected chamber. The government has begun the work of reform and currently has a bill going through Parliament to remove the remaining hereditary peers. But even this long overdue reform has not been straightforward, as it has become bogged down in the Lords itself.
For example, the two-page bill received 46 pages of amendments just at report stage, as the Lords seems particularly keen on intervening on legislation that directly impact them.
Senior peers have been explicit that this is a purposeful tactic to make life painful for the government. Lord True, the Conservative leader in the Lords, warned ministers they would face “very aggressive procedural action” if they went ahead with removing the hereditaries.
This is not an idle threat either, as parliamentary time is precious and peers eating it up causes real issues for the government getting its legislative agenda through. In short, the problem with Lords reform is that the Lords is both poacher and gamekeeper on the issue.
Removing hereditary peers must only be the first step in wider reforms
As the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill enters its last stages in Parliament, the question is now what comes next? Removing the absurdity of the hereditary peers was a long overdue and necessary step, but their exit won’t solve the core issue around an undemocratic Lords.
In 2022, Keir Starmer was explicit in his ambition to make the lords elected and at the same time former Prime Minister Gordon Brown laid out plans for a smaller, directly elected chamber that better represents the nations and regions of the UK. Since the election, media reports suggest the focus is on much less ambitious measures aimed at tackling the Lords’ enormous size, such as an enforced retirement age and participation requirement.
One of the few things that almost everyone agrees on is that the current Lords needs reforming, and it is good to see the government make a start on the worst excesses. Yet, removing the hereditaries must be only the first step to wider reform, as until the Lords is made accountable to the country it legislates for questions about its legitimacy will persist.
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