The coalition government is embarking on another round of reform of the House of Lords. The Liberal Democrats are particularly fond of reform.
After the Parliament Act of 1911 the House of Lords was reduced to little more than a place where legislation is examined and if it is found to be inadequate or unwarranted returned to the House of Commons for further attention. The Lords can create a maximum delay of 2 years by returning legislation to the Commons. This role of vetting legislation has meant that some members of the House of Lords have been appointed because they are experts in their field however, most appointees are people who have been given a place in the Lords as a reward for service to a political party. The Lords are appointed for life so cannot be relied upon by their parties and as a result many Labour peers will vote for Tory legislation and vice versa.
It seems to me that Britain has stumbled onto an interesting method of governance. The House of Commons is elected and supreme but held in check to a limited extent by an experienced House of Lords that is not tied to any particular party.
There is a need for further reform because the composition of the House of Lords, which includes bishops and too many of the party faithful, is not rational and its powers are ill defined. The committee of politicians who were appointed to examine this problem of reform seem to have completely misunderstood it and have proposed that the Lords is replaced by an elected House that is similar to the Commons.
The committee has raised a brand new issue of whether or not we want to create two legislative bodies or keep just one. The media seems to misunderstand what is happening or are deliberately misleading the public. Those who support the creation of a new, powerful competitor for the House of Commons suggest to the public that we have an unelected House of Lords full of old aristocrats who govern the country. This is not true, the House of Lords has a strange composition but it does not govern the country, it just vets legislation produced by the Commons.
These proposals for reform will create a new, powerful, political entity in the country. They will reduce the power of the House of Commons and change our system of government forever. People should be aware that according to Parliament itself, the proposals will make the Lords the supreme Parliamentary body: "Election of 80% of a reformed House will make the House more assertive and affect the balance of power between the Houses in favour of the House of Lords." (Report of the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill).
The presence of two powerful chambers will either allow the executive (the government) to divide and rule or will create a paralysis where one chamber opposes the other. The government will try to set one chamber against the other so it can just carry on with its business without reference to Parliament at all.
Postmarxists love this idea of continual conflict but it is not a good idea. In practice the conflict will be resolved because it will rapidly become obvious that government can only proceed if a presidential system is adopted.
The worst problem with the suggested changes is that members are elected for 15 years. Our current democracy works in a negative fashion, we turf out parties that offend us every 5 years. An elected House of Lords takes away this possibility and will allow the senior party Moguls to sit smugly in the Lords doing whatever they want with the country and we will be unable to stop them.
My suggestion would be to create a House of Lords that can perform its current function even better. I would limit it to 200 members who sit for 15 years, 40 of whom are appointed by political parties, 50 elected and the rest appointed by a mixture of an appointments commission of the House of Lords who would appoint 70 members and also allow certain organisations such as the Royal Society to appoint one or two members each up to a total of 40 members. The elected members would remind the population of the true function of the House of Lords as a body that vets legislation. This new House of Lords would be able to delay legislation for 2 years up to 3 times so that it could indeed delay the passage of legislation beyond the lifetime of a particular government but no further. This would ensure that contentious legislation would then have been voted upon at a general election before being passed.
There is a reasonable summary of the history of the reform of the House of Lords on Wikipedia. It is very noticeable that the House of Commons want more of their own sort of people in the Lords, if they do this they will shoot themselves in the foot.
I fear that the British electorate knows more about the US system of government than their own and will be fooled into thinking that laws are currently passed by an unrepresentative body.
After the Parliament Act of 1911 the House of Lords was reduced to little more than a place where legislation is examined and if it is found to be inadequate or unwarranted returned to the House of Commons for further attention. The Lords can create a maximum delay of 2 years by returning legislation to the Commons. This role of vetting legislation has meant that some members of the House of Lords have been appointed because they are experts in their field however, most appointees are people who have been given a place in the Lords as a reward for service to a political party. The Lords are appointed for life so cannot be relied upon by their parties and as a result many Labour peers will vote for Tory legislation and vice versa.
It seems to me that Britain has stumbled onto an interesting method of governance. The House of Commons is elected and supreme but held in check to a limited extent by an experienced House of Lords that is not tied to any particular party.
There is a need for further reform because the composition of the House of Lords, which includes bishops and too many of the party faithful, is not rational and its powers are ill defined. The committee of politicians who were appointed to examine this problem of reform seem to have completely misunderstood it and have proposed that the Lords is replaced by an elected House that is similar to the Commons.
The committee has raised a brand new issue of whether or not we want to create two legislative bodies or keep just one. The media seems to misunderstand what is happening or are deliberately misleading the public. Those who support the creation of a new, powerful competitor for the House of Commons suggest to the public that we have an unelected House of Lords full of old aristocrats who govern the country. This is not true, the House of Lords has a strange composition but it does not govern the country, it just vets legislation produced by the Commons.
These proposals for reform will create a new, powerful, political entity in the country. They will reduce the power of the House of Commons and change our system of government forever. People should be aware that according to Parliament itself, the proposals will make the Lords the supreme Parliamentary body: "Election of 80% of a reformed House will make the House more assertive and affect the balance of power between the Houses in favour of the House of Lords." (Report of the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill).
The presence of two powerful chambers will either allow the executive (the government) to divide and rule or will create a paralysis where one chamber opposes the other. The government will try to set one chamber against the other so it can just carry on with its business without reference to Parliament at all.
Postmarxists love this idea of continual conflict but it is not a good idea. In practice the conflict will be resolved because it will rapidly become obvious that government can only proceed if a presidential system is adopted.
The worst problem with the suggested changes is that members are elected for 15 years. Our current democracy works in a negative fashion, we turf out parties that offend us every 5 years. An elected House of Lords takes away this possibility and will allow the senior party Moguls to sit smugly in the Lords doing whatever they want with the country and we will be unable to stop them.
My suggestion would be to create a House of Lords that can perform its current function even better. I would limit it to 200 members who sit for 15 years, 40 of whom are appointed by political parties, 50 elected and the rest appointed by a mixture of an appointments commission of the House of Lords who would appoint 70 members and also allow certain organisations such as the Royal Society to appoint one or two members each up to a total of 40 members. The elected members would remind the population of the true function of the House of Lords as a body that vets legislation. This new House of Lords would be able to delay legislation for 2 years up to 3 times so that it could indeed delay the passage of legislation beyond the lifetime of a particular government but no further. This would ensure that contentious legislation would then have been voted upon at a general election before being passed.
There is a reasonable summary of the history of the reform of the House of Lords on Wikipedia. It is very noticeable that the House of Commons want more of their own sort of people in the Lords, if they do this they will shoot themselves in the foot.
I fear that the British electorate knows more about the US system of government than their own and will be fooled into thinking that laws are currently passed by an unrepresentative body.
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