With the Liberal Democrats now having their chance to be part of government, the issue of reform of the House of Lords is now firmly on the political agenda. Truthfully, it is something that should have been reformed a long time ago, but with the main political parties having benefitted so extensively from the power of patronage (or cronyism as called anywhere else), there has been little to no political will to do so. However, the House of Lords as it stands today should not be seen as a completely pointless body. Without it, many bad laws would have been passed unchecked. It is ironic that the most undemocratic part of British democracy is actually one of the best defenders of our rights and freedoms. This strength is in part because it is unelected and many of its occupants are professionals in their fields and willing to exercise independence from the political parties, this is completely in contrast to the House of Commons.
That said, the House of Lords has a very uneasy position being a concept that is at odds with how a functioning democracy should look like and so reform does remain necessary. The trick is not to create further shortcomings or to simply replicate the shortcomings of the House of Commons. This means that having another body of elected politicians controlled by political parties has to be seen as a bad thing. Yet by the same token, there needs to be a politically legitimate body that can challenge the government of the day and stand up for the interests of the voters. How is this to be done? Well funny enough, I have some ideas on this issue that I have wanted to articulate for a while.
The first issue is that of elected peers. Election in a representative democracy is supposed to be good and democratic, yet I always think back to that great quote by Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, “the problem with democracy is that the winner is not chosen by ability, but on who shouts the loudest.” Sounds an awful lot like the House of Commons! Even the politicians at Westminster admit they do not want a duplicate chamber. If we look at the US system, the dangers are obvious, either both houses have the same political party dominating and thus laws get rubberstamped, or they have different political parties in charge and so a huge amount of wasteful horse trading is required to get laws passed. At least in the US , they have checks and balances, in the UK such an arrangement would concede far too much power to the Prime Minister as they effectively control the House of Commons through the whips. That is bad enough, worse still if they could do this to both chambers.
And so I would argue that we need a second chamber elected in a very different way, one not based on everyone in the country voting as a one off event, but rather a system where political interests are openly acknowledged and harnessed in a constructive way. This would fall into the delegative democracy system and it is actually quite simple. Each peer would be elected on a 6-8 year term on a staggered basis. Something like one third or one quarter are elected every two years. However, these are not general elections, but rather closed ones with a variety of selection criteria.
Let’s start with regional peers. Each region in the UK ( Wales , Scotland , South West, North East etc) gets to vote one in one peer each. They represent their geographical region and only people living in those regions can vote for them. Then lets have major industry peers (rail industry, retail, finance, manufacturing etc) they get selected by their peers in those professions. So for example all manufacturing companies can be registered to have one vote each and they select a peer specifically to represent their interests. Now let’s have one peer for each government department, voted for by that department. Their job is to scrutinise their respective departments and to challenge governments about any mistakes made in running it or on the policies coming out. Each of the major religions can have one peer each. We also want peers for the voluntary sector and we want peers representing disabled people, poor people, gay people and so on. I can already imagine the question of how would their election be managed and how does one select which groups are represented, but please bear with me and gloss over this part as I want to talk about the principle of the idea rather than the detail of its implementation. Finally, the government would appoint a number of peers to answer questions. This has to happen because the government needs channels by which they can be held accountable and so a small number of appointed peers (who are also ministers in government departments) allows this to happen. They, however, are only in office for as long as the government is rather than adhering to the normal peer terms.
And so the end result is a second chamber designed deliberately to have few career politicians in it, a very diverse population (not full of white middle aged men educated at Eton or Oxbridge), as representative of the full UK population and industries as much as practically possible and those representatives are knowledgeable about their elected area. If they do a bad job, there should be rules to enable them to be impeached. Thus we have a chamber with political and professional credibility in a completely different way to the Commons. If the peer for poor people stands up and says government policy disadvantages their constituents or a doctor criticising NHS reform, the odds are that they will know what they are talking about. They are also not in the pay of political parties and they will not have a political axe to grind. Where the government has a good policy, but some flaws in its implementation, those peers would want to help them make it work. Thus the second chamber is there to help government, not just to hinder. If the government cannot mobilise the support of these professions then it must be pushing for a pretty bad law.
I am aware that this system will mean people will get represented by more than one peer, but I would argue this is a good thing. You may have not elected your MP, but they are your only representative no matter whether you hate them as personalities or their policies. With this peer system, everyone would have someone they can contact about their interests. It is much more inclusive and with the current political apathy gripping UK politics, this has to be a good thing. These peers don’t even have to take political bribes or hide support from special interests, it is their job to represent those interests. So if businesses gives peers people to help run their offices, this needs only be declared rather than glossed over as is the current case with Parliament. Above all, it is transparent.
I have not read of this sort of idea anywhere else and to my knowledge, no one elects their politicians this way. I think this is an idea well worth exploring and could well propel the UK into the forefront of democracies for trying something new and interesting. I fear however, that it is the last sort of thing that those in power want. With this system, there will be little opportunity for patronage. Worse of all, the second chamber would know more than the politicians in government, we can’t have that! It is a pity really, I fear the reality will be more politicians, more arguing, more cronyism and little in the way of political reform that would genuinely make the lives of UK people better. It would have been nice to have proved Plato wrong on the issue of democracy.
Also: Since I genuinely do not know if this idea has been voice before, I intend to apply some copyright, specifically the Creative Commons Licence below. If people wish to circulate this idea further (with attribution) they are welcome to do so. If they want to discuss it or even to flag up where it or a similar idea has been raised before, again they are welcome to do so.
