John Wakeham, Robin Cook, Charlie Falconer, and now Jack Straw. All different, but all somehow the same. All shy away from breaking the one link that might help drag our democratic institutions into the 21st century: the link between patronage and power.
So long as our party leaders can hand pick people for parliament, politics will never be rid of the suspicion that seats in the legislature can be bought. So long as party leaders can stuff the Lords with loyalists, people will continue to doubt the legitimacy
of those sitting in the second chamber.
The fact of patronage arguably generates more distrust than the mechanism by which people are appointed to the Lords. This key issue all too often gets lost in debates on the extent to which members should be appointed or elected. If the aim of reforming the second chamber is to enhance public trust in our political system, the Straw proposals should be judged not on whether they break a deadlock between competing sets of political elites, but on whether they can create a patronage-free second chamber.
Although the white paper ultimately leaves it up to MPs to decide on a variety of different options, Straw’s own proposals signally fail this test. Indeed, they are a transparent attempt to consolidate and even strengthen the link between party patronage and seats in the second chamber.
While it is certainly correct that no party should have an overall majority, the white paper does little to address public concerns about the domination of parties over the political process. The most glaring example of this is the proposal that 30 per cent of the 50 per cent of appointed members should come from the political parties. If there is a desire to retain an appointed element, regardless of the proportion, why not simply remove parties from having any role within it?
Given that these proposals have been produced in the midst of an investigation into whether peerages were bought, it is astonishing the white paper proposes buying existing peers out of their seats with a ‘generous redundancy package’. This fuels the suspicion that the proposals are ultimately nothing more than a series of bargaining chips to be exchanged in a final deal between political elites. Although lip service is paid to enhancing the shockingly low levels of public trust in our political system, the voice and views of the wider public are nowhere to be seen in the formulation of these proposals.
The fundamental flaw of the white paper is the process of reform in which it is embedded. Politicians are subject to an unenviable conflict of interest when they are making reforms that affect their own power and chances of staying in office. Even the most well meaning of politicians will be loath to institute reforms that might reduce their own chance of re-election, or their party leaders’ powers of patronage.
If politicians rarely reflect on this conflict of interests, the same cannot be said for the public. A recent ICM poll found that only 17 per cent of people believed that elected politicians would take the right decisions on the future of the House of Lords in the long-term interests of the country. In contrast, 68 per cent thought that a jury of the general public would be most capable of making a decision.
When it comes to rebuilding trust, the process by which proposals are arrived at is arguably as, if not more, important than the content of the proposals themselves. The Straw proposals do little to inspire confidence that politicians are capable of resolving their own conflicts of interest. In the next phase of Lords reform, ordinary citizens should be brought into the process to broker a deal in the public interest. Politicians shouldn’t have to bare the burden of creating a democracy fit for the 21st century all by themselves.