Reform of the House of Lords is again on the government’s agenda,
with the Ministry of Justice currently consulting on their proposals
for a fully or majority elected second chamber. Whilst much debate has
focused on the merits of appointed or elected peers, little has been
discussed about the geographical representation of the Lords: in short,
how can the House of Lords best represent the UK as a whole?

The
New Local Government Network has therefore recently published figures
on where members of the Lords actually live, or at least where they
register their “main residence”. The results were startling, showing
that over 40 per cent of all Peers live in either London or the
south-east and that large swathes of the country are underrepresented,
especially the north of England, the Midlands and Wales.

In
its present form, the House of Lords embodies a real and substantial
gap in regional accountability and representation. The information we
have suggests that many major British cities such as Birmingham,
Liverpool, Bristol and Belfast have little or no voice within the
Lords. A significant north-south divide is apparent, with areas in the
south enjoying far greater representation than those in the north.
London has more peers than the East Midlands, West Midlands, Wales,
Northern Ireland, north-east England and Yorkshire and the Humber put
together. London aside, there also seems to be an incoherent bias
towards lesser-populated rural areas then heavily-populated urban ones.

Of
course it could be argued by some that there is a certain inevitability
given the location of the Westminster location of the House of Lords
that many peers will be based around London and the south-east. If more
peers were based in areas further away form the capital, might they
find it more difficult to attend the chamber and take part in debates
and votes? Why, indeed, would a peer living in the north-east travel
hundreds of miles to attend one particular debate?

Our figures
however knock down this argument as London peers have one of the worse
attendance records in the entire UK, with Lords from the north and the
Midlands more likely on average to turn up to debates in the Lords than
their southern counterparts.

Moreover, one of the more
startling findings is that eight peers register their main residence as
“overseas”. Not only does the House of Lords suffer from an
underrepresentation of many UK regions but eight of its members
self-identify as living outside the UK. Why should a Peer of the Realm
seek to live abroad? We know that some peers, such as Conservative
donor Lord Ashcroft, decline to pay income tax in the UK despite the
fact that they have the privilege to vote upon our laws.

A
simple solution, and one which we would be intrigued to hear Cameron’s
reaction to, would be to stipulate that a condition of entering the
Lords is that you are a UK resident and that you pay income tax in this
country. We would not expect a Member of Parliament to live overseas
and nor should we permit members of the Lords to do so either.

Despite
over a century of debate, the UK parliament remains a fundamentally
imbalanced institution with an outdated second chamber, disconnected
from the country at large. The laws we live under are still determined
in an unrepresentative and unfair way. There remains a glaring built-in
bias in the composition of the House of Lords, with some parts of the
United Kingdom underrepresented to the point of neglect.

The
Government should look seriously at forming a regional dimension to a
reformed Lords, either on the basis of a ‘regional list’ system or by
co-opting local leaders into the chamber. If legislation is to be seen
as legitimate in every locality, then it stands to reason that everyone
should have access to roughly the same number of legislators. Only then
will we have a parliament that truly represents the whole of the United
Kingdom.

Lords of our Manor? How a reformed House of Lords can better represent the UK is available to download at www.nlgn.org.uk