John Prescott and Ian Paisley may well have stolen the headlines in last week’s dissolution and resignation honours list from Gordon Brown. But, the appointment of a whole clutch of new peers should not mask a little noticed but deeply concerning part of the coalition agreement which could seriously undermine the scrutiny role of the House of Lords.
Given the controversial nature of much of the government’s constitutional changes including the 55 per cent super majority for dissolution of parliament, this is really worrying.
Longer term, all the main parties are committed to a mostly or wholly elected House. But even on the most optimistic scenario, this will take time.
In the meantime, the Lords could be expected to continue its work of revising legislation and forcing the government to think again.
I took well over 20 bills through parliament in ten years as a minister. And I was defeated many times. In fact up to the end of the 2009 parliamentary session, the Labour government had been defeated in the Lords well over 500 times.
I’m not complaining. That’s what a revising chamber should do. And it usually gets the balance right with the government getting its major legislation through but having to make some real changes as well.
This could soon come to an end. The coalition agreement pledges to make more appointments to the Lords to give it a membership which reflects votes at the last election. On the face of it that sounds reasonable enough. But apart from ensuring a BNP presence, it would stack the second chamber in the coalition’s favour.
Already the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats combined heavily outnumber the opposition with 258 members compared to Labour’s 211. Since the cross-bencher peers vote much less frequently and tend to cancel each other’s votes out, the coalition has an effective majority.
There has long been an understanding that there should be a rough parity between the government and the main opposition party. That’s why governments are able to be defeated.
In opposition, Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative Leader in the Lords argued very forcibly for a strong second chamber to help the House of Commons keep the executive in check.
How ironic that as the new leader of the House, he should now oversee its demise. For, if the coalition can guarantee to win every vote, what possible purpose can it have, save to dutifully let through every bit of government legislation?
Over the years, the second chamber has earned a deserved reputation for its independence. If the coalition goes ahead with it plans to swamp the Lords with its own supporters, this is now very much at risk.
Coincidentally I was thinking on just the same terms earlier today – not so much about the appointments, which would be a short-term and cynical fix, but about the fact that a wholly elected Lords under PR (which is what constitutional radicals now seem agreed upon and likely to get) would, in an era of coalition Government (if we get AV or more for the Commons) make the Lords a weaker, not a stronger, check on the Executive. http://bit.ly/95a5wf
The coalition agreement states: “In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.” There is nothing in that statement that suggests a mass stuffing of the Lords, and the only source for that idea was a wholly speculative article in the Times a couple of weeks ago. When challenged about this after his speech on political reform two weeks ago, Clegg said the following: “I don’t want to stuff the House of Lords. Any transitional arrangement – where the coalition agreement quite rightly said that in that transitional arrangement you want some greater proportionality in the appointments made to the House of Lords – is just that. It is a transitional arrangement. I would like to reduce that to a heartbeat. If we could reform the House of Lords tomorrow and just get on with it, that is what I would like to do. We will do it as soon as we can. We are not going to start orchestrating some great stuffing of the House of Lords.” Finally, of the appointments made last week, 16 were Conservatives, 9 were Lib Dems and 29 (more than both the other parties combined) were Labour. Labour is in no position to start lecturing about stuffing the Lords.
Labour is in such a position because it never took the opportunity to stuff the Lords when in power, but instead introduced a balanced chamber, a purposely hung chamber, if you like. Not till 2005 did the number of Labour peers even equal that of the Tories. And if the govt are not planning on flooding so then it would be helpful if they made that clear and then ‘speculation’ would be put at a clear end.
I regret that any new Lords have been appointed because by doing so you delay moving to a fully elected chamber. Reformers now need to concentrate on ensuring that the new government brings forward legislation to introduce a elected second chamber. So that these can be that last appointments and that we can finally complete the reform of the House of Lords that started in 1911.
Never mind reflecting the balence of votes – how about shattering the myth that the Lords represents the country. Where is the working class representation (yes I know it is also true of the commons – but that is our fault). How over represented in both houses is the institutionaly corrupt legal proffesion?