The House of Lords

Great Debates
21

With regard to the hereditary peers; there are, indeed, noble families who bring their children up to a tradition of duty to their country. The best, or at least most obvious, example is the Royal Family. They may, variously, be emotional cripples, loud-mouthed idiots, or barking mad loons who talk to trees, but they do seriously believe in doing what they can for Britain as a whole.

The trouble is, you can’t rely on a family tradition, any more than you can rely on its genetic heritage. If King Henry IX, sometime in the future, decides to say “stuff the family tradition of service! I’m going to sell Buckingham Palace, spend the money on whores, and then declare war on Neptune!”, there ain’t a whole lot, constitutionally speaking, that can be done about it. So, it makes sense to have legislators who are accountable to the public, not just to their own consciences or traditions.

But I’m not at all happy with the current plans for the Lords. Quirm has a point, but political appointees are more likely to be picked for their ability to support the Government of the day than they are to be chosen on actual merit. And, frankly, I think you could pick better legislators by throwing darts into the phone book than you would by choosing from “Tony’s Cronies”.

I like amrussell’s idea. I agree, it’s a shame this will never happen.

22

I feel I should point out that judges are specifically selected (by the Lord Chancellor, I think) to become law lords, in the same way that they are selected to join the US Supreme Court (without the political controversy, though). Law Lords aren’t just those from the normal intake of party nominated life peers who happen to have the right experience. As you point out, Northern Piper, it’s one of these areas of the British constitution where theoretical powers are different de facto powers.

23

Queen Elizabeth II owns Buckingham Palace in her role as sovereign, not as an individual. She is constitutionally required to pass on this residence to her successor, therefore she cannot sell Buckingham Palace and neither could Henry IX. :slight_smile:

24

Oh, yeah, I was forgetting “This isn’t ours, it’s a tied cottage” (HRH the Duke of Edinburgh).

25

It doesn’t make much sense to call it the House of Lords unless it’s a house of lords. The British could just follow the examples of Canada, Australia, and France and the U.S. for that matter, and call it a Senate. Then they could various regions equal representation regardless of population, and abandon the habit of overrepresenting Scotland and underrepresenting Northern Ireland in numeric terms. With the simple abolition of the monarchy and ratification of a written constitution, they could be just like the U.S. Wouldn’t that be much simpler?

Just kidding. But I do think they should change the name; the classism implied by the names Lords and Commons is getting pretty hoary and could use a good dusting.

26

I want to thank all the Anglophiles for my education on the House of Lords. I’ve watched the opening of Parliment on C-Span, and they have some commentary there, but it is mostly about the pagent. (Which you Brits do very damn well. Every once in a while I will visit our local British pub for fish and chips (cod and french fries for the unwashed.) MMMM, mushy peas.) The Queen gave a nice speech too.

27

The Law Lords are a fine court, as is the Privy Council - they apply the local law of the country of the parties to the appeal as appropriate. They have, however, been known to criticise those laws, with effect - I’m thinking especially of Hong Kong’s stupid conveyancing laws. Australian judges have served on the Privy Council, most notably Sir Owen Dixon, the finest legal mind of his time, and until 1985 Sir Garfield Barwick, when Australia and Great Britain passed the Australia Acts by which Australia’s High Court became the court of final appeal for Australians.

On the Privy Council passing sentence on Carribean prisoners, see the excellent book “The Justice Game”, by human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson. Its not that straightforward.

The Law Lords are in fact a subcommittee of the House of Lords - their judgments are called “speeches”, and Privy Council decisions are called “advices”, to the Crown.

New Zealand and many other countries still use the Privy Council as their final court of appeal, and House of Lords decisions are very persuasive common law authority across the British Commonwealth, partly because of the calibre of the judges. This is why I suspect any reform of the House of Lords would not affect the Law Lords - the effects would go well beyond England.

From the link to the Guardian, above:

Dave runs around in circles with his hands in the air, muttering, “Separation between church and state! Separation between church and state!”

28

The role of the Law Lords is the simplest and least controversial aspect of Lords reform. If it was decided to make the Lords a wholly elected chamber, a new, separate final court of appeal would simply be created to exercise the Lord’s existing judicial functions, possibly in the guise of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It has, in any case, been suggested that the Law Lords should be provided with more convenient accommodation elsewhere in London, even if they technically remain a committee of the House of Lords.

The idea of appointing religious leaders to balance the presence of the bishops has often been suggested and a number of governments have in the past considered making such appointments on an informal basis. The big stumbling block has always been that neither the Church of Scotland nor the Roman Catholic Church, the two churches with the strongest claim to such representation, would be easily accommodated under such a system. The problem with the CoS is that, in so far as it has a leader, it has a Moderator who changes every year. The same applies to the major Presbyterian denominations in England. The problem with the RC Church is that its priests are theoretically barred by the Vatican from sitting in parliamentary assemblies. It is widely believed that the late Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Hume, repeatedly turned down the offer of life peerage for that reason.

As for the composition of the rest of the Lords, the argument used to be that an hereditary peerage was indefensible and that an appointed peerage was not much better, but that, in practice, the Lords often took a more sensible view than the Commons. (The Poll Tax springs to mind as one obvious example.) This is the one advantage of having a chamber which is conspicuously undemocratic - it can’t simply assert that it represents ‘the people’, so that, if it wants to carry any weight, it needs to make sure that it does in fact reflect public opinion. Similar arguments can be applied to the political role of the monarch. Attempting to preserve the virtues of the old House of Lords while making it more democratic was always going to be a project likely to fail. Any reform which retains any element of the existing structure can only look half-baked.

29

Oh, c’mon Dave - we can do better than that! What about the Lord Chancellor and the separation of powers?

The Lord Chancellor:

a) is a member of the Executive, with a new one being appointed whenever the Gov’t changes, with executive responsibilities;

b) a member and presiding officer of the House of Lords in its legislative capacity;

and

c) a member and presiding officer of the Law Lords, sitting in their judicial capacity.

Montesquieu obviously missed the Lord Chancellor when he started talking about the separation of powers. :slight_smile:

30

Gah. I didn’t know that.

31

And yet the Brits haven’t devolved into totalitarianism. In fact they matured into a democracy from true monarchy.

Many Americans fond of quoting Montesquieu obviously are missing something.

Just my 2sense

32

My view: since the job of the Lords is to scrutinise bills, not propose them, I would rather they were non-political. Since cronies appointed by the Prime Minister or politicians elected by the people will by nature be political, a hereditary peerage system would seem the natural way to ensure that a long-term view of Commons Bills can be taken without any politics entering into play.

The current situation, in which the elected MPs propose Bills and independant Lords study them, seems perfect to me.

Of course, that is in an ideal situation, where MPs aren’t silenced by their party leaders, and where the Lords are not dominated by peers with decidedly Tory views. This ideal situation only ever occurs on JamesWorld - others would argue that an elected house is the only fair way to do business, and here lies the main problem: under Blair’s proposals, neither case will come into play.

You see, according to one’s point of view, we either need the long-term views of unelected, non-political peers, or the “people’s views” of elected peers. One must, without doubt, be better than the other.

But what is Blair proposing? Well, he removed most of the hereditary peers, packed the Lords full of his cronies, and now grudgingly suggests putting a small minority of elected representatives into the House.

Well, whoopee doo, thank you Mr. Blair. As it is, you have taken apart a system that was working fine, and meddled with it so that we now have a bizarre half-way mess between two systems.
Addition to 2sense’s piece: our system protects against totalitariansm. A Prime Minister cannot extend Parliament as this is the one Bill that he cannot force through the Lords using the Parliament Act. An independant Lords would never give assent to such a Bill.

33

I cannot agree with any system of hereditary peerage (or whatever we’ll call it once we’ve gone all sensible). The fact that an elected second house risks short-term political bickering is neither here nor there when discussing the concept of the inheritance of political power. Thank god the Royal Family no longer wield realistic political power, but they remain a symbol of a society that seems to accept that birth is enough qualification for status and respect. I would dearly love to see the UK rid itself of the monarcy, a hereditary peerage, and the established church, but I think it will be slow because the UK has an evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) history in political terms (NB no jumping on me shouting for Cromwell :slight_smile: - I think that political institutions developed at a tortoise-pace even considering the Civil War).

As you can see at

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld/ldinfo/ldanal.htm

the number of hereditary peers in the Lords is actually now substantially reduced by recent reforms. I believe those remining are the survivors of a process whereby they had to justify their presence in the House.

I don’t see why a process of selection by independent commission shouldn’t apply to a larger proportion of life peers - so called “people’s peers”. At the time the first of these were chosen, there were complaints that there were “no hairdressers”, and that the selected people were already elevated in society. To be honest, I don’t see why there should necessarily be “hairdressers” in the upper chamber. All I want is people who are engaged with contemporary political issues, prefereably from a non-party perspective, and who are willing to give their time and experience to their new position. These need not be “Oxbridge” educated, as someone suggested, but they are likely to have demonstrated through their career that they have the wherewithal to deal with ideas at a national political level. I don’t want “people like me” debating issues of state: I want people with MORE nous than me.

Embra “lordy”

34

My concern with a wholly elected House of Lords is not with political bickering, but with short-termism.

The duty of the Lords is to look at the long-term impact of Bills passed by the House of Commons. This acts as a brake on any short-term whims embarked on by the Commons.

So, where should these peers come from? It is clear that there has to be some clear system. The hotch-potch cooked together by Blair is clearly a shambles. If there is a problem with the system, then change it. If there is not, then leave it alone. Don’t mess around, tinkering here and there, as that can have no benefit (except to Blair, of course, who managed to remove a huge number of opponents from the Lords by promising reforms that he has no intention of completing).

So, putting to one side Blair’s political meddling, which system is best? Remember that the job of the Lords is to scrutinise Bills passed by the House of Commons for constitutional problems, conflicts with other laws, and the long-term effect on / general good of the nation. It is not an all-powerful law-making position, but merely gives a Lord the power to request the Commons to look at a Bill again.

One option is for peers to be elected in the same way as MPs. However, the peers cannot take a long-term view if they have to court short-term populism in the same way that politicians do. So, regular elections do not seem to be the best way forward.

Another option is for the peers to be elected for life. This improves on the above system, in that the peers can now take a purely long-term view, as they no longer have to chase votes. However, where will the candidates come from? Popular figures? I hope not, as I want someone who knows something about constitutional law, politics and economics to be scrutinising Bills. Captains of industry? Again, I hope not, as checking Parliamentary Bills is a full-time job, not one that can be carried out inbetween sitting on various company boards. Retired politicians? Still doesn’t sound too good, as the whole point of the Upper Chamber is that it needs to be largely non-political.

Assuming, though, that suitable candidates put themselves up for election, how will we choose between them, given that they must be non-political experts in points of law? We may as well let them be appointed.

So, the third option: all peers are appointed. Nice idea, but unless politics can be completely removed from the appointment process, then it still isn’t perfect. Even “independant commissions” are still set up by the ruling political party of the day, and still have to keep the Prime Minister happy.

There is of course an easy way to appoint peers whilst keeping the Prime Minister’s nose right out of the process: rely on accidents of birth.

To me, this is the obvious choice. This is the easiest way to fill the Lords with people who do not have to chase a vote, do not have to tip the wink to any political leader, can afford to take unpopular decisions if need be, and will know from the day they are born that this is what they will be expected to do, so will have plenty of time to brush up on their knowledge of law and constitutional matters.

In fact, I would go the whole hog and say that we should give these peers a cushy life, plenty of money, maybe a nice pad somewhere, so that they can concentrate on checking the impact of Bills. Sure, the politics of envy screams out that this is unfair, but I want the peers give all their time to the important job of checking the fine print of the government’s plans; I don’t want them having to seek time-wasting jobs in the “real world”.

If a peer doesn’t want this vocation, then fine - give up your house, salary and the rights of your decendants.

Remember - “I don’t think it’s fair” is not a reasonable argument. We are talking about the long term interests of the country.

DISCLAIMER: All this is academic anyway, since Blair has messed the whole thing up to suit himself anyway.

[sup]Jeez, that was long. Plenty there for you all to rip to shreds now… :)[/sup]

35

sirjames, are you one of those hereditary leftovers? Go on, identify yourself! :smiley:

When I said that entrants to the Lords should be “non-political” I didn’t mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to identify with the politics of a particular party, only that they shouldn’t be beholden to that party. A life appointment is a partial antidote to this as there’s plenty of time for (e.g.) a Blair appointee to change their mind and become a thorn in the side of their party.

I agree that second-chamber members should be paid, and should dedicate themselves to their position. Remember that it’s really only since 1911 that MPs in the Commons have been salaried: it used to be thought that a wage was far too base a motive to become involved in politics at all, and that legislation should be left to that class of people who had a private income.

I still completely disagree with the whole concept of hereditary titles of political power. To me it’s not an alternative. It represents the completely false assumption that people from the same family line will (a) always be even competent at a particular job, and (b) always WANT to do that job. We would potentially miss an enormous amount of candidates, AND we would be reinforcing an aspect of the class system that we really should be trying to escape from. Inheritance of social and political power is something which underpins the persistence of class in the UK, I think.

More thoughts as I receive them… ::moves political antennae around::

Embra

36

Embra - Sadly the monarchy has overlooked my family when dishing out peerages so far, but I am sure the Queen will put it right when she realises. :smiley:

Anyway, we agree on the need for payment [sub]though it pisses me off that MPs get paid and then don’t bother turning up for work[/sub] and the need for lifelong membership of the Lords. That’s a good start, I guess.

The only thing we disagree on in the method of selecting the said peers. The real problem I have with appointed peers is not their association with parties (hell, everyone has views), but that it goes beyond that. “Beholden” is exactly what they are - [sub]generalisation alert[/sub] you become a life peer by showing your loayalty to a party, either through donations or general arse-licking. This behaviour rarely changes in the Lords, which is why Party Whips are accepted by peers in the Upper House (which, in my view, is completely wrong). Once a sycophant, always a sycophant.

I settle on the hereditary method of selection only because it seems the only way to get someone who is (a) non-political and (b) knowledgeable. Any moral problems with hereditary titles should be thrown out the window, as we are not talking about real “power” here.

But, as you rightly point out, there are still many problems with the hereditary principle for peer selection. In reply to the ones you identified:

People from the same family line are not necessarily competent.
I would say that if they know from birth that this is to be their role, then they have plenty of time to pick up the necessary skills.

People may not want the job.
Certainly, which is why they are able to renounce the title.

As I see it, opposition to the hereditary principle normally comes from the “it’s not fair” line of thought. Sure it’s a bummer if you come out of the wrong womb, but hey, it’s not massive power we are dishing out here. And even if the very principle offends, I would say if it works, it works. So what?

Note that I am not defending the hereditary principle; I am saying that in this case it is the best method of selection, and so should be used. How “fair” it is should be irrelevant. On the other hand, if there is an equally effective method that avoids this principle, then even better. The problem is, the other proposed methods are certainly not equal.

James (no Sir there really!)

::sees Embra’s political antennae sweeping by::

Jeez, mind those things, will you? That one nearly had my eye out.

37

The Lords as the revising house is a 19th Century modification; originally they were the stronger house, introducing and passing laws to which the Commons consented back in Wars of the Roses days. The shift came when the Commons asserted their right to originate and levy taxes in a way such that if they didn’t get the laws they wanted, they wouldn’t give the King the taxes he wanted.

With regard to my early comment on hereditary peerages, all I was trying to say is that while typically a hereditary peer might be a nonentity, uninterested in government and tending to be a cipher politically, there is some excellent evidence in British history and elsewhere for the recurrence of the sort of shrewdness and leadership skills that make effective members of government on a biologically hereditary basis. (Another example: Sir Winston Churchill was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, radical 19th Century Tory and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and descended from John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, political and military leader under William III and Anne.) To have persons of this caliber entitled to access voice and vote in government forestalls their having to make their way up through the bureaucracy to a position where they can be effective, since they’re already there. Giving the country the benefit of 20 years or so more of their skills. The ones who are not so skilled will in general stick to their hunting, horseracing, and other aristocratic activities, not sit in the Lords on a day-to-day basis (which would bore them silly).

Finally, Sir James, insofar as the family tradition that our family originated as wrong-side-of-the-sheet byblows of the Plantagenets may have any merit, I’d be happy to ennoble you. That and a fifty-pence piece will get you a good cup of coffee, but I can at least offer. :wink:

38

I guess it’s too much trouble to hie over to http://www.parliament.uk and read what the government actually says about its plans, etc.

39

Not entirely true. The Lords has pretty much always been primarily a ‘revising’ chamber, as there was never any point from the fourteenth century onwards when the Commons did not do the bulk of the legislative work in preparing most bills. Of course, the Lords did have the power to introduce bills, but that is a power which it continues to exercise no less frequently than it ever did in the past. The more significant shift was rather the almost complete removal of its powers of veto, a process which occured during the twentieth century. Moreover, this did not coincide with any real shift in the powers to levy taxation. Several centuries prior to either the nineteenth or twentieth centuries the Lords had already recognised that taxation bills ought to originate from the Commons and that (with one or two minor exceptions) it did not have the right to amend them. Its theoretical powers of veto over money bills was never exercised, which was why its attempt to do so in 1909 caused such a fuss. The Crown’s recognition that taxation could only be levied with Parliament’s approval (a process which also long pre-dated the nineteenth century) largely occured after the Lords had conceded that taxation bills were primarily a matter for the Commons. One should not make the mistake of confusing the collective political power of the peerage merely with the rights of the House of Lords.