While the byelections for the Conservative and crossbench seats are hard-fought and competitive, the pool of potential Labour-supporting aristocrats is desperately small. Lord Hacking, who lost his seat in , has repeatedly attempted to return to the House of Lords as a crossbencher over the past two decades. I was the first person in living memory to walk across the floor of the house in the House of Lords. The election, in which every member of the Lords has the right to vote, is not a totally foregone conclusion, as Hacking first has to see off two challengers.
The other is Anthony Biddulph, 5th Baron Biddulph, a former interior designer and perennial candidate who is running for the Labour-allocated seat as a Conservative. Although there is some embarrassment in Labour circles about the continued existence of hereditary peers, and while the party is not commenting on the process, the view is that it would be failing in its duty if it did not take the chance to secure another Labour-supporting vote that could prove key if it comes to crunch votes on legislation.
The last time a byelection for a Labour hereditary peer arose was earlier this summer, when the successful — and only — candidate was the 3rd Viscount Stansgate, better known as Stephen Benn. When a hereditary peer retires or dies, an internal by-election is held, with eligible candidates being drawn from those listed in the Register of Hereditary Peers. The House of Lords Act of removed all but 92 hereditaries, then numbering , breaking a year-old right for all peers to sit on and vote from the red benches.
The remaining 92 were elected by all the previous hereditary peers in the House grouped by party affiliation — 42 Conservatives, 28 Crossbenchers, three Lib Dems, two Labour and 17 others. These numbers are set — when one Conservative resigns, a new Conservative is elected. The decision to retain 92 hereditary peers was a forced compromise from then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, in his planned House of Lords reforms, had sought to remove all of them but was forced to back down following opposition from the Lords themselves, instead agreeing to let a small number remain as a temporary measure ahead of further reform later in the parliament.
Hereditary peers have just as much power as the other members of the upper chamber, the 26 Lords Spiritual and almost appointed life peers. Today, the chamber acts as a revising body that examines non-financial bills, investigates public policy, and scrutinises the government in power. The House of Lords remains an undemocratic body, where un-elected lawmakers take part in political decision-making without democratic accountability or representation.
Life peers, undemocratic as they are, are at least appointed by the prime minister, who commands a majority in the commons, if not the nation. Occasionally, peers are appointed on the basis of their expertise, although political affiliation can often be the main factor.
But hereditary peers are effectively appointed by each other, chosen from a pool of individuals who claim a title by mere inheritance. Which in most cases relates to historic deeds or relationships of their long-dead ancestors. As Cunninghame Graham said. Why therefore, our laws to an hereditary legislator, merely because he has taken the trouble to be born, and is the presumed son of his father? Lack of representation is the central problem. Hereditary peers — even more than non-hereditary ones — are a clear sign that the decisions of those in the upper chamber have no democratic legitimacy nor accountability.
There have always been large numbers of amendments made to government bills in the chamber, which can run into thousands per year. But most of these are government amendments, which may result from poorly drafted legislation, or respond to points made when the bill was in the House of Commons, as well as to debates in the House of Lords.
Numbers of amendments alone therefore do not tell us very much. In recent years there have been large numbers of such defeats, and this figure appears to be rising. In the session that ended in early November this year, there were 62 government defeats. In the previous long post-election session in —02 there were 56, and in the —98 session there were In total there have been over government defeats in the chamber since it was reformed in Figure 3: Government defeats in the House of Lords, — Figure 3 shows the number of defeats in the chamber in each session since You can see a rise after , and particularly after However, this could be interpreted, as it is by some Labour ministers, as simply demonstrating that the House of Lords is more hostile to Labour governments.
As you can see, the level of defeats was consistently low during the Conservative years —97—averaging 13 per year—but was exceptionally high during the —79 Labour government, reaching a peak of in its second parliamentary session alone.
But although the Lords undoubtedly made life more difficult for Labour governments in the past, I think that we are now seeing a different pattern. If the Conservatives were in government, Labour and the Liberal Democrats would almost certainly combine to defeat them in the Lords, so we would not see a return to the formerly quiet times.
However, this cannot be definitively shown until we have a Conservative government. The number of defeats the government suffers therefore gives some indication of greater assertiveness on the part of the Lords, but is not on its own conclusive proof that the chamber has changed.
Another measure that may provide greater evidence is the extent to which the House of Lords is prepared to insist on its amendments. In this case the bill shuttles back and forth between the chambers until they either agree, or the bill is dropped, or occasionally the government uses its power to bring the bill back in the following session and pass it without the support of the House of Lords.
In two cases it insisted once, and then backed down. In one case it insisted twice, and in the last case it insisted three times—meaning that the bill shuttled back and forth three times before the matter was resolved. This was an increase on the record under the previous Labour government, when over the whole period —70, the Lords had only insisted once on an amendment.
In the —05 parliament there were insistences on 17 bills. In most cases there was just one insistence before either the Lords backed down or some kind of compromise was reached. In three cases there were two rounds of insistence. This seems a sure sign that the Lords are prepared to throw away the caution that guided them in the past, and stick to their ground when they believe that the government is wrong.
They may give in, ultimately, but in the meantime the government faces delay and public exposure on the issues which cause the Lords concern. These are, as I already suggested, imperfect measures. Counting defeats, or counting insistences by the second chamber does not capture the extent to which the government alters its policy in response to the pressure from the House of Lords. There is no need for the chamber to insist if the government accepts its amendments following a defeat. A great deal of this goes on and it is very difficult to measure.
There is no need for peers to propose amendments at all, if the government seeks to pre-empt their views by putting legislation before the house which is likely to be acceptable. One interesting development in recent years is the extent to which the government is prepared to consult with the Liberal Democrats—who as I say now hold the balance of power in the House of Lords—over key policy proposals.
For example when planning its anti-terrorism legislation in the Liberal Democrats were invited to the negotiating table on the same basis as the Conservatives—a clear recognition of the fact that assent by one or other party is generally required to get a bill through the Lords.
In the end, incidentally, it was the Conservatives that were persuaded to support the government on this occasion whilst the Liberal Democrats remained opposed. Another interesting shift that we have seen recently is a new kind of joint working between members of the Commons and the Lords. On one occasion earlier this year—on a bill seeking to outlaw religious hatred—the Lords made significant amendments, which the government sought to overturn when the bill returned to the House of Commons.
But there was much public concern about the bill, and rather than back the government the Commons chose to back the Lords amendments, and the government found itself defeated, as numerous Labour MPs rebelled. On other occasions rebellions during the Commons stages have sent a warning, which has been picked up in the Lords and the legislation changed, with the government choosing to concede rather than face a further Commons rebellion.
Several times now Labour dissidents have publicly called upon the Lords to block or amend bills, and clearly much clandestine lobbying also goes on behind the scenes. As a result it seems to be not only the Lords that is strengthening, and certainly not the Lords versus the Commons, but parliament as a whole with respect to the executive.
All of these things seem to provide pretty clear indications that the House of Lords is both feeling more confident, and acting more assertively, following its reform. If one further piece of evidence is needed it can be found in the response of the government. This reflected growing concerns that the current conventions are breaking down, and is an indication of how the traditional restraint exercised by the House of Lords is seen to be declining, in respect both of primary and secondary legislation.
This is what the committee was asked to look at but, after having taken much interesting evidence, it offered the government little comfort when it reported early last month. It suggested that it would be difficult to codify the current conventions, and that these would be bound to change in any case if the composition of the chamber were further reformed. Prospects for future reform. This leads me to briefly reflect on what these developments suggest for future reform of the House of Lords, before turning to some more general conclusions.
As I said at the start, the government initially promised a two-stage reform, and the norm in the UK is to see House of Lords reform as unfinished business. So much is its current state considered merely temporary, that few bother to look at how the Lords is actually operating. However, we in Britain have a long history of temporary solutions that somehow stick. The reforms in , and were all considered shot-term fixes, to be followed by longer-term solutions when the players could reach agreement and parliamentary time could be found.
There is every indication that the reform will prove to be the same. There are many in the Labour Party who remain committed to Lords reform. However, they remain committed to it for very different reasons. To some extent this diversity of view with respect to how many checks a second chamber should put on government has always existed in the Labour Party.
But more than ever it is now appreciated that the objectives of democratising the Lords and weakening it are fundamentally incompatible. If one seemingly minor compositional change—the long overdue removal of the hereditary peers—results in a chamber which is this much more assertive, there are major concerns in some quarters about the power that would be unleashed by creating an elected chamber. The government is internally divided, and it has been unable to come up with a set of proposals that can secure sufficient support.
In the House of Commons voted on a variety of options for the composition of a second chamber and all of them—ranging from all-elected to all-appointed and five options in between—were rejected by the house.
Since we have had a Royal Commission, two joint committee reports, and we are rumoured to be about to get our fourth government white paper on Lords reform. But I suspect this will go the same way as all the other proposals. In fact the rumours are that the government wants to square the circle by proposing a half elected half appointed chamber—which rather than being welcomed as a compromise is simply likely to be rejected by all sides. So the Lords composition remains controversial. Whilst the Lords has the support of the public for its policy interventions this would be a very risky and controversial step, and it would be strongly resisted by the Lords itself.
Probably the likeliest reform is a further minor one, to tidy up the appointments process, reducing the patronage of the prime minister and giving more power to the independent commission which was established in to oversee appointments. There is growing pressure for this given recent controversies about seats for party donors.
However, even this step is seen by some as dangerous as it will further increase the legitimacy of the chamber, and once again its strength. The first is, as the title of this talk suggested, that a little reform can go a long way.
Despite the seemingly minor—many would say inadequate—nature of the change to the House of Lords in , power relations have shifted significantly as a result. Reform can have unintended consequences, and those consequences can be bigger than you might expect.
We do have prior experience of this in Britain—to some extent the same could be said of the reform which introduced life peers. This was seen as a short-term fix, but lasted 40 years and in many ways reinvigorated the House, certainly saving it from terminal decline.
Here there are clearly parallels with the introduction of PR for the Australian Senate. The second big conclusion is about the shape of British politics. We clearly offer the definitive Westminster system, with a strong executive sustained by a single-party majority in the House of Commons, and able between elections to legislate relatively freely—simply facing the wrath of the electors next time round if the wrong decisions are taken.
If this ever was true, it may well have been ended by this seemingly minor reform to the Lords. Because of the unelected basis of the Lords, and its lesser powers compared to the Commons, it does remain clearly the junior partner. The shift in party power relations is not as stark as it would be if we moved, as many have proposed, to a system of proportional representation for the Commons. Indeed what we are left with is something like what you have experienced in recent decades—a compromise between majoritarian and consensus politics.
0コメント