House of Lords – why?

In the debate over whether the House of Lords should be fully elected, fully appointed or somewhere in between, other options have been largely ignored. Do the Lords actually have any function at all other than providing party leaders with a handy way of rewarding services rendered, or hereditary peers passing the time pleasantly just because they happened to get born in one bed rather than another?

Advocates of a 'strong' upper house point to the role the Lords plays in providing an ameliorating effect on the excesses and stupidities of government legislation. This is a function which is already carried out by parliamentary committees. It may be argued that parliamentary committees are ineffectual in this role, but that is a reason to reform the parliamentary committee system, not to maintain a second house.

Nor is there any history of the Lords successfully obstructing any legislation that has been passed to it by the government for rubber stamping. They may provide an irritant from time to time but little else. When the upper house consisted of all the principal landowners in the country they obviously wielded a great deal of power irrespective of a seat in the Lords. That situation no longer applies.

Accepting that the hereditary element is to be abolished anyway, do any of the other mixes really stand up to scrutiny? Any element of appointment of peers by party leaders is inevitably going to be corrupt. Further, appointing a peer for life blocks up a place even when he or she has become senile or just disinterested.

Any elected element is presumably likely to be elected for a finite period of time. If the election process for the upper house is conducted at the same time as for MPs, the peers that are elected would exactly replicate the balance between the parties in the lower house. In which case a fully or majority elected upper house could be expected to accede to the instructions of the government of the day.

If the election for the upper house was held between parliamentary elections, bearing in mind the almost inevitable mid-term swing against the government of the day, it is likely that the upper house would then be in permanent opposition to the lower house and adopt the role of trouble makers. Albeit to little purpose as the lower house has all the power.

It would mean also incessant political campaigning. As this is expensive it would lead to further calls for the political parties to be maintained from the public purse. This route merely hands the existing parties a mandate for ever and would block the emergence of new political parties or the growth of existing small ones.

Bearing in mind the minimal and decreasing engagement of the electorate now in anything other than parliamentary elections and even those, it is highly likely that more elections still would lead to even greater apathy.

Furthermore, the amount of power exercised by the Westminster government is dwindling by the day, with the majority of laws now emanating from Brussels. It will shortly be nothing more than a glorified county council. Why in that case do we need a second chamber to scrutinise legislation, when the role of parliament is itself becoming nothing more than a rubber stamping body.

You could make out a case for a body independent of all party affiliation to comment on, and even suggest, legislation. You are still left though with the problem of how it is constituted and selected. One way would be to allow bodies such as the TUC, the universities or the CBI, to nominate an agreed number of delegates, drawn from their ranks. This would at least stand a chance of being composed of people other than superannuated party hacks or career politicians.

All in all, however, it would seem that the best option would be to abolish the upper house altogether. Many other countries have done just that without falling apart. It would have the added bonus of saving money and streamlining the legislative process.

My guess though is that irrespective of the commons vote it is in the interest of none of the party leaders to have anything other than an appointed House of Lords. They are unlikely to willingly give up such a convenient method or rewarding friends and favours at the public expense.