Note: This article was originally published over on this blog’s Subscribestar page and was originally for subscribers only when it was published several months ago. However, enough time has elapsed to give any subscribers first bite at this particular written cherry so I am republishing it here. It is also being republished here and at this time as I’ve been having some interesting conversations on the Gab platform about the current shortcomings of the House of Lords after its ‘reform’ by the Blair government and I believe that this piece would add to this ongoing conversation.

A Radical Suggestion For House of Lords Reform 

INTRODUCTION

Britain’s Parliament, which sits in the Palace of Westminster, is a bicameral one. This means that the Parliament consists of two chambers, a lower house, the House of Commons which is broadly similar to the US House of Representatives and an upper house, similar but not the same as the US Senate, but with extremely limited powers when compared to the US Senate. Like a lot of other upper houses, the UK House of Lords is not directly elected but is mostly appointed, with the very British difference in that there are 92 (90 + 2 who hold special position, see 1999 Act) hereditary peers who are entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

The House of Lords is a deliberative chamber, where legislation that may have been made in haste or to satisfy some sensible or unhinged animus on the part of the general public or the media, for example the less than well thought out bills can be debated in a less party political environment. Despite the House of Lords having less power than it once did, thanks to the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts that put into law the primacy of the House of Commons and reduced the ability of the Lords to block bills sent there by the Commons, the Lords is a valuable asset to British politics as members can think, voice and debate free from electoral concerns.

It is no coincidence that in Britain it has been in the Lords and not the House of Commons that contentious issues that no elected politician would pick up have been openly debated. To give a few examples: Viscount Stockton’s speech on monetary policy to the Lords at the height of Thatcherism in 1985, Lord Pearson’s contributions on the subjects of Brexit and on Islamic Rape Gangs and Baroness Cox’s criticisms of Sharia Law marriages as well as her contributions on the subject of the ongoing scandal of Islamic Rape Gangs that continue to scar and mar Britain’s towns and cities, these are examples of the House of Lords at its best. Hereditary peers like Viscount Stockton and Life Peers such as Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox are able to bring to the debate lifetimes of knowledge and experience and can do so in an environment where they are not subject to the fickleness of the ballot box or the sometimes authoritarian control of the party whip.

I’m afraid that despite the House of Commons being the elected house and the Lords being the appointed / hereditary house, it is in the Lords where the most free thinking and bold speakers are to be found.

Of course, the House of Lords is not perfect, far from it. In any event any legislative chamber whether appointed, hereditary or elected will have problems. The Israeli Knesset, which is a unicameral parliament, is often a seething, shifting mess of coalitions and alliances, due to the highly proportional electoral system there, and it is the perfect example of an imperfect but functioning governing house.

My observation of the House of Lords has increasingly brought me to the view that although the Lords has been an impediment in the past for reforming governments, for example with the Reform Acts of the 19th century and their obstruction of the proto-welfare state in the early 20th century, reform to it in the past has helped to make it a better chamber. I speak here of the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts and the Life Peers Act of 1958. The 1911 and 1949 Acts made the Lords into a proper revising chamber and the Life Peers Act brought into the House a lot of new blood from fields outside of politics who were experts in business, the arts, faith and medicine as well as those with particular societal interests to name but a few. The problem, as I see it, is that some of the changes that have been made to it in recent decades and the nature of those who have been appointed to the House of Lords, have made things worse, not better.

In my view, the biggest damage to the reputation and effectiveness of the House of Lords can be traced back, as with so many other problems in British life, to the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of 1997 to 2010. In 1999, the Blair government purged the House of Lords of all but 90 of the hereditary peers and I consider this robbed the chamber of a great number of people who might have spoken up against central government excesses or who were independent of mind.

Those who spoke against turning the Lords from what it was, a mixture of those who by dint of birth were in the Lords and Life Peers with specialist knowledge and skills, into a chamber of government and opposition appointed cronies have sadly been proven to be correct. Despite the existence of some very good working peers such as the likes of Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson as mentioned above, taking away those who were there by a large degree of random chance of birth has impoverished the chamber in my view. What Blair’s government created was a sort of Frankenstein monster of a chamber which is nearly completely made up of appointees, including some who were ennobled merely for donating to political parties or those like Baroness Chakrabati, ennobled for crawling up the backside of the Opposition party leader. The current House of Lords although it contains a lot of free thinkers, doesn’t contain as many of such thinkers as it should, because of Blair’s reforms.

To those who argue against having any hereditary principle in government I say this: I have little problem with the hereditary principle in general, provided that it is secondary in power to those who are elected and this is what the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts and the 1958 Life Peers Act achieved. The 1911 and 1949 Acts put the Lords on a secondary footing and the 1958 Act diluted the influence of the hereditary peers by bringing in Life Peers. Our own monarchy is hereditary but the powers that the monarch has are wielded mostly by the elected House of Commons. The hereditary peers in the Lords, following the bringing in of the Acts mentioned above prior to the 1999 Act, occupied a similar place to the monarch themselves, in that they could advise and persuade and also amend legislation, but not block completely the will of the people as expressed in the elected House of Commons.

On Reform of the House of Lords 

In my opinion, Tony Blair created a bit of a mess with regards to the House of Lords and the question for me is how to repair the damage that he did, to make it much more of an efficient revising and debating chamber filled with independent people with minds less dominated by party political concerns? Blair’s ‘reforms’ of the Lords created something that is neither fish nor fowl, a neither wholly appointed chamber nor one with the randomness that the hereditary system had. Reform of the Lords is in my view necessary but I disagree with those who believe that it should be an elected chamber, a wholly appointed chamber or a wholly hereditary chamber.

I know that my position on not wanting an elected House of Lords will cause howls of indignation from both Left and Right and there will be those who will excoriate me for rejecting the concept of an elected Upper House. But, my position is based on solid ground and primarily on the potential problem of legislative gridlock, something that is highly likely to happen should the House of Lords be elected.

Here’s how this legislative gridlock could occur. Imagine for example that you have an elected House of Lords with the same or similar power to what it has now, something very likely, as it is not going to be the case that the Commons will give up power to an elected Upper House. Party ‘A’ holds the majority in the Commons and Party ‘B’ holds a majority in the elected Upper House. This is a recipe for gridlock with the Upper House deliberately blocking, or holding up via vexatious amendments, Commons legislation. These delays would not be brought about by the Upper House engaging in proper debate about the legislation referred to it, but on base party political grounds. Party ‘B’ would, in order to spite Party ‘A’ make mischief and it would be a case of vice versa should the make up of the chambers be reversed.

We’ve seen this happen before in the United States where you have a President from Party A, who cannot fulfill any election promises because either the Senate or the House of Representatives is dominated by Party ‘B’. You can even get the situation where Party A holds the House whilst the Senate is held by Party ‘B’. As much as I admire the way that the founders of the United States drafted their constitution, it does and can fall prey to legislative gridlock of this sort. Whilst I grant that mid term elections for the House and the Senate can provide a way out of this impasse, not only can these mid term elections make the situation worse, but they would be difficult if not impossible to import and superimpose on Britain’s system. This is because Britain is a nation where there are General Elections every five years and the only mid term elections are to fill seats that have been vacated by MP’s due to death or an MP resigning by ‘taking the office of the Chiltern Hundreds or the Manor of Northstead’ (MP’ are not technically allowed to resign but they can be appointed to Crown offices with profit that prohibit membership of the Commons).

Can you imagine the complete mess Britain would be in politically if for example the Tories held the Commons and Labour held the Lords or vice versa? Not only would it make the business of government more difficult, it would also ensure that one house was constantly at the throats of the other, if the Houses were held by opposing parties and would be a route to tyranny should both houses be held by the same party.

A proposal for reform

So, if there are sound reasons for not wanting or desiring an elected House of Lords then what can be done? It’s obvious that some reform of the House of Lords is required but what? My own belief is that in order to get the reform that is needed, some or all of the damage done by Tony Blair in his 1999 Act needs to be repaired. This repair could be done by way of a two pronged attack on the 1999 Act. The 1999 Act would need to be repealed by the Commons and there would then be a need to negotiate with the Lords for an increase in the number of hereditary peers and a reduction in the number of Life Peers. I believe that you could increase the number of hereditary peers to 160 and reduce the number of Life Peers to 200 – 250. There are certain categories of Life Peers who I believe that the House of Lords and the country could do without and who have been ennobled not because they are experts in their field for example like Lord Winston, but because they have been big donors to political parties.

The ability of political leaders to ennoble big party donors is a major corrupting influence in British politics and there are a lot of people who have been ennobled either because they’ve dished out dosh to parties or because they are friendly with political leaders. Getting rid of these peers would remove not just those who have been ennobled for questionable reasons but would also help to slim down the House of Lords to a more manageable size, at 797 the Lords is just too big. Those removed from the Lords by such a measure should be able to keep their titles but not sit in the Lords or vote in divisions.

Slimming the House of Lords down would make it more efficient and removing the right of politicians in the Commons to appoint their friends and donors to the Lords would help to make British politics more clean. I believe that people should still be elevated to the Lords for their achievements in life or because they have worthwhile specialist knowledge that would be of benefit to the House and the nation as a whole, however the sleaze associated with elevating party donors is something that the UK Parliament could do without.

I would, of course, not want to get rid of hard working Life Peers who are not associated with sleaze and party political donations. There would need to be some form of Lords Commission set up in order to remove those people from the House who are tainted by sleaze or are there only because of donations. This commission would of course need to be made up of Peers and non-peers who are not tainted with being involved in political donations.

So, you rid the House of Lords of all or most of those who have been ennobled due to party donation reasons. Those elevated due to this sort of sleaze would no longer have any input into the legislative process. If 250 Life Peers are retained and they sit with 160 hereditary Peers then this gives us a slimmed down House of Lords but still one with is broadly appointed and hereditary. The question then arises how to make this new reformed House of Lords more representative of the people but without creating a situation where both chambers are elected and therefore in competition with one another?

It’s a big question but I believe that I have at least part of an answer and that is to institute an element of randomness into those who sit in the reformed House of Lords. Bringing in those who have no axe to grind, no specific party political loyalties and no birthright reason to be in the House of Lords could create a welcome amount of creative randomness that would balance the possible conservativism of the hereditary Peers and the possible political animalism of the appointees.

How to bring about creative randomness to a reformed House of Lords. 

My suggestion is pretty radical but also one that has its roots in British culture. This would be to appoint to the House of Lords people randomly selected from the Electoral Register to sit for a period of ten years. This would be very similar to how Britons are selected for criminal trial juries and may well invigorate not just the House of Lords but British politics as a whole. Although radical, it would come from the same point in British culture as using juries to judge those accused of crimes.

I’ve been giving some thought to how this system might work. Firstly it would require the creation of a new class of peer to occupy this new position. This would not be revolutionary as there is precedent for this in the creation of Life Peers via the 1958 Life Peerages Act. I would suggest that those who occupy this new class of Peerage be called ‘Thanes’. This would fit in well with British history as traditionally in Anglo-Saxon times a Thane was a class of aristocrat who was not as high as an Earl but not a mere freeman but would be somewhere in between. In the context of a reformed House of Lords, a Thane would sit as a temporary member of the Lords but with full rights to debate and vote for the entire ten year period of their office. They would get the same daily allowance as other peers who turn up and their job would be to represent the people of the county that they’ve been picked at random from and to follow their consciences.

I would base their selection on historic counties or areas of the UK that are referred to and act as counties. There are 109 areas considered as counties in the UK so giving each county 2 members to be sent to the House of Lords would give us 218 Thanes. Therefore a House of Lords reformed by this method would contain 160 hereditary Peers, 250 Life Peers and 218 Thanes, a total of 628. This would make the reformed House of Lords smaller than its current 797 and not that far short of the numbers in the House of Commons which is 650. In this type of set up, the hereditary peers would be outnumbered by the appointed Life Peers and a combination of the Thanes and some hereditary peers could, if necessary outnumber the Life Peers. Taking some inspiration from the US Electoral College concept, it might even be possible to give rural areas, who currently suffer under the current political system where the interests of those in such areas can be stomped upon by those from the various large metropolises, extra Thanes to bring the number up to 250 to put the Thanes on an equal footing with the appointed Life Peers. This or some other variation of numbers could be used but should always, whilst giving a place for the hereditary peers and their creative randomness of mind, make them in a minority when compared to the Thanes and the Life Peers. This sort of reform of the House of Lords would in my view be a very British compromise solution to a very long lasting problem that the British constitution has, which is how to reconcile all the various interests that exist and represent them in the Parliament? This plan would allow the traditional landed gentry and those who have a sense of noblesse oblige to take part in the political system, would bring into government those who are not politicians but who are experts in or respected in their particular field whilst also including what could be termed the ‘vox populi’.

Some people may look aghast at the idea of picking randoms to take a part in the legislature but we allow randoms to decide whether or not someone is guilty of a serious crime so why not allow randoms to take some part in deciding Britain’s laws? Is it any worse than the situation that we have in the House of Commons at present where candidates can promise this that or the other to voters, only to crap on these voters from a great height once elected?

I think that British politics would be greatly improved by bringing in more people who are not professional politicians, all too often those who take the Oxbridge PPE, researcher, councillor, MP, Cabinet Minister route are not as connected to the views of the populace as much as they should be. Whilst I have little issue with ennobling former Prime Ministers and putting them in the Lords where they can continue to bring to debates their significant and wide experience, an upper house made up of too many ex-senior politicians would be too unbalanced. To make tasty leavened bread requires yeast and in my view a new category of Lords members, the Thanes, could be the yeast needed to make the Lords a much more dynamic and effective place. It would not take any legitimacy away from the Commons, the legitimacy of the Commons comes from the electorate, but bringing in ordinary people who may not have thought to seek elected office may give a whole lot more legitimacy to a reformed House of Lords. It may even help to make and keep the Commons more honest?

Some details on this proposal

Picking the randoms to serve in the House of Lords as Thanes would have to be on a similar, although not exactly the same basis as people are picked to serve on juries. The age profile I believe should be slightly higher than that of jury selection on the grounds that you would need to pick people with some sort of life experience, but not those who are so old as to be unable to properly contribute to proceedings. My suggestion would be that those picked to be Thanes and serve a ten year period would be at the lower end, 25 whilst at the upper end 75. Deaths, resignations or exclusions because the Thane committed a serious crime would result in the Thane being replaced by random selection from the voters register and who would serve the full ten year term. Therefore if a Thane died or resigned or was excluded five years into their term then the replacement would serve the full ten years.

There should be some method that would allow people to refuse to serve or decline to serve in a similar way to there is with juries, such as those with tiny children or who have serious disabilities or who are in control of businesses that require daily management, but as the Thane would be given £300 per day, the current attendance allowance rate for the Lords and accommodation whilst attending the Lords in London, this should alleviate worries that those picked may have about lost income. This allowance should prevent a situation where the Thanes, unlike those who serve on juries, are all too often made up primarily of the unemployed, those in public sector jobs, or the retired or those on independent incomes. Parliament needs to attract people who do ordinary jobs in a diversity of places in the UK. There are already more than enough lawyers in Parliament in the Commons and in the Lords and I believe that an injection of engineers, care workers, cleaners, factory workers, motor mechanics, admin workers, salespersons, agricultural workers and those who just want to give something back to society, may be beneficial, not just to the workings and culture of Parliament itself but also for the nation as a whole.

Conclusion

The UK Upper House, like nearly all Upper Houses in bicameral legislatures does have less power than the elected Lower House, which is as it should be. But there is a need to temper the desires of the elected house with a secondary deliberative stage in the Upper House. Election of the Upper House would inevitably cause friction between the Lords and the Commons and even legislative deadlock and would equally inevitably attract those who are hungry for political power. Electing the House of Lords would only replicate many of the problems that are woefully obvious with the House of Commons. An elected Lords would be filled in next to no time with lawyers, grifters and others who want to enter it in order to exercise political power over others. The Upper House should be full, or at least have a large complement of those with few party political axes to grind.

Electing the House of Lords will not remove those who are hungry for political power, it will only give such people another opportunity to gain power. A similar argument can be made both for having a wholly appointed or wholly hereditary Upper House. It will end up filled with those who are advanced by politicians in the Commons for their own ends if wholly appointed and if wholly hereditary it will become either moribund as it was threatening to be prior to the 1958 Life Peerages Act or will be, as happened during the political arguments over the 19th century Reform Acts, a chamber of extreme reaction. What is needed is a mix. A mix that recognises that there has historically been a hereditary aspect to government but which keeps this contingent subservient to those groups that are either appointed or chosen via lot.

The introduction of an element of randomness to those who serve in the Lords would also help to keep under control those who are appointed and those who are either there by birthright and who have been appointed can do the same for those who are chosen by random selection. Such a reformed chamber of the Lords would, in my view, be a very British compromise and could end up functioning in a similar way to how the US Supreme Court functions, in that it would be independent of the immediate electoral political process. Although a House of Lords reformed in this manner would not be a court, it would be somewhat outside the electoral and political process in a similar way to how the US Supreme Court is an island of permanence amid a sea of often boiling political arguments. A House of Lords that was reformed in the manner that I am suggesting could guard not just the British constitution from those elected politicians who wish to become autocrats but may also be very effective in guarding the rights of individual Britons.

I would like to end this piece by saying a profound thank you to those supporters who are reading and have read this piece. I do not expect my arguments for a partially hereditary, partially appointed and partially random House of Lords to be favoured by those who believe in absolute democracy every time, but sometimes absolute democracy may not be the best thing to protect either a constitution nor the rights of the average British subject. I’m not a revolutionary, as all too often revolutions end up consuming the nations that go through them, but evolution, which what my proposal represents, is something that I can easily support and recommend.