House of Lords Reform

The Parliament Acts have castrated the powers of the House of Lords. The Upper House can no longer delay finance bills and has limited powers to delay other bills. It is a revising chamber and whilst a bill may start its parliamentary journey in the House of Lords nevertheless the House of Commons has the final word.

The Commons is wholly elected, the Lords a mixture of the rump of hereditary peers, life peers plus a few bishops reflecting that the Church of England is a state church. 

The House of Lords was until  recently the highest court of appeal in legal cases.  However cases were heard by a committee comprised of judges known as Lords of Appeal.  No other peers could wander in and take part in a hearing.  An anomaly was the Lord Chancellor who could hear cases with Lords of Appeal, sat on the Woolsack as the 'speaker' of the Upper House and was a member of the government with a place in the cabinet.   The Lord Chancellor thus straddled the judiciary, the legislature and the executive. 

The key to the success of the House of Lords is its ability to understand the ramifications of proposed legislation from a position of expertise in the field covered by legislation in a way politicians in the Commons are unable to do.  As the Commons is filled more and more by professional politicians with little experience of the 'real' world it is imperative that proposed legislation is scrutinised by those with experience - not to stop the legislation, rather to propose changes which will make the legislation workable.  For such a role it was imperative to have life peers rather than rely on hereditary peers.  For this reason the move to reduce the number of hereditary peers and eventually dispense with them was essential.

My fear is that by having a wholly elected upper house the essential elements of expertise and experience will be lost, to be replaced by political place-men lacking the skills required for a revising chamber.

Some people promote the idea of a wholly elected upper house on the basis that that is what exists in other countries.  However, context is all important.  In the USA the Executive does not have seats in the House of Representatives, nor the Senate.  The President (and the staff he appoints) is the Executive.  In the UK members of the Executive sit in the Commons and the Lords.

Merely to tinker with the machinery of government in a limited way is not the way to travel, which should have been learned from  the devolution arrangements in the UK.

An elected upper chamber will soon become a threat to the supremacy of the House of Commons and threaten a political paralysis.