Reassessing the House of Lords: Why the Lords Should Remain Unelected

“As the House of Lords has existed for about six centuries without reform, some alterations have become necessary in order to bring it into conformity with the changed institutions by which it is surrounded.” – Lord Rosebery, 1884.1

Since Lord Rosebery’s well-known speech there has been much debate about changes in the composition of the House of Lords. Major reforms included the Life Peerages Act 1958 and later the House of Lords Act 1999, which reduced the hereditary members to 92.2 Nevertheless, constitutional experts such as Rodney Brazier argue that the House of Lords continues to be “unelected, unrepresentative and unaccountable.”3 The Coalition Government is therefore working on another reform bill to provide for a wholly or largely elected second chamber. This essay will argue that such a drastic change from a largely appointed to an elected system is too unrealistic to be implemented. Instead, the Government should seek to abolish Prime Ministerial patronage as well as the remaining hereditary members and adopt an independent Appointments Commission that appoints all the members of the upper chamber. To arrive at this conclusion, we will need to analyse which selection method best retains the Lords’ expertise, as well as their independence and representativeness. Then, a discussion follows whether the Lords necessarily ought to be democratically elected to provide a legitimate chamber. Lastly, the possibility of a mixed chamber will be considered.

The House of Lords is commonly referred to as the ‘revising chamber’ in Parliament as its principal role is to serve as a check on the Government by amending drafted bills.4 Without the scrutiny of the House of Lords there would not be any “counterweight against elective dictatorship”, because the House of Commons could otherwise easily pass their bills.5 Would this vital function be preserved in both elected and appointed chambers?

A wholly or largely elected upper chamber would pose several problems in regards to the Lords’ expertise. At the moment, the upper chamber is comprised of experts in their fields leading to high quality debates, if not higher than in the Commons. A comparison with other upper chambers abroad proves: no other second chamber achieves a similar reputation as an intellectual powerhouse as the House of Lords.6 This is because many members of the House of Lords are specifically appointed because of their experience and personal distinction. In an elected system, however, it would be difficult to imagine how such a wealth of knowledge could be retained. Most likely, only politically active people would be running for election. This is due to the fact that elections involve much media attention which could deter those who might have been chosen by a ‘publicity free’ Appointments Commission. It is true that the House of Lords needs political experts in order to comprehend the workings of Parliament but too much of a political bias might limit the intellectual resources of the House.

Of course, the current system is not flawless either. A striking drawback is that the vast majority of the Lords are elderly, which on the one hand underlines their experience, but on the other hand this hints to the fact that they might not be familiar with the recent developments of their professions.7 Furthermore, Prime Ministerial patronage involves much bias as members are chosen depending on the ruling Prime Minister. This makes the appointment system quite arbitrary. The current House of Lords Appointments Commission is too weak to make much of a difference. However, an independent Appointments Commission could tackle this problem by specifically targeting senior experts as well as politically accomplished persons and highly-promising newcomers in various fields. That way, much of the existing expertise would be preserved while at the same time adding ‘new’ knowledge to the chamber.

Another factor which determines the Lords’ excellent working performance is their ability (as far as human nature allows) to think independently. Many life peers do not currently confess to any political party. This allows them to have a more unbiased approach to legislation than Members of Parliament who are under constant pressure of their party whip. Yet, society will put an election of the House of Lords on a level with the many other political elections. As a result, chances are high that people will simply vote for ‘another politician’ than for somebody who does not belong to any party at all but who might have been the right candidate. This is strengthened by the fact that politicians usually possess the ability to sell themselves in public, whereas others may seem intimidated in comparison. When a politician is elected as a Lord, partisan pressure would lead to the newly-elected Lord not to be neutral and, therefore, not to debate without bias.8 Such findings speak against an elected upper chamber.

In addition, people may not consciously vote for whoever is most qualified for the upper chamber. Political scientist Bogdanor argues that the results would rather reflect the performance of the ruling government.9 Hence, even if the elections happen at a different time than those of the House of Commons, people might understand this opportunity as some kind of ‘mid-term opinion’ of the performance of the Government and vote accordingly.10 This would completely undermine the value of the result. As people associate the House of Lords with the entire Government, such a situation would be difficult to circumvent. This further proves the advantage of leaving the House as an appointed chamber because elections would clearly not take place.

At present, critics argue that the House of Lords does not reflect British society of the 21^st century. Former Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Martin Lindsay correctly pointed out the personal background of the Lords is too homogenous: it would be unlikely to see a manual worker represented in the House of Lords.11 Although this was probably an exaggerated analogy, Lindsay touched upon a very important point: lack of societal representativeness.

An elected chamber would unfortunately not improve this. For, if we continue our analysis that people are likely to elect high-calibre politicians for positions in the House of Lords, the picture we would get would not be too different to our current Government: white, middle-aged men, who enjoyed an above average education.12 While we could not force the electorate to vote for a more representative chamber, an independent Appointments Commission could ensure an equal number of women, ethnic minorities and churches to be represented in the House of Lords.

As professor Dawn Oliver constitutes, this would:

“enhance the capacity of the reformed second chamber to be a forum for public participation...in the development of policy and holding government to account.”13

We need to realise that we no longer live in a secluded society but in one which requires us to embrace multiculturalism. Thus, an appointed chamber would be more representative since it would incorporate larger sections of society resulting in fairer decision making.

On the contrary, the missing democratic element is likely to be the strongest argument against an appointed chamber. Democratic instinct tells us that any part of the Government, above all Parliament, should be democratically elected without any external influence. Thus, no matter how high the quality of the debates or how representative the Lords may be, the upper chamber is automatically deemed undemocratic as it is not chosen by the electorate. Is it not a paradox to have an unelected chamber dismissing legislation by an elected House of Commons and declaring the bill undemocratic? This was, for instance, the case when the House of Lords rejected a bill to cancel the Great London Council elections in 1984.14

The Guardian journalist Martin Kettle gets to the point: “In a democracy, those who make the laws should be chosen and removed by the people...so the Lords should be elected.”15 However, Kettle should not forget that elections actually require the electorate to vote – otherwise an elected system would not make much sense. With already numerous local, national and European elections we start to recognise a falling interest in politics among people, a common sign of ‘voter fatigue’.16 In fact, voting turnouts have never been as low as this decade since the Second World War, with the 2001 general elections hitting a record low of 59, 4 per cent.17 It can therefore be argued that turnouts for another election do not seem promising.