Conor Burns MP
The program of reform for the House of Lords that
is currently being pursued by the government is one which will
severely harm the ability of this Parliament to work effectively.
While reform is essential, it needs to create a house which will
complement, rather than compete with, the work of the Commons
in producing sound and robust laws. With this in mind these are
some of the objections that I have to the current government proposals
concerning reform of the Upper House.
Current proposals to create a new democratically
elected 'senate'- style second chamber will give the Lords a mandate
to challenge any of the work of the Commons. In the longer term
the political composition of the Lords may not necessarily reflect
the more fluent make-up of the Lower House. The natural conclusion
of this is the advent of behavioural issues between the houses,
and so it is with this in mind that I ask the committee to urgently
review the following points:
1. Problems created by election to the House
of Lords
The vision of an elected second House would undoubtedly
strengthen it to equal, if not surpass the legitimacy of the Commons.
Having been elected on a particular platform, new members of the
Upper House would then possess the democratic mandate to pursue
a particular ideological or issue-based agenda. This could not
only give them the potential to frustrate the program of the government
of the day, but lead to confrontation and political stalemate.
In addition the prospect of election could deter
otherwise experienced and professional candidates from trying
to become Members of this prestigious revising body. The current
House boasts a wealth of ex-cabinet members and key government
figures whose indispensable experience and unique insights enable
them to astutely revise and scrutinise legislation. Were election
to be a pre-requisite of office, there is little incentive for
members retiring from government or other public service duties
to stand in another election.
Moreover, the new provisions made for elected candidates
could discourage ex-MP's, civil servant and heads of business
and industry. If at least 80% of its members will have to stand
for election and they will be paid c. £60,000 per year over
a 15 year term, this will entail a likely income drop during the
highest earning years of their lives in addition to the expectation
that they will take on a full-time job for the next fifteen years.
As a result of this it is highly likely that many of the better
and more experienced candidates will be put off from applying.
Furthermore, election carries the risk of excluding
independent candidates if future members of the Upper House were
to seek the patronage of major parties to access the resources
needed to campaign for election. This could mean that membership
of the House of Lords could become inaccessible for independents
without great personal wealth, women and minorities who have so
far been typically better represented in the Lords than in the
Commons.
As well as this, by introducing the mechanism of
election the Deputy Prime Minister appears to imply that currently
the House of Lords is undemocratic. In fact, when it is examined,
Peers are appointed on the principle of double election, which
is currently used by the three main political parties. The Prime
Minister is not elected to run the country by the citizenry, but
rather by his party, and it is then the country who selects the
party. By this same principle, when the country elects the party,
the party appoints peers to the Other Place, representing the
wishes of the electorate through a transparent democratic process.
2. Problems in the changing function and powers
of the House of Lords
In spite of the Draft Bill stating that the functions
of the Upper House would remain the same, it is plainly inevitable
that with a new mandate and strengthened consent, the new House
would begin to challenge the Commons for supremacy and be entitled
to functions from which it had previously been excluded. For example,
the Bill does not consider the possibility that a Prime Minister
could be drawn from this new House of Lords, with added legitimacy
of proportional election and the further benefit of a 15 year
term.
Over time the House of Lords has constantly evolved
from a chamber which provided a check on the executive by its
power to reject legislation to one which can still act as a check
on the executive but does so through the detailed consideration
of legislation and its scrutiny of administrative decisions by
expert advice. The proposals in the Draft Bill are designed to
reverse this evolution as the addition of a democratic mandate
to the role of the new members will embolden them to reject legislation,
block policy and ultimately frustrate the program of government
in a way that previous reform of the house has intended to stop.
What's more, constituencies will interfere with the
current balance and work of the House since the idea of a representative
House of Lords is at odds with its function of revision and scrutiny
of legislation. If new members of the House are elected by constituencies
then the primary work of the new members will be to represent
their constituents by corresponding to them, taking up their cases
and spending time in their constituencies. This will then take
away vast quantities of valuable time from the new peers that
would otherwise be devoted to the revision and scrutiny of legislation.
The current proposals fail to take into account the
constitutional changes that will occur if the new House is given
more power though election. No consideration appears to have been
given to how it is that the relationship between the two Houses
will be altered if the second chamber is given powers which make
it more equal to the first chamber. There is no clear consideration
of how the status of the new chamber will be relevant to the current
conventions and statutes that govern the relationship between
the Lords and Commons. The Bill erroneously imagines them as final,
seemingly unaware that they rest on a series of assumptions in
the absence of anything as totemic as a written constitution giving
legitimacy to the Commons.
3. Problems with the term length in the new
House of Lords
The Draft Bill proposes that a single non-renewable
term of 15 years be the life-cycle of a working new member of
the House of Lords. This is a seriously flawed concept as the
idea of re-election is in place to make parliament more accountable,
following the assumption that an MP will want to be re-elected
and will thus work hard to represent their electorate before all
other business. The Draft Bill deters future members from representing
the people who elected them and indeed from working hard to review
legislation full-time as the reform states.
4. Problems with the electoral process of
the new House of Lords
The idea that voting in new members take place at
the same time as a general elections, under a different electoral
system, with staggered terms will lead to voter fatigue, confusion
and ultimately a House whose make-up does not reflect the position
of the Government , causing further behavioural issues. Holding
a vote for both members of the Lords and the Commons on the same
day, but using two different systems will undoubtedly cause confusion
among an electorate who have already rejected a different voting
system during this parliament.
Moreover in a parliament which had two houses that
have been elected using two separate forms of voting could not
be considered to function well. In fact, in spite of all of the
Commons best historical efforts to repeal powers from the Crown
and the Lords, this new legislation appears to offer them more
power as new members who are voted using the Single Transferrable
Vote System (STV) would logically be more democratically representative
than the Commons and therefore have supremacy and higher legitimacy
which runs in direct contravention to the current balance and
functions of the two houses. The revising chamber having more
power than the legislating one is simply illogical.
5. Problems with the salary and allowances
in the new House of Lords
The current government proposals allocate the new
members with constituencies, staff, salaries and offices. This
is an idea which will cause great expense to the taxpayer, with
no clear indication of how much the total cost of this new chamber
will be and where it is that the money required for this project
will come from. For example, based on the current staffing budgets
of MPs (£115,000) and MEPs (£222,000) coupled with the
fact that the Draft Bill seeks to allocate constituencies twice
the size of current parliamentary ones, the assumption remains
that staffing budgets for all 300 new members would be at least
£200,000 each.
It is true that no one would 'invent' the House of
Lords in its current form, but we are fortunate enough that without
anything a totemic as a written constitution we are able to constantly
evolve and develop all the organs of government into a coordinated
and integrated Parliament.
However, I find that the proposals of the Draft Bill,
when closely examined, lend themselves to the creation of a fractured,
confrontational and unbalanced parliament that is not in the interests
of the electorate or indeed the wider democratic community. I
urge you to consider the points made above.
26 January 2012
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