The Green Party
1. The size of the proposed House and the ratio
of elected to non-elected Members (the draft Bill gives options);
Every member of the House should be an elected member
with no appointed members. We are content with the proposed size
of 300 members, although this may be on the low side given the
expected workload. 100% should be elected. While 80% elected would
be better than the current 0% elected we strongly favour 100%.
2. A statutory appointments commission;
With 100% elected there is no need for an appointments
commission.
3. The electoral term, retirement etc;
Consideration should be given to a 10 year term,
with 50% of the House elected each time. There could then be the
possibility of standing again to serve a second term. Electing
150 members each time, rather than 100, would allow a more proportional
result.
On the issue of thirds vs halves—the proposal
seems to be mostly based on transitional arrangements—thirds
allows some of the current peers to stay in Lords for another
10 years in exchange for their support for the bill. However making
a long term choice based on the transitional period isn't very
sound.
4. The electoral system preferred (the draft
Bill gives options);
We wish to see a fully proportional system. This
would best be achieved by a single constituency for the country
and elections using an open list system with the Sainte-Lague
system used to allocate seats. Open lists ensure that the electorate
can override the list order selected by the party. This places
more power in the hands of the electorate. The Sainte-Lague system
gives a more proportional result than the d'Hondt system used
for the European parliament elections in the UK.
Should smaller constituencies be used then we would
want them to be multimember constituencies large enough to ensure
that elections are proportional, e.g. current Euro region boundaries,
and that STV is used.
5. Transitional arrangements (the draft Bill
gives options);
We wish to see an all-elected House introduced as
soon as possible, ie immediately following the 2015 election.
The proposed transitional arrangements will not achieve this until
2025. Instead 300 members should be elected in 2015 with 100 serving
for 15 years, 100 for 10 years and 100 for 5 years. This would
be similar to the process used for councils, that normally use
rolling thirds, after an all-out election following ward boundary
changes, with the higher placed candidates getting the longer
terms. While this would not absolutely guarantee any continuity
we would expect the main parties to include some of the current
peers on their lists and so there would be some continuity.
6. The provisions on Bishops, Ministers and hereditary
peers;
There should be no seats for Bishops or hereditary
peers. In a multicultural society, a privileged position for the
Church of England is inappropriate but neither would it be appropriate
to provide additional reserved seats for representatives of other
religions. Religion and politics should be kept separate. If bishops
or leading figures from any other religion wished to sit in the
second chamber, they should be allowed to seek election like any
other candidate for public office.
We do not support the proposal that the Government
should be able to appoint extra members to serve as ministers.
This would override the result of the election by giving the governing
party extra members who had not been voted in by the electorate.
It would be open to abuse and accusations of cronyism, precisely
the sort of thing that these reforms are supposed to end.
7. Other administrative matters like pay and
pensions;
We agree that salaries, pensions, expenses, etc should
be subject to similar arrangements to those for MPs.
12 October 2011
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