The House of Lords

As I write, the House of Commons is debating for the second day a bill to reform the House of Lords. There will be a vote tonight.

When I was born, there was only one sort of 'Lord'. A few families had the right to send their eldest member to parliament and when he died his son got the job / privilege. Then Life Peers were introduced (known to the hereditaries as 'day boys') and there was some sort of balance. Then Tony Blair, in a bid to 'reform' the second chamber, got rid of all but around 90 hereditaries, but replaced them, not with a new system, but with his own placemen.

With the system of hereditary peers, if you closed your eyes and crossed your fingers, you could almost see some sense in it. It never claimed to be democratic, you got what you were given, almost as if the Upper House had been chosen by God. Some were hard working and clever, others were stupid or feckless or both. A brilliant soldier could father a worthless fool, an idle good-for-nothing could father a brilliant lawyer.

It was indefensible after about 1850, but in some respects it worked.

The system introduced by Blair was the worst of all options. Whoever commanded the House of Commons could stuff the Lords with his cronies (Blair did).

So the thing needs changing.

I have no objection to an Upper House 80% elected and 20% appointed: the appointed ones could help the machinery of government work, introduce some specific talent like the Church or the Military and stop the thing being too political. And let me say I don't believe it would create some constitutional anomaly if both houses were elected: that they would both have the right to claim electoral legitimacy. Most other countries have two elected houses and they each know what they are there for.

But a word needs to be said about how they would be elected.

The proposed system, of 'party list' is the worst of all Proportional Representation versions. What happens is that you would vote for your party and the party would decide who was first on their list, second, etc. There would be no connection between the electorate and the person who got the position. We can't have this, particularly since the people have recently voted in a referendum against using some new system for elections. It means the political class would have an even greater grip over our country (you don't imagine anybody who spoke his mind would get the job, do you?), at a time when they are already too strong. Strangely enough, most of the media, in particular the BBC, accept PR as naturally fair, as if there could be no argument against it.

The peers need to be non-proportional (see the electoral legitimacy point above). I would suggest two per old county, so the Isle of Wight would get as many as Middlesex, and their job would be to speak up for their region. This is what happens in the USA and there is no reason why it wouldn't work for us. There would be a straight ballot and the two candidates with the most votes would be elected. This would keep the Upper House at under 150 which would be good.

This new bill is rushed and, with its PR element, the creature of the Liberal Democrats, who I had thought were supposed to be junior partners in the coalition. Mr Cameron has given into them for short term political advantage, playing with our constitution for his own narrow political gain. He should be ashamed of himself.

The people of Britain deserve a properly thought out amendment to their constitution and when we have got one, they deserve to vote on it.