Discussion: Is reform required in our Government?

bussnapperwm · 5 Nov 2019

As we know from this Brexit debarcal, Politics are broken (in my opinion). We have a unelected upper house, a country run by people who are just born or have bunged a few quid to their mates in order to become a Lord.

The Lords earn £305 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities. This equates to £43k for 141 days work, or £46/hour. Half of the time you see the Lords near empty.

The average backbencher in the Commons earns £79,468 for 141 days work. That is over £500 a day, with the gravy train of expenses.

Surely the Lords, which is undemocratic, which is unelected, should be scrapped and replaced with an elected upper house, one which is elected by the people to represent their EU region. Maybe have 90 members, with 10 from each of the UK's EU regions, with a fixed 10 year terms. Maybe have a parliament which has the elected Upper House which earns the pay that the Commons earn currently, with the average Member for the local area earning a lower amount. (maybe call them the "Representitives" in the lower house and "Members" in the upper house?), the upper house being elected via the D'Hondt method.

The existing Lords Spiritual could then be a "non voting member" in the upper house, with the current Lords Temporal being allowed to stand as Representitives or Members should they so wish.

The Prime Minister would be made so by way of the votes between both Houses, and then confirmation of HRH (or their successor.)

WIth the lower house, a FPTP system could work, with the D'hondt method being used for the lower house, with the FTP act being replaced with fixed 5 year terms for the lower house, 10 years for the upper house, with alternate Lower House terms being the same day as the upper house.

What do you think? let me know in the comments...

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DynamicSpirit · 5 Nov 2019

bussnapperwm said:
As we know from this Brexit debarcal, Politics are broken (in my opinion). We have a unelected upper house, a country run by people who are just born or have bunged a few quid to their mates in order to become a Lord.

This is factually incorrect for the obvious reasons that (a) the House of Lords do not run the country, and (b) people are appointed to the House of Lords for a variety of reasons, and (with a few possible dubious exceptions0 generally NOT because they have given a few quid to their mates.

bussnapperwm said:
The Lords earn £305 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities. This equates to £43k for 141 days work, or £46/hour. Half of the time you see the Lords near empty.

So if they are only paid on the days that they actually attend, what is the problem with them not attending on many days? Also, you say it's near empty, but are you aware of the work that is done outside the main chamber - for example, Select Committees?

bussnapperwm said:
The average backbencher in the Commons earns £79,468 for 141 days work. That is over £500 a day, with the gravy train of expenses.

Sorry but this is ill-informed rubbish. Backbenchers don't ONLY work on days that they are sitting in the Commons: They also all have extensive constituency commitments - helping and representing constituents. From everything I've heard, that is far more demanding than sitting-in-the-Commons commitments. Then there is all the less public Parliamentary stuff such as those Select Committees (again) as well as all the time that would have to be spent in research etc. to keep on top of issues. As for 'gravy train of expenses'. No, it's not a gravy train. MPs claim expenses for things that they necessarily have to pay in the course of their job. They cannot pocket the money from them.

And the salary of about £79K ... I realise that sounds a lot if you are a shop assistant or working in a job close to the minimum wage. But if you compare it with the standards of many senior jobs in industry (which, in terms of responsibility, is a reasonable comparison) then you'd find it's not excessive. As an experienced software developer, I'm pretty sure I could find work with a comparable salary if I wanted to - and as a software developer, I'd have to work a lot fewer hours than the average MP has to to earn that salary. There may well be an argument in there about equality, and I'd be the first to argue that many lower paid people deserve a better standard of living. But that doesn't make MPs' salaries unreasonable.

Other than that, I do agree with you about the need for reform. But starting to attack MPs salaries and making out that (most) MPs don't work hard is just wrong.

Cowley · 5 Nov 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
This is factually incorrect for the obvious reasons that (a) the House of Lords do not run the country, and (b) people are appointed to the House of Lords for a variety of reasons, and (with a few possible dubious exceptions0 generally NOT because they have given a few quid to their mates.

So if they are only paid on the days that they actually attend, what is the problem with them not attending on many days? Also, you say it's near empty, but are you aware of the work that is done outside the main chamber - for example, Select Committees?

Sorry but this is ill-informed rubbish. Backbenchers don't ONLY work on days that they are sitting in the Commons: They also all have extensive constituency commitments - helping and representing constituents. From everything I've heard, that is far more demanding than sitting-in-the-Commons commitments. Then there is all the less public Parliamentary stuff such as those Select Committees (again) as well as all the time that would have to be spent in research etc. to keep on top of issues. As for 'gravy train of expenses'. No, it's not a gravy train. MPs claim expenses for things that they necessarily have to pay in the course of their job. They cannot pocket the money from them.

And the salary of about £79K ... I realise that sounds a lot if you are a shop assistant or working in a job close to the minimum wage. But if you compare it with the standards of many senior jobs in industry (which, in terms of responsibility, is a reasonable comparison) then you'd find it's not excessive. As an experienced software developer, I'm pretty sure I could find work with a comparable salary if I wanted to - and as a software developer, I'd have to work a lot fewer hours than the average MP has to to earn that salary. There may well be an argument in there about equality, and I'd be the first to argue that many lower paid people deserve a better standard of living. But that doesn't make MPs' salaries unreasonable.

Other than that, I do agree with you about the need for reform. But starting to attack MPs salaries and making out that (most) MPs don't work hard is just wrong.

I agree. Money for money there are plenty of politicians earning less than they could of if they’d chosen a career in certain types of business...
It’s all too easy to slap politicians down as earning money for nothing (compared to relative jobs) when many of us are living outside of the London wage bubble.
From the outside looking in they seem to earn a reasonably fair wage considering the stick they get.
I wouldn’t want to do it that’s for sure.

DarloRich · 5 Nov 2019

bussnapperwm said:
As we know from this Brexit debarcal, Politics are broken (in my opinion). We have a unelected upper house, a country run by people who are just born or have bunged a few quid to their mates in order to become a Lord.

The Lords earn £305 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities. This equates to £43k for 141 days work, or £46/hour. Half of the time you see the Lords near empty.

The average backbencher in the Commons earns £79,468 for 141 days work. That is over £500 a day, with the gravy train of expenses.

Surely the Lords, which is undemocratic, which is unelected, should be scrapped and replaced with an elected upper house, one which is elected by the people to represent their EU region. Maybe have 90 members, with 10 from each of the UK's EU regions, with a fixed 10 year terms. Maybe have a parliament which has the elected Upper House which earns the pay that the Commons earn currently, with the average Member for the local area earning a lower amount. (maybe call them the "Representitives" in the lower house and "Members" in the upper house?), the upper house being elected via the D'Hondt method.

The existing Lords Spiritual could then be a "non voting member" in the upper house, with the current Lords Temporal being allowed to stand as Representitives or Members should they so wish.

The Prime Minister would be made so by way of the votes between both Houses, and then confirmation of HRH (or their successor.)

WIth the lower house, a FPTP system could work, with the D'hondt method being used for the lower house, with the FTP act being replaced with fixed 5 year terms for the lower house, 10 years for the upper house, with alternate Lower House terms being the same day as the upper house.

What do you think? let me know in the comments...

What do I think? I think you need to read more widely. This post is stuffed full of inaccuracies and half baked nonsense which detracts from an important point

HSTEd · 6 Nov 2019

An elected upper chamber then starts us down a path that leads to the weakening of the supremacy of the commons, and to yet more American style legislative stalemates.

The whole point of the Westminster system is that they are supposed to be impossible, but we've already got a taste of them thanks to the madness that is the Fixed Term Parliament Act.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we had two democratically elected chambers engaged in eternal fights over everything?

GRALISTAIR · 6 Nov 2019

Do Church ofEngland bishops still get to attend the House of Lords? If so that should not be allowed.

najaB · 6 Nov 2019

bussnapperwm said:
The average backbencher in the Commons earns £79,468 for 141 days work. That is over £500 a day, with the gravy train of expenses.

So, when they're not in the House they're not found any work at all. Okay.

SteveP29 · 6 Nov 2019

bussnapperwm said:
with the gravy train of expenses.

DynamicSpirit said:
As for 'gravy train of expenses'. No, it's not a gravy train. MPs claim expenses for things that they necessarily have to pay in the course of their job. They cannot pocket the money from them.

The majority of an MP's expenses is staffing. They all need secretaries and researchers, it doesn't matter how good you are with learning and reading etc, you simply couldn't be well informed on everything (and it does seem that some MP's do prove that)
The problem I do have with that, is that it's usually family members or favours for friends that end up with these positions, often on a wage that's way out of proportion with their requirements, qualifications and experience (MP's paying spouses £40k a year for being their secretary indeed)
I believe there should be a pool of civil servants and if an MP requires a secretary, they go to the HR (or HoC equivalent) and are sent one, somebody being paid the going rate for their services, NOT what they want to pay them, which saves the country money and gives gainful employment to somebody who needs it, rather than the system we have now.

DynamicSpirit · 6 Nov 2019

SteveP29 said:
The majority of an MP's expenses is staffing. They all need secretaries and researchers, it doesn't matter how good you are with learning and reading etc, you simply couldn't be well informed on everything (and it does seem that some MP's do prove that)
The problem I do have with that, is that it's usually family members or favours for friends that end up with these positions, often on a wage that's way out of proportion with their requirements, qualifications and experience (MP's paying spouses £40k a year for being their secretary indeed)

Usually? I fear you are also very badly informed here. From a bit of Googling, it seems that out if 650 MPs, about 120 employ one family member. So that's a small minority. After a reasonable online search, I can't find any evidence that any salaries are out of proportion with the job requirements, and my understanding (I may be wrong) is that salaries of MPs' staff are controlled by IPSA, not by individual MPs.

And as an aside, I really don't see any objection in principle to employing a family member provided that the family member is actually doing the job. There are good arguments that in some ways a family member if available can be very suitable. Look at this account from someone who used to work as a Parliamentary assistant:

OliviaUtley said:
For a start, although lots of jobs require travel, there are very few in which a person has a civic duty to be in London from Monday to Thursday, but would be scorned by a few thousand people for not going up north every weekend. For MPs with young children, this is a particularly serious issue, as I saw for myself when working as a Parliamentary Assistant in Westminster.

My boss, a 45-year-old woman, made the decision on her election in 2010 to send her two very young children to nursery school in her North-Eastern seat. She thought, quite rightly, that she would only gain the respect and trust of her constituents if she based herself in her constituency. Her then 3-year-old sons didn’t quite see it like that, and spent Monday to Thursday nights crying because they missed their mum. After years of struggling to find the right balance, she eventually moved them down to a school in London – at the cost of unanimous opprobrium at home in her constituency.

Unless we start asking our members of parliament to take a vow of chastity when they get sworn in, children are always going to be an important part of the job. For my boss, the answer to her dilemma was employing her husband who worked with her in London during the week. He could then could travel up to Staffordshire, with her children, to work with her at the weekend. What other employee on a public-sector salary would agree to that sort of arrangement?

And in answer to your other point...

SteveP29 said:
I believe there should be a pool of civil servants and if an MP requires a secretary, they go to the HR (or HoC equivalent) and are sent one, somebody being paid the going rate for their services, NOT what they want to pay them, which saves the country money and gives gainful employment to somebody who needs it, rather than the system we have now.

That seems very harsh. A fundamental part of employing someone is that you need to be able to work with them. And in the case of MPs, they need to be able to trust their staff absolutely to deal with both personal private matters impacting constituents and with party political issues - assisting their MP in research for example. That's unlikely to work unless the employees' political views are roughly aligned with the MPs (Imagine for example, under your system, a person who happens to be a Tory party member being assigned by HR to work as a researcher for a Labour MP, or vice versa - it would be unworkable!). Removing from MPs the ability to employ people whom they know and trust would in some cases basically prevent MPs from being able to do their jobs properly. And it wouldn't save any money, since you'd still have to pay these (potentially, less suitable) people just as much.

sprunt · 6 Nov 2019

Newly elected MPs are not allowed to employ family members. MPs who were elected before the 2017 election and already employed them were allowed to continue to employ them.

DerekC · 6 Nov 2019

Yes, it's a pity the OP has cluttered up his argument with irrelevant and misleading stuff because we certainly do need reform. I agree that an unelected upper house appointed by patronage is quite unacceptable. However unlike @HSTEd, I do think we need one as a check and restraint on the power of Government. The situation we have now (or had until yesterday) is quite unusual. The normal state is a PM with a commons majority able to wield power pretty much as he/she likes. If one thing has become clear in the last couple of months it's that the Monarch has no power at all, so let's pension her off, abandon the fiction that she has any part in Government and produce ourselves a modern structure which delivers democracy with some degree of stability - and at the same time get rid of the flim-flam and dressing up!

Robin Edwards · 6 Nov 2019

Yes in a word.
For me we have the wrong political system to support consensus across a coalition of parties, as might be said to 'succeed' in parts of Europe for instance, Scandinavian countries.
A system that revolves predominantly around two-parties seems to allow for the extremes on both sides to hold court and this is something we have suffered from as have and do the US where politics is polarisation to a level beyond what we have in UK.
The job of a democratic society should be to constrain the extremes of right & left so that neither can be allowed to wield power. There are those whoever that would seemingly prefer an autocracy if it gets them what they want without having to get past a majority consensus, until that is, the power is welded by the opposition and is then not what they want. - Sound familiar?
Critics of coalitions might say that they don't achieve very much which could be said for the UK experience where the party in charge doesn't have a suitable majority. I'm probably biased but would say that coalitions require more grown-up behaviour than our government (and others) requires and has demonstrated priorities of their personal preservation of power and that of their party both prevailing over what might be good for the majority.

Senex · 6 Nov 2019

DerekC said:
If one thing has become clear in the last couple of months it's that the Monarch has no power at all, so let's pension her off, abandon the fiction that she has any part in Government and produce ourselves a modern structure which delivers democracy with some degree of stability - and at the same time get rid of the flim-flam and dressing up!

Isn't it rather that the Crown still has extensive and massive powers, but these are not exercised by the Monarch (as the Balmoral farce and the Queen's Speech both very clearly demonstrated) but by the Prime Minister of the day—who, until the Supreme Court stepped in to defend the rights of parliament, was apparently subvect to no checks and controls at all?

HSTEd · 6 Nov 2019

Arguments over whether Parliament should have been prorogued for a few weeks extra or not is really not a colossal constitutional issue, especially since Parliament effectively permitted itself to be prorogued by doing absolutely nothing to stop it despite being informed quite far in advance.

It is certainly not the sort of thing the Monarch is supposed to protect against, which is meant for things far more serious than that.
See the example of the Governor-General of Grenada's role in that whole affair.

Senex said:
who, until the Supreme Court stepped in to defend the rights of parliament, was apparently subvect to no checks and controls at all?

So was subject to no checks and controls at all, except for the ones he was subject to?

hkstudent · 6 Nov 2019

GRALISTAIR said:
Do Church ofEngland bishops still get to attend the House of Lords? If so that should not be allowed.

There are 26 CoE bishops in the House of Lords.
As long as CoE is the Establishment Church of England, they have the rights to stay in the house.

Of course, direct involvement in politics by religious persons does violate the principle of seperation of politics and religion.

HSTEd · 6 Nov 2019

hkstudent said:
Of course, direct involvement in politics by religious persons does violate the principle of seperation of politics and religion.

Separation of Church and State is a traditionally American and French concept though.
It doesn't exist in quite a few European democracies.

furnessvale · 6 Nov 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
Usually? I fear you are also very badly informed here. From a bit of Googling, it seems that out if 650 MPs, about 120 employ one family member. So that's a small minority. After a reasonable online search, I can't find any evidence that any salaries are out of proportion with the job requirements, and my understanding (I may be wrong) is that salaries of MPs' staff are controlled by IPSA, not by individual MPs.

Does that figure include the rather convenient way MPs employ EACH OTHER'S family members in a quid pro quo arrangement?

option · 6 Nov 2019

SteveP29 said:
The majority of an MP's expenses is staffing. They all need secretaries and researchers, it doesn't matter how good you are with learning and reading etc, you simply couldn't be well informed on everything (and it does seem that some MP's do prove that)
The problem I do have with that, is that it's usually family members or favours for friends that end up with these positions, often on a wage that's way out of proportion with their requirements, qualifications and experience (MP's paying spouses £40k a year for being their secretary indeed)
I believe there should be a pool of civil servants and if an MP requires a secretary, they go to the HR (or HoC equivalent) and are sent one, somebody being paid the going rate for their services, NOT what they want to pay them, which saves the country money and gives gainful employment to somebody who needs it, rather than the system we have now.

from the 2017 intake onwards, they can't employ family members

I agree with some of your third paragraph. The constituency/office/research staff should be recruited/chosen by the MP, but then employed by the parliamentary authorities. They would then not have to claim their employment costs as expenses.

Same with constituency offices, they should be a direct HoC operation, not a choice of the MP.

option · 6 Nov 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
That seems very harsh. A fundamental part of employing someone is that you need to be able to work with them. And in the case of MPs, they need to be able to trust their staff absolutely to deal with both personal private matters impacting constituents and with party political issues - assisting their MP in research for example. That's unlikely to work unless the employees' political views are roughly aligned with the MPs (Imagine for example, under your system, a person who happens to be a Tory party member being assigned by HR to work as a researcher for a Labour MP, or vice versa - it would be unworkable!). Removing from MPs the ability to employ people whom they know and trust would in some cases basically prevent MPs from being able to do their jobs properly. And it wouldn't save any money, since you'd still have to pay these (potentially, less suitable) people just as much.

Civil service rules...

deltic · 6 Nov 2019

I'm all in favour of scrapping the House of Lords - as with many such ideas the problems arise because there is no majority opinion as to what it should be replaced by.

There are some interesting view on MPs - in the past when Parliament sat only in the afternoon and evening and effectively only from Monday to Thursday, was predominately male with no caring responsibilities and select committees and similar did not exist and there was far less constituency work then many of them had second jobs. This meant that the Commons had a far wider range of experiences to draw upon than at present. Today we expect MPs to devote all their energies to being MPs but this then leads to people who have only worked in the political sphere and are almost 100% from professional backgrounds. I am also surprised by how many couples, sibling and children are MPs.

Are MPs overpaid? From the few I have come across the answer is no - they work long hours, may be living away from home most of the week, expected to serve on local community groups in the evenings or weekends and are usually doing surgeries on Saturdays.

GRALISTAIR · 6 Nov 2019

hkstudent said:
There are 26 CoE bishops in the House of Lords.
As long as CoE is the Establishment Church of England, they have the rights to stay in the house.

Of course, direct involvement in politics by religious persons does violate the principle of seperation of politics and religion.

Well that needs to be changed

ashkeba · 6 Nov 2019

hkstudent said:
There are 26 CoE bishops in the House of Lords.
As long as CoE is the Establishment Church of England, they have the rights to stay in the house.

Of course, direct involvement in politics by religious persons does violate the principle of seperation of politics and religion.

How many Lords are there in total? Do they outnumber the 650 elected MPs? In how many countries do executive-appointeds outnumber electeds in the legislature?

I do not think that stalemates in the USA are as much because the Senate is elected as because that election system is dominated by two divisive parties. The UK could have an elected chamber like Poland but it could alternatively have indirectly-elected upper house like France or Germany or an attempt at a representative panel-based chamber like Ireland.

DynamicSpirit · 6 Nov 2019

GRALISTAIR said:
Do Church ofEngland bishops still get to attend the House of Lords? If so that should not be allowed.

Or alternatively, you could allow it, but balance it with equal representation from other faiths (and from some equivalent atheist organisation(s)).

DynamicSpirit · 6 Nov 2019

ashkeba said:
How many Lords are there in total? Do they outnumber the 650 elected MPs? In how many countries do executive-appointeds outnumber electeds in the legislature?

I do not think that stalemates in the USA are as much because the Senate is elected as because that election system is dominated by two divisive parties. The UK could have an elected chamber like Poland but it could alternatively have indirectly-elected upper house like France or Germany or an attempt at a representative panel-based chamber like Ireland.

I don't think the numbers of Lords vs numbers of MPs is so important. What's far more important is the division of legislative an scrutiny powers between the two houses.

And in the USA, I would say a lot of the stalemate is because, (a) electing both chambers means that they both become very politicised, and (b) elections at different times means that it's very common for the two chambers to be controlled by different parties, and therefore to have opposite agendas. That is a danger that you will always have with two powerful legislative bodies who are both elected at different times. The problem is compounded in the USA because you have separate elections for the President who is therefore often from a different party to either house.

(Although, to be fair, with a President like Donald Trump, stalemate is probably the least bad option until we can have a more reasonable President).

HSTEd · 6 Nov 2019

ashkeba said:
How many Lords are there in total? Do they outnumber the 650 elected MPs? In how many countries do executive-appointeds outnumber electeds in the legislature?

As the chambers never sit together, the relative size of the two chambers is essentially irrelevant for all practical purposes though.

ashkeba said:
I do not think that stalemates in the USA are as much because the Senate is elected as because that election system is dominated by two divisive parties.

As will always happen unless you end up in a one party state, or a system where the political class just cozily carves up the power to the detriment of the electorate.

ashkeba said:
The UK could have an elected chamber like Poland but it could alternatively have indirectly-elected upper house like France or Germany or an attempt at a representative panel-based chamber like Ireland.

The Irish chamber has 18% of it's members automatically be toadies of the Prime Minister though, plus the ones elected by a limited franchise.
Whilst the Lords is essentially all political appointees, since they cannot be easily removed it's essentially impossible for a Prime Minister to gain substantial additional control of the chamber like that.

If an Irish appointee Senator wants to keep his post, or a Governing-Party University Senator wants to stay on the ballot for the next election, he must obey the party.
Once a Lord is raised to the peerage and given permission to sit, he need not obey the Prime Minister again.

ashkeba · 6 Nov 2019

HSTEd said:
As the chambers never sit together, the relative size of the two chambers is essentially irrelevant for all practical purposes though.

I thought they all sat together (well, many stand because the rooms have not enough seats) to listen to the Queen but I realise no laws are passed right then.

HSTEd said:
As will always happen unless you end up in a one party state, or a system where the political class just cozily carves up the power to the detriment of the electorate.

Or a functioning multi-party system.

HSTEd said:
The Irish chamber has 16% of it's members automatically be toadies of the Prime Minister though, plus the ones elected by a limited franchise.
Whilst the Lords is essentially all political appointees, since they cannot be easily removed it's essentially impossible for a Prime Minister to gain substantial additional control of the chamber like that.

I thought some Prime Ministers had threatened to appoint as many new Lords as necessary to gain control? Asquith I think was one. I do not know if any carried out the threat.

Senex · 6 Nov 2019

HSTEd said:
Arguments over whether Parliament should have been prorogued for a few weeks extra or not is really not a colossal constitutional issue, especially since Parliament effectively permitted itself to be prorogued by doing absolutely nothing to stop it despite being informed quite far in advance.

It is certainly not the sort of thing the Monarch is supposed to protect against, which is meant for things far more serious than that.
See the example of the Governor-General of Grenada's role in that whole affair.

So was subject to no checks and controls at all, except for the ones he was subject to?

Lower courts were willing to let him do whatever he wanted on the grounds that the courts should not deal with political matters, it seems. So according to them, untrammeled powers, but according to the Supreme Court, yes he was subect to controls.

DerekC · 6 Nov 2019

Senex said:
Isn't it rather that the Crown still has extensive and massive powers, but these are not exercised by the Monarch (as the Balmoral farce and the Queen's Speech both very clearly demonstrated) but by the Prime Minister of the day—who, until the Supreme Court stepped in to defend the rights of parliament, was apparently subvect to no checks and controls at all?

Yes - that's exactly the point. So let's stop the pretence that the Monarch has anything to do with Government. It would make discussion of a proper constitution (which is what's needed) a lot easier and less emotional.

Bevan Price · 6 Nov 2019

I definitely think that the composition of the House of Lords should be determined by the public. At present, Boris, or his successors are theoretically able to nominate as many "supporters" as they want, in order to ensure that their policies get through that House of Lords.

I would suggest that in the House of Lords, each party should be able to nominate "voting Lords" in proportion to the percentage of votes received at the most recent General Election. So, if Party X got 25% of the votes in that election, it would be allowed 25 "voting Lords" if the House of Lords had a total of 100 members. To avoid letting in too many fringe minority groups, there might be a minimum qualifying level (say 5% or 10% of total votes) before your party can nominate anyone to the Lords. ***

(*** - To be decided is whether or not the percentage of votes was determined on the "national" vote, or the votes in regions of approximately equal population, such as Scotland, Wales, England NW, England West Midlands, etc.)

I would be content to permit the Lords to have a number of "non-voting" members who would be allowed to speak as experts on particular topics - but would not be allowed to vote in the Lords.

DynamicSpirit · 6 Nov 2019

Bevan Price said:
I would suggest that in the House of Lords, each party should be able to nominate "voting Lords" in proportion to the percentage of votes received at the most recent General Election. So, if Party X got 25% of the votes in that election, it would be allowed 25 "voting Lords" if the House of Lords had a total of 100 members. To avoid letting in too many fringe minority groups, there might be a minimum qualifying level (say 5% or 10% of total votes) before your party can nominate anyone to the Lords. ***

(*** - To be decided is whether or not the percentage of votes was determined on the "national" vote, or the votes in regions of approximately equal population, such as Scotland, Wales, England NW, England West Midlands, etc.)

I would be content to permit the Lords to have a number of "non-voting" members who would be allowed to speak as experts on particular topics - but would not be allowed to vote in the Lords.

It's an interesting idea. But I think the problem is that you'd end up with a House of Lords that largely duplicates the Commons - especially if we ever introduced proportional representation for the Commons - and PR for the Commons would be absolutely top priority on my list of reforms. And if the two chambers are duplicates, why have them both?

I would go the opposite way to you and do something far, far, more radical: Remove almost all party political representation from the Lords and have Peers appointed instead from a wide range of civic societies etc., chosen partly because of their expertise, and partly to reflect the whole of society. This would fit in with the supposed functions of the two chambers - the Commons to direct legislation, and the Lords to scrutinize and improve it. I would say that scrutinizing and improving is best done by professionals and people representing all parts of society, away from the pressures of party politics. You would obviously need a very robust mechanism to choose which organisations are able to recommend Peerages, as well as to ensure that those organisations themselves have robust selection processes. That would require a lot of thought, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be do-able.

So as an example you might - say - end up with a Peers being nominated by the Royal Society and the Institute of Physics etc. (for scientific expertise), by Faith and Humanist groups (experience in ethics), by the CBI (industry), by various organisations who work with the vulnerable, and with the homeless, by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing - and so on. Obviously add several hundred other groups, with no group able to nominate more than one or two Peers - so it's impossible for any one group to exert more than a tiny amount of influence.

And possibly have a small number - no more than, say, 5%, of Peers nominated by political parties, to provide a means for people very experienced in Government to be nominated.

Discussion: Is reform required in our Government?

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Established Member