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Reform the House of LordsThis is a question which has been debated for over 200 hundred years. Essentially do we need a bi-cameral legislature and if so what manner should it take? In assessing the question I found the BBC’s article ‘House of Lords reform: The Facts’ very helpful in setting the tone. Due to political expediency I see a botched job occurring – your own views would greatly be appreciated.Martin Frost
2006-03-28 Reforming the Lords -- only fools rush in Labour injects urgency into Lords reform Lords reform back on the agenda Only smoking gun will dislodge Blair in loans scandal House of Lords reform The Facts See also Daily Telegraph: 28/03/2006
Memories of the Dangerous Dogs Act, or of the crude legislation to ban
handguns after the massacre at Dunblane, should confirm that the worst
reason to pass laws is in response to a specific crisis. Tony Blair's
moral flaws led him to try to debauch the peerage by selling baronies
to his financial backers. By way of redress, he has now decided to resurrect the reform of the Upper House, begun in 1999 with the eviction of hereditary peers. However, any reform measure passed now will simply tackle the problem of a prime minister who sees patronage not as a reward for merit, but as a business deal. It needs, instead, to address the constitutional functions of a revising chamber, and its composition. This will not be done well if done quickly, or in a state of reactive panic. Any programme of reform needs clearly defined goals. A consensus is emerging between the main parties that the Lords should be either wholly or partly elected. There are many reasons to oppose this suggestion - such as the need to resist the creation of a further salaried political class, and the threat this would inevitably pose to the supremacy of the Commons and to the stability of our constitution - but one is supreme. It is the same one Enoch Powell spotted in 1968-69, when an alliance between him and Michael Foot wrecked the Labour government's plans to reform the Lords: that any constitutional measure agreed upon by the front benches of the main parties must be bad for parliament and the electorate. Backbenchers in the Commons are already voicing their opposition to an elected Lords. It is to be hoped that their will might, as in 1968-69, prevail. Every constitutional change Mr Blair has inflicted on Britain since 1997 has favoured a minority at the expense of the liberties of the majority. An elected Lords would be no exception. It would in effect put the Lords under the control of the whips in the Commons, and neuter it as a revising chamber without any measure of independence. Mr Blair cannot admit it, but the Lords he butchered in 1999 - by removing some assiduous hereditary peers with an ethic of public service and replacing them with his high-rolling cronies - was far more effective than the one we have now. Similarly, the one we have now is, painfully predictably, likely to be better than what might replace it. Before Lords reform becomes the private property of the executive and a few other Privy Counsellors, a serious debate among all interested parties needs to be arranged. The best forum for this, for which there are ample precedents, would be a Speaker's Conference of long duration. Mr Blair should commission one without further delay. Labour
injects urgency into Lords reform
Lord chancellor has talks with Tories and Lib Dems MPs likely to get free vote on elected upper house Patrick Wintour: March 28, 2006: The Guardian The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, is aiming to give MPs a free vote on the elected composition of the House of Lords this autumn, as part of a renewed drive to win cross-party consensus on the future relationship between Lords and Commons. He hopes to table legislation at the beginning of the next session. Lord Falconer held private talks last week on the timetable with Tories and Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were represented by Lord Strathclyde, Tory leader of the Lords and the party's constitutional affairs spokesman, Oliver Heald. Representing the Lib Dems were Lord McNally, their leader in the Lords, and Simon Hughes, the party's new constitutional affairs spokesman. The aim is to get agreement on composition of the house, methods of election and powers, in time for party conferences in the autumn, followed by a free vote in the Commons in November. Detailed talks on a cross-party consensus are likely to get under way after the May local elections. Mr Hughes and Lord McNally favour an 80% elected upper chamber, as does Conservative leader David Cameron. But all parties are internally divided. Mr Hughes said yesterday he believed the government had accelerated its interest in Lords reform after the "loans for lordships" controversy. Two days after newspapers exposed the alleged link, Mr Hughes received a call offering bilateral talks with Lord Falconer on March 16. These talks led to last Thursday's three-way talks. Lord Falconer denied the offer of talks was a smokescreen to hide the government's embarrassment over the scandal. He is likely to offer MPs only a limited number of options on the proportion of the upper chamber that is elected. MPs were given seven options when they last voted on the issue, in 2003, and rejected all of them. Lord Falconer had been trying to get all-party agreement on a small joint committee of both houses to review the conventions and rules that govern relations between the two houses. Liberal Democrats and Tories had refused to cooperate but now, in light of the agreement on wider talks, have agreed to participate. This committee, which is likely to be set up next month, will report on the current power relationship between the two houses, including the ability of the Lords to defer legislation. Lord McNally said yesterday that his party had blocked the joint committee because it was likely to turn into "a simple wing-clipping exercise of the Lords". He added: "If it is true that Tony Blair has had a genuine change of heart that is very welcome. Until now he has been the roadblock to reform." In an indication of the hurdles Lord Falconer faces, the former Labour cabinet minister Frank Dobson said yesterday he would not support a large elected element without clear agreement on limiting the powers of the House of Lords. Mr Cameron, who wants a minimum of 50% elected upper house members, is facing pressure from some of his backbenchers who are worried that a largely elected second chamber could undermine the authority of the Commons. Many Tory peers have long been opposed to elections, fearing it will destroy the character of an expert chamber. Kenneth Clarke, chairman of the Tories' democracy working party, said: "The only good thing to come out of this [loans for lordships] scandal is state funding of parties, and House of Lords reform are going to go rocketing up the agenda again." Recent defeats of government bills have hardened opinion among Labour MPs that reform must include a clear statement of the primacy of the Commons. Research by Meg Russell, a former adviser to the late leader of the Commons Robin Cook, shows the government has been defeated in the upper house nearly 400 times since 1997. Almost four out of 10 Lords defeats result in lasting policy change, with the government often conceding points rather than waste time and political capital by continuing to resist them. Voices: Sir Richard Eyre, theatre, film and TV director "It should be an elected house. It is in other countries where they have an upper chamber." Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government, Oxford University "The problem of an elected House of Lords is that you need to find a basis for representation which is different from that of the House of Commons." Roy Hattersley, Labour peer "The House of Lords should be replaced by an elected assembly, but it should not have the power to legislate, and ministers should not be elected into it." Lord Norton of Louth, department of politics, University of Hull "It should remain unchanged in terms of composition. The second chamber fulfils functions that the first chamber doesn't have the time, the political will or sometimes expertise to carry out." AS Byatt, novelist "I believe in meritocracy. Hereditary peers, those who have inherited the title of lord, that's just pot luck isn't it?" Jenny Jones, Green party member of the London assembly "The reforms for the House of Lords don't go far enough because we need a 100% elected chamber." The lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, is leading the discussions and has argued that directly elected members should still play a role in the future of the Lords. He said that the issues of Lords reform had been important to the government long before the recent controversy over party donors who had been short-listed for peerages. Speaking on the Today programme, he said: 'Personally my view is that there should be a substantial elected element. How it should be elected needs to be discussed. 'We made clear in our manifesto that there should be a free vote on composition and we made clear that the Commons should be the prime house.' Prime Minister Tony Blair is said to be keen on completing the process of Lords reform before he steps down as party leader. And Lord Falconer reinforced those views, saying: 'I know that [Mr Blair] is keen to see if it is possible that the reform of the House of Lords can be completed because there is a profound sense of unfinished business.' But the head of the Conservative democracy taskforce, Ken Clarke, believes that most peers should 'be appointed by an independent body'. Mr Clarke did add on the same programme, however, that the prime minister should be able to 'appoint three or four people because he particularly wants them'. Lords reform has been an ongoing project for the government, the last such reforms taking place in 1999, but the issue has become a much more high profile matter since the recent accusations that leading businessmen were given peerages in exchange for loans to the Labour party. Labour has strongly denied this and recently made public the names of the 12 businessmen who loaned the party money ahead of the general election last year. Pressure has grown on the Tories to now do the same. Today's discussions are expected to lead to a number of possible options being debated and voted upon in the Commons. Under present regulations, all peers either inherit their titles or are directly elected by the government. Scotsman 2006-03-28
This weekend saw frantic attempts to drag John Prescott and Gordon Brown into the "loans for peerages" scandal. Both men are adamant they knew nothing about it which at first sight looks pretty stupid. If you are the Deputy Prime Minister and titular No 2 to Tony Blair and the Chancellor, the government's financial whizz kid and real vice premiere, surely you should be fully acquainted with the financial shenanigans that bankroll Labour winning elections. However, as always in politics, all is not what it seems. The two Cabinet Ministers who definitely don't need to know, don't want to know, and should not know are Mr Prescott and Mr Brown. The former has overall responsibility for planning and other decisions that have a vital effect on the profitability and prospects of just the sort of big firms whose bosses are likely to hand money over to a political party. And the Chancellor with overall responsibility for business taxation and performance is in the same position. If two people were to be kept out of the loop they were the pair. However, the case of Labour Treasurer Jack Dromey is rather different - he certainly should have known or wanted to know where the cash came from. The same applies to party chairman Ian McCartney, however ill he may have been when asked to sign documents. So there are good reasons as to why Mr Blair would keep the more arcane details of Labour party financing from his chief lieutenant. However, the secrecy in which he, his fund raiser Lord Levy and their inner circle operated has suggested an element of venality and a 10 Downing Street bunker out of touch with its MPs, its activists and the public at large. The fact that when push came to financial shove to pay for first the last election and then the debts are still left, the Prime Minister chose to circumvent the very transparency rules over political gifts he'd introduced. And that is where the noxious smell of scandal is coming from. And that is why speculation is rife about how long Mr Blair can last in No 10. But Mr Brown faces three problems over an early succession. The first is that Mr Blair, like all prime ministers, self-evidently doesn't want to quit yet. The second is that most of his Cabinet colleagues - and a lot of MPs - don't want him to go either. Those at the top table have seen all the viable challengers to the Chancellor for Labour leader and Prime Minister drop by the wayside. David Blunkett's complex personal and financial life scotched him while Alan Milburn's appalling performance as last year's General Election supremo, who had to be replaced by the snubbed Mr Brown at the last minute, has left him in the cold. Home Secretary Charles Clarke is just not credible - who wants Fungus the Bogeyman as Prime Minister? And as for Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who would choose a man who resembles a younger version of Bargain Hunt's David Dickinson to run the country? And the third problem: does Mr Brown - desperate though he is to finally get Mr Blair's job - want to take over now with the Labour leadership knee-deep in sleaze and financial scandal? He risks finding himself in the same position as Mr Blair once he knows what's going on and he certainly doesn't want to go into the next General Election - his only chance of staying in No 10 - without any cash to fight it. From his point of view holding fire for some time till Mr Blair and his former flatmate Lord Falconer have cleared up the mess and reformed the House of Lords seems a much better option. Then Mr Brown can come in with a clean slate and start to reform the party more in the image that its backbenchers and activists wants but with an eye to not alienating the middle classes. The odds remain that - unless someone finds a "smoking gun" linking him directly and unequivocally to accepting cash in secret in return for a peerage - that Mr Blair will stay in No 10 until a time of his choosing. And common sense and Westminster intuition says that will be late next year or sometime in 2008. Tony Blair will be remembered as the prime minister who removed the voting rights of most hereditary peers. But will Labour's promised second stage of reforms ever take place? BACKGROUND "One of the most curious of the curious anomalies in British public life, defying all logic of democratic and secular politics." That is how the political scientist, John Kingdom, saw the House of Lords. The second parliamentary chamber is responsible for scrutinising and amending the legislation of the House of Commons and it can delay non-financial legislation for up to a year. However, most other democracies with a second chamber do not have hereditary peers who are privileged to sit in the House because of a title inherited through an accident of birth. Since 1958 the prime minister has had the power to appoint peers for life, but these members cannot pass the title to their heirs. The Lords also reflects the role within Britain of the Church of England, with the presence of 26 bishops. In addition, 12 law lords sit in the Lords, acting as the UK's final court of appeal. While supporters of the historic system say that the Lords has long offered a less party-political counterbalance to the Commons, those who oppose the second chamber, including the constitutional reform pressure group, Charter 88, say the chamber enjoys little public support and makes a mockery of representative democracy. The Lords has long been a source of anger for Labour politicians. It has had a truly massive in-built Conservative majority - by virtue of the hereditary peers - which has generally led to more second chamber defeats of Labour proposals than of Tory ones. The greatest number of Lords defeats suffered by any government was 126 inflicted on Labour during the 1975-76 session. In the first year of Tony Blair's government there were 38 defeats. The highest number inflicted on the previous Conservative administration was 22 defeats in the 1985-86 session. Legislation rejected by the Lords has included two attempts to repeal Section 28, the controversial law which prevents local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality. Campaigners also complain that the doctrine of the "separation of powers" is undermined by the existence of law lords who both make the law and then interpret it. This, they say, prevents the UK from becoming a modern democracy in which the courts, parliament and government are all independent of each other - and therefore in a stronger position to check and balance each other's powers. Before Labour came to power in 1997, two main options for reform dominated the debate over the House of Lords. • A second chamber wholly nominated by the prime minister. • A directly-elected wholly independent second chamber Opponents of the first option said that this would perpetuate the dominance of the government and do little to persuade the public that the Lords had aneffective role to play. Supporters of the second option said that an elected Lords would be empowered to scrutinise government and legislation. But critics, including Tony Blair, said it would create a political force to rival the primacy of the Commons and slow down effective law-making. ELECTED, APPOINTED OR BORN INTO IT? Labour completed the first stage of reform in November 1999 when all but 92 of the 750 hereditary peers lost their right to sit and vote in the chamber. Tony Blair had wanted all the hereditary peers to be removed - but agreed a compromise with the upper house to ensure that the legislation would get through. Those who remained were chosen through a ballot of other Lords - something that critics dubbed a beauty contest - though a further 10 were given life peerages by the prime minister. Labour said at the time that reform would not stop there. But now, as the party seeks a second term in office, it has yet to put forward clear proposals on what might happen next. The question facing the government has been - how to make the Lords more effective, without making it too powerful? A directly-elected second chamber would be more democratic. It is supported by both Lord Rodgers, the Liberal Democrat leader in the second chamber, and Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader. Campaigners say public opinion is also on their side. In opposition, Mr Blair had said Labour always favoured an elected House of Lords. But in government he has shown little enthusiasm for the option. Margaret Beckett, leader of the Commons, argues that two elected chambers would each claim equal legitimacy and could end up being perpetually at war. ROYAL COMMISSION A Royal Commission into reform of the Lords, chaired by the Conservative peer, Lord Wakeham, spent a year looking at blueprints for reform. In January 2000 it published its report which revealed that the commission members were divided over the issue of wholly-elected or appointed peers. It proposed a compromise: The House should have 550 peers with a minority directly elected. The majority of peers would be appointed by an independent Commission and at least 30% of appointed members should be women with similar safeguards to ensure representation of ethnic minorities. The commission failed to agree on exactly how elected members would be picked. Instead it suggested three options for further discussion. The commission did recommend, however, that the prime minister should lose the power to appoint peers, suggesting that the second chamber's composition should be regularly adjusted in proportion to votes cast at the previous general election. Charter 88 dismissed the report as a "dismal" establishment stitch-up and said it had completely missed the wider issue of strengthening the powers of the second chamber to check the government. Critics also said the Royal Commission's conclusions had been so weak they had even ducked the issue of the name of the chamber. WHERE NOW? Critics predict that Labour will not bring forward reforms to make the House of Lords more independent - but the party says it is pledged to pursue stage two of the plan. An appointments commission was established last May. However, it can appoint only a minority of peers, the generally independent cross-benchers. Furthermore, it is not wholly independent as the prime minister retains the power to decide how many peerages are awarded overall and the governing party's own nominations. Critics go on to say that Labour did not want to set up the Royal Commission in the first place, but felt that it was obliged to do so. The Conservatives have predicted that Labour will try to make sure that the second stage of reform never happens. But the Tories do appear to have accepted that the era of the hereditary peer has gone - and they have pledged to establish an independent appointments commission plus a "substantial elected element". Other Lords on all sides are increasingly convinced that the present "transitional" House may continue for a further decade unless Labour returns to government after the general election with a clear timetable. Indeed a joint committee of MPs and peers to scrutinise the Wakeham recommendations has still not been set up. This is despite a statement last summer from Lady Jay, leader of the Lords, that it would be established "as soon as possible". The delay is partly due to cross-party disagreement over the remit of the committee. Labour said it wanted the committee to consider the second chamber's role and powers but not its composition and method of election - something that the opposition parties refused to accept. Last September, Labour did agree to elect a minority of at least 65 peers. This is likely to outrage Conservatives, who would see the proposal leading to the final demise of the hereditary members. See also British Constitutional Changes Britain - what is it? Parliament's doomsday machine Crime Pays |
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