David Willetts is a member of the House of Lords.
Reform of the House of Lords is back on the agenda with measures due in the King’s Speech. Labour’s manifesto proposed “an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords”.
It would be the end of the deal agreed by Tony Blair which enabled 92 hereditary peers to survive after Tony Blair’s last major reform. (There is supposed to be a special patch of woodland of 92 trees on the Marquess of Salisbury’s Hatfield estate, a gift to him from the hereditaries whose survival he negotiated in one of those provisional deals which can last a long time.)
It is impossible to defend the hereditary principle as a basis for sitting in a modern legislature so Labour should not expect any serious opposition. The only question will be how rapidly the hereditary peers go – from an all out cull straightway through to slower disappearance by not replacing ones who depart. Some hereditaries, who make the greatest contribution, might perhaps be awarded life peerages.
Labour’s manifesto also proposed a compulsory retirement age for peers as well: “at the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords”.
That would affect almost 200 peers. It would tackle one of the key problems – that with about 800 peers the Lords is too big though the number of actual regular attenders is rather lower – and affect disproportionately Tory peers, so helping Labour get a rebalancing of the composition of the Upper House.
And the average age of the Lords is 71 which is too high – though it is good for morale to arrive in one’s sixties and be welcomed as fresh young talent.
However compulsory retirement ages are in general on their way out and this does seem hard on some peers who are still active and effective past eighty, whereas some young peers don’t prove to be very effective; it would be a pity if we lost the distinctive Veterans’ Wimbledon atmosphere of some of our debates – when Kenneth Baker (aged 89) is debating education with David Blunkett (a vigorous 77).
I personally would favour a different reform to the composition of the Lords – all of us should be appointed for a single fifteen-year term. That would help get younger members into the Lords by removing the concern that if a poor performer gets in (and perhaps there may be just one or two) they could be in the legislature for many decades.
After that it gets trickier. Gordon Brown proposed radical changes in a report for Labour in Opposition – an elected Assembly of the Nations and Regions. It was not far from Nick Clegg’s plan put forward in the Coalition for a democratic chamber, structured so as to reflect the devolution settlement and regionalism. But what is to be the new composition of this second chamber?
It could be directly elected – which is what Nick Clegg was aiming for. This is clearly the most democratic option. It has an immediate obvious appeal and is where members of the Commons start because it is a principle they above all understand and value.
But it then raises difficult questions about how the powers of the two chambers are to be balanced. The Commons doesn’t actually want a rival for democratic legitimacy. The idea of a second chamber somehow representing and scrutinising devolved powers could be seen as the Commons trying to divert the challenge away from itself to the devolved assemblies and elected city mayors, who would find they faced a democratic chamber assessing and challenging them.
(It would be different if a reformed second chamber were actually a forum where the mayors and representative elected for devolved assemblies could themselves scrutinise Whitehall decision-taking.)
The main function of the Lords is as a revising Chamber scrutinising draft legislation with care and expertise. This is more important than ever as scrutiny of bills at committee stage has largely broken down.
It is not the role of the Lords to subvert political priorities of an elected government but we can suggest sensible improvements to legislation; there is widespread frustration amongst peers who do try constructively to amend legislation that governments with large majorities then reject most of the amendments.
Any reform to the Lords should recognise and reinforce this role. Labour themselves have seen in Opposition how ineffective legislative scrutiny in Parliament has become. They are proposing a new Modernisation Committee, modelled on the one under last Labour Government. It would be great if it focussed on how to strengthen scrutiny. Focussing on that function is the real priority.
