Be Excellent To Each Other

As part of their plans for constitutional reform, and still bathing in the success of the voting system referendum, the Government has published some draft proposals for the House of Lords.

Their current plans are for a house of 300, 80% elected, with the remainder being appointed (and some bishops). Members would serve 15 year terms, with a third elected by regional STV every five years or so.

The PM would be able to appoint temporary members to Lords 2.0 so they can serve as ministers, but they would lose their seats when they left office, which I think is an interesting constitutional innovation and would stop the chamber getting too big.

The powers would remain the same as they are.

Personally, although I think the House is way too big, I'm quite happy with the current fudge. It revises legislation, scrutinises it, and whilst it can delay legislation cannot obstruct proposals for far too long, although I've always sensed that defeats in the Lords are usually taken seriously by the government. It isn't how we'd devise a second chamber if we were drawing it up today, but it kind of works. Ish.

What do you folks think?

I'd keep it more or less as-is. The current problems with the place come from Blair and Cameron piling too many new Lords in there.

Democracy is fine or whatever, but elections are won by the popular and no-one ever made a reputation for the right decisions alongside one for making popular decisions. We need an unelected house full of experienced people who acts as 'political elders' and we've got one, why fuck with it? Look at the Fred Goodwin naming yesterday... you'd never get an MP doing that.

Shhhhhhhh ...you'll wake them.

I agree with GY. If you started electing them, they'd base their entire political careers around being elected to the House of Lords one day, they'd become more useless than they are now. 300 of them? That's way too many and not a pair of balls between them, no doubt. The media would grab a party each to use as a sock puppet to a greater extent than they do now and the country would be on it's knees within 30yrs. You'll be wishing for The Rapture at that point.....mark my words...

Old people are ace, they tell it how it is. Rich old people are even better because they occasionally say something even more un-PC than the regular old people.

Aye, I might not agree with what some of them are saying but at least they're capable of thinking for themselves. If they can get voted in & out they'll lose that ability

Some of the more outspoken lord's comments on the current shower of cunts MPs as well as the last shower have been hilarious.

IDGI.... I R

Going to be interesting to see how the Tories back some kind of PR for the Lords but justify it not being used for the Commons.

This.

I'm a bit torn, because in principal, the idea of a bunch of unelected spongers (and clergy, ffs) having veto powers and all that bothers me. But in the last decade, the house of lords proved itself several times to be the only sane political body in the country, and saved us from some of the worst excesses of the Blair government.

The fact that the driving body behind this is the Commons doesn't bode well, either.

Very much

Although the draft bill proposes a single 15-year time and restricts standing for the Commons for a short period afterwards, to help prevent people going on about 'careerists' I can't help but feel that an elected House would be as assertive in acting as a block to the more populist and illiberal tendencies of the lower chamber. Also, would people vote for the person, or more for the party? If the latter, there would be some expectation that they kept to the whip and didn't think for themselves too much.

I find elected spongers far more worrying. Besides, have you met people who vote? Fucking mental, half of them.

As for the clergy, I'm apparently one of these rabidly secular militant atheists, which means I disregard with any fairytales as I'm presented with them, something society does quite frequently. I strongly oppose in principal the five bishops or however many it is but so long as they can't swing a vote easily they serve a similar capacity to the monarchy - whether we like it or not these are our roots and nothing grows well without strong ones.... besides the sort of countries where church and state are separate tend to have more wildly divisive and influential religious politics. Keep the old buggers in there, I like using them to shut the Christian Right up when they whinge about being marginalised.

Thing is though, it's Clegg's bill, isn't it? Why do we even need to discuss it

Yeah, this is basically why I'm not convinced by an elected house of lords. We already have a commons full of elected idiots, thanks.

Difference is, the Tories *want* this bill, to politicise the Lords and stuff it full of as many sympathisers as possible by rigging it during its term in power. Personally, I'm happy with how things are now. I want PR for the Commons, but having an unelected, relatively non-politicised stop-check second chamber works, so changing it isn't the best of moves.

And here's the published bill.

On offer are a house of 450 members, plus 12 Lords Spiritual, and up to 8 ministerial peers (appointed to hold ministerial post, in the way people like Alan Sugar became peers in order to enter government). 80% of the 450 to be elected, one-third of them at each UK general election using an open party list system (Northern Irish voters get STV instead). Other than the bishops, a member of the House of Lords can serve one 15 year term, and cannot stand for the Commons for the next five years. Powers to remain the same, and judging by the text, it will still be called the House of Lords.

Second reading is on 9 July, and the government are likely to whip the vote. Labour are holding their cards to the chest.

Oh, and the evicted peers can still be hold their titles, whilst the new occupants of the House are referred to as 'Members of the House of Lords'.

And how the hell has the House of Lords Precedence Act 1539, which the bill would amend, passed me by for so long? I fear I'd better hand in my constitutional trainspotter card forthwith.

In theory i'm all for an elected house of lords. In practice the current lords seem to be the only people in government without a party agenda and a vaguely sensible head on their shoulders, and i've seen what absolute fuckwits the general public vote for when given a chance, so i'm worried about this reform.

So the bill passed second reading, but the government was forced to withdraw its timetable motion. I reckon we can hear the quiet 'phut' as it gets knocked into the long grass, again.

Good.

If we elect the house of lords, we may as well not have one.

Much better to have people who don't ever show up, and get handed titles by the incumbent governments to reward them for being absolute bastards while in power, all in an effort to maintain the status quo of the rich and powerful.

Go, go unelected bishop and lord overlords!

The US Senate is elected, isn't it?

I have to say I'm not on one side or the other. I'm struggling to get behind the reforms, but at the same time I think the old duffers in the House of Lords at the moment are pretty much a waste of space.

They most certainly are not. They do lots of important things.

They seem to be able to delay horrid legislation the government (current & previous) want to implement, but it always seems to get through anyway.

Some of them do. Some do not. One of them has voted 7 times in the last 13 years, 5 of which were against Lords reforms.

Maybe the proposed version wasn't perfect, but it really does need reformation from the current outdated model.

I think this has shown what an absolute clusterfuck the current Parliament is.

Cameron can't control his party. Graun reporting a large number of rebel MPs are from the 2010 intake, who were happy to put their careers on the line. Even Mensch was looking to vote against, and she would kill babies with hammers if there was a Tory vote in it.

Clegg apparently had the opportunity to drop the NHS reforms if he agreed to drop the Lords reform. (The Times, today.) And said No. Even if he didn't, he has got his MPs to sit back and support tuition fees, the destruction of the NHS and public sector and banking reform leading to the death of his party at the next election. And his reward was those self same people destroying the only two things he did seem to care about. Of course this means that the next time the Conservatives put forward something else that fucks over people, we can see a queue of Lib Dems MPs trotting towards the opposition... no, I can't even say it as a laugh.

And Ed Miliband is today congratulating himself for getting the Labour Party to vote in favour of inherited privilege retaining an unelected job for life. Even as a purely political move, he managed to give a kicking to damaged goods in Clegg, rather than supporting the reform, which would have caused all sorts of shit for Cameron with his backbenchers. Well done, Ed. Truly, you have proved to be Adrian Mole with a lust for power.

Coalitions. They can't even do that right.

I can honestly see the case for both sides. I don't like the idea of a fully elected upper house, because that just gives you the same popularism and party politics that is a curse on the commons, and results in the partisan mess that is the US Senate. I don't like the idea of a fully hereditary upper house, because then you have the mess we're in now, where a good load of them don't care and just turn up for their £450 a day, and it's stuffed to the rafters with politically appointed sycophants.

I don't know what the sensible middle ground is.

I'm against fully elected Lords. I think that they should be appointed for knowledge and expertise. They should act as a brake on the Commons to ensure the lower house doesn't go batshit mental.



Only 92 are heriditary peers right now, but I do agree in principle.



Agree



I recall seeing some statistics that showed that voting among party lines isn't as common as one might ecpect, but bugagred if I can recall where. Ask kern.

Totally agreed. Unfortunately, it's fucking difficult to put in place a non-partisan process to evaluate 'knowledge and expertise' to decide who gets the job.



I mis-spoke there. I meant appointed life peers, rather than hereditary.

I really dsiagree with some appointments of late.

Yes, two per state, for six year terms (a third are elected every two years). Means Wyoming, with a population roughly equal to Cornwall, carries the same weight in the chamber as California (population roughly equal to the UK)

Canada has a fully appointed upper house, Germany's is composed of the state governments, and Australia has elections (if I remember correctly). I used to be able to reel off a long list of different approaches used across the globe, such was my misspent youth. Each has its own advantages and flaws, but generally it's best to ask what Parliament shoul be doing, then build two Houses from that, rather than decide how to fill it without knowing what you want to achieve. But nobody ever bothers.

Can't remember! But without the risk of deselection, it's hard for the whips to have any real power in the Lords. Moreover, one of the largest groups are the nonaligned Crossbenchers, who sit with no party affiliation. That is the group we'd lose I'n an elected house.

Any Lords reform that doesn't involve removing the Bishops is also inherently broken from the start.

But the Bishops represent the religious majority in this country!

Would that amount to disestablishment? Or are you an antisisestablismentarian?

I broadly agree with nonantidisestablishmentarians.

You've waited years for that, haven't you?

And as such, I would have no issue with those folks who would like their religious views represented in the upper house being allowed to vote for a Bishop the same as they could vote for anyone else. Or for a Bishop to be nominated to the house on the basis of knowledge and experience same as anyone else. It's the fact that they're automatic seats that I dislike.

I was being facetious, but yes.

I like the idea of having Bishops in there. I think it's kinds goofy, but cool.

Must you always be bashing the Bishops?

Not being funny, but haven't the politicians - Mr Clegg in particular - got more pressing matters to worry about right now than the reform of the House of Lords?

As an aside, I'll take Bishops over (elected, sycophant, line-towing) Pawns anyday. And anyway, in all seriousness - what the fuck is the point in having an elected second chamber...? The first elected chamber is surely and self-evidently bad enough.

Probably true, but it was a manifesto commitment and part of the coalition agreement.



Oh, I've got nothing specific against them as individuals. I just don't like the fact that it's (I think) the only job in the UK that gets you an automatic seat in the Lords.

Oh true, I agree with you mate. My fear, however, is that the likely alternative - an elected chamber - could well be much, much worse, in many ways. At least some of the current incumbents actually speak their minds about stuff.

Agreed. I really don't know what the 'ideal' second chamber would look like.

So you're against the whole idea of democratic representation? Both those of your arguments have historically been used by dictators and dictatorships as arguments against democracy: "we've got a national crisis on, we can't be distracted by democracy!"; "we can't have elected politicians, they'll all be populist careerists!".

It has taken 100 years to get this far.

As for Clegg having better things to be doing... this is about all he has left.

I kind of am, in this case. We've got an elected lower chamber. The whole point of the upper chamber is to apply a filter to the actions of the lower chamber in order to avoid the worst of the populist, short-term, re-election chasing policies that might be pushed their way.

Whoa there, I didn't say I was against democratic representation, did I? I just don't want to see all the upheaval, expense and government/parliamentary resources consumed (where these are surely needed elsewhere) - ultimately for something new that's demonstrably worse than what we have, as clearly imperfect as it is.

Sorry, but there *is* a national crisis ongoing at the moment; this is unprecedented, certainly within my own lifetime. We look (vainly) to our politicians to do the job that they're elected to perform and for them to seriously analyse the problems and formulate meaningful, substantive and worthwhile solutions that are within their gift so to do. So yes, I unashamedly believe that this is absolutely not the time to be indulging in this stuff, notwithstanding the fact that yes, something definitely does need to be done - cautiously and unrushed - that offers worthwhile, more accountable improvements, for less cost, and further enhances the independence of the second chamber from rank party politics. (Albeit, to the extent that the public tend to elect vapid morons who are no more than conduits of power for those very few individuals at the top of political parties and most tellingly, corporate interests entirely outside of the political process, I am extremely wary of an elected second chamber, which I suppose could be construed as 'undemocratic'? It all depends how it's done, and by whom. I believe in a Meritocracy myself, with meritocratic principles; let us populate the second chamber with people having a proven, empirical track record in business, the professions, the arts).

This sense of priority doesn't make me akin to a dictator - let Clegg and Co. sort out the much more pressing, urgent matters requiring their immediate attention before stuff like this, which can wait.