The House of Lords: Much Ado About Nothing?
Figure 1: (Source: Sullivan, 2021) Clerks of the House of Lords lined up in their traditional wigs.
Following a heated debate about the legality, ethics, and practicality of the controversial Rwanda Bill, the House of Lords (HoL) voted to move the bill forward to the next stage of legislation. As the bill progresses, the question of what to do with the HoL resurfaces.
Under the Rwanda bill, some refugees seeking asylum in the UK will be sent to Rwanda as their claims are processed. Despite intense criticism during the first debate, peers (members of the HoL) voted against a measure that would block the bill by 206 to 84 votes (BBC News, 2023). The bill will now progress to the committee stage.
Figure 2: (Source: UK Parliament) The HoL vote will move the Bill to the Committee stage.
An Elitist Past and an Uncertain Future
The HoL is the unelected counterpart to the House of Commons (HoC) in the UK’s legislative system. Calls for reform or even abolition of the HoL dates back centuries (Russel, 2013). The HoL originated as a council for the king and evolved to a mainly hereditary chamber that favoured the Conservatives (Russel, 2017). Peers have either a hereditary seat or are politically appointed by the monarch, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.
The HoL is criticised for being undemocratic, elitist and misrepresentative of the wider public (Baldwin, 2007). The average age in the HoL is 71, over 30 years older than the UK wide median age of 40 (UK Parliament, 2017: Clark, 2022). Critics claim that this gap inherently misrepresents the interests of the UK (Russel, 2023). A 2023 YouGov poll shows that only 19% of people aged 18-24 support the Rwanda Bill, but 58% of people over the age of 65 support the bill. The passing of the Rwanda Bill to the next stage by such a large majority supports the claim that the interests of the HoL is not conducive with that of the general UK population.
Figure 3: (Source: YouGov, 2023)
Although there are always calls for change in the HoL, there has never been wide sweeping reform. Instead there have been a number of smaller, incremental changes such as the House of Lords Act 1999 which removed most hereditary peers (Russel, 2013). The HoL has taken a backseat to the HoC, changing into more of a recommending body than an equal partner to the HoC, but calls for change still persist (Russel, 2017).
There are four possible futures for the HoL; remain as it is, undergo reform, replacement, or abolition.
Remain
Despite near constant calls for change, there are still merits to the status quo. As the HoL does not exercise as much power as the HoC, it is argued that it is a complementary institution.
Some believe that the appointment of peers creates a distance between the HoL and electoral politics (Russel, 2017). Therefore, peers don’t have the same pressure to appease a constituency or have to dedicate time and resources into getting re-elected. This enables them to consider bills with a unique degree of separation and deliberate more carefully.
As the UK faces a series of pressing issues such as the cost of living crisis and the ongoing effects of Brexit, supporters of the HoL argue that now is not the time to focus on reform (Russel, 2013).
Reform
Although not on the top of the public’s priority list, institutional reform has been pursued by both the Conservatives and Labour (Russel, 2023). Rather than changing the powers of the HoL, most reform proposals focus on the make-up (Russel, 2023).
Reform can take many forms including lowering the size of the chamber, adding term limits, inserting the HoC into the appointment process, and relocation.
Replacement
For those who see the HoL as illegitimate but still prefer the merits of a bicameral legislature, replacement is the way to go. However, the question lies in what to replace the HoL with.
Although it could open the door to legislative gridlock, an elected chamber is a popular recommendation (Norton, 2020). The elected chamber could consist of smaller constituencies like the HoC or a smaller chamber of territorial representatives for the devolved governments. Another route for closer representation is a citizens assembly.
Abolition
As reform works slowly and replacement is vague, there are calls to abolish the HoL entirely (Baldwin, 2007). This would mean the HoC would become the single chamber of Parliament.
Many people believe that the HoL is beyond reform and should be rid of in order to improve the (Shell, 2007). Unicameral legislatures are common and have several advantages such as improved public accountability and efficient lawmaking (Carroll, 1942).
Final Remarks
The question of what, if anything, should be done about the HoL? As a completely unelected institution, does its power undermine the legitimacy of the lawmaking process? Or could a replacement institution change the system in ways that might not be fully understood?
References
Baldwin, N.D., 2007. The House of Lords–Into the Future?.
BBC News (2023). Why Are Asylum Seekers Being Sent to Rwanda and How Many Could go? BBC News. [online] 13 Dec. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-61782866.
Carroll, D.B., 1942. Unicameralism. U. Kan. City L. Rev., 11, p.3.
Clark, D. (2022). UK population median age 2020. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281288/median-age-of-the-population-of-the-uk/.
Norton, P., 2020. Replace. In Reform of the House of Lords (pp. 47-55). Manchester University Press.
Russell, M. (2013). The contemporary House of Lords : Westminster bicameralism revived. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Russell, M. (2017). Don’t abolish the Lords. History shows it really can be reformed | Meg Russell. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/23/dont-abolish-house-of-lords-history-reformed-second-chamber-change [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].
Russell, M., 2023. House of Lords reform: navigating the obstacles. Institute for Government.
Shell, D., 2007. The House of Lords. Manchester University Press.
Sullivan, W. (2021). House of Lords: Hereditary peers are being ‘elected’ to parliament in a mockery of democracy. [online] The Scotsman. Available at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/hereditary-peers-by-elections-are-a-mockery-of-democracy-willie-sullivan-3320740 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2024].
UK Parliament (n.d.). The Legislative Process. Available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldconst/393/39305.htm [Accessed 1 Feb. 2024].
UK Parliament (2011). History of the House of Lords. [online] UK Parliament. Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/lords-history/history-of-the-lords/.
UK Parliament. (2017). Membership and principal office holders. [online] Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-lords-faqs/lords-members/.
YouGov (2023). To what extent do you support or oppose the government’s proposed policy to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda? | Daily Question. [online] Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/06/30/726e7/1.
From the start of the blog post my attention was grabbed by the title and the use of the Rwanda Bill. The use of the Rwanda Bill showed how currently the House of Lords is functioning. An additional subject which could be interesting to look at is the ethnicity and gender in the House of Lords and whether this reflects with the UK society of today. It is shown on the House of Lords website that only 6% of those in the HoL come from an ethnic minority background, which is significantly lower than the ethnic diversity in the UK. This further highlights the problem of the House of Lords not being an accurate representation of the UK population. Furthermore, the House of Lords is only 29% female. Representation of both gender and ethnicity can be a strong argument as to why the House of Lords needs reform.
This post is very well written, with a clear structure and strong headline. The separate sections regarding possible decisions that could be taken in regards to the HoL made the complexity of the question of the HoL, easier to understand. The HoL has no place in a representative democracy, and as this post highlights, it fails to represent or be democratically elected. Using the Rwanda bill as an example to showcase how unrepresentative the HoL was insightful but perhaps rather than only focusing on age, gender, sex and race could have also been incorporated.
The strong headline immediately provided a clear demonstration for the blog topic. The overall blog post was clearly structured, making good use of subheadings to divide up sections and provide an easy read. Additionally, the argument against the HoL is provided from an unbiased point of view, remaining factual as the blog engaged with current trends such as the Rwanda Bill. Ending the blog on a question, “Or could a replacement institution change the system in ways that might not be fully understood?”, was an intuitive way of engaging with readers and opening up the topic for further debate. However, when discussing the elitist background for the majority of the HoL, the blog could have expanded on the lack of representation in the HoL, as only 29% are women but in the HoC 35% are women, it would’ve been a further comparison to make between the two. Ultimately, a very engaging read.
This blog post is extremely interesting and insightful. With the eye-catching and intriguing headline to begin with, it immediately makes the piece exciting to read. The format of the blog also makes the piece easy to read. The sections are split up with subheadings allowing the reader to see a quick overview of what the author is addressing as well as making the piece easier to read as a whole. As well as that the use of graphs and tables throughout the blog illustrate and back up the points the author is making on the House of Lords and its purpose. Furthermore, the use of data creates further legitimacy to the points against having the House of Lords. However, an improvement which could be made to the blog post is in the final section, it is made up of rhetorical questions which the author could answer to create a higher level of coherency. However, the content and structure of the post are extremely good and make it an overall pleasant and engaging read.
I found the idea briefly mentioned of potentially replacing the House of Lords with a citizen’s assembly intriguing, and not one that I had heard of when discussing how to fix the issue of the House of Lords. This article inspired me to look deeper into this concept, and the information I have found has really influenced my opinion on the matter. Although it was difficult to find any academic research on the topic, the Sortition Foundation provided some fascinating insights into the advantages of a possible permanent “House of Citizens”, including how there are already examples of this in Eupen in Belgium, Paris, Newham and Mornington in Melbourne (Sortition Foundation, 2023). I feel as though this evidence adds even more validity to the point made in the article that the question for a potential replacement of the House of Lords is what to replace it with, given the number of possible alternatives that have been advocated for. I believe this debate is one that literature on the topic should pay more attention to.
Sortition Foundation (2023) “Replace the House of Lords with a house of citizens” [Online] Available at: https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/replace_house_of_lords_with_house_of_citizens (Accessed 6th February 2024).
This particular blog post instantly caught my eye because it addressed two highly contentious issues in British Politics. The Rwanda Bill and the role of the House of Lords in its Parliamentary function. I understand the heavy emphasis the author has placed on the undemocratic nature of the House of Lords and how harmful this is to overall governance in a so-called democratic society. Furthermore, through various graphs and tables within the blog post the author includes necessary evidence to suggest that as a chamber it does undermine the law-making and legislating process. However, I think an additional topic that could’ve been explored is the various proposals and reforms that have been geared towards the HOL, for example, the House of Lords Act 1999 saw the removal of hereditary peers but in the same regard saw the introduction of life peers. Consequently, in recent times it is felt that life peers simply further accountability concerns that already exist within the House. I think this is especially relevant when the blog post examined the age divide in the House, life peers are merely another way in which this can be reinforced.
Whilst the criticisms of the House of Lords are both valid and worthy of consideration, the potential benefits that an unelected chamber can offer to the legislative process must be acknowledged.
An aspect that is often neglected in regards to the House of Lords is its capacity to provide expert subject matter knowledge and independent scrutiny to proposed legislation. Unlike elected representatives who may be party political animals influenced by whips and electoral constraints, members of the House of Lords have the freedom to scrutinise and debate without the pressure of seeking re-election. As such, this can often lead to more informed decision-making and a thorough appreciation of legislature.
While calls for reform or abolition of the Lords are understandable, it’s of vital importance to consider the potential consequences of such actions. Merely replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, or abolishing it, may not lead to improved outcomes, and could even result in unintended consequences such as increased partisanship or diminished legislative scrutiny.
In navigating the future of the House of Lords, it’s imperative to balance addressing realistic concerns about its make-up and role, whilst also preserving the valuable contributions it can make to the legislative process.
This blog post presents a thought-provoking analysis of the House of Lords and its role in the UK’s legislative system, particularly considering recent debates surrounding the Rwanda Bill. While the post discusses possible futures for the HoL, it’s essential to consider the broader implications of its existence on democratic representation and accountability. One aspect worth exploring further is the potential impact of the HoL’s composition on its ability to effectively scrutinize legislation and represent diverse interests. While critics highlight the unelected nature of the House of Lords as undemocratic, proponents argue that its members bring valuable expertise to the legislative process, free from electoral pressures. However, the question arises: does the current composition of the House of Lords adequately reflect the diversity of voices and perspectives within the UK? With a higher average and a membership largely appointed through political patronage, concerns persist about its representativeness, particularly among younger voters. Moreover, while the House of Lords serves as a revising chamber, offering valuable scrutiny and expertise, its lack of democratic legitimacy raises questions about the accountability of its members to the electorate due to life tenure. In light of these considerations, calls for reform or abolition of the House of Lords reflect broader debates about democratic governance and institutional legitimacy in the UK. Reform proposals aimed at diversifying the composition of the House of Lords, introducing term limits, or enhancing transparency in the appointment process could address some of these concerns while preserving its role as a revising chamber, which the blog post recognised.