Why we must now finally rid the Lords of ‘vermin in ermine’

ON June 23, 2016, more British people voted to leave the European union than have ever, in our democracy’s history, voted for anything. Legislation for the referendum had glided through both Houses of Parliament, opposed by virtually no one save scottish Nationalists.

the Government’s subsequent, controversial leaflet to every British household – arguing for a Remain vote – promised unambiguously to enact ‘whatever you decide’ and, at last year’s General Election, 80 per cent of voters backed either the tories or Labour – both standing on manifestos committed no less unambiguously to a hard Brexit.

Yet in recent months the House of Lords has been shamelessly throwing its weight around. Peers have inflicted no fewer than 15 Government defeats on various aspects of the European union (Withdrawal) Bill, cheering such Europhiles as tony Blair, sir Nick Clegg and the ghastly Anna soubry.

Worse, they have greatly helped such hard-eyed Eurocrats as Jean-Claude Juncker, Michel Barnier and Donald tusk – to say nothing of Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s unscrupulous and callow taoiseach – removing any incentive for them meaningfully to negotiate.

And all this from a bunch of be-ermined nobles (plus a gaggle of Anglican bishops) whom nobody actually elected.

A second Parliamentary chamber with the power to scrutinise, to revise and at least to ask their colleagues in the other place, ‘Are you quite sure about this?’ is not, in principle, a bad thing.

Holyrood would certainly benefit from one – if we could stand the expense. the united states senate serves as a useful brake on excitable Congressmen and imperial Presidencies. And for ‘this house of Peers’ to make life excessively exciting for HM Government is not new.

Harold Wilson’s final administration suffered a record 126 Lords defeats in one Parliamentary session and defeats under those of tony Blair and Gordon Brown were common. Generally, the firm queries of the Lords make for better government, especially when support for a given policy in the Commons is soft on its own backbenches.

It was the upper chamber that delivered us from the restoration of compulsory identity cards in Blair’s last years and then ill-considered tax credit plans from George Osborne.

Of course, the Lords has been a menace in the past. Its veto on Gladstone’s modest measures for Irish Home Rule ensued years of mayhem from 1916 and the advent of an independent country on a bitterly divided island.

But it was the uproar over Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ in 1909 that finally saw peers’ wings firmly clipped. they refused to pass this radical Budget – with its plans for an old age pension, funded by a land tax and death duties – and two bitter elections were fought over it, both returning the same determined Liberal Government amidst a rammy so bitter the strain probably killed King Edward VII.

His son, King George V, with great reluctance finally agreed to create hundreds of Liberal peers if the House of Lords continued to hold out against the popular will. In the face of this, the tories buckled. subsequent reforms restricted the upper Chamber merely to delaying legislation, not preventing it, and any part at all in passing the Budget.

Conventions were since established that the Prime Minister must sit in the Commons and the Lords will not block an explicit manifesto commitment endorsed by voters in a general election. the advent of life peerages in 1958 – admitting people from more diverse backgrounds, and far more women – greatly changed the revising chamber’s atmosphere.

Hereditary peerages have since largely been confined to the Royal Family.

Mrs thatcher declined an Earldom when in 1992 she quit the Commons and, though she did take a life peerage, all of her No10 successors have declined enoblement.

But it is to tony Blair’s halfcocked 1999 reform of the Lords that we owe the current Brexit Horlicks. All but a rump of hereditary peers were banished – though they won the right to vote in elections, and even stand in them.

Dozens of life peerages were then bestowed by Blair and Brown – on just the sort of people you would expect – and as a result tories have long been outnumbered in the Lords.

they sit in roughly equal numbers to the Labour contingent, with a force of Liberal Democrats and ‘cross-benchers’ as, effectively, the swing voters. the sNP, perhaps to its credit, has stoutly refused any part in upper House. We shall never behold Baron salmond of strichen.

THus a tory government is having an unusually bad time with the red benches and, of course, significant tory rebels are part of it – woolly seventies people such as Michael Heseltine and Chris Patten.

Blair ditched virtue-signalling proposals for a directly elected House of Lords because he was averse to elections he could not control – Ken Livingstone became Mayor of London despite his best efforts – and because elevation to the Other Place’s sweet life is powerful Prime Ministerial patronage.

Dubious colleagues can be ‘kicked upstairs’ and bolshier senior backbenches tempted with the possibility come retirement. useful allies in business or the media can also, by ennoblement, be brought into government without the need to consult pesky voters.

the effective scrapping of the hereditary principle, though, has left the monarchy dangerously isolated – and the failure to introduce direct election in its place greatly weakens the upper chamber’s legitimacy.

It should be stressed its wrecking role in fraught Brexit legislation is really due to the position in the Commons.

We have a hung Parliament, a weak Government in hock to a bunch of ulsterfolk still rewaging 1690, a divided Conservative Party, an unhappy Prime Minister loath either to lead or to go – and no obvious successor waiting in the wings.

Brexit will happen, though it will be a compromise, in the end, to some extent disappointing everyone.

But the muddle that is a House of Lords full of ‘vermin in ermine’ must some day be confronted. Direct elections are not the solution. British governments must at times do courageous and unpopular things and most endure brief periods of deep unpopularity.

Mid-term elections to the upper House would only encourage indecision. You would also have far less diverse peers from the same boring ‘political class’ that dominates the Commons.

And you would lose the perspective, and gentle courage, that at its best has long distinguished this House of Peers. With measures in place to deal with misconduct, let us indeed elect our Lords – but for life.