Ideas for a reformed House of Lords

YOU asked on your letters page for comments on the future of the House of Lords. Mine are the following:

Worldwide, most governments (including the UK) have a bicameral structure, with an elected ‘lower house’ and an ‘upper house’ that may or may not be elected.

Generally, the purpose of the upper house is to review legislation proposed by the lower house, and otherwise debate and advise on topics of national interest.

The revisionary function of an upper house can be useful – providing some checks and balances over, and a fresh look at, what the lower house proposes.

This is the primary reason why most countries find the existence of the upper house desirable. Some 15 countries (including Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand) have abolished their upper houses and reverted to a unicameral system, in general because their upper houses were unelected, under-represented minorities, delayed legislation, or were too large and costly.

Although the desirability of an upper house (let us call it a senate) is arguable, the UK consensus is that it exercises a useful supervisory function and that without it the lower house, the Commons, would have unchecked powers and could act in a partisan and dictatorial fashion. Let us for the moment accept this position and consider the primary desirable and undesirable characteristics of a senate:

It should not be too big, and consequently unwieldy and expensive;

It should represent its society at large, and not be disproportionate in religion or creed, sex or sexual orientation, race or colour, or political leanings;

It should consist of men and women who are intelligent, wise and mature, and have proved themselves as such in one or more areas of life and occupation;

It should not include people whose presence is prompted by support, financial or otherwise, of a political party (there is already too much politics in the Commons);

There should be no hereditary right to membership and no life membership;

There should be selection for membership, but this should not be politically based.

The House of Lords fails on all the above counts. With 783 members, it is one of the largest in the world. Members are appointed for life.

Over 600 are official members of a political party, and nearly half of these are Conservatives. Many have made large donations to a political party, which has almost certainly contributed to their selection.

There are 92 hereditary peers. There are 26 ‘Lords Spiritual’, all members of one religious organisation, the Church of England, despite the existence in the UK of many other strands of religious belief (or non-belief ). Fewer than a third of members are female, and fewer than 8% are from ethnic minorities.

It should therefore be abolished or, as I suggest above, retained, but drastically reformed, along the following lines:

There should be 100 members, each serving four years;

Each member should be selected by the representative bodies for the various areas of UK activity. Such areas could include: business, trades unions, religious organisations (including but not limited to the Church of England), the law, police, armed services, emergency services, the arts, theatre and film, charities, environmental groups, farming, medicine, finance, etc. The Commons (and perhaps the current House of Lords?) should debate and decide which organisations should be represented, and the number of members each should nominate;

There is a case for a limited number of ‘wild cards’ (say five to 10), people proposed by popular acclaim via a country-wide internet based system;

This process should be reviewed every four years.

The division of areas of competence between the two houses of parliament, and the extent to which the senate could gainsay the Commons, would need careful consideration. The broad principle is that matters concerning the UK as a whole would be the province of the upper house: constitutional issues, foreign policy and relations, and defence are obvious areas here.

Policies relating primarily to, and manageable by, each of the four constituent parts of the UK would be delegated symmetrically to English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliaments.

(As a by-product of this, England would for the first time have its own legislative assembly, redressing the current anomaly.) The individual parliaments could decide their own electoral system, including whether to incorporate proportional representation.

I realise that the above proposals are controversial and their implementation could be difficult. But we would end up with a workable system, simpler and fairer than at present, and owing less to the undesirable political influence that today causes so much division and conflict.

David Lucas Liskeard, Cornwall