It’s time to rid our nation of Brussels worshipping Lords
BREXIT offers a golden opportunity to revitalise our parliamentary democracy. As a sovereign nation once more, we will no longer be ruled by an unaccountable foreign cabal. Yet real change will only be properly achieved if the Government tackles Britain’s own unelected monolith at the heart of Westminster, namely the House of Lords.
The second chamber likes to regard itself as the guardian of the constitution but it is nothing of the sort. Absurdly bloated and packed with mediocrities, it is profoundly unsuited to play any role in our national governance. Its membership is wholly unrepresentative of the electorate. Its political culture is marinated in metropolitan groupthink and worship of Brussels whose self- serving oligarchy it closely resembles.
The drastic need for reform has been highlighted this week by Boris Johnson’s regrettable decision to create another 16 new peers. This means that since he became Prime Minister last July he has made no fewer than 58 appointments to the Lords, which makes a mockery of Tory pledges to reduce its obesity.
Most other second chambers across the Western world have no more than 200 members but the Lords now has more than 830. Shamefully, it is now the world’s second largest legislative body after the Communistrun People’s Assembly in China.
WHAT makes the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for ermine even worse is his elevation of City tycoon and Conservative donor Peter Cruddas to the peerage. Over the years, Cruddas has given more than £ 2.5million to Tory coffers, including £ 658,000 since Johnson entered Downing Street. But his involvement with the party’s finances has dragged him into controversy.
As co- treasurer in 2012 he was accused by one newspaper of selling access to David
Cameron in return for donations. Cruddas won a partial libel victory, though he was also condemned by the Court of Appeal for his “unacceptable, inappropriate” behaviour.
The Lords’ Appointments Commission recommended the peerage should be blocked. But in an unprecedented move, Boris Johnson overruled this advice, provoking widespread outrage. Sir Alistair Graham, the stalwart former head of the parliamentary standards watchdog, described Cruddas as “a totally unsuitable person to be appointed a life peer”.
Advancement in public life should be based on merit, not on personal or political relations. The Cruddas saga has once again exposed the disreputable nature of the House of Lords, reinforcing its image as a bastion of cronyism and a citadel of sleaze. His case is just part of a wider pattern, where a place on the red benches is often the reward for favours, or even failure, rather than talent. In fact one of the upper house’s unedifying purposes is to act as a well- upholstered refuge for defeated MPs and a retirement home for ex- ministers.
The House of Lords is also extravagantly inefficient. In 2018- 19 its overall costs stood at £ 117million, a rise of almost a fifth on the previous year. The bill for peers’ expenses shot up by 27 per cent to £ 23.4million, with members able to claim a £ 323- a- day tax- free allowance just for signing in.
In a climate of greed, many members do so without making any contribution, fulfilling the warning of an internal audit report that the Lords expenses system is “vulnerable” to “being exploited for personal gain”. Last year, 112 peers claimed in total over £ 1million despite making no written
or spoken contributions. Contempt for public money is mirrored by disdain for public opinion. Once a fortress of aristocratic Toryism, the Lords is now dominated by the progressive elite, as reflected in its attempts to overturn the 2016 referendum and thwart Brexit.
SIMILARLY, the size of the Lords’ ultra- woke Liberal Democrat group is out of all proportion to their party’s popular support. At the last general election they won just 11 Commons seats, yet have 94 peers in the Lords.
Just as offensive is the pretence that the Lords is some kind of repository of wisdom and statesmanship. In fact most of its members are political second- raters, municipal worthies, pressure group activists and party hacks, united by their addiction to verbiage and selfregard. Few of them can even deliver a forceful speech.
The constitutional renewal of our nation through Brexit should be the cue for the replacement of the Lords by an elected second chamber. In a genuine democracy, our legislators should be chosen by the people rather than establishment patronage.
‘ A place on the red benches is often the reward for favours, or even failure’