Democracy is being undermined by peers
The British constitution may not be codified in a single document, but its rules are clear and well-known. One such rule prevents the House of Lords deciding on issues of public spending. Another dictates that the elected Commons always has primacy over the unelected upper chamber. None the less, Labour and Liberal Democrat peers have used their disproportionate strength to thwart the will of the Commons, on a decision worth more than £4 billion a year of taxpayers’ money. The Lords may not have killed plans to cut spending on tax credits, but they have voted to stall the implementation of a measure that was last month clearly supported by the Commons. This is illegitimate; talk of a constitutional crisis is not overblown.
Equally regrettable is that there is every prospect of peers committing similar acts of obstruction in the near future. The Lords will shortly consider the legislation giving Britain an EU referendum; some Labour and Lib Dem peers talk of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in that referendum, something the Government rightly opposes. Such an attempt could start a struggle with MPs that could even delay the referendum. Similar vandalism is likely when ministers produce their plans to reform Britain’s unbalanced human rights laws.
In short, the unelected House of Lords is now a significant obstacle to the Government doing the things it was democratically elected to do. That is unacceptable, and if David Cameron were to act to remove that impediment, he would be justified.
To some, the answer is fundamental reform of the Lords, perhaps by making it a smaller chamber whose members no longer serve for life and that attempts to reflect the balance of opinion expressed at general elections. But whatever the merits of such reforms, they would inevitably take time and involve endless political wrangling.
A quicker, neater solution would be the creation of enough Conservative peers to give Tory laws a fair chance in the Lords. Such peers need not be permanent additions to a chamber that is already too big; parliamentary rules now allow peers to retire, and new members could take their seats with a promise to step down after, say, five years.
The prospect of creating dozens of new peers would fill many reasonable people with dread, but so egregious is the conduct of peers that it must now be considered. The behaviour of the Lords is undermining democracy. That cannot be tolerated.