IN THIS COUNTRY, we have strong traditions both of democracy and of non-democracy, interweaving and entangling throughout the story of our political development, with their most notable point of conflict being the civil war, setting the course for the next half millennium of the dominance of the former over the latter. One great manifestation both of our non-democratic strain and of the great rivalry between these two forces is the House of Lords, our august upper chamber. Over the last hundred-odd years, it has evolved from a chamber giving voice to the wishes of our hereditary, landed aristocracy to one – in its idealised form – of appointed experts, who scrutinise and comment upon the actions of our true representatives in the House of Commons. Certainly, great work has been done to democratise our political system with respect to this house, particularly its disempowerment relative to the commons. Although, as we have seen with the recent maltreatment of the Assisted Dying Act by the Lords, they are not yet without teeth.
Proposals for the reform of the Lords have always had to balance the countervailing arguments of expertise and tradition: that the Lords in its modern, unaccountable form provides a level of genuine knowledge and life-experience that is often lacking in our modern MPs. This is, therefore, a necessary step to ensure we get good, effective, legislation – free of holes and poorly thought out second order effects that might escape the notice of the lower house. There is also the argument that the House of Lords ties us into our tradition of parliamentary government, representing a link with our distant past – all the way back to Magna Carta and arguably further, to the pre-feudal war councils of the warlords that settled our islands after the retreat of Rome. There is a lot to be proud of in that tradition of almost continual, millennium-spanning government. Saying that is not the same, however, as saying that that this House does not demand urgent reform. In a modern society, a clearly feudal, non-democratic chamber with real legislative power over my life and yours alike clearly demands some substantial criticism. While this most obvious avenue for criticism – its sheer outdatedness – has at least become somewhat less damning with the departure of the hereditary peers (but not, notably, the Lords Spiritual, whose presence is worthy of criticism so obvious I don’t feel the need to spell it out here). Yet still, the presence of unelected experts with real power and real input into our democratic legislature is a real issue – on the grounds of Democracy alone, even if we consider no other argument.
Therefore, a proposal for serious reform should balance several competing forces: the real value of tradition, and a link to our history; expertise, and the accumulated wisdom of our society which the House of Lords, in an idealised form, should hope to ensure our legislation is exposed to; our rights as citizens of a democracy not to be ruled over by those over whom we have no authority.
I set out to propose a system for a new House of Lords, one where Lords are elected but only indirectly, and are proposed on the grounds, at least to some degree, of professional expertise. Each major political party would be invited to submit a list of notables, experts, and academics – people they would want to see in the House of Lords. Then, after each general election, each party would be allocated seats in the Lords according to their vote-share. This kind of proportional representation of expertise (PRE) would offer a counterbalancing force to the dominant House of Commons, where seat share is not identical to vote share – offering, unless in the case of a genuine population-wide landslide, a healthy degree of difference of opinion and persuasion to the government. The effect of our first past the post system for Commons election has the effect of narrowing down the spectrum of opinion that is expressed in our lower chamber, or at least substantially weaking perspectives that fail to meet that magical plural threshold in a sufficient number of seats. PRE would reintroduce that diversity of opinion, not at the level of open democratic competition in the American fashion, but in the spectrum of views that the public wishes to be included in scrutinising the decision-making process, mediated by the political party.
This is not to say that this system would be wholly partisan, assuming it functions as intended. Ideally, there would be substantial agreement on what constitutes ‘expertise’ in different political camps, so although members may be elected by different parties, and their expertise may lend itself to a particular ideological camp more than another, it should avoid the bitter partisanship of the lower House where members are elected for their views more than for their experience. I imagine a Tory peer under the PRE system elected for her experience running a major industrial firm, or a Green peer elected for his experience as an academic economist advocating for wealth taxation. While parties may suggest some peers for election due to their experience in an industry or sector largely aligned ideologically with their party (e.g. traditionally, industrialists aligning with the Tories) or due to an academic ideological alignment (e.g. in economics, some schools align more closely with some kinds of economic policy than others) these would be the strongest grounds for actual ideological disagreement – there may be other areas, for example an experienced social care worker, a great physicist, a pioneering museum curator, or an astronaut, where their experience is apolitical – as far as anything can be truly apolitical – where partisanship can be left at the door in the interests of expert policy advice, and cross-party collaboration might become the norm.
I suggest two other reforms that would need to accompany this system: a Peerage Commission (I don’t insist on the name) which would monitor all suggested party lists, to ensure things like candidate quality, that expertise is genuine and not a fabricated excuse to put a colleague in the Lords, and that party bosses ensure a fair process of suggestion and decision of the makeup of the list: a list written entirely by the party leader ought to be discouraged. Secondly, that there should be a stronger tradition of abstention: if you are a member of the House by virtue of your expertise in, say, accountancy, it could be reasonably argued that you ought to abstain on any votes related to national park management; you are there to provide expert advice, not represent your own views. Therefore, we may want to consider a House of Lords substantially increased in number to ensure that a sufficiently large number are able to comment on any given debate.
This has the added advantage of turning it into something closer to a mass-participation body. If there were, for example, two thousand seats in the House of Lords, and this were to refresh fully with a general election every five years, then over a half century fully twenty thousand people would have taken their seat in the upper House. Suddenly that starts to become a not insubstantial part of the population. If we want to take this further, we could increase the turnover rate: parties might have to submit five lists of names to the Peerage Commission, which would have a full annual replacement throughout the Parliament. With two thousand seats, that would result in a hundred thousand people participating in the House of Lords over the same period as above. Now, some people may serve more than one term, and some may not feel the need to attend any votes during their year if their specific expertise is irrelevant, but in principle this would be a unique democratic transformation. Suddenly, it would not be entirely uncommon to meet someone who had served a year in the Lords. Their family, friends and acquaintances (and crucially, colleagues) could discuss the issues of the day with them during their term, and feel that they were right up against the decision making process, inputting directly into the deliberations of our Parliament. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to hope and even, not unreasonable to expect, that if you gain a sufficient degree of proficiency in your field you may one day be asked to legislate on it for the nation. In short, it would become not wholly unlike jury service. What better reform to the House of the Aristocracy than this to represent the fullness of our democratic transition?
We may wish to make the system a little more complex: certain positions of high public importance (The Director General of the BBC, The Chairman of the British Museum, Vice Chancellor of some Universities) may become automatically associated with being asked to serve a rolling term for the duration of the position ex officio. Some organisations (major religions, large charities, large companies) may be offered to chance to nominate some number of names onto a party list. These measures ensure a direct route for major organisations to feed straight into government systems, making coordination easier and ensuring that the issues that any particular organisation has with legislation can be satisfactorily dealt with while the legislation is being drafted and reviewed, preventing lengthy holdups in the courts or media battles over minutiae. More meaningfully, it would provide a route for these important organisations representing the views of our society on important issues are able to be heard in Parliament. If this were to happen, steps would of course need to be taken to ensure that this doesn’t become a route for even greater corporate or pressure group influence within government, but this is a solvable problem.
Needless to say, this change would also substantially reduce the patronage power available to reigning governments to appoint people in return for political favours or even for personal gain, a practice which has become disappointingly common.
When compared with other schemes for reform, PRE offers some obvious benefits – it has neither the issues with dual-house deadlock often touted against true PR systems, nor the issues with non-expertise suffered by the idea of a true citizens’ assembly. Instead, it offers a complex balance of a truly democratic reflection of peoples’ views with a PR style seat allocation system, with selection criteria that prevent members from truly being politicians in the traditional sense. They are there to share experience and to criticise, not to put forward their own agenda. This House would also be definitively subservient to the Commons. Instead, it would provide genuinely expert analysis of considered legislation, filtered through the lens of the political view and opinion of the populace. It honours both our democratic traditions and our non-democratic ones, and continues the legacy of the long chain of House of Lords reforms of all kinds that has been handed down to us.
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