How to reform the House of Lords
From elections to experts
Revoke peerages from Bishops
As it stands, 26 bishops automatically hold a seat in the Lords. That would be enough for six games of chess, were they not limited by the number of Queens.
According to the Electoral Reform Society (and you can probably guess their view on the matter) aside from the democratic titans of The Vatican and Iran, ‘most countries do not involve clerics in making laws’.
This article will go on to justify the importance of having experts in the Lords. Whilst one could claim that bishops are representative of Christians and that they provide expertise in a religious sense, neither of these ideas justify a peerage coming with bishop-hood automatically like some sort of added bonus.
Scrap hereditary peers
The idea that people should have a right to sit in this country’s second chamber just because of their birthright is frankly ridiculous.
Even when they are in the chamber, The Sunday Times has demonstrated they are still less engaged, and more self centred than life-peers:
‘The average hereditary has spoken in the chamber just 50 times in the past five years, compared with 82 times among life peers. When they do speak, they are 60 per cent more likely to mention their own business or personal interests’
That doesn’t exactly scream ‘we need hereditary peers’. Some might question how exactly we’ve ended up with these peers at all, an answer you can find here.
Cross-bench peers elected by MPs with a two-thirds majority
Cross-bench peers should primarily be made up of experts from their respective fields. This allows the House of Lords to continue to fulfil its function of scrutinising and improving proposed legislation.
Under this idea, cross-bench peers would be nominated in the same way as life-peers (by party leaders). However, to be appointed, they would require the backing of two-thirds of MPs. They would also have term limits of five years. At the end of their term, to remain peers, they would have to be voted in by the Commons, but would not require the nomination by party leaders again.
So, why should these experts only be elected by MPs? Firstly, it would seem unreasonable to expect the public to be able to decide which experts are best. It doesn’t make sense to have experts campaign to try and show how smart they are, even if a few might enjoy it. Equally, the point of cross-benchers is to be apolitical and guided by their expertise. Thus there is no need for them to be representative of the public.
The two-thirds majority requirement should ensure that the experts are apolitical, as excluding any massive landslide elections, the appointing of cross-bench peers would require cross-party support.
This also provides a check on potential cronyism. No Conservative government would put forward a former donor, knowing that they would automatically be blocked from becoming a peer. It would just create needless bad press.
There should be 100 cross-bench peers, to ensure they can make up a broad range of expertise.
However it is possible, especially when electing the first 100 cross-bench peers, that the Commons simply cannot agree on 100 peers. Equally, in the future, they may end up rejecting more peers than are agreed upon, causing the size of the chamber to fall.
This could be seen as a potential flaw in the system, as unlike elections carried out by the people, the MPs would be voting for or against an individual, rather than voting for which individual out of a collection is best for the job.
However this flaw in the system is actually an excellent fail-safe. It ensures that cross-bench peers are not ‘the best 100 who were available’ but those who are seen as adding value to the second chamber by MPs.
Elect peers with party affiliation
It would be the task of these peers to represent the public. These peers would be elected using party list proportional representation, on a national basis, meaning peers would be elected from four ‘regions’: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Admittedly, a commonly suggested reform for the House of Lords is to turn it into a Senate representing regions of the UK.
However, since the UK’s voting system of First Past the Post already allows for effective local representation, it appears that the Senate system actually sacrifices a potential benefit to a second chamber. That benefit being peers elected on a national basis would be able to be entirely focused on the wider impacts of legislation.
Furthermore, what is the point in representation by region? The peer would be representing a collection of areas already represented by their MP.
Based on this logic, one could then question why we should elect peers by nation rather than in the UK as a whole. Yet given that numerous parties only stand in one part of the UK, it would be unfair to not to elect them by nation. This is because parties such as the SNP only stand in a comparatively small part of the UK (in terms of the size of the electorate) meaning they achieve low vote share overall, but still receive a very high vote share from their possible electorate. This indicates significant strength of feeling which should not be ignored.
One potential distribution of seats among the four nations would be as follows:
England: 272
Scotland: 28
Wales: 16
Northern Ireland: 9
In total, there would be 325 elected peers. To calculate this, I took the seat distribution from the 2023 Boundary Review and divided it by two. I rounded up for England and Scotland, simply just to ensure a nicer number than 323. Whilst the Boundary Review is of course intended for the House of Commons, it still applies for our purpose here.
What would this look like?
This visualisation gives you an idea of what the House of Lords could look like under my system. Keep in mind there are numerous assumptions in this model.
Based on vote shares from the 2019 General Election, the Conservatives would have the greatest number of peers, with 144. Assuming Sinn Féin would refuse to take up these seats, and that there are 100 cross-bench peers, the number of peers required for a majority would be 211, leaving the Conservatives 67 short.
Thus the Conservatives would only be able to win votes in the House of Lords with cross-bench support, increasing the importance of expertise, demonstrating how the experts and the elected can play a role in our second chamber.
