Time to Abolish the House of Lords?
Labour has announced that if they win the next general election they plan to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a reformed upper chamber. Is this the right decision or, as one government source has said, would it “risk undermining the Union of the United Kingdom”?
It is hard to imagine the House of Lords exiting in any other modern democracy. If there wasn’t a close tie between Britain and America, our trans-Atlantic partners would surely pressure us towards democratic reform. Indeed it is the sort of democratic deficit that leads British politicians to call for reform abroad.
And yet, in a strange way, it has always worked. The Lords have always been aware of the limit of their powers and when they have over-extended, reforms like the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, and the Salisbury Convention have always kept the upper house in line.
Meanwhile, as more power has concentrated around Downing Street in recent years, the expertise offered by life peers has tended to keep some of the more drastic proposals in check. Reforms to judicial review were nowhere near as bad as they could have been following intervention by former members of the judiciary now sitting in the House of Lords. Even now, the only real hope of blunting Dominic Raab’s misguided Bill of Rights lies in the upper chamber.
So the Lords is undemocratic but it seems to work in the UK, so why would Labour want to change it?
The problem is that in recent years the Conservative government has identified the House of Lords as a key threat to their policies and has started to do something about it.
On Twitter, Jessica Simor KC asked who the worst appointment to the Lords was in past six years and the problem was the surfeit of options. The top reply managed to whittle the list down to five names.
Who makes up this Hall of Shame?
Baroness Fox: Appointed by the Johnson government, Fox was an MEP for the Brexit Party and dismissed international law as “undermining national sovereignty”.
Baron Moylan: Appointed by the Johnson government, Moylan was an adviser to Boris Johnson for many years when the latter was Mayor of London.
Baron Hannan: Appointed by the Johnson government, Hannan was a lockdown scpetic and did not believe Covid was as serious as scientists believed.
Baron Lebedev: Appointed by the Johnson government, Lebedev was the subject of a hit podcast that highlighted the growing influence of Russian money in the UK.
Baron Frost: Appointed by the Johnson government, Frost became prominent after he criticised the Brexit agreement that he himself negotiated.
There is a running theme there but the Johnson appointments merely highlight a worrying trend. In the past, appointments were spread across the political spectrum and rewarded valuable contributions to public life. However most recent appointments have sought to increase the numerical advantage that Conservative peers have, and even other appointments have that same effect.
Baroness Fox is a crossbench peer but her political views clearly align closely with the Tories. Baroness Hoey was a Labour MP for years but endorsed the Conservatives in the 2019 general election.
If the government controlled who was appointed to the judiciary then there would be outrage yet the Lords are a similar, if not more powerful, check on executive power. The House of Lords Appointments Commission would ideally stop this sort of rot but they are merely an advisory body. When the Commission opposed the appointment of Peter Cruddas to the House of Lords because of his donations to the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson simply ignored the advice.
At this point the House of Lords is losing credibility at a dramatic rate and wholesale reform is needed to save its reputation. The upper house is becoming bloated and ineffective. Democratisation may be the only solution.
This week on the podcast we travel into the distant past and examine a planning permission from 1967. As the usage of land changes over time, can permission from that long ago remain valid?
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-30/
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Marcus