Lords Reform - Burns Report

The House of Lords has recently published a report on reform of the House of Lords.

The House of Lords is not democratically elected, and its members are appointed directly or indirectly by Prime Ministers. It is one of the least legitimate legislative chambers in the developed world. Proper reform would make the House of Lords democratically elected.

But this report is not that sort of reform. This report works within the existing legislation of an appointed House of Lords. Nevertheless it is a good report as far as it goes within those constraints, and it is worthy of consideration.

Burns Report on the size of the Lords

The report's committee was led by Lord (Terence) Burns, formerly Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, and an economist by profession. The report embodies some of the better qualities of the civil service, by providing both clear analysis and workable proposals which provide evolutionary and incremental change to achieve reform. Care is taken not to frighten any horses.

The main thrust of the report can be summarised as follows

The size of the House of Lords should be reduced from around 800 to 600 members.

New members should serve a fixed fifteen-year term, instead of being appointed for life.

New members for each party should be appointed in proportion to the average of the party's vote share and its seat share at the most recent general election.

For a fifteen-year transitional period appointments would operate on a "two-out, one-in" principle until the size was reduced to 600 members.

In terms of continuity and making evolutionary incremental progress, the report promises:

No change to legislation

No forced retirement of existing members (though parties would have to choose which members would retire in the transitional period)

No change to the system of 90 hereditary members, where vacancies are filled through by-elections of peers

No change to the 26 Church of England Bishops who have seats in the House of Lords

No change to the patronage of the Prime Minister and major party leaders in choosing who is appointed.

Continued presence of 134 independent "crossbenchers" without party affiliation.

The main strength of the report is that it would, rather gently, convert party appointments to the House of Lords from being fairly arbitrary into a rolling proportional system. The composition of the House would be strongly linked to the performance of political parties at general elections.

The metric used has been carefully chosen to both appear simple and be relatively sophisticated in its behaviour. For each party, their share of new seats in the Lords is given by the formula:

Lords Seat Share = ( GE Vote Share + GE Seat Share ) / 2,

where the "GE" is the most recent general election for the House of Commons. This appears a simple formula, but it has a nice balance between responsiveness to general election majorities and not being a simple clone of the Commons. The fifteen-year terms of new members mean that the Lords' composition will be a rolling average of the last three (or so) parliaments.

The committee also took the time to "backtest" how the Lords would have looked if the new system had been in place since 1959. The bar chart below shows many seats each party would have had the proposed system been in place and stablised. There are 450 party-political seats, with another 150 for crossbenchers and Bishops.

It is clear that the party composition is responsive to changing public opinion, but with a lag. The Conservatives elected in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher would have to wait a year or so until there were more Conservative peers than Labour. And Tony Blair in 1997 would have to wait four years until there were more Labour peers than Conservatives. That Labour legacy continued so that the Conservatives would still be outnumbered by Labour all through David Cameron's premiership and Theresa May's up to 2017.

Positive and Negative Features of the Report

The report has a number of good features which would lead to a better House of Lords, albeit with limitations. These are:

Democratic linkage to general election results, and the linkage is quite sensible

Fixed-term appointments of members

Practical and workable

Can be implemented without legislation

These are good things, which would lead to a House of Lords better than it is now. It would not be perfect, but it would be less bad.

Intriguingly, there are also some more or less subtle hints of things could be done if there were legislation. Just as Mark Anthony can repeat "Brutus is an honourable man", but suggest something different, so in this report. Phrases such as "for as long as the House remains an appointed chamber" are suggestive of progress beyond that state. The clause "in the absence of legislation, the number of Bishops would be unaffected" can be read either as a neutral statement of fact or as a subtle spur to legislate. Although the text does not say so explicitly, an attentive reader can infer some broad directions for larger-scale reform.

Make the House of Lords elected (page 1 para 1; page 4 para 3; paragraphs 5, 7, 13)

Reduce or remove the Bishops (page 2 para 6; paragraph 23)

Reduce or remove the hereditary peers (page 2 paras 6-7; paragraphs 20-21)

The Prime Minister should use "honorary" peerages for patronage, without those peers being full voting members of the House of Lords (paragraph 25)

Lord Burns and his committee cannot say these things directly, and would make no progress if they tried. But the Kremlinology of their smoke signals does give some directions for the future.

But there are also some drawbacks to the report. These are:

Party patronage and control over existing members is significantly increased by the power of parties to select who should retire early (paragraph 104).

Party patronage and control over existing members is increased by the power to extend fixed terms to front benchers (paragraph 33).

The scheme relies on the co-operation of the current and all subsequent Prime Ministers, even if that runs against their party interest (paragraph 53).

It takes fifteen years, or more, to achieve the objective (paragraph 86).

The first two of these are particularly troubling, because they would give more control over the legislature by the executive, rather than less. The long implmentation time may also not appear reasonable to the general public.

Full reform of the House of Lords

Useful as it is, the Burns report is not full-scale reform of the House of Lords. The fact that the House of Lords is appointed (or hereditary) is a dark stain on the British constitution. Westminster, the mother of parliaments, has an undemocratic canker at its heart. Compared with other democratic countries, Britain is a cautionary tale rather than a shining exemplar.

Country Second Chamber Size Selection process Britain House of Lords 800 Appointed by the Prime Minister, plus 90 hereditaries France Senate 348 Elected by 150,000 local councilors and other officials Germany Bundesrat 69 Delegates of each elected state government Italy Senate 320 Elected by popular vote, plus 5 appointed Japan House of Councillors 242 Fully elected by popular vote USA Senate 100 Fully elected by popular vote

The House of Lords is, by a large margin, the largest of these chambers. It is, also by a large margin, the least democratic. France and Germany have indirectly elected chambers, and the the US, Japan and Italy have directly elected members.

The House of Lords is not democratically selected and makes Britain look bad internationally. Reform was originally mooted in 1911, but has made no progress. Groups like the Electoral Reform Society have put the case for elections in the public domain. Who or what is blocking reform?

Westminster does not want reform

Reformers need to be clear-eyed about the forces opposed to change. Almost everyone at Westminster has a strong vested interest in not having reform of the Lords. This runs from every Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, through most MPs and members of the Lords. Their motivations are laid out here

Political role Personal advantages of the current system Prime Minister Patronage and parliamentary management Leader of Opposition Patronage, plus looking forward to being PM Govt Whips Parliamentary management — easier to get business through weak second chamber MPs Increased personal power relative to members of weak second chamber; attractive retirement option Life Peers Remain members of House of Lords without need for election Bishops,

Hereditaries Remain members of House of Lords

Remember that it needs new legislation to elect the House of Lords. And legislation needs the support of the Prime Minister, the whips, MPs and members of the Lords. The opposition of any one of these groups can kill a bill, and this reform is opposed by all four of them. So Westminster, left to itself, will not make the House of Lords democratic.

But the British people want change

There are 1,450 members of the Commons and the Lords who (mostly) do not want reform. But there are 46,847,015 British voters who (mostly) do want reform.

Polling about House of Lords reform happens infrequently, but it provides a very consistent view from the British people. Here are three relevant polls from the last few years. Respondents were usually asked whether they wanted the House of Lords to be appointed, partially elected, fully elected or abolished. Percentages are given as a fraction of those with a definite opinion, excluding "don't knows".

Pollster / Client Survey dates Sample size Appointed Partially Elected Fully Elected Abolition Survation / Daily Mirror 17 Dec 2013 1,005 11% 76% n/a BMG / Electoral Reform Soc 22 Oct 2015 – 27 Oct 2015 1,504 13% 24% 36% 28% BMG / Electoral Reform Soc 17 Oct 2017 – 20 Oct 2017 1,148 10% 27% 37% 27%

The two more recent polls from BMG are shown in the pie-chart below with the recent poll as the outer ring, and the 2015 poll as the inner ring.

It is very clear that there is a large majority of the public which wants elections to the House of Lords. Only a very small minority want to maintain the current appointed House.

The forward path

The natural proposition is that the House of Lords should change and be democratically elected.

There is a large majority in Westminster against that change. So we can deduce then that change will not come from Westminster, and a legislative solution is unlikely.

But there is a large majority for the change amongst the public. The question becomes how can the public's view prevail over their unrepresentative representatives. The obvious answer to this question is to hold a referendum. This is the main democratic instrument for asserting the public's view over parliament. Given the polling evidence, it should be much more clear-cut than the EU Referendum and less divisive. And easier to implement the decision.

For Britian to be properly democratic we need a referendum on electing the House of Lords.

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