Bring the Lords into the 21st century – a solution for changing the culture of our second chamber

If there’s one fact that should keep you awake at night, it’s that according to the IFS Britain is only 46% of the way through austerity. As Ronald Reagan would say: “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”.

The next Labour government will therefore face the unenviable task of having to make increasingly difficult spending cuts to already stretched departmental budgets. With austerity scheduled to continue well into the next Parliament, both our Party and the political class can ill afford any more scandals such as those that have sullied the reputation of the Lords over the past few years.

Aside from causing many to choke on their teas (tax-payer subsidised or otherwise), some Peers brazen abuse of the system helped reinforce the image of the Lords as an antiquated, un-democratic, and illegitimate upper house.

If a Labour government is to make any progress in restoring the public’s faith in the political system, it must not leave intact a chamber whose costs and numbers continue to grow, whose rules continue to be abused, and whose continued existence many consider to be an accident of history. Reform is desperately needed, and this is why number of Labour peers were elected by our Group in the Lords to sketch out a way forward.

At the end of last week, we published our findings, putting forward a series of modest reforms aimed at inching the Lords into the 21^st century. And our final recommendations include an end to the hereditary principle, capping the size of the House to 450 (down from 834, of whom 778 are currently eligible to attend), introducing a 60% attendance requirement and a retirement age, and making it easier to disqualify members.

Already the distinguished former diplomat and now ex-Peer, Julian Grenfell, has used a new provision to retire from the House permanently – something few of his Labour colleagues knew about until he took the plunge last week. Many could follow Julian’s example now and most of our short term proposals could be implemented by agreement without legislation.

Important though these changes are, they do not however deal with what many believe to be the most objectionable characteristic of the upper chamber: the fact that it is unelected. Our working group, like Marx, refused to write recipes for the cook-shops of the future, and we have therefore refrained from making any concrete suggestions as to how the second chamber should be elected or appointed.

Instead, we propose that a Constitutional Commission is set up to consider all possible options, consult with the public, and produce cross-party consensus. Such a body would be tasked with looking at Lords reform in a UK-wide context, taking into account devolved arrangements in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England, before putting recommendations to a public referendum.

Personally, I am sceptical about plans for a directly-elected second chamber as such a move would almost inevitably lead to the primacy of the Commons being challenged – and perhaps even US-style gridlock. I would be interested instead in the type of indirect elections used to elect Senators in France. But these are the kind of discussions and debates that should be facilitated and resolved by a Constitutional Commission that can hopefully put the question of Lords reform to rest.

The other significant advantage of such a Commission is that it provides the mechanism for discussing further decentralisation of power in the UK after a ‘No’ vote in the Scottish Referendum this year and for improvements to Parliament as a whole.

Lord George Foulkes of Cumnock is a member of the Labour Peers working group on Lords reform. Its report A programme for progress is available HERE