Lording it Over Us?

The last week has seen the effective demise of proposals to reform the House of Lords. After a century of promises, papers, reports and commissions this was very disappointing. The 21st Century is surely time for a more democratic second chamber - but please don't call it a 'senate'!

There can be no justification for half of our parliament being appointed through the patronage of party leaders to lifetime terms of office – an arrangement that we have the doubtful pleasure of sharing with Belize, Burkina Faso, and Jordan. There's also no excuse for supporting a system that allows some lawmakers to inherit their office – an arrangement that we currently share only with Lesotho.

Nearly 800 years after Magna Carta, as George Monbiot recently put it, unrepresentative power of the kind familiar to King John and the Barons still holds sway. There is no excuse for more than half of the country's lawmakers to sit in Parliament without an electoral mandate from the people.

I know that there are arguments to the contrary, but whatever happens, some things do need to change. Some of the more reasonable arguments relate to the value of experience, so that, for example, someone who has sat in the Commons would at least know the Westminster ropes and hopefully have acquired a degree of judgment.

While there may be some truth in this, it did not stop an earlier government from abolishing the role of Aldermen (retired, former long-serving councillors) from their role in council decision making. So if this is right for local government I'm sure that it should also be applied to national government. Forgive me for seeking consistency here.

There is also the question of business experience - all well and good so far as it goes (bankers, financial services, insurance, much of the legal profession and certain security firms excepted) but how many of the Lords would have experience of living on the minimum wage or surviving on benefits and about which they approve life-affecting legislation? A lopsided set of experiences may not lead to overall good decision making - as I'm afraid we know to our cost.

In addition to all of this there are some disconcerting features about the larger half of Parliament. For example, in the present House of Lords:

40% of members were educated in just 12 private schools

Seven out of ten members are party political appointments

Half of the members come from London and the South East

More than a quarter are former MPs

Only one in five are women

As is clear from these facts, while its debates often have a reasonable tone and behaviour is undoubtedly better than in the Commons - it could hardly be worse  - the House of Lords as presently constituted does not, in its composition, reflect the country that it helps to govern.

It is surely preferable for lawmakers to hold their place in Parliament through the directly expressed will of the people. This would give them greater legitimacy in standing up to a Cabinet and a Commons that can become obsessed with failing agendas and detached from reality and the best interests of the country.