Contradictory views on the House of Lords
The final few questions from Populus’s monthly poll were in yesterday’s Times and reveal some rather contradictory opinions on the future of the House of Lords. 78% of people agree that it is important to have a strong House of Lords to act as a check on the Commons and the Government (unsurprisingly, given that the government it is currently checking is a Labour one, this view is strongest amongst Tory voters). At the same time 62% of people think that it is right that the elected Commons can, at the end of the day, overrule the unelected Lords.
These two views are, of course, not directly contradictory - it is perfectly possible to want to have a very strong House of Lords, but still think that, in extremis, the elected House should be able to have its own way. What is directly contradictory were the other two questions - 75% of people think that the Lords should be “mainly appointed” because it gives a degree of independence, on the other hand 72% think that “at least half” of its members should be elected to give democratic legitimacy.
These two opinions are directly contradictory - the Lords can’t be both mainly appointed, and mostly elected. The results probably reflect a lack of clarity in the debate, people really haven’t formed firm opinions on what they’d like to see. The answers certainly imply that people want to see a chamber that has both independence from electoral politics, but also some degree of legitimacy. The question people don’t yet know the answer to is how to meet both criteria.
Filed under: Populus
I strong agree to the view the house of lords should be check point for the government.
I think it says more about the futility of asking leading questions.
The myth that an appointed House would be more independent than an elected House is almost entirely fictional: Lords vote on party lines as much as MPs, only rarely rebelling (with the exception of a few usual suspects): the only reason the government is defeated with the frequency that it is is because no party has a majority in the Lords. Indeed, if party whips were abolished, and it were left to cross benchers to scrutinise bills, the main characteristic would be that virtually no-one would bother voting, and the government would, broadly speaking, get its way far more often.
What people are saying is that they want the Lords to be independent, because “independence” is seen as a good thing in these anti-political times. But elections are seen as a good thing as well.
What’s the solution? Clearly, to have a form of proportional representation to elect the Lords. But then, that was one of the few things the Wakeham Commission agreed on and there has been no suggestion that FPTP should be used at any point. So where’s the problem?
You are right that people don’t spend their time thinking about this, but if journalists would only stop pretending that an appointed House is more independent than a democratically elected one, you might be surprised at how much consensus there is out there.
The democratic legitimacy is important, and the way forward is to have a whole House of Lords elected but under a different method than in the Lower House. For example, if half the Lords were elected each Commons election, and these from a country list for each component country of the UK (with say a minimum of 3 Lords for each country-NI- and then a lord for each large amount of people) this would satisfy the PR demand (but have say a minimum requirement of 5%), the nationalism demand and the demand that the Upper House not just be a replica of the Lower. I see no excuse for any unelected House of Partliament; even Iraq has more democracy than we do!
For me the answer is PR.
Under a proportional system the House of cCmmons would truely reflect national views and would have a wider range of parties represented.
In such a situation there would be no real need for a second chamber to check the power of a parliament dominated by one party that had a minority of the popular vote.
A PR House of Commons could therefore mean we could get rid of the House of Lords all together.