Defend the Lords (by electing them)

It’s now a few days after Lords Reform Day and Paul has already written another, well-worth-a-look piece here, which makes this attempt to fulfill my pledge by writing a related article a little late. Still, hopefully it’s of some relevance and interest…

The idea behind Lords Reform Day and its sponsor organisation, the Elect The Lords Campaign, is fairly obvious: to the extent that we have any kind of checks and balances on the laws passed by our combined executive-and-legislature at all, they’re provided by a mottley crew of retired worthies, ex-MPs and political donors (plus a couple of bishops for good measure); and this doesn’t make for representative government.

This is absolutely correct. However, it’s worth remembering the most vital maxim of all government policymaking: the question you need to ask is not “is this a nice idea?” but “what could go wrong compared to the current situation?” Or, what’s the worst-case scenario of moving from an unelected, semi-emasculated Lords to an elected Lords with real veto power, given the kind of elected Lords we’d be likely to get?

Well, according to the ETL campaign:

The clear consensus that appears to be emerging is for a second chamber elected in thirds, using significantly larger constituencies than we have for the Commons. As a system, that would complement a FPTP elected Commons and a PR elected Commons – both houses would still have different remits and be constituted differently in order to avoid “duplication”.

This helps mask the worst excesses of the Commons, assuming we’re talking about large constituencies where the top four(ish) candidates get elected following transferable vote antics: this makes it much harder for parties with a small plurality of the vote to get a large majority of the seats, and therefore should ensure that the chamber is generally able to provide effective opposition. The third-of-seats-at-a-time rule should increase this effect further.

We’re still left with one serious problem, which is that the Lords is currently theoretically better placed to deal with laws that are popular but wrong (say, the “Hanging of Suspected Paedophiles And Terrorists Without Trial Act 2007″). The War Crimes Act is a good example: in the 1940s, Britain didn’t claim jurisdiction to punish war crimes committed by foreigners against foreigners on foreign soil. This means that it is unreasonable and a dangerous precedent to retrospectively make these actions punishable in Britain – even though they’re unbelievably horrible actions and their perpetrators deserve to be punished. Therefore, having a second chamber that’s immune from political concerns is a Good Idea.

However, this argument falls down presented with the simple facts that: a) the government of the time used the Parliament Act to get the War Crimes Act through, because nobody was willing to take the political risk of saying “well, actually, we don’t have the right to lock up these Nazis, evil though they are”; then b) its successor did the same with an issue as trivial and irrelevant as hunting with dogs. The governments were able to point to the Lords’ status as “out of touch ridiculous toffs” to make their dissent seem irrelevant and allow the second house’s status to be utterly and irrevocably lost. The latest round of anti-terror legislation may well do the same, only with giant hairy knobs on.

In an ideal world, we’d have a second chamber immune from political concerns consisting of Platonic judges of what is good and right, ignoring all pressures from “society”, or the interfering busybodies that make up its most visible presence. This isn’t an ideal world, and anyone appointed to that position would both likely be a ghastly, self-aggrandising creature and loathed and despised by the masses.

An elected second chamber, although still vulnerable to the same ignorant “out-of-touch” jibes that get directed at the judiciary, would have more power than any other imaginible organisation to stop the government for doing anything egregiously evil and stupid. Therefore, anyone with a shred of interest in stopping-our-leaders-from-doing-awful-things should support the establishment of one – and continue to support it when it says unpopular-but-right things and gets vilified by the usual idiots.