Nick Clegg, bless his cotton socks, has put forward plans for the reform of the House of Lord or, more precisely, for its replacement. He suggests that the existing unelected House of around 800 members should be replaced with a new House of 300 members, mostly elected. He also suggests that the first election to this new House should occur on the same day as the General Election planned for May 2015. Members would be elected for 15 years by proportional representation, with ⅓ being elected every 5 years.
Inevitably, some current members of the House of Lords have immediately come out in opposition to the reform plans, citing the usual reasons why this type of reform is a bad idea. Expertise would be lost; being elected would lead members to challenge the other elected House, the Commons, more frequently; being elected would make members more 'party-orientated'; being elected would make members act in a way to best ensure re-election, rather than in the best interests of the country; etc., etc. They say that the House of Lords works very well as it is.
I find all this very tedious and a fine example of turkeys failing to vote for Christmas. I may be wrong, but I don't believe any other country in the civilised world has an appointed Government chamber, and I'm not aware than any of them has sufferred dire consequences or constitutional crises as a result. The USA manages very well with 2 elected chambers as does France; why can't we ? I also wonder how it is that a country that has parish councils, borough councils, district councils, county councils, metropolitan councils, regional assemblies and 2 devolved government bodies, needs 650 representatives in the House of Commons and another 800 in the House of Lords.
The current House of Lords is no longer the anachronism that it was when it was populated entirely by unelected hereditary peers, bishops and judges, but neither is it in any way representative of the people. Many, if not most, of its members are political appointees, former members of the House of Commons who've either lost their elected seats or 'retired' to the upper chamber. People like the loutish John Prescott. who always maintained that he'd never accept a peerage, now sit all too comfortably and without any prospect of being ejected, on the plush red benches. Worst of all, to be a member of this House, one has to be 'elevated to the peerage' and thereby granted the title of 'Lord' - what a shocking abuse of this noble title.
In this day and age, there is no logical reason why the House of Lords should not be abolished and replaced with a properly elected upper house that could sensibly be termed 'The Senate'. There is no reason for retaining the political nonsense of 'Life Peers' and there is certainly no reason why we should have a House comprised of hundreds of them; there is also no reason why bishops should have any automatic place in it. The issue raised by some existing peers of the potential for conflict between the new House and the House of Commons should be easily addressed through devising an appropriate set of rules for the responsibilites and operation of the new House and the relationship between the two.
Electing a revised upper chamber on a proportional representation basis would ensure that representation reflects the views of the population; it would provide a sensible alternative and counterbalance to the 'first passed-the-post representation in the House of Commons. Representatives could be elected partly by county and partly from a national list; there would be nothing to stop existing members of the House of Lords, or other supposed experts, from putting their names forward but there would also be no automatic progression from one House to the other as there is, far to often, now. And 300 sounds more than enough members.
The Liberals first proposed reforming the upper House over 100 years ago and very little happened, so perhaps we shouldn't get too excited about these latest suggestions. Nonetheless, it's high time something did happen and those turkeys need to be plucked.
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