Reforming the Upper House

When Tony Blair and his reformed, repackaged New Labour swept to power in 1997, it was on the back of a number of promises and commitments. In many cases, the Labour government has attempted to avoid those promises. Not so much failing to keep them, as delaying addressing them. A botched compromise to license fox hunting looks likely to be turned by the commons into an outright ban, and government whips will be turned out to push through the much needed rationalisation of our bigoted sex laws. Given that war with Iraq now looks unlikely before next autumn, there is little left to distract the government from perhaps its most important promise - to reform the upper chamber.

Over the last five years or so, there has been much discussion of the form a modernised upper house should take. The various compromise suggestions to emerge from the government have uniformly shown that peculiar New Labour virtue of satisfying no one, but not annoying anyone enough to change the opinion polls. Constitutional reform is one area where Blairite spin and caution cannot be accepted. The reform of the upper house must be complete, or it should not be attempted. A partially elected, partially appointed house would be disastrous, producing a chamber that is neither representative nor accountable. If the upper house is to be reformed (and no one who believes in democracy can doubt that it should be) then it must be done properly.

Deciding how to reform the upper chamber depends on the function that such a chamber is to serve in our democracy. For some supporters of an elected upper house there appears to be an overwhelming urge to look to the United States for a model. However, the American system differs from our own in one important respect - we do not have a President. Where in Britain power is divided in two, in America the division is three-fold. Nor should we be seeking a presidential style executive. Concentration of power in a single voice can distort the democratic intentions of the people, as two of the closest elections in American history have shown, with disastrous results for both American foreign policy and the environment.

Instead, it is essential to maintain the current roles of our two chambers - the lower to legislate, the upper to adopt a cautionary, supervisory position. The current House of Lords provides an efficient brake on the excesses of government, and the new upper house should maintain the same relationship to the lower. It is the composition of the house that is the problem. At present, the upper house has distinct biases that do not reflect those of our society as a whole, being generally more right wing and conservative, and with a mock Victorian belief in family values. When the members are drawn from the titled upper classes and the beneficiaries of political patronage this is perhaps less than surprising.

Direct election of the entire upper chamber is surely the only option acceptable to a democratic country. The question remains as to the form that election should take. The major challenge is to produce a system that is both democratic and accountable while producing a chamber that is clearly differentiated from the lower house. To an extent this differentiation can be achieved by a constitutional separation of powers, but if the election mechanisms are too similar there is the very real danger that a small electoral advantage can result in one party gaining a control of legislation out of all proportion to their mandate.

At this point, many commentators will start extolling the virtues of proportional representation. I believe that the many drawbacks of proportional representation make it almost as poor a choice for the upper chamber as it is for the lower. While the tendency for PR to produce fragmented chambers, with no party holding a clear mandate, would help produce a chamber aimed at curbing government excess, I feel that this is not sufficient when viewed against the complete lack of accountability our supposed representatives would enjoy, or the inability for a local, independent candidate to be elected.

Instead, I believe that candidates need to be directly elected by a local constituency that they represent. This provides the direct accountability that is essential to a representative democracy, as well as allowing for independent candidates to be elected. Whether the upper chamber would closely follow the political leanings of the lower is a concern, but one that can be minimised by using a different electoral method for the upper chamber. The upper house, unlike the lower, will benefit from a slower turn over of members, and each member should hold their seat for longer, perhaps ten years. This, coupled with large, multi-member constituencies should iron out the worst inequalities that are introduced into the house of commons by small electoral swings coupled with the first past the post system. To provide some rough numbers, merely as an example, dividing the UK into 50 constituencies, each representing one to one and a half million people and electing six members to the upper chamber, would provide an upper chamber of 300. Every five years, half of these would be re-elected, with voters being allowed to vote for two candidates. There is still the worry that the upper chamber would fill up with the party faithful, career politicians seeking another route to power. This could be discouraged by a simple ban on members of the upper chamber holding either a seat in the lower house or a cabinet position during their elected term, even if they resign.

I am by no means suggesting that the above model is the only practical one. My intention here is not to introduce a dogmatic model for the future that I believe must be followed, but to illustrate that the current arguments against a directly elected upper chamber are baseless. Only through direct election will we achieve the representative, directly accountable upper chamber that is essential to our democracy.

Graham Robinson. 4th December 2002.

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