House of Lords Reform

[AlterEgo]

On "experts" and crossbench peers, I went on the HoL website and selected the very first crossbencher alphabetically to see their voting record. That's Lord Adebowale (sorry Victor it had to be someone!) who was appointed a peer because of his - entirely justified and extensive - expertise on housing and social exclusion. So anyway, he's been voting on all sorts of stuff like:

Merchant shipping bilge alarm regulations
Protection for prosecution for the armed forces who are suspected to have committed crimes overseas
Heather and grass burning regulations
HS2
Agriculture bill
Fisheries bill
Gay marriage (voted against btw, cheers for that Mr Social Exclusion expert)

I think the idea that having these experts in and they won't stick their oar in beyond their expertise is daft. One assumes that Lord Adebowale does actually attend the debates and doesn't just vote on vibes, by the way.

No - they belong on committees, not as lawmakers. Lawmakers should be voted for and have the consent of the people.

 

[Sorcerer]

On "experts" and crossbench peers, I went on the HoL website and selected the very first crossbencher alphabetically to see their voting record. That's Lord Adebowale (sorry Victor it had to be someone!) who was appointed a peer because of his - entirely justified and extensive - expertise on housing and social exclusion. So anyway, he's been voting on all sorts of stuff like:

Merchant shipping bilge alarm regulations
Protection for prosecution for the armed forces who are suspected to have committed crimes overseas
Heather and grass burning regulations
HS2
Agriculture bill
Fisheries bill
Gay marriage (voted against btw, cheers for that Mr Social Exclusion expert)

I think the idea that having these experts in and they won't stick their oar in beyond their expertise is daft. One assumes that Lord Adebowale does actually attend the debates and doesn't just vote on vibes, by the way.

No - they belong on committees, not as lawmakers. Lawmakers should be voted for and have the consent of the people.

Just out of interest are you also of the opinion that the House of Lords should be abolished? Or are you on the team of replacing it with an elected upper chamber of Parliament?

 

[AlterEgo]

Just out of interest are you also of the opinion that the House of Lords should be abolished? Or are you on the team of replacing it with an elected upper chamber of Parliament?

I'd rather we had a fully elected second chamber.

 

[Sorcerer]

Interesting because it seems like a smaller-sized fully elected second chamber is the majority opinion on any House of Lords reform, whereas I seem to be the only one who thinks we'd manage just find with a unicameral legislature as part of a wider package of proportional representation to address concerns of countering populism and enabling a more consensus-based approach to politics. I almost seem like the extremist here.

 

[JamieL]

No, it's fundamental and this shows a total lack of understanding of the issues.

Sinn Fein do not abstain from Stormont.

If you make Stormont a chamber for passing laws anywhere in Great Britain Sinn Fein would object and collapse the Assembly. There would therefore be no Assembly. "Sinn Fein could just abstain and it would be fine" - haha.

Sinn Fein are elected to Westminster, by the way, specifically to abstain from it. Therefore their electorate are by and large perfectly satisfied with that, and framing it as a disappointment is a very English perspective.


The DUP wouldn't be there. There'd be no Assembly.


Better still is to let the devolved legislature be a devolved legislature as per the Belfast Agreement, and not unilaterally declare it to be something else. This is classic English ignorance of Northern Ireland's unique constitutional position and history.

Regardless, how do you propose to push through stuff like defence bills? A vast amount of legislation pertains to currently reserved matters and some of that is for perfectly good reason.

Nobody serious has ever come up with this idea and that's because it doesn't work.

I was referring to Sinn Fein and Westminster. Ultimately, there is no reason why the NI Assembly should not get a say on all matters pertaining to NI, devolved or not. And for Defence (and other such matters) that could be done via approval of majority of devolved legislatures.

All this said, there is little benefit in arguing a theoretical and in any event, the way things are moving, I doubt NI has a long term future in the Union anyway. I will certainly cede from the UK before we rid ourselves of the Lords.

 

[Cloud Strife]

When talking about reform of the House of Lords, my preferred solution would be this:

300 members, with 150 coming from England and 50 from each of the other countries in the rest of the UK. They would be appointed indirectly like the Bundesrat, that is, each council would send at least one person. In Scotland, there are 32 councils, so they would all send one each, then the largest 18 councils would send a second Lord. Each Lord could be recalled at any time by their council, but otherwise they would continue to sit until the council decided otherwise. If England has more than 150 local councils, then the councils themselves would have to decide how to allocate seats.

By doing it this way, you create a genuinely representative second chamber. The new House of Lords would then be able to block legislation, the dominance of the House of Commons would be ended, and it would require consensual politics to get legislation through both chambers. This is an important safeguard, because for instance, let's say that England votes for Reform en masse in the next election. If they don't control any councils in Scotland/Wales/NI, they wouldn't have any seats in the new House of Lords, and they would also find that quite a few English seats in the House of Lords would also oppose anything radical coming from them.

 

[43096]

When talking about reform of the House of Lords, my preferred solution would be this:

300 members, with 150 coming from England and 50 from each of the other countries in the rest of the UK. They would be appointed indirectly like the Bundesrat, that is, each council would send at least one person. In Scotland, there are 32 councils, so they would all send one each, then the largest 18 councils would send a second Lord. Each Lord could be recalled at any time by their council, but otherwise they would continue to sit until the council decided otherwise. If England has more than 150 local councils, then the councils themselves would have to decide how to allocate seats.

By doing it this way, you create a genuinely representative second chamber.

Err, no, it isn't representative. It's nowhere near based on the population spread.

Country	Population 2023	% of UK	Proposed Seats	% of Seats	% Variance
England	57.7	84	150	50	-34
Wales	3.2	5	50	17	+12
Scotland	5.5	8	50	17	+9
Northern Ireland	1.9	3	50	17	+14