Content area
Full Text
After yet another failed attempt, what could be done now to reform the House of Lords?
When Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg conceded that his cherished House of Lords Reform Bill had been crushed at the hands of his Conservative coalition partners (and the Labour opposition) in 2012, it seemed that attempts to reform the upper house had been defeated for another decade. But out of the wreckage there have been attempts from within Parliament itself to forge consensus over limited modernisation. While far short of proponents' ambitions to legitimise the chamber democratically, it must be recognised that piecemeal reform has meant that the character and composition of the Lords has altered considerably, even in recent decades. And modest, consensus-driven change could alter its nature once again.
This article is based on the author's evidence before the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, which launched an inquiry into smaller-scale change that might achieve political consensus. What follows argues that even if proposals for reform are practically focused, the principle of democratic legitimacy must feature in any reform process. It discusses the ideas placed in the public domain by the inquiry and makes the case that modest demo- cratic reform could achieve broad consensus even at this stage.
Lords reform and proposed reform, 1911-2012
For more than a century there have been attempts to reform the House of Lords and since 1911 a number of relatively significant changes have been implemented, includ- ing the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts, Life Peerages Act (1958), Peerages Act (1963), and House of Lords Act (1999). These reforms changed both the powers of the Lords and its composition. As such the chamber has moved gradually from one comprised exclusively of male and hereditary peers, to one almost wholly appointed, 22 per cent of whom are women (roughly the same proportion of women as is found in the Commons) (Leys, 2012). The Lords, a revising chamber, cannot veto finance bills and can only delay for a maximum of two sessions. Thus over the period of piecemeal reform, the primacy of the House of Commons has been established and reinforced.
Since the 1999 Act which removed all but 92 hereditary peers (though others were converted into life peerages),...