Once again, reform of the House of Lords is in the news.
The UK is probably unique in having a massive 'upper house' to its legislature that is entirely unelected. The House of Lords is also unusual, to say the least, in having no fixed number of members, some whose place is a birthright, and others who are there by virtue of their religious affiliations. The majority are time-serving ex-members of the House of Commons whose reward for 'toeing the party line' over many years is to be 'elevated' to the upper house. All of these are created 'Life Peers', entitling them to be addressed as 'Lord' or 'Lady', a form of address originally intended to be reserved for what I would call 'genuine' peers of the realm.
The evolution of this House to its current state of chaos has taken many years and a vast amount of effort from policians with an assortment of vested interests. The kudos to be gained by becoming, for instance, Lord Prescott or Lady Castle, would surely be more than adequate incentive to encourage many MPs to wish to maintain a system that could provide such a reward. At the same time, the natural envy and jealousy of many politicians on the left eventually did away with most of the hereditary peers, to leave us with a house dominated by far too many political appointees, often of dubious ability.
The necessity of giving people titles in order for them to sit in this House is a nonsense; why they can't be called senators is a mystery, at least to me. Why they aren't elected is another mystery, as the only people who seem to be vehemently opposed to election are members of the current House, who might see their perks disappearing, and members of the House of Commons who see the chances of their own future 'ennoblement' diminishing. Why an assortment of 26 Church of England bishops should have places reserved for them is another archaic piece of nonsense as, in reality, is the continued presence of the 92 members who owe their positions to the exploits of distant ancestors.
The answer to this mess is to sweep away the whole of the existing system and to replace it with a modern, wholly elected, senate with powers defined so as to retain the existing separation between Commons and 'Lords'. While we have over 600 members of the House of Commons, it should be unnecessary to have more than half this number in the upper house; 300 should be more than enough. Elected on the basis of proportional representation and with membership linked, perhaps, to counties - one representative per 200,000 of population or thereabouts; and let this House be free of the iniquitous 'whipping' that requires members of political parties to vote according to party wishes rather than their own beliefs.
Many will, of course, fight tooth-and-nail, to prevent any such reform from occurring but, given the already vast array of representative bodies that exist - from parish councils to borough, district, county and metropolitan councils as well as the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies - why do we need any more sitting in splendour in Westminster's two Houses ? Let us finally get on with this reform and bring the British Parliament into the modern world.
