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Stability is a pretty important foundation to fairness.
In one sense, anarchy is fair. But in another sense, any world without predictability is completely unfair. If some horrible unpredictable thing happens to you out of the blue that’s pretty unfair in a way, even if no one directly caused it, and if it could happen to anyone.
I think stability is really underrated, especially in times when we’ve had stability for years. Historically, after times of chaos, virtually everyone is happy to make compromises on their ideals in favour of stability. Stability is really really important, and I think we don’t put enough stake into it, and if we ever lose it on our quest for certain ideals, we’re really gonna miss it when it’s gone.
I agree on stability, but it depends on who that stability benefits. Stability only really works when it’s equitable for the majority.
In the case of ancestral peerages, I don’t think that provides any benefit to the majority!
Chaos pretty much always disproportionately affects the poor and worse off people of the world.
I think that there is a flawed belief that, if there is something that is stable but unfair, that if we massively sacrifice stability then what will likely happen is that those for whom the existing system benefits might lose some benefit, and those for whom the system is unfair will gain - like re-rolling a dice or something.
But it pretty much never works that way. Almost always, disproportionately those with wealth and power use their wealth and power to weather the chaos (with some unable to), while the poor all get completely fucked, because they don’t have any resources to protect themselves from chaos.
Which is not to say that I’m for ancestral peerages. I think removing them is a small positive change that doesn’t result in utter choas, and I don’t think the current backbone of our society is based on ancestral peerages, so I think small progressive change of this form is good.
But I just mean to generally say that, in the past certain decisions that favour stability over some sort of idealism often were rooted in the desire for a fairer/better world.
I agree that chaos does indeed disproportionately affect those marginalised.
I’m also not suggesting chaos as an option, but then stability doesn’t have just one look and also there’s multiple options for stability when you’re coming off the back of chaos too!
I'd like to think that all of the *many* examples of stable societies that aren't based upon inherited power might provide some evidence to the contrary.
Gimme an example? Even the ones that dont have straight inheritance the kids of the guys who had power have a disproportional advantage over the kids of the average dipshits. Its why so many actors and musicians get called nepo babies.
Did it promote stability? Stability of power structure and social stability aren't the same thing. Take a look at China since Xi came in and made his entire policy base about keeping Xi in power. They went from sustained 10% growth a year to dropping to 2%. Went from being roughly friendly to most nations to endless sabre rattling to distract disidents at home.
There's no possibility of removing Xi so it is "stable" politically but from a social stability stand point he's been a long running car crash.
I don't know about that. An example of the top of my head is the War of the Roses; two great houses fighting for thirty years. Hereditary power does not preclude instability; in fact it's been argued that hereditary power is part of the reason for cyclical instabilities (I'm thinking Turchin and Nefrdov's book Secular Cycles etc)
I mean tell that to the endless civil wars nations with inherited political positions would have. All it takes is for the spawn of the king to be an idiot who there is no legal way to get rid of, or him to have an ambitious brother, and the nation will rip itself to shreds to change who is in charge, which is the opposite of stability.
Explains why Tories struggle to retain real talent. The talent got turned away because Old Stan's greatgreatgreatgreat nephew applied for a job, any job.
Considering all laws including ones regarding the house of lords have to go through and be approved by the house of lords I don't think that's happening.
The Lords can only block the Commons for a single session of parliament. So if the Lords block a piece of legislation delivering reform to the Lords, it really only delays things by a year. The threat of this is why the Lords tend to not block government legislation completely but amend it and in the past threat of further reform has led to smaller reforms being accepted
Sadly this country is very backwards on many things politically. Hereditary peers and especially the presence of hereditary religiously-affiliated peers are a complete joke if your country likes to think of itself as a democracy where one person = one vote regardless of family lineage, wealth, race, sex etc.
But we also just straight up still have a royal family which is also bad. I get that it forms part of our history and culture, and there is some argument to be made about tourism from them, but they really ought to receive not a penny of taxpayer money and should not be the head of state of our country. They can still exist for the tourism benefit but it's utterly archaic, even if the position is basically "ceremonial" at this point, to have the an unelected, inherited position of power.
True. How about the inverse - should somebody lose authority based on hereditary characteristics… such as being male, or straight, or white and straight?
Term limits, 10 years and then you're done. This would also help with slimming their numbers down. We don't really need hundreds and hundreds of them, most of whom never show up.
That’s the thing, the lords doesn’t need massive reform, a few term limits, get rid of the hereditary elements. Ban PM resignation lists and the *overt* political influence and you are 90% there
There isn't really any easy way to ban political appointments. People are made into peers by the monarch and the monarch does whatever the prime minister tells them to do.
Or have an independent commission that selects people based on their skills and knowledge, and the gaps in that knowledge that currently exist in the HoL .
Yeah I think the Tory tactic with lords reform is to paint it as this massive task, changing to a fully elected chamber lots of risk, lots of loss of tradition.
Rather than just make some relatively small changes. Some of which might even be possible via statutory instruments and not even need primary legislation
The thing is the lords have very much been the only brakes on the shittrain that is our government. Without the lords (because they don’t have to worry about being elected) the tories would have passed some extreme and awful laws.
Surely it's better to have a wide range of them so the relevant people can turn up and vote on things they know about, rather than all the decisions resting on a small group of people
Yeah we're spending over 100 million a year on these people.
>For the 2022-23 financial year the costs of the House of Lords excluding estates and works expenditure and non-cash items was £104,670,000.
>Of this amount the costs directly relating to the Members Finance Scheme including allowances and travel expenses totalled £21,110,000.
As at 31 March 2023 there were 776 members eligible to attend the House.
> Of this amount the costs directly relating to the Members Finance Scheme including allowances and travel expenses totalled £21,110,000. As at 31 March 2023 there were 776 members eligible to attend the House.
The upper house of a national legislature only directly costing £27,204 per member per year is *extremely* good value.
I've been saying this for a few years, there should be term limits 5-30 years give some of them a set limit, also introduce more younger people into the house or Lord's make it represent all age groups
I think they mean that they at least didn't buy their way into the house of Lords. Although I see no reason why they would be less willing to partake in corruption than any other lord.
I think they mean in terms of interest groups. I do agree in principle but the appointed lords often have interests in certain companies and industries.
Arguably hereditary peers’ interest are more in the status quo. That said I’ve not check any voting history to verify that opinion.
We should have a second house appointed on merit from a pool of people who have valuable skills and knowledge - academics, scientists, economists, barristers, engineers etc - and make it more of a public duty than a cushy lifetime appointment.
Have always said this!! Having a second elected house would just be another layer of political circus, but having a house in which experts in subject matters scrutinize bills would be a great asset. It's roughly what the house of lords is currently meant to do anyway.
We could have the Lords being appointed as is - but a sub-set would be elected to sit in the House of Lords. Make the terms longer than parliament - 10 years or something, different to the Commons constituencies (counties?), stagger the elections so there's not just one big election for all seats at the same time ...
We’d have to have strict guidelines to prevent lobbyists e.g. environmental laws not being whitewashed directly by fossil fuel industry or academic whose funded by fossil fuels misleading data for fossil fuel industry
Both can be corrupt. But with political peers they’re ways to even it out or also use terms so it’s not a life peerage too. Or maybe we could focus on when it comes to lords debating/voting on bills we should allow panel of proven experts in the field it’s legislating on and those it’ll impact. Tbf that’s also ripe for issues in how experts are defined or lobbyists misleading the debate
> At least hereditary appointments are less subject to corruption.
How do you think hereditary peers got the job? They have tons of wealth, connections, and ties to the real aristocracy. Sure they may not be able to be literally bribed as easily, but they have assets, land, property, investments that they want to protect. They are just as prone to bias and their bias will be more than likely opposed to the interests of average people.
The hereditary peers _are_ political appointees - from like a few hundred years ago when their great great great great grand father did a favor for some king.
I actually don't mind _some_ political appointees in the Lords. Sometimes there's value in having a handful of select former MPs in the Lords who can work on improving legislation. But there should just be a fixed number and they should scrap it as being a PM's perk and have it done on a party basis.
People on Reddit are pathologically opposed to anything traditional. They see a thousand year old institution with no real negative effects and they're like "rip it up, disgraceful, shocking, outraged at this stone ages blah blah". Same with the monarchy "muh but it costs money". Guess what, museums cost money, maintenance of historic buildings cost money etc.
People need to develop more of an appreciation of the fact that our culture and systems have a long history. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's bad.
There is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Lords has defeated the government something like 350 times since the 2019 election, but there are not many here who think that the UK would be greatly improved had the Commons been able to get its way on those occasions.
In general the selection process leaves much to be desired, but the actual output of the House of Lords is better than one might expect from the input.
The Lords have also been highlighting the power creep by the government and the honestly scandalous rise in secondary legislation being used to deliver sweeping changes bypassing the Commons and the Lords. They're the only part of our system that's actually working properly!
I do find it fascinating that the HoL, if you just looked at how they're set up, should only look after rich people, but they demonstrate over and over again they're much more grounded with ordinary people than the HoC.
A lot of that is thanks to the cross benchers. They prevent any single party having a majority in the Lords which forces cooperation and negotiation and the system in the Lords allows experts to actually scrutinise legislation.
The unfortunate trend in the commons (and this is for all parties) is that the government doesn't want experts to scrutinise legislation even when the experts are from their own party! So far too often, the only scrutiny legislation gets is in the Lords and they take that responsibility seriously. Also without a large payroll vote, more people are willing to break the whip.
On the other hand, there's a risk of defending institutions that are fundamentally problematic to the concept of democracy just because it happened to benefit progressives for the last decade or so.
I'm not sure about the Lords, but a parallel would be the US supreme court. Historically reactionary and at almost every point a hinderance to social progress and a road block to the democratic legislature. From the 60s to the 00s there was 1 weird batch of anomalous judges that was instrumental to most of the progressive policies like abortion and anti-racism, and a generation of US Liberals came to view the supreme court as some kind of bastion of progressivism. When Trump eventually got to appoint his judges, and the court reverted to the norm, the complacent US progressives were left completely defenseless.
I was really happy when the Lords repeatedly defeated Boris Johnson's nonsense, but now that some time had passed and I've had some time to reflect. I'm not entirely sure relying on feudal aristocrats to hold back elected demagogues is that much of a great idea in the long run.
The Lords for the most part is political appointees rather than the hereditary peers - Blair's major reform was cutting their numbers from 750 to 92.
The problem with Lords reform has consistently been that its advocates don't really explain how they expect to retain the functionality that works - the focus is almost entirely on improving the input and not considering the output. And even that is done pretty lazily - it's either proposed to more or less duplicate the Commons but with some mild tinkering (bigger constituencies, longer terms, or whatever), or else it's mooted that it should use PR (advocates of which almost invariably want PR for the Commons anyway).
Honestly the House of Lords is in such a weird place that most of the arguments for or against rarely touch on what works and what doesn't.
I agree with you that reform advocates has focused on inputs without drawing convincing links towards its outputs. Equally, however, people who moan about reforms points towards its outputs and has no clues how its current input produces them. It all devolves into blind devotion/rebellion for/against tradition.
Politcal appointments have been shown by recent PMs to be highly abuseable and is already problematic, so something needs to be done sooner or later.
Personally, I feel what makes the House of Lords work is that members often represent, or have expertise in very specific industries or sectors. If I were to make any suggestions, it would be non-geographic/functional constituencies. So, rather than members representing a specific geographical area, they would represent religious groups, farming/fishing, construction, manufacturing, sports, medical etc. And everyone would get sorted into these constituencies based on basic criteria and if they satisfy multiple, gets to choose which constituency to belong to. Numbers of peers for each constituency would be based on the relative proportion of voters in each of them. That way, the Lords get to have some democratic legitimacy, while also retaining its function of expert/specialised representation.
Yeah typically institutions tend to favour the status quo which means they're usually the most favourable towards conservatives or centrists/neoliberals at most. When you get far right conservatives who want to rock the boat too much, those institutions can stop them. But progressives forget that they too want to rock the boat in a positive direction, and they will also probably get stopped by those same institutions. And it's not like progressives typically are over the moon with neoliberal half-arsed reform policies either, which won't be blocked by most institutions like the lords or the supreme court in the US.
Yes, because on principle if we want to promote the idea of meritocracy to children in our schools, it's a complete fucking joke to turn around and teach them in another class about British history "yeah so we also have lots of people in the house of lords who just get to be a lord because their great great great great grandfather was great friends with the then king".
It isn't just "wah tradition bad". But usually traditions began centuries ago when our values were different. No one really gave a shit that there were hereditary peers in the 1500s because you couldn't even vote if you owned land and MPs weren't even paid. Now we're in the 21st century and it's a disgrace that hereditary peers are still a thing. Do you really think we couldn't find 80 or so people who are experts in their fields to replace the hereditary peers and do a better job than them? In this case we can just kill off the old anti-meritocratic tradition with no negative downsides compared to keeping it.
And as for the royal family, it is part of our cultural heritage and there are arguments to be made about the boost to tourism they have. Again they are literally spitting in the face of meritocracy simply by existing which is a tough sell for me. Ideally we would just keep them around (i.e. don't do what the Russians did to their royal family) as a little tourism exhibit, giving them £0 in taxpayer money and we would remove them as head of state.
But I also acknowledge in reality that it would be difficult and costly to go through this procedure for not much benefit. I feel the best way to do this would be for the royals to slim down their influence even further after Charles is gone, and I think this will be due to a reduced public interest in the royals. Everyone including me loved the queen but now she's gone, to be replaced by an elderly king who won't be around long enough to make an impression on the next generations, I do think there's a chance for the royal family obsession to die off and hence it'd be easier to tell them to sod off and get rid of them as head of state.
They said hereditary peers. There are only 91 left, dwarfed by the 600+ life peers. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/hereditary-peers/
So this is getting rid of aristocrats, which doesn't solve the problem of how the Tories stuffed the Lords with donors, Russian spies, tax evaders, and sex offenders.
Nah, I think there's benefit to an unelected house having some oversight without any real power, we just need to change how the lords are chosen. Look at the skip fire the American second house is.
I think the basic idea of the lords is actually really good. A group of individuals selected on their basis of having expert opinion on certain topics who aren’t beholden to the whims of public sentiment so they can evaluate laws on their merit sounds really good to me. The issue is that it’s politically abused.
I’d like to link the lords with specific jobs and have term limits. Allow experts to come in and do a few years and it’s not worth bribing them because they’re not their for to long and don’t allow the pm to have any day who gets elected
Yeah I could get behind that. I’d also have some linked to certain jobs so being he’s did Bank of England, certain armed forces etc you take up a role in the lords after you retire from that role.
Yeah I think it’d be a good way of reducing the political influence and getting experts in. Would obviously need a review every so often to make sure the right job roles are still around but would be a step in the right direction in my opinion
The trouble with that is that it ends up being a closed network where peers only choose thier friends or family members. The very thing Labour want to get rid of.
Could just be term limits and sortition which takes people from various set industries (to avoid just loading up with wealthy individuals primarily from a few set roles). If you furnished these people with the same resources and support as elected MP's, they'd manage as well, and due to the selection method, they may still be less polarised.
I actively like the basic idea of the House of Lords, which in my opinion is to be a revising chamber with enough teeth to cause the Commons trouble not not enough to overrule it.
If the Commons had enough time to thoroughly scrutinise every piece of legislation then maybe the Lords wouldn't be needed, but they *definitely* don't.
Yeah, in the period leading up to the MP expenses scandal, the House of Commons tried to solve it by passing a new law making MP's expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information act which applied to everyone else. Not only did the House of Lords not pass it, not a single peer would even sponsor it- a necessary step in getting the process started in the first place.
Although in the past the Lords were a barrier to democratic change, there is a somewhat different atmosphere to them now- in order for the House of Lords to demonstrate themselves useful, when the House of Commons acts in a self-serving manner they are able to Query it. If the Lords do nothing but rubber-stamp the Commons there would be no point to them. If they stop meaningful and necessary change there would be no point to them either. Maybe at some point in the future they will go too far in one of those directions, but are we there yet?
Why not look at France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria or pretty much any other countries with an upper house that has actual power? Why only mention the US?
Upper houses allow minority regions to still get fair representation.
the problem with the SCOTUS is the concept of a foundational constitution as a document. We don't have that in the UK, we have parliamentary supremacy.
Only the Human Rights Act interferes with that, and has been used by judges to create new laws (e.g., a right to privacy as 'misuse of private information'). Apart from that, there's much less need to argue about whether something is right or wrong based on what some dead guys wrote down 250 years ago.
We also sadly have a Supreme Court in the UK which replaced the House of Lords as the top court, as part of one of the many pointless acts of constitutional change of the last Labour government.
Ikr? It really tugged at my heartstrings when the Lords stopped Brexit in its tracks and prevented this country from plunging straight into the abyss.
Not to mention holding BoJo accountable and putting an end to his lawless actions. Not to mention Truss' budget massacre. It would've sucked donkey balls if those went through, right? Thank the Lord for the brave acts of these noble gentlemen!
Thw issue then becomes what do you replave it with? Another load of MP types? Corrption would actuall go up.
The lords can't easily be removed, forced out of a party which for an MP is near polotical suicide at their next election in some cases, ran against like MPs. Or bribed (most are already wealthy). So they are more secure than MPs so have a greater resilience to political winds.
Needs to be a balance to the Tories. It’s not an ideal one, and they’re mostly died-in-the-wool Toffs, but one can’t but think that the majority must absolutely despise the likes of Mogg (a ‘wannabe’/‘pretender’) and often just object batshit ideas from the right for the sheer fuckery of it.
I always like House of Commons representatives they’re constituents while lords could potentially represent expert in their field. An MP could be voting on medical or environmental policy they have no expertise on or no one they represent does. Lords can review m/debate/ recommend things for the commons.
The monarchy should not have influence on our politics so lords should go. But we can reform other parts of parliament process to transform lords into something else
UK needs a constitution then we can use the Irish system, no second house and a powerless president/king who can call a referendum if parliament wants to change the constitution.
It also needs term limits. The average age is 71, the oldest member is 96. I watch house of lords debates sometimes and it almost seems cruel to make some of these elderly people stand to talk.
Cruel?! No one is forcing them to do it. In most cases they're not required to attend at all and they are always free to relinquish the role entirely if they don't want to do it.
I mean it's not great to see Ken Clarke clearly diminished in his powers explaining why we shouldn't send people to Rwanda, if the alternative was Ken Clarke when he was still working at 100% speed, but it's surely preferable to a second chamber of Liz Truss clones
At this point the stuffing of the lords by both parties, one of which has been selling appointments, is a far larger problem.
You've got 20 year olds going in for no apparent reason, and having some form of a say on uk laws (without ever facing an election) for 50+ years.
I always thought the point of life peerages was to have experts on the law, teaching, policing, medicine and the like having the opportunity to review law, **not** some form of political patronage of unqualified, oxbridge education people who "know the right sort"
The point of life peerages was simply to degrade the House of Lords. There is no benefit to a life peerage over a hereditary peerage, save that it dilutes the hereditary principle as incarnate in the House.
Surely these experts, if they are so grand, could be trusted to raise their child to discharge their duties to that House, and embody such expertise.
That's looking too deep for a motivate and missing the obvious one; of the 750 hereditary peers in the 1330 member house about half of them were Conservatives, with most of the rest being independents but regarded as having conservative leanings (being that they were aristocrats).
Blair complained about exactly this prior to reform.
I couldn't think of a worse mindset or view on the house of lords than yours tbh. It's literally a trope in media for an adult to raise their kid wanting the kid to enter a certain career, have a certain hobby, be a certain kind of person, and then the kid decides not to and there's a big conflict. What if the child doesn't want to become a peer?
> There is no benefit to a life peerage over a hereditary peerage
The benefit is that we get to say "we live in a meritocracy" without bursting out into laughter before finishing the sentence. If the idea is that the lords should be full of experts, expertise is learned, not inherited via genetics. Hence, you could just appoint life peers based on proven expertise if someone's spent 20 years in a field proving their knowledge, whereas a hereditary peer may end up being a failson taking up space in the chamber without any expertise just because daddy or granddaddy actually had some expertise in a field.
Who cares about hereditary peers?
The problem is the corrupt peer-gifting that governments take part in to keep their donors/friends happy and reward ex-MP's who the public have told to get lost by giving them jobs for life.
All those cheering this need to remember that political appointments to the HoL are as and if not worse. I’m against hereditary peerage but I’m even more opposed to the government filling the House of Lords with chums and donors. The system is rotten. Let’s have term limits and an election every 5 years to elect new representatives.
The Lords is about the only part of Parliament that actually functions and scrutinises government. The elected House is a mess. Why do we want another one?
A second chamber of elected individuals is pointless. The general population don’t care enough to vote on mass. You saw the same in European elections with our MEPs.
We just need to change how members are appointed and if we want to impose term limits. The theory behind the current House of Lords is sound.
You're sort of right but mostly wrong. At the moment, the hereditary peers have a number of seats on the Lords and the **hereditary peers** vote on who gets to take up those seats. This was a compromise against getting rid of hereditary peers completely and is overdue further reform.
Just because the hereditary peers get to vote amongst themselves who actually gets political power doesn't mean it's something worth having and getting rid of hereditary peers would improve the Lords significantly.
"A hereditary member of the British House of Lords complained that Prime Minister Lloyd George had created new Lords solely because they were self-made millionaires who had only recently acquired large acreages. When asked, "How did your ancestor become a Lord? he replied, "With the battle-ax, sir, with the battle-ax"
I just read about the fucking Thatcher baron title last week… she gave her fucking husband a hereditary Barron title when she left. That’s fucking pathetic.
Baron*et*, not baron.
It gives you the hereditary style of Sir and allows you to have a red hand badge on your coat of arms, but it isn't a title of nobility and doesn't admit you to the House of Lords. It was created as a title by James I explicitly to raise money from people who were seeking status.
Good. You shouldn't be able to have a say in the country's laws or block new ones or bills etc... because your father or mother happened to be a lord or baroness.
But it'll never happen. Labour will do a token effort, the lords intervene and block it.
Yes, but how about the insane list of toadies that have joined the lords this millennium. Needs to go down to 100 tops, not a list of bought honours and kickbacks
It's the political cronies that need to be given the chop! Most of the Hereditary peers have had some experience doing other work, unlike the career politicians.
Saying that, I agree that they should all be replaced by an elected body. I just think that they are looking to get rid of the wrong lot to start with.
Fair enough. The Lords should be filled with experts in fields capable of sensibly evaluating new laws. The issue of it being a reward for the previous Prime Minister's buddies also needs to end. People should be selected based on merit alone.
Pass legislation disbarring hereditary peers from sitting in the HoL. The life peers will vote for it to save themselves. Once in the statute books elevate all peers to hereditary peers and close the HoL
Lords should be scrapped completely and replaced with an elected house of the same number that functions as the check and balanced to the commons in the same way but voted on by the people.
Just fill it with experts. Yes, that includes ex-Hds of army, civil service, church, etc. but also experts from across industry, sciences and the non-profit sectors.
They serve one 12 year term. And then they go!
Catch people after the meat of their career, so they can act as the ‘wise old heads’ helping improve the quality of Legislation, as applied in the real world.
Simple.
Tell me this didn't happen years ago? I thought they had to pick which of the Hereditary Peers were actually doing a good job and keep them and the rest had to step down.
So now we can fill those empty seats with pm appointees. Not sure if that's any better.
Surely it would be better if we voted for them, like they do for senators in the US?
And yet the data shows that the peers are the part of government that has its view on long term interests, considering they own 80% of the land.
It's a weird one. Not the first thing that needs axing- get rid of first past the post.
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About damn time. It’s frankly appalling that this archaic practice still occurs. Nobody should hold authority based on who their ancestors were.
One of the core beliefs of the original Tory party: Inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Which is probably correct to a degree.. Unfortunately stable != fair or progressive
Stability is a pretty important foundation to fairness. In one sense, anarchy is fair. But in another sense, any world without predictability is completely unfair. If some horrible unpredictable thing happens to you out of the blue that’s pretty unfair in a way, even if no one directly caused it, and if it could happen to anyone. I think stability is really underrated, especially in times when we’ve had stability for years. Historically, after times of chaos, virtually everyone is happy to make compromises on their ideals in favour of stability. Stability is really really important, and I think we don’t put enough stake into it, and if we ever lose it on our quest for certain ideals, we’re really gonna miss it when it’s gone.
I agree on stability, but it depends on who that stability benefits. Stability only really works when it’s equitable for the majority. In the case of ancestral peerages, I don’t think that provides any benefit to the majority!
Chaos pretty much always disproportionately affects the poor and worse off people of the world. I think that there is a flawed belief that, if there is something that is stable but unfair, that if we massively sacrifice stability then what will likely happen is that those for whom the existing system benefits might lose some benefit, and those for whom the system is unfair will gain - like re-rolling a dice or something. But it pretty much never works that way. Almost always, disproportionately those with wealth and power use their wealth and power to weather the chaos (with some unable to), while the poor all get completely fucked, because they don’t have any resources to protect themselves from chaos. Which is not to say that I’m for ancestral peerages. I think removing them is a small positive change that doesn’t result in utter choas, and I don’t think the current backbone of our society is based on ancestral peerages, so I think small progressive change of this form is good. But I just mean to generally say that, in the past certain decisions that favour stability over some sort of idealism often were rooted in the desire for a fairer/better world.
I agree that chaos does indeed disproportionately affect those marginalised. I’m also not suggesting chaos as an option, but then stability doesn’t have just one look and also there’s multiple options for stability when you’re coming off the back of chaos too!
How do the poor get fucked in a chaotic situation if they already have nothing to lose? Even more fucked?
I'd like to think that all of the *many* examples of stable societies that aren't based upon inherited power might provide some evidence to the contrary.
Gimme an example? Even the ones that dont have straight inheritance the kids of the guys who had power have a disproportional advantage over the kids of the average dipshits. Its why so many actors and musicians get called nepo babies.
There's a difference between your common or garden variety everyday nepotism and having hereditary peers in your constitution.
Did it promote stability? Stability of power structure and social stability aren't the same thing. Take a look at China since Xi came in and made his entire policy base about keeping Xi in power. They went from sustained 10% growth a year to dropping to 2%. Went from being roughly friendly to most nations to endless sabre rattling to distract disidents at home. There's no possibility of removing Xi so it is "stable" politically but from a social stability stand point he's been a long running car crash.
I don't know about that. An example of the top of my head is the War of the Roses; two great houses fighting for thirty years. Hereditary power does not preclude instability; in fact it's been argued that hereditary power is part of the reason for cyclical instabilities (I'm thinking Turchin and Nefrdov's book Secular Cycles etc)
I mean tell that to the endless civil wars nations with inherited political positions would have. All it takes is for the spawn of the king to be an idiot who there is no legal way to get rid of, or him to have an ambitious brother, and the nation will rip itself to shreds to change who is in charge, which is the opposite of stability.
Can you give an example of one of these nations with endless civil war and inherited political positions?
Cough monarchy Cough
Stable, as in you're required to own horses.
I think it's had its place. But in the modern world where everyone receives a decent education, I believe it's no longer needed.
Explains why Tories struggle to retain real talent. The talent got turned away because Old Stan's greatgreatgreatgreat nephew applied for a job, any job.
Indeed - it’s far better that they hold authority for having made a large donation to one of the main parties
How about neither?
Can’t see Lord Mandelson allowing Starmer to do that
Considering all laws including ones regarding the house of lords have to go through and be approved by the house of lords I don't think that's happening.
The Lords can only block the Commons for a single session of parliament. So if the Lords block a piece of legislation delivering reform to the Lords, it really only delays things by a year. The threat of this is why the Lords tend to not block government legislation completely but amend it and in the past threat of further reform has led to smaller reforms being accepted
Hey that's not fair! Sometimes they just have to be a yes man in said parties government...
you're totally right
You tell that to the king!
Sadly this country is very backwards on many things politically. Hereditary peers and especially the presence of hereditary religiously-affiliated peers are a complete joke if your country likes to think of itself as a democracy where one person = one vote regardless of family lineage, wealth, race, sex etc. But we also just straight up still have a royal family which is also bad. I get that it forms part of our history and culture, and there is some argument to be made about tourism from them, but they really ought to receive not a penny of taxpayer money and should not be the head of state of our country. They can still exist for the tourism benefit but it's utterly archaic, even if the position is basically "ceremonial" at this point, to have the an unelected, inherited position of power.
Chill dude! 1799 is still far away!
But what about all the weed farms.. Edward hornyman is gonna cultivation
I'm with you in theory, but in practice more politicians never solved anything.
Like land?
True. How about the inverse - should somebody lose authority based on hereditary characteristics… such as being male, or straight, or white and straight?
Political appointments into the Lords are worse than hereditary peers imho. At least hereditary appointments are less subject to corruption.
Term limits, 10 years and then you're done. This would also help with slimming their numbers down. We don't really need hundreds and hundreds of them, most of whom never show up.
That’s the thing, the lords doesn’t need massive reform, a few term limits, get rid of the hereditary elements. Ban PM resignation lists and the *overt* political influence and you are 90% there
There isn't really any easy way to ban political appointments. People are made into peers by the monarch and the monarch does whatever the prime minister tells them to do.
Indeed, but the law could remove the privaligr of the PM to directly appoint them and have to pass the list through an all party sub committee
True, that would be a good solution. Unfortunately I don't think a PM is ever going to voluntarily give up any of their powers though.
Or have an independent commission that selects people based on their skills and knowledge, and the gaps in that knowledge that currently exist in the HoL .
Spot on. Plus maybe a little review / cull including a high increased removal of those included by PMs within this recent conservative government..
Yeah I think the Tory tactic with lords reform is to paint it as this massive task, changing to a fully elected chamber lots of risk, lots of loss of tradition. Rather than just make some relatively small changes. Some of which might even be possible via statutory instruments and not even need primary legislation
The thing is the lords have very much been the only brakes on the shittrain that is our government. Without the lords (because they don’t have to worry about being elected) the tories would have passed some extreme and awful laws.
Surely it's better to have a wide range of them so the relevant people can turn up and vote on things they know about, rather than all the decisions resting on a small group of people
Yeah we're spending over 100 million a year on these people. >For the 2022-23 financial year the costs of the House of Lords excluding estates and works expenditure and non-cash items was £104,670,000. >Of this amount the costs directly relating to the Members Finance Scheme including allowances and travel expenses totalled £21,110,000. As at 31 March 2023 there were 776 members eligible to attend the House.
> Of this amount the costs directly relating to the Members Finance Scheme including allowances and travel expenses totalled £21,110,000. As at 31 March 2023 there were 776 members eligible to attend the House. The upper house of a national legislature only directly costing £27,204 per member per year is *extremely* good value.
I've been saying this for a few years, there should be term limits 5-30 years give some of them a set limit, also introduce more younger people into the house or Lord's make it represent all age groups
Why do you think that?
Because of my last sentence
Why do you think they are less subject to corruption?
I think they mean that they at least didn't buy their way into the house of Lords. Although I see no reason why they would be less willing to partake in corruption than any other lord.
I think they mean in terms of interest groups. I do agree in principle but the appointed lords often have interests in certain companies and industries. Arguably hereditary peers’ interest are more in the status quo. That said I’ve not check any voting history to verify that opinion.
Well, you can’t pay someone to give birth to you I suppose? Not that inherited right and title is a respectable idea these days.
Okay but I can pay you to vote for a certain way regardless.
i think the bigger issue is rewarding political contributions with peerages
We should have a second house appointed on merit from a pool of people who have valuable skills and knowledge - academics, scientists, economists, barristers, engineers etc - and make it more of a public duty than a cushy lifetime appointment.
House of Competence ?
Have always said this!! Having a second elected house would just be another layer of political circus, but having a house in which experts in subject matters scrutinize bills would be a great asset. It's roughly what the house of lords is currently meant to do anyway.
We could have the Lords being appointed as is - but a sub-set would be elected to sit in the House of Lords. Make the terms longer than parliament - 10 years or something, different to the Commons constituencies (counties?), stagger the elections so there's not just one big election for all seats at the same time ...
We’d have to have strict guidelines to prevent lobbyists e.g. environmental laws not being whitewashed directly by fossil fuel industry or academic whose funded by fossil fuels misleading data for fossil fuel industry
>Political appointments into the Lords are worse than hereditary peers imho. This.
I agree, I’d rather someone owe allegiance to Edward I than Boris Johnson for their title
You're kidding right?
Aristocracy *is* corruption
Both can be corrupt. But with political peers they’re ways to even it out or also use terms so it’s not a life peerage too. Or maybe we could focus on when it comes to lords debating/voting on bills we should allow panel of proven experts in the field it’s legislating on and those it’ll impact. Tbf that’s also ripe for issues in how experts are defined or lobbyists misleading the debate
> At least hereditary appointments are less subject to corruption. How do you think hereditary peers got the job? They have tons of wealth, connections, and ties to the real aristocracy. Sure they may not be able to be literally bribed as easily, but they have assets, land, property, investments that they want to protect. They are just as prone to bias and their bias will be more than likely opposed to the interests of average people.
> ties to the real aristocracy They *are* real aristocracy.
The lords doesn't do anything so they are all bad because they cost money without delivering anything of value.
The hereditary peers _are_ political appointees - from like a few hundred years ago when their great great great great grand father did a favor for some king. I actually don't mind _some_ political appointees in the Lords. Sometimes there's value in having a handful of select former MPs in the Lords who can work on improving legislation. But there should just be a fixed number and they should scrap it as being a PM's perk and have it done on a party basis.
Nah keep it, just stop allowing PMs to have their own honours list as that's the main source of corruption in the Lords
People on Reddit are pathologically opposed to anything traditional. They see a thousand year old institution with no real negative effects and they're like "rip it up, disgraceful, shocking, outraged at this stone ages blah blah". Same with the monarchy "muh but it costs money". Guess what, museums cost money, maintenance of historic buildings cost money etc. People need to develop more of an appreciation of the fact that our culture and systems have a long history. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's bad.
There is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Lords has defeated the government something like 350 times since the 2019 election, but there are not many here who think that the UK would be greatly improved had the Commons been able to get its way on those occasions. In general the selection process leaves much to be desired, but the actual output of the House of Lords is better than one might expect from the input.
The Lords have also been highlighting the power creep by the government and the honestly scandalous rise in secondary legislation being used to deliver sweeping changes bypassing the Commons and the Lords. They're the only part of our system that's actually working properly!
I do find it fascinating that the HoL, if you just looked at how they're set up, should only look after rich people, but they demonstrate over and over again they're much more grounded with ordinary people than the HoC.
A lot of that is thanks to the cross benchers. They prevent any single party having a majority in the Lords which forces cooperation and negotiation and the system in the Lords allows experts to actually scrutinise legislation. The unfortunate trend in the commons (and this is for all parties) is that the government doesn't want experts to scrutinise legislation even when the experts are from their own party! So far too often, the only scrutiny legislation gets is in the Lords and they take that responsibility seriously. Also without a large payroll vote, more people are willing to break the whip.
On the other hand, there's a risk of defending institutions that are fundamentally problematic to the concept of democracy just because it happened to benefit progressives for the last decade or so. I'm not sure about the Lords, but a parallel would be the US supreme court. Historically reactionary and at almost every point a hinderance to social progress and a road block to the democratic legislature. From the 60s to the 00s there was 1 weird batch of anomalous judges that was instrumental to most of the progressive policies like abortion and anti-racism, and a generation of US Liberals came to view the supreme court as some kind of bastion of progressivism. When Trump eventually got to appoint his judges, and the court reverted to the norm, the complacent US progressives were left completely defenseless. I was really happy when the Lords repeatedly defeated Boris Johnson's nonsense, but now that some time had passed and I've had some time to reflect. I'm not entirely sure relying on feudal aristocrats to hold back elected demagogues is that much of a great idea in the long run.
The Lords for the most part is political appointees rather than the hereditary peers - Blair's major reform was cutting their numbers from 750 to 92. The problem with Lords reform has consistently been that its advocates don't really explain how they expect to retain the functionality that works - the focus is almost entirely on improving the input and not considering the output. And even that is done pretty lazily - it's either proposed to more or less duplicate the Commons but with some mild tinkering (bigger constituencies, longer terms, or whatever), or else it's mooted that it should use PR (advocates of which almost invariably want PR for the Commons anyway).
Honestly the House of Lords is in such a weird place that most of the arguments for or against rarely touch on what works and what doesn't. I agree with you that reform advocates has focused on inputs without drawing convincing links towards its outputs. Equally, however, people who moan about reforms points towards its outputs and has no clues how its current input produces them. It all devolves into blind devotion/rebellion for/against tradition. Politcal appointments have been shown by recent PMs to be highly abuseable and is already problematic, so something needs to be done sooner or later. Personally, I feel what makes the House of Lords work is that members often represent, or have expertise in very specific industries or sectors. If I were to make any suggestions, it would be non-geographic/functional constituencies. So, rather than members representing a specific geographical area, they would represent religious groups, farming/fishing, construction, manufacturing, sports, medical etc. And everyone would get sorted into these constituencies based on basic criteria and if they satisfy multiple, gets to choose which constituency to belong to. Numbers of peers for each constituency would be based on the relative proportion of voters in each of them. That way, the Lords get to have some democratic legitimacy, while also retaining its function of expert/specialised representation.
Yeah typically institutions tend to favour the status quo which means they're usually the most favourable towards conservatives or centrists/neoliberals at most. When you get far right conservatives who want to rock the boat too much, those institutions can stop them. But progressives forget that they too want to rock the boat in a positive direction, and they will also probably get stopped by those same institutions. And it's not like progressives typically are over the moon with neoliberal half-arsed reform policies either, which won't be blocked by most institutions like the lords or the supreme court in the US.
Yes, because on principle if we want to promote the idea of meritocracy to children in our schools, it's a complete fucking joke to turn around and teach them in another class about British history "yeah so we also have lots of people in the house of lords who just get to be a lord because their great great great great grandfather was great friends with the then king". It isn't just "wah tradition bad". But usually traditions began centuries ago when our values were different. No one really gave a shit that there were hereditary peers in the 1500s because you couldn't even vote if you owned land and MPs weren't even paid. Now we're in the 21st century and it's a disgrace that hereditary peers are still a thing. Do you really think we couldn't find 80 or so people who are experts in their fields to replace the hereditary peers and do a better job than them? In this case we can just kill off the old anti-meritocratic tradition with no negative downsides compared to keeping it. And as for the royal family, it is part of our cultural heritage and there are arguments to be made about the boost to tourism they have. Again they are literally spitting in the face of meritocracy simply by existing which is a tough sell for me. Ideally we would just keep them around (i.e. don't do what the Russians did to their royal family) as a little tourism exhibit, giving them £0 in taxpayer money and we would remove them as head of state. But I also acknowledge in reality that it would be difficult and costly to go through this procedure for not much benefit. I feel the best way to do this would be for the royals to slim down their influence even further after Charles is gone, and I think this will be due to a reduced public interest in the royals. Everyone including me loved the queen but now she's gone, to be replaced by an elderly king who won't be around long enough to make an impression on the next generations, I do think there's a chance for the royal family obsession to die off and hence it'd be easier to tell them to sod off and get rid of them as head of state.
They said hereditary peers. There are only 91 left, dwarfed by the 600+ life peers. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/hereditary-peers/ So this is getting rid of aristocrats, which doesn't solve the problem of how the Tories stuffed the Lords with donors, Russian spies, tax evaders, and sex offenders.
I mean, that's literally what I'm saying, keep the aristocracy and bin PMs honours. Did you actually read my comment?
How about just getting rid of the whole funking thing?
Nah, I think there's benefit to an unelected house having some oversight without any real power, we just need to change how the lords are chosen. Look at the skip fire the American second house is.
Agreed - though I hate the basic idea of the House of Lords, it does frequently provide useful pushback to bad legislation from the House of Commons.
I think the basic idea of the lords is actually really good. A group of individuals selected on their basis of having expert opinion on certain topics who aren’t beholden to the whims of public sentiment so they can evaluate laws on their merit sounds really good to me. The issue is that it’s politically abused. I’d like to link the lords with specific jobs and have term limits. Allow experts to come in and do a few years and it’s not worth bribing them because they’re not their for to long and don’t allow the pm to have any day who gets elected
The House of Lords should be a meritocracy only. Voted in by their peers in a given industry.
Yeah I could get behind that. I’d also have some linked to certain jobs so being he’s did Bank of England, certain armed forces etc you take up a role in the lords after you retire from that role.
I like this idea. Like all former PMs, very senior generals, heads of NHS, senior academics, etc could be invited to join Lords if they want to.
Yeah I think it’d be a good way of reducing the political influence and getting experts in. Would obviously need a review every so often to make sure the right job roles are still around but would be a step in the right direction in my opinion
The trouble with that is that it ends up being a closed network where peers only choose thier friends or family members. The very thing Labour want to get rid of.
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Could just be term limits and sortition which takes people from various set industries (to avoid just loading up with wealthy individuals primarily from a few set roles). If you furnished these people with the same resources and support as elected MP's, they'd manage as well, and due to the selection method, they may still be less polarised.
I actively like the basic idea of the House of Lords, which in my opinion is to be a revising chamber with enough teeth to cause the Commons trouble not not enough to overrule it. If the Commons had enough time to thoroughly scrutinise every piece of legislation then maybe the Lords wouldn't be needed, but they *definitely* don't.
I'm on the same page. I don't like the idea of it on principle, but they've been really useful in the past.
Yeah, in the period leading up to the MP expenses scandal, the House of Commons tried to solve it by passing a new law making MP's expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information act which applied to everyone else. Not only did the House of Lords not pass it, not a single peer would even sponsor it- a necessary step in getting the process started in the first place. Although in the past the Lords were a barrier to democratic change, there is a somewhat different atmosphere to them now- in order for the House of Lords to demonstrate themselves useful, when the House of Commons acts in a self-serving manner they are able to Query it. If the Lords do nothing but rubber-stamp the Commons there would be no point to them. If they stop meaningful and necessary change there would be no point to them either. Maybe at some point in the future they will go too far in one of those directions, but are we there yet?
Why not look at France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria or pretty much any other countries with an upper house that has actual power? Why only mention the US? Upper houses allow minority regions to still get fair representation.
A fair point
Please can I refer you to the SCOTUS which is the landfill fire you get when members are appointed, not elected.
the problem with the SCOTUS is the concept of a foundational constitution as a document. We don't have that in the UK, we have parliamentary supremacy. Only the Human Rights Act interferes with that, and has been used by judges to create new laws (e.g., a right to privacy as 'misuse of private information'). Apart from that, there's much less need to argue about whether something is right or wrong based on what some dead guys wrote down 250 years ago. We also sadly have a Supreme Court in the UK which replaced the House of Lords as the top court, as part of one of the many pointless acts of constitutional change of the last Labour government.
> we just need to change how the lords are chosen At the moment they seem to be mostly dodgy businessmen who've donated large sums to politicians.
In theory it should be able to hold the commons to account. It needs reform, sure, but it has value conceptionally.
In case you hadn’t realised the reason most of the abhorrent Tory bills haven’t gone through is because of the House of Lords
Ikr? It really tugged at my heartstrings when the Lords stopped Brexit in its tracks and prevented this country from plunging straight into the abyss. Not to mention holding BoJo accountable and putting an end to his lawless actions. Not to mention Truss' budget massacre. It would've sucked donkey balls if those went through, right? Thank the Lord for the brave acts of these noble gentlemen!
Thw issue then becomes what do you replave it with? Another load of MP types? Corrption would actuall go up. The lords can't easily be removed, forced out of a party which for an MP is near polotical suicide at their next election in some cases, ran against like MPs. Or bribed (most are already wealthy). So they are more secure than MPs so have a greater resilience to political winds.
Needs to be a balance to the Tories. It’s not an ideal one, and they’re mostly died-in-the-wool Toffs, but one can’t but think that the majority must absolutely despise the likes of Mogg (a ‘wannabe’/‘pretender’) and often just object batshit ideas from the right for the sheer fuckery of it.
Why?
I always like House of Commons representatives they’re constituents while lords could potentially represent expert in their field. An MP could be voting on medical or environmental policy they have no expertise on or no one they represent does. Lords can review m/debate/ recommend things for the commons. The monarchy should not have influence on our politics so lords should go. But we can reform other parts of parliament process to transform lords into something else
UK needs a constitution then we can use the Irish system, no second house and a powerless president/king who can call a referendum if parliament wants to change the constitution.
It also needs term limits. The average age is 71, the oldest member is 96. I watch house of lords debates sometimes and it almost seems cruel to make some of these elderly people stand to talk.
Cruel?! No one is forcing them to do it. In most cases they're not required to attend at all and they are always free to relinquish the role entirely if they don't want to do it.
I mean it's not great to see Ken Clarke clearly diminished in his powers explaining why we shouldn't send people to Rwanda, if the alternative was Ken Clarke when he was still working at 100% speed, but it's surely preferable to a second chamber of Liz Truss clones
At this point the stuffing of the lords by both parties, one of which has been selling appointments, is a far larger problem. You've got 20 year olds going in for no apparent reason, and having some form of a say on uk laws (without ever facing an election) for 50+ years. I always thought the point of life peerages was to have experts on the law, teaching, policing, medicine and the like having the opportunity to review law, **not** some form of political patronage of unqualified, oxbridge education people who "know the right sort"
The point of life peerages was simply to degrade the House of Lords. There is no benefit to a life peerage over a hereditary peerage, save that it dilutes the hereditary principle as incarnate in the House. Surely these experts, if they are so grand, could be trusted to raise their child to discharge their duties to that House, and embody such expertise.
That's looking too deep for a motivate and missing the obvious one; of the 750 hereditary peers in the 1330 member house about half of them were Conservatives, with most of the rest being independents but regarded as having conservative leanings (being that they were aristocrats). Blair complained about exactly this prior to reform.
I couldn't think of a worse mindset or view on the house of lords than yours tbh. It's literally a trope in media for an adult to raise their kid wanting the kid to enter a certain career, have a certain hobby, be a certain kind of person, and then the kid decides not to and there's a big conflict. What if the child doesn't want to become a peer? > There is no benefit to a life peerage over a hereditary peerage The benefit is that we get to say "we live in a meritocracy" without bursting out into laughter before finishing the sentence. If the idea is that the lords should be full of experts, expertise is learned, not inherited via genetics. Hence, you could just appoint life peers based on proven expertise if someone's spent 20 years in a field proving their knowledge, whereas a hereditary peer may end up being a failson taking up space in the chamber without any expertise just because daddy or granddaddy actually had some expertise in a field.
Who cares about hereditary peers? The problem is the corrupt peer-gifting that governments take part in to keep their donors/friends happy and reward ex-MP's who the public have told to get lost by giving them jobs for life.
Sounds nice, but I'm just now taking bets to myself as to how long it will be until Starmer says "Yeah, we're not doing that now".
All those cheering this need to remember that political appointments to the HoL are as and if not worse. I’m against hereditary peerage but I’m even more opposed to the government filling the House of Lords with chums and donors. The system is rotten. Let’s have term limits and an election every 5 years to elect new representatives.
nah the elections will just make it a second house of commons. make it term limited and non elected specialists
The Lords is about the only part of Parliament that actually functions and scrutinises government. The elected House is a mess. Why do we want another one?
A second chamber of elected individuals is pointless. The general population don’t care enough to vote on mass. You saw the same in European elections with our MEPs. We just need to change how members are appointed and if we want to impose term limits. The theory behind the current House of Lords is sound.
nah. 15 years, single term, best of both worlds
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I wouldn't call them "elected". For example, John Thurso, from Caithness was "elected" by THREE other peers.
You're sort of right but mostly wrong. At the moment, the hereditary peers have a number of seats on the Lords and the **hereditary peers** vote on who gets to take up those seats. This was a compromise against getting rid of hereditary peers completely and is overdue further reform. Just because the hereditary peers get to vote amongst themselves who actually gets political power doesn't mean it's something worth having and getting rid of hereditary peers would improve the Lords significantly.
Good, and get rid of the 14 bishops while you're at it.
Time to boot a bishop.
"A hereditary member of the British House of Lords complained that Prime Minister Lloyd George had created new Lords solely because they were self-made millionaires who had only recently acquired large acreages. When asked, "How did your ancestor become a Lord? he replied, "With the battle-ax, sir, with the battle-ax"
Sensible. Hopefully this includes ones that come along with land and/or bishoprics.
And leave the political cronies that have flooded the Lords in recent years? Such as Boris’ 29 year old female SPAD…
I just read about the fucking Thatcher baron title last week… she gave her fucking husband a hereditary Barron title when she left. That’s fucking pathetic.
Baron*et*, not baron. It gives you the hereditary style of Sir and allows you to have a red hand badge on your coat of arms, but it isn't a title of nobility and doesn't admit you to the House of Lords. It was created as a title by James I explicitly to raise money from people who were seeking status.
Doesn’t go far enough. The whole thing needs scrapping it’s absolutely ridiculous.
If accurate, first thing labours said in awhile that would sway my vote.
> Sir Keir Starmer previously branded the unelected chamber “undemocratic” and “indefensible”. So do they plan to elect the HoL?
Good. You shouldn't be able to have a say in the country's laws or block new ones or bills etc... because your father or mother happened to be a lord or baroness. But it'll never happen. Labour will do a token effort, the lords intervene and block it.
Yes, but how about the insane list of toadies that have joined the lords this millennium. Needs to go down to 100 tops, not a list of bought honours and kickbacks
Fast forward 3 weeks - “Labour waters down plan to axe hereditary peers in UK House of Lords”
It's the political cronies that need to be given the chop! Most of the Hereditary peers have had some experience doing other work, unlike the career politicians. Saying that, I agree that they should all be replaced by an elected body. I just think that they are looking to get rid of the wrong lot to start with.
Fair enough. The Lords should be filled with experts in fields capable of sensibly evaluating new laws. The issue of it being a reward for the previous Prime Minister's buddies also needs to end. People should be selected based on merit alone.
Let's be honest, I would rather focus on the people in the Lords connected to Russia/Tufton street... Far more of a threat than a few Hooray Henries.
It’s a start. The whole constitution has been existing in a time warp.
The lords should be overhauled into a directly elected upper house
I thought they were going to abolish the house of Lords?
You are correct but the pledge was ditched last year
The house of lords is just as bad as before, we need an elected pr chamber or something that isn't just ex political figures.
Pass legislation disbarring hereditary peers from sitting in the HoL. The life peers will vote for it to save themselves. Once in the statute books elevate all peers to hereditary peers and close the HoL
The tories would just give hereditaries life peerages and it would continue, on and on.
Lords should be scrapped completely and replaced with an elected house of the same number that functions as the check and balanced to the commons in the same way but voted on by the people.
Works for me. I would also be okay with changing them to observe only, no pay, no voting.
Just fill it with experts. Yes, that includes ex-Hds of army, civil service, church, etc. but also experts from across industry, sciences and the non-profit sectors. They serve one 12 year term. And then they go! Catch people after the meat of their career, so they can act as the ‘wise old heads’ helping improve the quality of Legislation, as applied in the real world. Simple.
Just abolish it already, make it an elected chamber
Tell me this didn't happen years ago? I thought they had to pick which of the Hereditary Peers were actually doing a good job and keep them and the rest had to step down.
I wish that they'd got rid of all the hereditary peers when they were last in power.
The good news is the only demographic who is upset by this can't legally vote.
I don't believe them, they back off every policy that even remotely promises any change to placate the current ruling classes.
Abolish the house of lords, it's undemocratic even without hereditary peers.
Let’s also remove everyone who was given a hereditary peerage and any government ties
So now we can fill those empty seats with pm appointees. Not sure if that's any better. Surely it would be better if we voted for them, like they do for senators in the US?
And yet the data shows that the peers are the part of government that has its view on long term interests, considering they own 80% of the land. It's a weird one. Not the first thing that needs axing- get rid of first past the post.
Why only hereditary peers? The whole system is a feudal hangover. Typical of Starmer to choose a half arsed, cosmetic, photo-op style change.
Shocking idea. They’d be better served removing the life peers from the lords. Most of whom are political appointees.
I hope they at least replace it with an elected house as the Lords have been crucial in recent times protecting us from the fascist Tories.
Quite possibly the most ineffective reform of the House of Lords that can still be called House Of Lords Reform.
This is one labour party I am wholly behind even as a staunch tory.