The UK House of Lords’ supporters have some genuinely good points that can be brought up. Being able to take a longer-term view and spend your whole time engaging in deeper thought, rather than being swayed by the ebbs and flows of day-to-day politics or needing to be in the media. And there are examples of bills given in this video where the Lords—even the Conservative lords—have done a good job of forcing the Commons (including when there was a Conservative majority) to rethink some of their worst proposals.
But, as the video says, thanks to Commons primacy, many of those cases ended up passing more or less in their original form, eventually. So even its supporters should be willing to concede that some sort of reform is needed to help it accomplish its goal.
Of the 6 western English-speaking democracies, Canada might be the one I’m least familiar with, but as I understand it, their Senate is “life” (retire at 75) appointments? I’m curious from anyone who has seen it, how does this go? Are the appointees overly political? Are there examples where they have held the Commons to account, even against their appointees’ wishes? Are they legally allowed to block policy, or are they like the Lords and only able to delay?
On the whole, I quite like the Australian Senate system, too. They are voted using a proportional system by state (similar to how the proposed UK “nations and regions” might work), for terms roughly equal to two House of Representatives terms. This gives Senators a somewhat longer view than MPs, while still being accountable to the people to some extent. Unfortunately, “twice as long as the House of Represtatives” is only 6 years, and we only elect 6 Senators per state per election, which means the ability to be proportional is fairly limited, and the vast majority of the Senate comes from 3 parties (counting the “Coalition” as a single party). Making the size of the Senate larger so it can be more proportional, and making terms longer—perhaps doubling it to 12 years, but with a cap of a single term—would seem to me to be the best way to go.
Having a more powerful house of review is essential to prevent the Government of the day just forcing their agenda through, and longer terms (especially if coupled with an inability to stand a second time) is essential to ensure they can be that effective house of review rather than being highly political. A larger chamber, perhaps electing a minimum of 10 per region—or even more than that—rather than Australia’s current 6, helps ensure the diverse voices within that region are well represented.
The Lords cannot ultimately block legislation. First Past the Post is a much bigger problem.
The Lords cannot ultimately block legislation
But that’s just the thing: its defenders have good points about its purpose. But being unable to block legislation undermines their case. To the extent that their arguments are correct (that the Lords really do spend more effort thinking deeply about issues and using expertise to decide what’s best to do, regardless of political popularity), being unable to block legislation undermines that.
First Past the Post is a much bigger problem
Absolutely. I actually think Lords reform could be a backdoor way to improve the electoral system. If Lords was replaced with a House of Nations and Regions (which…seriously? Just call it a Senate. That’s literally the one thing in common between the Senate in Australia, America, and Canada…), having it be elected proportionally would be a much easier sell than changing how the House of Commons is elected, considering the fearmongering and failed past attempts to overhaul the FPTP system.
And then, maybe, once they’ve seen the HoNaR’s (ok, I do kinda like that acronym…) proportional system work well, maybe it’ll be harder to oppose reform to the Commons as well. But even failing that, a proportionally-elected upper house with real power would offset a lot of the harm of an FPTP Commons, in the same way that Australia’s proportional Senate offsets the problems with single-winner IRV in the House of Representatives.
The implication of saying that you need the extra scrutiny is that either the Commons doesn’t reflect the will of the people; or that the will of the people is not what ultimately makes law. If the people elect idiots and get bad legislation, that is democracy for you.
Of course, FPTP more-or-less guarantees that the government has a majority in Parliament without having a majority of the vote.
Defenders of FPTP often say that one advantage is that it means that the government has a clear majority. If that were such a good thing, why would we need a second chamber to balance it?
You certainly won’t find me defending FPTP. I don’t even really consider it to be democracy. Instant Runoff Voting is really the bare minimum available system, IMO. (Ok, I would accept Approval Voting, which is much much better than FPTP but not as good as IRV, as democratic. But I’ve never seen it used in practice so it’s not especially relevant.)
My point was simple: even within the framework of supporters of the current Lords, it does a very bad job of delivering on its promises.
The implication of saying that you need the extra scrutiny is that either the Commons doesn’t reflect the will of the people; or that the will of the people is not what ultimately makes law.
The former is obviously a good case for voting reform. But the latter I think oversimplifies the issue somewhat. Aside from using a more democratic voting system, I don’t think anyone is calling for changes to how the Commons works. It’s always going to be the people’s elected representatives. And nothing can pass without being the will of the Commons. But that leaves the second house to be able to perform a different function. In a lot of countries, the Senate is supposed to represent the will of the states/provinces, rather than people directly. An equally valid option is to be essentially a panel without the need to worry about what’s popular (or at least with less need of that). It can help as a bulwark against populist policies. See the many examples given in this video of things the Lords tried (and ultimately failed) to stop.
Or I could point to the recent Australian social media minimum age law, which would absolutely have been stopped by any even vaguely apolitical chamber, not necessarily because the policy itself was bad, but because rushing it through in one week without adequate time for public submissions or inquiries is always bad policymaking.
