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Today is the ninety-fourth anniversary of the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 receiving Royal Assent. The preamble of the act states “it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.”
After nearly a century, we do not have an elected House of Lords. The removal of most of the hereditaries has instead been replaced with patronage; Tony Blair has appointed more people to the House of Lords than any other Prime Minister in history. Labour promised to hold a free vote on the composition of the House of Lords in their manifesto but it still hasn't happened. Even though majority of MPs favour a mostly or wholly elected second chamber, the last time a vote occurred in 2003 all eight proposals -- the sheer number of which I think were an attempt to divide the pro-reform movement -- were defeated.
In July, the Labour Party's National Policy Forum discussed proposals and came up one which would change the name to the "second chamber", requires up to four-fifths of members to be elected (starting at twenty percent and going up over time assuming that the chamber "doesn't get too powerful"), major faith groups and "other broadly representative groups in society" (such as the TUC or professional bodies of doctors and lawyers) would nominate new members approved by an independent appointments commission to make up the other fifth, and removes the recently created life peers in lieu of six-year terms for everyone else. The Liberal Democrats are calling the proposal, which Labour say is a white paper and not official policy, "muddled and inconsistent." Even the Conservatives want a majority elected House of Lords.
Labour rejects a wholly elected second chamber and the "secondary mandate" using the proportion of votes at a general election that was proposed by Billy Bragg. I disagree. With the decision that the Parliament Act should not be used for big constitutional changes and thus the House of Lords has the power to block constitutional legislation there must be unequivocal reform to the House of Lords immediately. I tend to believe this should take the form of being wholly elected under Single Transferable Vote (STV) proportional representation.
If you agree that there should be at least a predominantly elected second chamber, please take a look at the Elect the Lords campaign.
electthelords
August 10 2005, 18:51:11 UTC 6 years ago
August 10 2005, 19:00:23 UTC 6 years ago
August 10 2005, 19:35:53 UTC 6 years ago
August 10 2005, 19:16:19 UTC 6 years ago
This reads as a tad confused -- if you back STV for the upper house you'd have to at least concur with Labour on the Bragg proposals, which to my mind are distracting from real reform as effectively as did the Simon Hughes attempted amendment to the age of consent in 1994 (the rest of us were fighting for equality at 16 or a compromise reduction for m/m sex to 18 from 21; Hughes started campaigning to equalise at 17, raising the AOC for f/f and m/f in the process).
I only have one problem with STV for the upper house, which is that I want STV for the lower house, and fear the legitimacy battle between a fair votes upper house and a FPTP lower house. I don't have a solution on this one; certainly national or regional list elections would be little different to a house of appointments and patronage. AV and SV don't satisfy me for one reason or another, AMS has a lot of the problems of simple list elections, SSV is just a fun idea, condorcet would be a nightmare to implement. Damnit, I might have to come out in favour of AV+... or maybe huge regional STV seats elected in thirds.
*fx:vanishes up own electoral systems fundament*
August 11 2005, 01:21:09 UTC 6 years ago
September 2 2005, 13:19:36 UTC 6 years ago
September 6 2005, 03:37:13 UTC 6 years ago
I haven't seen anything like this in the UK. Is there?
September 6 2005, 08:26:03 UTC 6 years ago
September 2 2005, 13:35:58 UTC 6 years ago
Which Senate / House problems are you thinking of?
Sorry if I seem to be asking eejit questions, and for coming to the thread long after it was fresh! It helps to know what someone is concerned about before you try and answer their concerns tho ~:o)
September 6 2005, 01:30:54 UTC 6 years ago
None of this would ever make it onto American news. Ever.
he idea of having two elected houses has been tried before, with devastating results (i.e. Senate and House of Representatives)
That the US legislative branch has had devastating results is arguable; they've passed good laws as well as bad. Particularly, I don't believe that the downsides of the Senate and House are related to being two elected houses. I would link the problems to a lack of a truly representative voting system (and indeed, continual corrupt redrawing of regional boundaries and the number of seats in the House per individual state), the corruption of campaign contributions and the following "paybacks", the way terms are structured, etc. far sooner than I would link them to having two elected houses. Can you imagine what the US would be like if there was a house unanswerable to the public?
Can someone please explain how there results would be any different if the UK did it?
See above.
How are the pork-barrel spending and lobbyist group situations over there?
As far as I'm aware, pork barrel spending does not exist and lobbying groups are far more strictly regulated with less contributory power.
September 6 2005, 08:23:57 UTC 6 years ago
Quite. Particularly since they passed the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act in 2000, which makes any significant donations to political parties (and we're talking the equivalent of hundreds of dollars not millions) a matter of public record. There are also limits on how much parties can spend nationwide and per-constituency in election years and during the election itself, so if a billionaire tries to 'buy' the election they'll wind up in prison for breaking electoral spending law.
It's still not perfect, just as in the USA the two largest parties have to raise similar sums of money to one another and so take large sums from trades unions, business backers etc and so some of their policy decisions may be influenced that way. It is at least limited and transparent though.
One of the interesting quirks of the PPER law is that a Labour Party politician is currently under threat of being expelled from the Labour Party for donating to the campaign fund of an old friend who was standing for Parliament as a Liberal Democrat candidate. Pre 2000 no-one would have known about the gift, but now it is a matter of legal record.
Pork barrel spending, now I get the idea, really isnt how we work.