The constitutional change in the House of Lords

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In the general election in 1997, the Labour party made commitments in relation to several areas such as constitutional, law and order, welfare, education and health, environment and economy. Among these, a major part of Labour’s election manifesto was the constitutional change in the House of Lords. The Labour party manifesto states that

“The House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. This will be the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.”

A political scientist, John Kingdom had opined that the House of Lords as “one of the most curious of the curious anomalies in British public life, defying all logic of democratic and secular politics.” The constitutional reform pressure group, Charter 88, say the chamber enjoys little public support and makes a ridicule of representative democracy. Contrarily, the supporters of the historic system of House of Lords viewed that the Lords has long provided a less party-political counterbalance to the House of Commons.

In my opinion, one of the reasons to reform the House of Lords is that the House of Lords always oppose the proposals of any government. For examples, the greatest number of Lords defeats suffered by any government was 126 inflicted on Labour during the 1975-76 sessions and the highest number inflicted on the previous Conservative administration was twenty-two defeats during the 1985-86 sessions. This would obstruct the administration and management of government. Besides, the present House of Lords suffers from a lack of legitimacy because of its anachronistic and unrepresentative composition. Thus, the Government is committed to improving the effectiveness and balance of the House of Lords, with the aim of it playing a full and proper part in Parliament. The House of Lord is unrepresentative and less democracy since there were a large number of hereditary peers who are privileged to sit in the House through succession. As example, in January 1998, there were 759 hereditary peers out of a total membership of 1272. Thus, the government’s ultimate objective was to replace the current House of Lords with a new elected second chamber, elected under a system of proportional representation. The Labour government expects the reform would complete within two years’ time and aim to institute the House of Lords which consisting of 1/3 directly elected representatives, 1/3 indirectly elected based on a party list and 1/3 appointed Life Peers who will be drawn mainly from business. Besides, Labour would implement the review on the system of appointment of life peers with the purpose to ensure that the over time party appointees as life peers reflect the proportion of votes cast at the previous general election more precisely. In addition, Labour would sustain independent cross-bench attendance of life peers, thus no political party could obtain a majority in the House of Lords. Lastly, a committee of both Houses of Parliament is set up to review the further changes and then submit the proposals for reform on the particular future changes.

Tony Blair, the Labour leader, advocated a two-stage reform, first is the removal of hereditary peers and second is a comprehensive reform of both composition and powers. However, the reform was criticised by Viscount Cranborne, the Conservative leader. He argued that to remove the hereditary peerage without any clearly defined idea of what would finally replace it was wrong and the House of Lords with the mix of hereditary and life peers would be more independent of the Government than a purely elected Chamber. To achieve the purpose of restricting the membership of hereditary peers, the House of Lords Bill was introduced in the Commons on 19 January 1999 and received Royal Assent on 11 November 1999. Section 1 of the House of Lords Act 1999 provides that no one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage. It stops the present and future hereditary peers from sitting, voting and speaking in the House or receiving a writ of summons unless they are excepted from this general exclusion under section 2 of the Act. Besides, section 3 had removed the disqualifications regarding to hereditary peer, unless he is an excepted peer, to vote in election to the House of Commons and for connected purpose. Consequently, a transitional House of Lords was existed until further reform is implemented.

According to the House of Lords Act 1999, ninety-two hereditary peers to be remained in the interim Chamber who excepted from section 1. Seventy-five of these were to represent the political parties and Crossbenchers, fifteen peers were to remain as office holders and further two peers were to remain in a ceremonial capacity. Beside, ten hereditary peers were given life peerages in November 1999 and seven hereditary peers were given life peerages in March 2000. The Act deprives excluded hereditary peers of all the privileges of membership of Parliament. They would not be paid allowances and to use the facilities of the House. Although the Act had removed the hereditary peers ‘right to vote’, the problem of legitimacy still exists. This is because the Labour government redressed the party political imbalance between life peers by appointing Labour ‘working peers’ to the House. Thus, the life peers have no more constitutional legitimacy than do hereditary peers. Therefore, the removal of the hereditary peers does not effect any constitutional change or obtain any greater democratic legitimacy. Deputy Director Chris Lawrence-Pietroni of Charter88 said the legislation works ineffectively in making the House of Lords; this would lack the democratic legitimacy and public confidence to do its job of scrutinising legislation and holding the accountable of government. It is submitted that, although the number of appointed member is increasing but it remains the problem of representative. For instance, only one in five of Blair's appointees are women and peers from ethnic minority still stands at 2.5 per cent of the House.

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Royal Commission chaired by Lord Wakeham was established in 1999, asked to consider the role, functions and composition of the second chamber whilst protecting the supremacy of the democratically elected House of Commons and to make recommendations. This report was having collected written submissions and oral evidence from public hearings. Finally, the Royal Commission report named ‘’ delivered to the government on 28 December 1999 and made to public in January 2000. The Royal Commission report became known as the Wakeham Report and contained 132 wide-ranging proposals. According to the report, the Commission had recommended that there should be ...

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