The House of Lords can be seen as highly undemocratic and out of date. It can be said that peers, who have inherited the position, often know nothing about the ordinary person and or government politics. It is worth noting also that there is a very small proportion of minorities in the House of Lords. There are also much fewer women than there are men and you cannot be a woman hereditary peer. It was only in 1957 under the Sex Disqualification act when women were first allowed to be a member of Lords. Many people feel due to these reasons that there is no real place for the House of Lords in democracy as they fail to properly represent the different groups within British society. Another key issue relating to representation and the House of Lords is that there are bishops and archbishops in the House of Lords but no other religions are represented. Due to these reasons the House of Lords could easily be argued to be both sexist and racist.
Members of the House of Lords although are not directly paid, such, they are given a generous attendance allowance. This basically means that they are paid for turning up and not paid in correlation to their contribution.
However there are some definitely good reasons for keeping the House of Lords. Firstly they play a vital role in the legislative. The House of Lords can scrutinise these bills and highlight any areas which they have any concerns with. The Lords can scrutinise the bills in much more detail than the House of Commons which means they can amend any problems that are found. They can also stop a bill from passing into law although the House of Commons can overrule this after a certain period of time has elapsed.
Then there is the role of Scrutinising the work of the executive. It scrutinises the executive in a variety of way. Firstly there is Question time where four oral or starred questions can be asked at the start of each day’s business. The ministers will be cross examined for half an hour on the government and policy issues.
The Lords also (unlike the House of Commons) have a Judicial role. A group of Lords are known as law Lords. They sit as the supreme court of appeal (the highest court of law in the country). Theoretically, anyone who believes they have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice can take their appeal to the Law lords although because the seriousness of cases only a handful of cases which pass through the UK’s courts each year end up with the Law Lords.
The Lords also have a Deliberative role. The role is carries out in the form of debates. Due to how much freedom the Lords have, the whips are rarely used which means these debates aren’t strictly controlled (unlike the House of Commons). Many people believe that the peers are more willing to contribute to debates as they may have a specific interest in the debate and could be looking to protect their position.
Another reason to put forward to continue to with the House of Lords is simply to share the burden of the government more evenly. Parliament has an enormous deal of work to do, and the House of Lords currently does its fair share of it. However, the benefit of sharing the work must be balanced against the costs, particularly when conflicts between the chambers result in an increased workload for both.
In this essay I have looked at the Major criticism of the House of Lords as well as the key function that are carried out by the Lords. I feel that there are some major issues relating to how democratic the Lords are and the lack of minority groups that are a part of the Lords. However I do feel that the Lords do have an essential role to play in British politics and I feel that it should not be abolished. I feel that there should be new elected peers who would be elected using proportional distribution to give a better representation in minority groups within the Lords.