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Let's hear it for the House of Lords!

07:46 / 11.03.05

I don't know about you guys, but my respect for the House of Lords has been on the increase over the past few days as the continue to defend the right of Habeas Corpus (the right of a fair trial).

Yes the might be entirely unelected, and wilfully mix the Judiciary and the Church in thebusiness of government, but because they work in a different way to the elected House, their flaws are different enough to delay and perhaps prevent contentious and ill-conceived legislation being forced through by any political party in government.

This is not to say that all the decisions made by the Lords have been without fault themselves, (their opposition to the lowering of the age of homosexual consent to the same as hetrosexual consent for example) but at least the Parliament Act adds a further balence to their existence.

But yes, to the question.

What do you think about the House of Lords, its uses and functions - would you ber happy to see Blair sweep it all away in a possible third term?

08:38 / 11.03.05

Indeed, much respect to Their Doddering Lordships, staying up all night and baring their teeth at Terrible Tone. Good job there are some at Westminster still who refuse to roll over and let him scratch their tummies.

The paradox is that I was pretty much in favour of a wholly elected second house and of doing away with admission through privilege of birth or policital patronage.

Sometimes the fact that Their Noble Lordships are beholden to nobody means they're not as malleable as party members in the Commons, driven through the voting lobbies by the ferocity of the whip system and the thought of future career advancement. With a wholly elected second chamber, we might lose that handy feature.

Tone is ranting about them playing party-political games but I'm hearing a lot of good speeches against the bill from New Labour stalwarts, mostly lawyers, who owe their place there to previous Blair patronage.

It's a horrible to feeling to find myself in agreement with Michael Howard.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:50 / 11.03.05

Yes, recent events have truly made for stramge bedfellows. I, too, was fully in favour of a fully elected House... but right now I'm glad we've got these old buggers.

Does it strike anyone else as slightly terrifying that the mainstay of our entire legal system currently owes its continued existence to how long a bunch of old people can stay awake?

It's always struck me as a weird system- but at the moment, Mr Tony having no credible opposition at the ballot box, they seem to be the only people to whom he has to listen anymore.

08:54 / 11.03.05

Yes indeed, the main benefit of the Lords is that they are are at the end of their political careers - the party whip system has very little leverage over them leaving them free to vote on the issues.

Tryphena Absent

08:59 / 11.03.05

I never thought a time would come when I was more than relieved that the House of Lords exists. But I am grateful and I blame Blair for proposing a bill that Tebbit backs.

09:08 / 11.03.05

I'd also like to add that I am not automatically in favour of an elected second chamber as the biggest danger such a second chamber would face would be becoming little more than a place to rubber stamp the lower house's legislation in the way that the US senate and house of representatives currently operates...

The second chamber needs both independence and a level of strength to prevent any one government steamrollering ill-conceived legislation through parliament.

09:19 / 11.03.05

And what about the seperation of the powers of church and state?

Generally I would describe myself as being opposed to major organized religion, however I can see the benefit of having some form of religious representation within the House of Lords as it gives the process of scrutiny the Lords must excercise over the legislation they receive some level of moral and ethical dimension. I wouldn't suggest that the number of Lords Spiritual be increased from their current minority status and I would rather this representation extended to all faiths practiced by a significantly large proportion of the population, but that is for the future...

What do other people think about Britain's curious mixing of Church and State?

10:50 / 11.03.05

i always thought an elected second chamber was a rubbish idea - it would just make them as corrupt and compromised as the mps eventually. the current mix of itv culture pundits and relatives of william the conqueror is a bit odd, but short of random selection of over-fifty-fives i can't think of much of a better one.

sgood this, tony's all 'it's the tories' and it's not, it's the lords, who thankfully aren't quite the venal cunts those in the lower chamber are, and have a bit of perspective beyond their careers or insane bushist religiosity. think this could reflect qute badly on the red menace in the run-up, the spanish voters were very annoyed by their govt's attempt to make capital out of the madrid bombing. think maybe the voters attitude is: we don't like terrorists, we like blatant pisstakers even less.

11:59 / 11.03.05

The thing is they're very unreliable. It's not just the fact that they're unelected that makes it undemocratic, but the way they are put there. Maybe a truly random selection would work. If they can do it for jury duty which can have the power to send someone down for life (or to the table in some US states), then maybe political seats by random lot might not be so strange.

In Australia they have two elected houses, the House of Reps and the Senate. Because most people don't want the govt to have total control, many who vote for one of the 2 main parties in the lower house will vote for our third (mid-size) party in the Senate and therefore the result is usually two houses controlled by different parties. Of course there is no guarantee this way, and you could very easily end up, at least for a term, with the govt having a majority in both houses which would be a bad situation.

However I remain uncomfortable with the concept of the House of Lords. Having them vote the way I want one day isn't enough for me to overlook that.

12:18 / 11.03.05

A counter arguement to that of course is that the Parliament Act allows the commons to exert its will over the Lords after a period of time... various reforms covering homosexual practices were pushed through using the Parliament Act. The elected House prevales eventually - the current system is, if anytrhing, more geared to building a consensus...

12:45 / 11.03.05

I think one of the reasons this bill is suffering so much in the Lords is due to the Law Lords, who understandably are unhappy with the loss of an ancient British legal right for the sake of political expediency.

One reform I would like to see in the House of Lords is a clear separation of the Judiciary, similar to the Supreme Court model in the US. As it is now the head of the Judiciary is so in bed with the Executive they may as well be the same branch, I believe that is unhealthy for a democracy.

Electing the Lords is indeed a difficult proposition because we do rely on them to look to the long view, not just the next election as in the Commons. Of the various solutions proposed, I'm confident the Commons will choose the option that most efficiently castrates the power of the Lords.

lord henry strikes back

13:21 / 11.03.05

The fact, as far as I can see, is that there is no reason for Britain to have an elected second house. Most countries that have two elected houses are republics, and the representatives of the upper houses are drawn from the states. This allows the smaller states, which often have distinct cultures, to have a louder voice than they get in the lower chamber and stop themselves from being totally ignored. As we don't have a state system an elected upper house would almost certainly mirror the lower, the problems with this have been mentioned above.

A solution that I've been touting for a while is to replace the Lords with a Council of Experts. Whilst I haven't quite figured out how the members would be selected (it should not be the lower house) whet I envisage is a group of noted experts in their own fields. These would be drawn from the Law, Economists, faith groups, green activists, the sciences, the arts, and so on, with each community selecting their own reps. They would sit for say 10 years and can only be appointed once.

If all goes well, this should result in a second house that knows what it is talking about (rather than being a selection of inbred hicks and political suck-ups) who are indipendent enough to block the kind of knee-jerk policies that we see governments going in for more and more (see control orders for the latest example).

13:34 / 11.03.05

What do other people think about Britain's curious mixing of Church and State?

Yes, Bishops out! I thought that was supposed to be happening anyway. Was it just one of the hifalutin' schemes that fell by the wayside when BlairCo finally got round to reorganising the Lords?

I see your point, sleaze, about the dangers of a fully elected upper house. It would have been more difficult for the Govt to dismiss the Lords' opposition to the foxbothering legislation, had they been accountable and elected.

I still think we need to elect them all, if they're going to govern us, charming and occasionally advantageous as their anachronistic eccentricites can be.

Will give it some thought - how to get the best of both worlds.

17:19 / 11.03.05

What I am hating is the government's insistence that this is simply an example of the Lords ignoring the primacy of the Commons. Apparently we should all be terribly angry at this flagrant flouting of democracy.

Farck ooooooooffffff!

17:33 / 11.03.05

Will give it some thought - how to get the best of both worlds.

What are the arguments against "elected, but permanent"? Is it simply impractical - one can't just hold an instant election every time a member dies, or retires, or whatever? What about an elected chamber with members serving fixed, once-only terms? I'm sure there must be some good arguments against these, but they seem more appealing than either our system of unelected and inherently conservative representatives, or the US system where there seems little qualitative difference between the House and Senate...

21:13 / 11.03.05

What about an elected chamber with the members serving fixed, once-only terms ?

It's a good idea in principle, I'm guessing, they wouldn't in theory have to get too involved in party politics, but then again, the minute they were standing for office they'd be compromised, and having been used to the the power, the prestige and so on, of the HOL, they wouldn't be all that happy about going back to work at the gas board or wherever, at the end of their time. They'd be just as vulnerable to the offer of a seat on the board of say Shell or Walmart as the average MP is, and so just as much, if not more so, likely to take cash for favours.

22:05 / 11.03.05

Gave me a giggle, thought I'd share.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:38 / 12.03.05

I wonder how many of these Lords are the ones that consistently voted against an equal age of consent and frothed about buggery? I'm also dubious about trying to characterise the Lords as being above party politics, yes they can't be whipped as Commons MPs can, but I believe there are House of Lord whips, and Lords do seem to be Labour peers, Tory peers, Lib Dem peers etc, so they aren't completely free of factionalising, several Labour peers sit in Blair's cabinet after all.

I like the idea of elected one or two-term peers for the House of Lords, reforming them is one of those things like a Freedom of Information Act, it's something you support when you're in Opposition but when you get in to power you suddenly convert to the idea of leaving it as it is.

And does Kelly Holmes' damehood mean she's now entitled to sit in the Lords?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:12 / 12.03.05

I wonder how many of these Lords are the ones that consistently voted against an equal age of consent and frothed about buggery?

Oh, probably most of them. I hold no particular love for them usually. However, opposition is what holds democracy together- this is why I find myself in the strange situation of wishing the Tories would get their act together. God forbid that they should get back in, but I firmly believe that any decision a government makes, no matter if it's a reasonable, just, "evidently necessary" one (of which the removal of habeus corpus is exactly none) should be questioned and attacked, for no other reason than that the government should be forced to explain why it's doing what it's doing. If a government's unwilling to do that, or tries to fudge around the issue (see: Iraq) then something is clearly wrong. With no credible opposition, the Lords are the only ones in a position to do this.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

21:14 / 14.03.05

It is rather ironic that, in a few years, I've gone from cursing the Lords unto the tenth generation, to thanking Unspecified Deity for their existence - they've finally made themselves useful for my own purposes, if accidentally. However, if something like the age-of-consent thing turns up again, they'll do more harm than good, especially if the rumblings about abortion term alterations turn out to be true. Ideally, the Lords should stay as long as Blair does, and then need to be removed and reformed by Someone Else as soon as possible. Aren't democratic countries supposed to have more than one elected representative body anyway?

22:31 / 14.03.05

Despite my dislike for the intransigence with regards to change from some quarters with the House of Lords to the issues of the ages of consent (and it was not universal, while one Baroness Young was steadfastly against lowering of the age of consent another Baroness Young [yes there are, or were, two of them] was in favour), I think that issue is of a whole different order to that of the right to a fair trial. I feel it would be supremely unwise to get rid of a revising chamber that can merely slow change but that cannot prevent it in favour of some unknown alternative that might have the power to block commons.

The Lords cannot propose legislation, only propose amendments and slow the passage of legislation proposed by the commons. I would rather have them in place to do that than propose to abolish the Lords without a clear idea of what would replace it.

My concern over the issue of a fully elected second house is that such a chamber would be susceptible to the same problems as the commons and consequently less able to perform its primary function as serving as a revising chamber, a balance on the power of the commons. Make no mistake, I accept that the Lords is not a perfect institution, however its flaws are at least different and therefore balanced and tempered by the flaws of the commons.

22:47 / 14.03.05

Aren't democratic countries supposed to have more than one elected representative body anyway?

Well this is another massive question that I was trying to get at over in this thread. What makes a country democratic - are all democracies equal or are some more democratic than others. is full and complete democracy even something to aspire to or is it something like fully uninterrupted markets that no-one has faith in ultimately...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:12 / 09.01.07

Well, it looks like the Lords are going to get to do something they haven't had the chance to do for quite a while, talk about the buggering of schoolchildren. If there's not a drinking game for House of Lords debates on sexuality there bloody well should be.

12:05 / 09.01.07

Yes, I just saw that and began frothing at the mouth. On the one hand, it's a damn good law and one that I hope will go through and pave the way for further reform. On the other, I now want to stalk over to the House of Lords and bugger them all with a banana.

When dreaming of utopias that probably wouldn't work, or at least ideas towards them, one that I'd love to discuss is the idea of making religion really subject to state law. So not only would a hotel be unable to rent a room to a same-sex couple because of "Christian values", but religions would be unable to discriminate against candidates for the ministry on grounds of their gender, sexual orientation and so forth, for instance. I don't see why I should have to put up with being treated as a second-class citizen in an Orthodox synagogue (the local one here puts women in a separate room, where they can only see and hear the service through a small hatch, for the services which don't attract a large congregation), for instance, when it's illegal to do that to me in a library. The problem is, by the time you enforced this thoroughly some religions would be in tatters, particularly those which practice extreme gender segregation, and I'm not advocating abolishing religion because apart from anything else, that also interferes with civil freedoms. Any thoughts?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:28 / 09.01.07

Primarily, I think it might be a good idea to start a new thread about it. Interestingly, I'm not sure it _would_ affect civil freedoms. After all, if you had a religion that depended on inflicting assault-level damage on its members, even if they consented, you would be arrested. Certainly one which practiced human sacrifice would be pursued, because these actions are not currently legal. If discrimination on grounds of gender or sexuality is illegal, why is it restrictive to expect all bodies to adhere to that law? That might be a useful place to start.

Also, I think I'd rather not think about the Lords and bananas.

15:40 / 09.01.07

Never mind bananas, I managed to make Blake Head jump last week by saying, while preparing supper, "Right, I'm going to cut the pumpkin up, and then...fuck it." Only those who have spent half an hour or so slaving over peeling an uncooked pumpkin will appreciate the depths of (potential) agony that caused me to make that slip.

This state/religion issue is on my list of "things I might post to Barbelith about if and when I can be sure that I know enough about the subject not to make an idiot of myself" (along with tackling the world population problem through enforced long-term contraception, and a comparison of all the different aspects of identity one can "come out" as). I suspect you know far more about it than I do, and you've certainly managed to summarise my usual arguments on the matter very nicely. Would you prefer to kick off? There are doubtless related threads on the board that would be useful to link to here, I'm sure I saw plenty on the Muslim veil debate for example, but I haven't a clue where they would be.

15:47 / 09.01.07

On second thoughts, I think that gender segregation in libraries would be unlawful rather than illegal, since it's a civil rather than a criminal offence. And when I can next get hold of my-best-friend-the-lawyer, I might even find out how that all works. Any lawyers here? I can guess roughly that beating up a Muslim is a criminal issue, denying a hotel room to a same-sex couple is a civil one, and refusing to ordain a woman is allowed under both systems, but that's about as much as I know.

03:31 / 10.01.07

And the challenge fails as the Lords vote it down by a majority of three to one.

But back on topic, what is wrong with the Lords scrutinising new laws an proposed changes to laws?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:08 / 10.01.07

Lord Tebbit said: "These regulations would leave perfectly innocent people in fear of legal action from the fanatical wings of the lesbian, homosexual, gay pressure groups. Whatever the intention of those who drafted the regulations, they are bound to create not only a shadow, or umbra of prohibition, but a vastly-wider penumbra of the fear of prosecution."

Refresh my memory, it was Tebbit that helped bring in Clause 28 wasn't it?

Talking of which, The Daily Mail goes for: Schools 'will have to promote gay rights' in reporting the debate, with this lovely picture as illustration,

The problem with the second chamber is that while it sometimes challenges the Commons on badly drafted legislation, when it comes to sexual morality a lot of them flick off the switch marked 'common sense' and flick on the bigger switch marked 'blithering nonsense'. It would raise the level of debate if Lords against these bills were forced to wear clown make-up to show they hadn't done any research and were basing their opinions on half-remembered fumbles with the cricket-team captain 80 years ago at Eton. It reminds me of the time John Cleese and Michael Palin met the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge, the Pythons were trying to discuss the film they had made, the latter two a film that existed only in their heads.

10:28 / 10.01.07

Having the House of Lords is an invaluable check to the rubber-stamping that all too often recent governments have allowed to blight the name of democracy. It is not infallible, but neither is any nation, any population, and therefore any form of democracy. But the lack of accountability to voters and to party whips (especially in the case of the cross-benchers) is, paradoxically to my mind, truly invaluable, and this was all the more the case when Labour first came to power with a (deserved, it seemed at the time, but nonetheless) nearly tinpot dictatorship-style majority, their ranks swelled by Tony's groupies. The existence of the House of Lords could not be dreamed up by a madman, could not be justified in its odd spectrum of ex-civil servants, politicos, cronies etc, yet serves intriguing practical functions.

I agree with some of the above comments that the House of Lords should change in format a bit, but to reflect the interests that it protects. There should be experts, as suggested above, maybe a chunk of normals, representatives of business and of religion and even specialist interests. And they should be left to vote as they please, answerable to their own consciences, a system that again depends on the user but overall seems to work in watering down or halting over-enthusiastic legislation. Maybe a small portion should be rotated, maybe there should at least be an age-limit, but one that does not exclude some of the learned and experience-worn old duffers who actually have something to contribute to society despite being beyond the age of retirement for some companies etc.

It was interesting to find that Labour peers have often, once elevated to the Lords, ignored their whips and provided some of the most pointed, vociferous and (from certain perspectives) useful contributions to debates on government legislation. It is a shame that sometimes the more rabid ones make better press, but as was reflected in the recent debate on the attempt to overturn the anti-discrimination bill, they are thankfully often more vociferous than numerous.

14:45 / 10.01.07

Refresh my memory, it was Tebbit that helped bring in Clause 28 wasn't it?

I think so, yes.

Tebbit is also insisting that

"Black is about being. Sexual orientation is about being.

"And we would not wish to discriminate against people for being black nor on grounds of their sexual orientation.

"The concerns which are being expressed this evening are primarily about sodomy rather than about sexual orientation - that is doing, not being."

I have absolutely no idea what sort of logic he's employing here. If it's about hotels and guest houses not being given legal dispensation to turn gay people away, then someone needs to break it to him that a) not all gay people do the willy/bottom thing, and b) not all straight people don't.

Apologies for going off-topic.

14:51 / 10.01.07

Also a little off-topic, but, erm, are we still so sure that an elected and democratic House functions in any less puerile or small-minded a manner than the unelected one? This article about Northern Ireland questions in the Commons (always a cause for light-hearted banter...) kinda hints that they are possibly worse at serious discussions than their more elevated counterparts. Oh, the humanity.

13:04 / 11.01.07

Our Lady said -
The problem with the second chamber is that while it sometimes challenges the Commons on badly drafted legislation, when it comes to sexual morality a lot of them flick off the switch marked 'common sense' and flick on the bigger switch marked 'blithering nonsense'.

The trouble is with 'common sense' as any kind of yardstick is that tends to be a bit of a movable feast depending on where you are standing. Moreover, I think it is problematic to judge the virtues and failings of a second chamber, or, indeed, any democratic institution on the belief systems of some of its members.

Church leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley still holds a seat in the elected chamber and also campaigned strongly against the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Does that render the Commons as equally suspect an institution to you as the Lords?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:42 / 11.01.07

Oh, of course, the whole 'two wolves and one lamb' thing and all. The older I get, the more the Conservative principle of small-government starts to appeal.

19:37 / 24.01.07

"I am doing it genuinely to protect the security of Britain and British families."

....W?