I worked for an organisation that was trying to support a change to the House of Lords to transform it into a mostly elected chamber back in 2012. Needless to say the enterprise was not a success. The foremost reason for this is because to say that neither the Tories nor Labour want any significant changes to the way the House of Lords operates is the understatement of the century. Their combined antipathy towards transforming the Upper House shows just how much Lords reform is not a left-right issue, in fact.
The Right mostly likes the House of Lords because it is an age old institution, and part of the traditional Tory thing is a reverence for old institutions. The Left likes the House of Lords because these days (i.e. post-Blair reforms), it is a break on all sorts of stuff they don’t like. The way the Lords halted the progress of the Health and Social Care Bill, aka the Lansley NHS reforms, in 2012 is a perfect example of this. So too is the current battle between the two Houses around the topic of tax credits. Many on the Left are full of praise for the Upper Chamber all of a sudden when these standoffs occur; out of the blue seemingly, that hoary old chamber filled with sycophants becomes the bastion of all that is good.
The reason both parties really like the way the Lords works though, has nothing to do with ideology at all. They like it because it is handy tool to get out of problems with. Need someone to stand down for anything from the need for more ethnic/gender balance to a brewing scandal? Give ’em a peerage. Want to keep a very intelligent individual who is needed both in policy terms and who knows where all the bodies are buried involved in the party at a top level, even though they (being an intelligent individual, remember) has figured out that being an MP is a rather crap job? Give ’em a peerage. And yes, no one likes to talk about this, but: you want someone to give you a large donation? Give ’em a peerage – just not right away, so as to make it too obvious.
The only thing that would change this equation is if the public really cared about this kind of stuff. But as I found out in 2012, they really, really don’t. Like, not at all. They may get outraged when a peer does something dodgy, but the anger is always directed at the vague, nebulous “establishment” as opposed to the Upper House itself and even then, it lasts a very short while and then is forgotten entirely.
So this is why when the dawn of the next century comes, in a little over 84 years from today, I think the House of Lords will still exist pretty much as it is today – even down to the whole “the prime minister can stuff it full with as many as he/she likes, anytime he/she likes” bit. Because the parties will never want to change it and the public don’t care.
“The Right mostly likes the House of Lords because it is an age old institution, and part of the traditional Tory thing is a reverence for old institutions.”
Nick, I guess when you say “Tory” you are thinking “conservative” (big or small “c” but mostly small). There is nothing conservative in the present Tory government; therefore your thinking is flawed.
I concede that the Tories (whom you place on the right, I guess because they dislike paying taxes) like the house of lords. That is not out of fondness for tradition; it stopped being traditional when the real lords were kicked out. They like it because it allows them to get away with things that an elected chamber wouldn’t.
A wholly elected chamber doesn’t guarantee things would work better. If it was done on the same cycle as the Commons then the Tories would have a majority, who would cheerfully back the tax credits changes.
Looking at electoral results in the last 5 years even a mid term vote wouldn’t have guaranteed a true ‘opposition’ majority.
That is even before you think about whether the Labour party has enough effective operators for a 2nd team in the 2nd chamber – they barely laid an effective punch in May. (Exactly the same can be said of the Tories through most of the 97-2008 period)
The converse of course is that an really unpopular government gets trounced mid term and the opposition opposes for the sake of it. Leading to arguments about legitimacy, relative turnouts and and things grind to a halt. Where do you go from there – more elections?
For my A Level politics paper in 1989 there was a question that was pretty much ‘In a democracy the House of Lords is indefensible, but in practice it works.’ Discuss. It could be on the 2016 paper and you would get pretty much the same answers.