Abolish the House of Lords? That really would be elective dictatorship

In the course of a splendidly curmudgeonly polemic for the Sunday Times, unfortunately behind a paywall, Jeremy Paxman (above) takes aim at the “unelected nobs and politically congenial pals” who populate the second chamber of our legislature. Demanding that “the legitimate part of the Parliament should cut the House of Lords out of the political process” and dismissing the well-meaning gradualism of the late Roy Jenkins and other advocates of reform, the broadcaster and popular historian will be satisfied with nothing less than abolition: “The House of Lords is like a bad smell that has been left behind by history and, like the stinks left by ancient plumbing, it will not be cured by any number of ‘reformers’…”

Paxman is now in his seventies, but the view that the Upper House must be brought down is not confined to the older generation. Today TheArticle publishes another call for abolition of the Lords by Noel Yaxley, a contributor young enough to be one of the great quizmaster’s victims on University Challenge. Yaxley, whose piece can be read here calls for a referendum on abolition, pointing out that between 2015 and 2019, the Lords defeated Commons legislation more than 150 times. The House, he says, “may be less undemocratic than when it was dominated by hereditary peers, but it is much more anti-democratic”.

I do not agree with Paxman and Yaxley, but theirs are serious arguments and they deserve a response. To take the last one first: the House of Lords has traditionally scrutinised and amended legislation rather than thrown it back at the Commons. By convention, Bills that were included in the governing party’s manifesto and are deemed to have been voted for by the electorate are never rejected or subjected to “wrecking amendments” by the unelected House. In the rare cases where the differences between the two chambers are irreconcilable, the Commons has the nuclear option of the Parliament Act (first passed in 1911, as Yaxley mentions, but strengthened since). In practice, this is seldom necessary: peers almost invariably bow to the inevitable and the will of the people prevails.

The reason for the anomalous number of clashes between Lords and Commons during the period cited by Yaxley was, of course, Brexit. With an overwhelming majority of Remainers, the Upper House felt entitled to question the Government’s interpretation of the referendum result: had the country really voted for a “hard Brexit”? After Theresa May’s inconclusive election in 2017, as negotiations with the EU ground to a halt, with the Commons deadlocked and the entire Brexit process seemingly bogged down in constitutional obstacles, many peers held out hope of a second “people’s” referendum to reverse the first. Hence their boldness in challenging the presumption that the elected chamber takes precedence.

It boiled down to an argument about legitimacy, which the unelected chamber was always going to lose. In 2019 Boris Johnson won a large majority to “get Brexit done” and the constitutional status quo ante was restored. But the episode left a legacy of acrimony on both sides. Downing Street has been determined to shift the balance in the Upper House to better reflect the sentiments of the country.

It is safe to assume that most of the new Conservative peers created under the present administration are supporters of Brexit. Equally, those in Parliament and the media who have never been reconciled to the UK’s break with the EU are now fighting various proxy wars, including the campaign against “Tory sleaze”. The targets include Brexiteers in the Commons, including Owen Paterson and the former Attorney General Sir Geoffrey Cox.

But those who want revenge on Boris Johnson also take aim at those he has appointed as peers, such as the former Editor of the Telegraph, Lord Moore of Etchingham, and the former Tory Treasurer, Lord Cruddas. All is fair in the guerrilla warfare of politics, but even those who disapprove of Brexit and deplore corruption should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Abolishing the Lords would be an act of constitutional vandalism, of elective dictatorship. It was one of the first acts of the only dictator we ever had: Oliver Cromwell.  

For the House of Lords does not deserve the obloquy being heaped upon it from both Right and Left — obloquy that is laced with hypocrisy. It wasn’t surprising that Remainer peers strained every possible loophole in our exceedingly flexible unwritten constitution to stop Brexit. Nor is it surprising that this Tory Government, like Labour ones before it, uses prime ministerial patronage to promote its supporters. Both sides know that, under different  circumstances, they would have done precisely what they are accusing the other of doing.

One of the virtues of the Lords is that its members are very often less partisan than their counterparts in the Commons, quite apart from the presence of the crossbenchers. Life peerages have their downsides, one of which is that the composition of the House may no longer correspond to the present political landscape. Yaxley complains that the Liberal Democrats are heavily overrepresented in the Lords. That may be a price worth paying for the independence of thought and conscience that life peers enjoy.

What of the charge levelled by Paxman that the likes of Lord Cruddas (unlike his elected namesake, the Labour MP Jon Cruddas) have bought themselves not only a seat in the legislature but social kudos too? The unpopular but unanswerable argument that the Commons is enriched by having members who have distinguished themselves in avocations other than politics applies to the Lords too. Successful businesspeople of all parties and none who devote their time and money to politics bring useful expertise to the Upper House. Tory tycoons are just as eligible as Labour’s trade union barons, provided they take an active part in proceedings. Peers who can’t or won’t turn up to vote, speak or serve on committees should consider the retirement package now on offer and make way for fresh blood.  

The hard-working peers who beaver away in the Lords are unseen, unsung and irreplaceable. Our laws would be much worse without their labours, civil society would be much poorer and the public less well served by Parliament. A couple of recent examples of legislation that was initiated in the Lords must suffice. Baroness Meacher’s Assisted Dying Bill stimulated a valuable debate on the end of life, while the Duke of Wellington’s Amendment to the Environment Act, persuaded the Government to place a new duty on water companies to reduce harm from discharges of sewage. Far from being a chamber that “stinks”, the Lords has responded to public concern about a real stink: the untreated sewage polluting our coastal and river waters — a concern that the Commons had ignored.

With great respect to Paxman, abolishing the Lords because he does not like the smell of the appointments process would be like removing the entire drainage system because one or two of the pipes leak. The days when Bagehot could observe that “the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it” are long gone. If Paxo were to spend a little time looking at what peers actually do there, I am confident he would end up by admiring the House rather than wanting to abolish it. Better still: if you can’t beat them, Jeremy, why not join them? As a people’s peer, he could hold their Lordships to account and tick off grandees who interrupted him with incorrect answers. Lord Paxman would be an adornment to Parliament. Only in this House, under this system, could such a thing easily happen.