The House of Lords serves as an advisory chamber within our legislature. The chamber is at its best when it’s full of experts that represent the full raft of talent across the United Kingdom. From this, they offer a critical role in amending legislation and holding the Government to account. But, with Prime Minister Johnson coming to the end of three years as head of Government, he gets his resignation honours list. It is widely suspected that he will pack the House of Lords with even more conservative peers, and Johnson allies. Therefore, the question arises, is this appropriate? Should we consider some immediate reforms? And, when should we start discussing an elected upper house?
The Tradition of Packing the Lords
It is not just Johnson which has contributed to filling the House of Lords up. David Cameron, from 2010-15, appointed 112 peers. Theresa May only appointed 43 during her three year period as Prime Minister. The argument is that the chamber is old, which leads to deaths and retirements, thus a given Prime Minister needs to bring new life into the chamber. This argument is fair to an extent, but the House of Lords is much larger than necessary to be an effective chamber.
This has been recognised by the Lord Speaker, who wrote to both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak asking them not to appoint as many members to the House of Lords. As helpful as it is for a Prime Minister to constrain themselves, like Gordon Brown and Theresa May did, I believe this poses the question of structural reform. Using the House of Lords as a form of patronage is not necessarily helpful for the chamber, because this misses its modern day purpose to critique and review legislation. If we keep the House of Lords as an appointed body, surely we need a process to significantly limit the number of appointments made and make it robust enough that it is not a tool of patronage.
The Agenda of Reform
This is not the first time that reform of the House of Lords has been suggested. There is a long history, which intensified in 1911 with the Parliament Act. This law legislated to weaken the House of Lords veto and cement the House of Commons’ supremacy over the Lords. Then, in 1999, Prime Minister Blair limited the number of hereditary peers to 92. Most recently, Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, tried to create a new set of elected peers but this failed to get past the second reading. Therefore, there’s clearly precedent to reconsider the purpose and makeup of the House of Lords. Given the House of Lords has swelled in size over the last decade, and polling has suggested reforms to the chamber are supported by the public, we should seriously consider steps to deal with the upper chamber.
We need to reassess the size of the House of Lords immediately, then we can discuss more fundamental changers, such as an elected chamber. Boris Johnson has created 86 peers, which is likely to increase by the time he formally resigns. This means the House of Lords has bloated to around 760 sitting members. It is clearly inappropriate for an undemocratic chamber, with significantly less power than the lower chamber, to be the larger chamber within the legislature. Therefore, for as long as the chamber is appointed, we need to regulate the number of appointments the Prime Minister can create to bring down the size of the chamber. This is already supported by a 2017 report by the Lord Speaker suggesting a cap to the chamber at around 600 members. This would bring it roughly in line with the size of the House of Commons which feels more appropriate.
Closing thoughts
Ultimately, we cannot stop at merely reducing the size of the House of Lords. We should have a more fundamental conversation about creating an elected chamber, with a precise constitutionally mandated role and remit. This could be a Senate, which represents the regions and nations, that revises legislation. It would also give a greater role to the regions and nations of our Union within the legislature, which could help deal with our democratic deficit. But, history suggests that Lords Reform is a piecemeal process which ends up with compromised solutions. Therefore, we must immediately embrace capping the size of the House of Lords, limiting the number of appointments the Prime Minister can make and making the oversight of appointments robust enough to tackle cronyism. This would make the House of Lords more effective in its current state, until we can deliver on the promise of an elected upper chamber.
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