Those of us with a sense of patriotic pride in Britain’s traditional institutions naturally include Parliament as central to that. At its heart is the House of Lords. With all its pomp and eccentricity – perhaps because of it – there is an appreciation that it is a part of our national identity.
For all the jokes about how posh and elderly its members are, there has always been a sense that its role is benign. Its function as a revising chamber, sometimes improving on legislation sent to it from the lower House of Commons, is all to the good. The details of legislation over which the Lords picks are discussed in a way that those excitable elected politicians in the Commons are often in too much of a hurry to bother with.
That is the case for the defence.
However, this case is becoming harder to make. The rot set in with the Life Peerages Act of 1958. After that, the ratio of members in the Lords by an accident of birth (or because you were a bishop) fell – and increasingly it became about political patronage. Even before that we had seen Maundy Gregory – the Liberal Party Treasurer under David Lloyd George selling peerages. Later we had Harold Wilson’s Lavender List.
Then with Tony Blair and David Cameron the House of Lords became stuffed with mediocrities amidst ever greater political cynicism. It wasn’t just the “cash for honours” arrangement for those who made donations to political parties. There was also the perverse arrangement where a peerage was offered to a bad MP (sometimes embroiled in scandal) in return for them standing down. So if they
were clinging on in a safe seat they would retire just before an election – and allow some favoured Special Advisor to be “parachuted in”. Such tawdry deals have been commonplace in British politics for decades.
During the Coalition Government a vast number of low calibre Lib Dem councillors and party apparatchiks were also given peerages. It was a sop by David Cameron to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to keep him sweet. Disastrously, these changes have resulted in House of Lords becoming like a giant Quango.
It also means that more of the Lords’ members are concerned with partisan mischief making rather than the national interest. We can see this with the efforts of Lord Mandelson and his chums to undermine the Brexit negotiations.
What can be done about it?
First of all there must be reform to donations to political parties. An annual cap of say £10,000 should be applied (including from trade unions whose leaders so often mysteriously to end up being ennobled). But all donations to political parties with this limit will be tax deductible. Political parties would be motivated to have a wide base of support rather than sucking up to a tiny number of hugely rich
people.
Secondly, the £300 a day daily attendance allowance – tax free – which peers receive for “clocking in” should be abolished. Perhaps it is reasonable to allow some modest travel expenses but the basic principle should be that peers are unpaid. There would be no difficulty in finding many capable and experienced peers who would be perfectly willing to continue to serve on that basis.
That change would mean that peers would attend for the right reasons – not just piling in for a few minutes crazed with greed to collect their free wad. It would also mean that deadbeat MPs and party hacks could not just be bought. The offer of membership of a body which was unpaid would surely appeal less to a great many of those who rely on the House of Lords for an income.
Genuine nobility would be restored to the Lords and we would be governed in a way that was not only cheaper but more effective and more honest.
