House of Lords: be wary of more botched reforms

The modern British public is a demanding political customer. That is not unreasonable. Given the levels of taxation and public spending, we ought to feel entitled to good government and indeed statesmanship. Neither is currently available, hence a widespread mood of discontent. But that has risks. Anger is rarely a wise counsellor, especially when it comes to institutions, many of which have come under attack. 

Yet if we take a long view – the only sensible approach to institutions – most of them have served Britain well over the years. It is not clear that any other major country is better governed than us.

Of course, there have been mistakes, but there is no use pining for a Gospel of Perfection. There was one, now lost, which the early Fathers denounced as heretical. Whether that was fair, it would certainly have been an impractical document, at least in this world. Equally, government ministers, and not the institutions which they often abuse, have been responsible for most of the blameworthy errors.

Moreover, British institutions could claim a remarkable achievement. They have refuted no less an authority than Our Lord Himself. He said that it would be foolish to put new wine in old bottles. But Britain has been doing that for centuries. Our constitution has evolved and in so doing has managed to address the day’s challenges while preserving ancient forms. Under the English Common Law, judges reason from established principles to new circumstances. The same is true of the wisest Tory politicians, achieving continuity and change, while always remembering their party’s greatest dictum, promulgated by Lord Falkland: “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

Ancient forms bring us to the House of Lords. When in ceremonial mode, it does look like Gilbert and Sullivan without the music. This has made it an easy target for those who cannot be bothered to look behind the forms and who appear to think that if anything can be accused of being undemocratic, it should immediately be cancelled. Again, a longer view is essential, to work out why the new wine came to co-exist with the old bottles.

From the Sixteenth Century onwards, English political life has turned on a Leninist question and a single word. “Who, whom” asked Lenin, by which he meant the single word: power, and who should have it. In Britain, although we think of ourselves as a stable country, that dispute has still not been resolved. The EU and the Scot Nats remain troublesome. But we have had a remarkably peaceful transition from absolute monarchy to our current arrangements, with less violence than in every other major country (before indulging in the joys of moral superiority, we ought to concede that the Channel is entitled to a great deal of the credit).

The House of Lords has played a crucial part in this. During the century before the First World War, there was an intermittent struggle for mastery between Lords and Commons. Although hindsight is easy, one does not have to be a complacent Whig to conclude that there could only have been one outcome. So what did the future hold for the upper chamber in pomp, with the lower one in power?

At the end of Mr Balfour’s Poodle, his excellent account of the conflict between the Lords and the Liberal government after which the Lords could no longer block legislation but merely delay it, Roy Jenkins implied that both sides had stumbled into a compromise. The Labour party deeply disliked the hereditary peerage’s continued role in a legislature, but approved of the reduction in their power, especially after the Attlee government imposed a further restriction in their ability to delay Bills. The Tories, sentimentally attached to the old peerage, were alarmed at the loss of power. The Lords could no longer act as a bulwark against the extreme Left.  On that basis, with neither side happy and neither mutinous, matters could continue indefinitely.

This was assisted by a further infusion of new wine. Bagehot wrote that the best cure for admiring the House of Lords was to watch its proceedings. That may always have been somewhat unfair and it became out of date in the late Fifties, with the invention of life peerages. This enabled those who either disapproved of hereditary peerages or who simply did not want to burden their descendants with such an encumbrance, to sit in the Lords. A lot of life peers were persons of distinction who brought intellectual heft to debates, and to other proceedings. The House of Lords’ select committees usually produce thoughtful reports and the Lords also acts as a revising chamber, which has become increasingly necessary as the Commons produces more and more legislation, less and less well-drafted.

By the Seventies, it was understood that although the Tories had a large majority thanks to the hereditaries, they would rarely defeat a Labour government unless the measure in question was manifestly absurd – and unpopular.

Sometimes, Tory peers were much less reluctant to defy their own ministers, and there was another factor. In the Thatcher/Major era, every Lords minister I spoke to insisted on the same point. The quickest way to lose a vote in the Lords was when the government spokesman had lost the argument on the floor of the chamber. Almost always, peers who intended to vote ensured that they listened to the debate. If they did not like what they were hearing, the best you could hope for was that they would melt away. There was little chance of them acting as lobby fodder, like their Commons equivalents, who are often happy to turn up for a vote without knowing what they are voting on, relying on the Whips to act as traffic cops and steer them to the right lobby.

So the new arrangements seemed to be working. In an ideal debate, eminent peers would contribute wisdom, retired senior ministers would rise above partisanship to bring experience while old-fashioned peers with historic names might be spokesmen for land and locality. That latter point might not sound modern, but no proper country should live entirely in the present, and the land is important. There would also be young hereditary peers who could chase the ball to the boundary and generally help to ensure that everything worked smoothly.

Then came Tony Blair. Despite his own gradual absorption into the establishment, he had not lost all contact with his seventeen year-old inner radical self. So he wanted to get rid of the hereditaries, just as he later wanted to abolish the Lord Chancellorship. How did he propose to reconstitute the House of Lords? He seemed to have no idea. The suspicion was that he wished to appoint a House of Cronies, who would do his government’s bidding.

In his negotiations with the Tories, he encountered another radical, in Lord Salisbury. It was widely assumed that Robert Salisbury (now chairman of Reaction) would try to preserve as many hereditaries as possible, acting as their Oskar Schindler. After all, his family had been peers for four hundred years. Not so: Lord Salisbury always insisted that the composition of the Lords was a second-order issue. The real question was its role. He wanted a House strong enough to resist the Commons, preventing it from simply acting as an elective dictatorship running a legislative sausage factory. If his new House were to come into being, its members would have to be at least half elected to give them the credentials to oppose the Commons, though there would also be eminent persons: the best of the current Life Peers. He envisaged the elected element being chosen by a different method than that in the Commons, possibly a regional element – with a different electoral cycle. So he did want to retain a good number of hereditaries pro tem, but only to act as a stone in the shoe. The Blair government, irritated by that, would then press on with reform, including a substantial measure of democracy.

But Robert Salisbury had either overestimated or underestimated Tony Blair. Perhaps we should use a George W Bush-ism: “misunderestimated.” Blair did not want a stronger Lords. He preferred a stone in the shoe to new shoes which might never be comfortable. So we are indeed stumbling on, with a House that has lost much of the charm and some of the ethos of the pre-Blair period, but still functions as a revising Chamber and still has excellent committees.

Meanwhile, I can detect no enthusiasm in government circles for another attempt at reform. There is a widespread view that as it would end in frustration and failure, why waste time?

Although the ultra-democrats will no doubt persist, the rest of us should feel justified in our caution. There is no one model of democracy applicable to all countries in all circumstances. In Britain, our democracy depends on the Commons, the press and our political culture. Provided that there is a competent Prime Minister who will appoint a good Cabinet, It also provides the possibility of strong government. If there had been a Robert Salisbury-style Lords in 1979, British history might have been very different. The eminent peers would mostly have embodied the conventional wisdom of a previous generation: few Thatcherites there. As soon as there was an election for the Lords, the Tories would have lost any hope of a majority, and any control over the legislative process. Poul Schluter, the then Danish Prime Minister, once alluded to our system when talking to Margaret Thatcher. “Margaret, what I wouldn’t give for even one year of the power that you enjoy under your system.” “Ten years is better, Poul” she replied. With a differently-constituted House of Lords, that conversation could not have taken place and she might not still have been PM.

Tony Blair had probably never heard of Falkland. After 1997, he blundered into unnecessary and thoughtless change, on the Lords, devolution and the judiciary. The latter is easy to correct: repeal all the Labour so-called reforms. The House of Lords is harder. But there is no urgent need for change. So let us, if not exactly leaving well alone, at least avoid piling botch on botch.