Labour’s latest reform of the House of Lords will make virtually no difference to the Upper House or to the operation of parliament, either in principle or in practice. Which is a pity, because Britain needs serious constitutional reform to make governments more democratic and less hegemonic.
Of course, no self-respecting democrat can object to the removal of the remaining 92 hereditary peers. They should have gone in 1999 when Tony Blair ejected the bulk of the hereditary peers, about 650 of them. But 92 were reprieved in a last-minute deal with the Tories—hereditary peers are, of course, mostly Tory—to smooth the exit of the 650.
The Blair reform made a substantive difference to the composition of the Lords, turning it from a largely hereditary and Tory assembly into a largely appointed chamber, with no one political party in control. The reprieve of 92 hereditaries did not affect this fundamental change.
In the intervening quarter of a century, more life peers have steadily been appointed. There are now approaching 700 life members (excluding life peers who have formally retired from the House). The removal of the remaining 92 hereditaries won’t change the essential character of the chamber beyond rebalancing numbers between Labour (at about 190 peers) and the Tories (at about 230). But there will still be more than 180 non-party peers and bishops, and more than 80 for the Lib Dems and minor parties, so partisan balance won’t change fundamentally.
However, in the modern Lords none of these numbers matter much because by modern convention the Upper House virtually never asserts itself against the elected House of Commons, which in practice means the government of the day. The House of Lords debates bills at great length and does a lot of work in revising their detail, but this is mostly at the behest of the government itself which uses the Lords to revise its own legislation in the light of ongoing political developments and pressures.
Every now and then, a cross-party majority in the Lords persuades the government to change its mind on something big. But on matters of first-rate importance this is rare: the drastic slowing down of the Blair government’s introduction of ID cards, which led to their abandonment, is one of the few such cases in my time in the House. And the Lords was probably wrong on that one, on the balance of the arguments about civil liberties and national efficiency.
Usually, when it comes to changes to bills made by the Lords but not supported by ministers, even minor ones, these are dropped once they have been rejected by the government’s majority in the Commons. It is notable that during the entire Brexit crisis, the Lords made no substantive difference to what happened at any stage, despite its overwhelming Remain majority. It was changes of Tory premierships, and how David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson managed (or failed to manage) Tory MPs in the Commons, that determined what happened.
Obviously a wholly nominated Upper House is acceptable to the Labour party in a way that a largely hereditary chamber wasn’t, because Labour gets to do about half of the nominating. But a nominated House is not much more legitimate in democratic terms than a hereditary one. Neither is subject to popular election. So the removal of most of the hereditaries has not led to a more assertive assembly, and nor will the demise of the last 92.
An elected second chamber, like the senates of the United States and Australia, would be a powerful assembly able routinely to challenge the Commons and thereby the government on major issues. That’s why we will probably never have one. And this latest reform is not a step towards one either.
The biggest parliamentary reform which might just be viable at some point in the foreseeable future is the introduction of proportional representation in elections to the Commons, which would make one-party governments rare. Another hung parliament could possibly lead to such a reform. But the Lib Dems failed to change the system when they were in coalition with the Tories a decade ago, and who knows when the next chance will come.
