Geoffrey Howe

Don’t vote for us

Geoffrey Howe argues against the introduction of an elected element into the House of Lords

Where next for the House of Lords? The debate has moved on a long way since that question raced up the agenda, after Labour’s landslide victory in 1997.

It was possible then for sensible people to regard the Lords as an archaic anomaly with no practical role and even less claim to legitimacy. There was, at that time, more than one reason for taking that view.

First, the fact that a clear majority of the House (the hereditaries, 750 out of 1,270) were there only because of an accident of birth – scant justification for political power in a modern democracy. Second, because one party, the Conservatives, had a large and permanent majority in the House (200 more than Lab and Lib combined). And finally, not least because of those two features, the Lords seldom found the confidence to challenge the Commons on any important issue. In short, the Lords was perceived as ineffective as well as illegitimate.

All this has now changed. Ninety per cent of the hereditary peers were removed in 1999. The disappearance of the rest is widely regarded as only a matter of time. The Conservative majority has gone for ever. Neither of the two major parties now has more than one third of Lords membership.

Upon that basis, and (as Meg Russell has pointed out in a perceptive article in this summer’s Political Quarterly) much more quickly than might have been expected, a remarkable consensus has developed about the future political composition of the House of Lords. All three parties have agreed explicitly that, in the words of the present government’s 2001 White Paper, ‘The House should not be dominated by the government of the day or by any other political party.’

So decisions of the House now very largely depend upon the votes of Liberal Democrat, ‘crossbench’ and other independent peers, who between them account for no fewer than two fifths of the present membership.

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