‘Hereditary peers remain indefensible,’ says Labour’s manifesto. The party plans to rectify this issue by ‘introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords’. If it follows through on its promise, Keir Starmer’s party will be making a big mistake.
Labour suggests that its reform will make the Lords a fairer and more ‘modern’ place. But what Starmer is essentially advocating is a chamber that is Prime Minister-appointed (save for the Bishops who it seems would, at least for now, remain). The hereditary peers provide a necessary counterbalance to a patronage-based system; their existence is one of the checks and balances in place to prevent abuses of power, and they are an essential cog in the complex machine of the British constitution. Their departure would bring this to an end.
The hereditary peers provide a necessary counterbalance to a patronage-based system
At present, it is within the PM’s power to hand a seat in the Lords to personal friends, loyal individuals or those who have donated large sums to the party of government, without particular regard for the qualifications the individuals would bring. Needless to say, while there are many deserving and active life peers who contribute much to the Upper House, the life peerage system opens up the opportunity for some eyebrow-raising appointments. Meanwhile, the pool from which appointees are selected tends to be Westminster-centred, leading to peerage lists which include a disproportionate number of former MPs and, increasingly, special advisers. As a result, the newer waves of life peers are not necessarily characterised by a breadth of experience.
By contrast, the hereditary peers have to go through a rigorous election process in which they must persuade fellow peers during their hustings that they will be able to contribute something distinctive. Emphasis is placed on peers being elected who represent a wide range of areas of British public life, from arts to the judiciary, agriculture to financial services, and who can therefore contribute meaningfully to certain policy areas. It is worth noting that the cull of hereditary peers by Tony Blair at the turn of the century led to a comparative dearth of peers with military and agricultural expertise, to the detriment of the nation. Losing the remaining hereditaries would likely lead to fewer policy areas getting the level of scrutiny and attention they deserve.
Another related argument in favour of hereditary peers is that they know why they are there, because it is a position for which they applied, whereas life peers do not have to apply for the role. One former MP who found himself unexpectedly appointed by a recent prime minister to the Lords sought an audience with the latter to ask what would be expected of him. The reply: ‘I don’t know, just get stuck in’. Unsurprisingly, the existing peers were said to be just as confused about why the new joiner of their ranks was in their midst as he was.
An analogy to this is the system whereby people can apply for trustee roles in British cultural organisations. If someone found themselves parachuted into a trustee role at a national museum by a friendly Secretary of State without having applied for the role, they would almost certainly be all the worse for it (at least from the perspective of the taxpayer or of the national interest), because they would be less invested in carrying out their duties. On the other hand, the very process of writing a personal statement and going through a strict interview process creates a stronger commitment to the role if appointed.
Labour has stated that it wants an Upper House that is more representative of the regions and nations that make up the United Kingdom. The irony is that, before Blair got rid of most of the hereditary peers, the House of Lords had full geographical representation of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The current situation – the lack of proper regional representation which the Labour party is lamenting – was therefore the result of the Labour party’s own reforms over two decades ago. It is naïve to assume that yet more Labour reform of the Lords would not similarly lead to unintended consequences which will require yet more reform to correct in a few decades. The problem is that traditional institutions are hard to bring back. Bert Lance was famously reported in 1977 as having said, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s the trouble with government: fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing things that are broken.’ The Labour party would do well to heed his words.
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