"The House of Lords performs no useful role in British politics and

should now be abolished” Discuss!

By Willi Patzelt

The House of Lords performs a very useful role in British politics. Particularly, in its
opportunity to revise or block (bad) legitimacy it has proofed to be a very useful second
chamber consisting of less members as proper politicians than consisting of experts for
different political issues. Besides the House of Lords is a much more powerful one, that it has
been before the House of Lords reform act in 1999. This reform avoids that the government
or rather the prime minister, who has a majority in the House of Commons has automatically
a majority in the House of Lords. This reform made it possible to have an independent (!)
second chamber.
But should the House of Lords be abolished? Is a second chamber useful at all? Of course
you can argue that the House of Lords is undemocratic because it is not elected in a general
election. Resulting of that, the House of Lords is not representative for the people. Not only
in terms of age, gender and ethnic background the House of Lords is not representative for
the British people: There are 5x more members from London than from the north-west of
England. In addition you can argue that the House of Lords is much too expensive. Because
of the system of appointment, the House of Lords has grown to over 800 members. One
peer earns an attendance fee of £300. The operating costs for the House of Lords amounts
£93,1m (2013-2014). But on the other hand the House of Lord is now – as described above –
an independent chamber consisting in big parts of experts. You can argue that you get for
around £90m per year a pool of experts. Besides the Lords can do really detailed work about
a law. This time is often missing in the House of Commons.
But is it not maybe the best way to reform the House of Lords again in a kind of a ‘second
stage’ after the 1999 House of Lords reform act? The probably most radical way of reform
would be to make the House of Lords fully elected. You can argue that it would be the
solution for the already described issue of not being representative, for example in terms of
age: Supporters of a fully elected ‘upper chamber’ assume that more young people would
become lords, what would be good for being representative. But if the House of Lords would
be fully elected, what would happen with the supremacy of the House of Commons (1911
Parliament Act). Besides the House of Lords would loose on of his most important
characteristics – being a pool of very experienced experts. And would this reform solve the
issue of too high costs for the House of Lords? Obviously not. Next to the fees for the Lords
you would have to spend money for the elections.
But there is a third way: Just doing nothing. The conservative party refuses now for many
years to make changes concerning the House of Lords. But is there a good reason for doing
nothing? You can argue that a country like this has so much tradition in the House of
Commons that it is not worth not jettison this rich tradition. Besides you can argue from a
conservative point of view, that the House of Lords worked more or less very well. So, there
may be no reason for changing anything. Of course, you can argue against it with all the
already outlined arguments.
Of course, the House of Lords performs a very important role, why it should not be
abolished. But what is the best way to go now? In my opinion it is good that the House of
Lords is not elected. The House of Lords should be in my opinion a pool of experts in many
issues, who made many experiences in their jobs. But nevertheless, such an important
political institution has to have some democratic legitimacy. That means that people should
be able to kick out Lords, who are not doing their jobs properly. I think it is not a problem
that the Lords are chiefly old mans. We should not judge because of the gender but rather of
the experiences. And it is obviously that old people have more experiences about the daily
political life than younger people. But if you want to improve the political system in terms of
being representative than it is maybe worth to have a discussion about the election system
for the House of Commons, because ‘First past the post’ cannot be seen – in my opinion – as
really representative.