Do we need an (elected) House of Lords?
by scotslawstudent
The House of Lords is a curious piece of constitutional framework but I think it’s better than the alternative. I don’t like that I have an MSP, an MP, an MEP and a couple of local councils (I live in one council area while I work and study in another). I think there has to be one or two too many cooks in that equation. I’ve got a funny feeling none of them particularly listen to me on the future state of the world and therefore do I really need 5 elected bodies to not particularly listen to my views? Do I need another?
The idea that the House of Lords should be elected is built on sound ideological foundations – democracy is good. I think it really is good, I just don’t see why people need multiple identical elected representatives to represent them. I think, if the second house will be made up by people voted for by the same people and arranged in the same political parties who will decide along party lines on the same legislation, this only happens because we assume we need a second house at all. Why would we? It’s exactly the same as the lower house.
I don’t want an elected House of Lords, I want a differently constituted upper house or I want us to save a bit of money by getting rid of it entirely. The whole point of the House of Lords is that it’s supposed to be able to resist the hue and cry of the masses and look at things objectively, the whole point of the House of Commons is that it’s supposed to listen to the voters.
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You really have a few MSPs at your disposal – certainly your directly elected first-past-the-post constituency one, but also a small gaggle of list MSPs from the PR system – I’ve never found them much use, but perhaps I don’t live is a particularly good list area!
That’s a point, you do have a lot of options for people to contact. I must admit to quite liking knowing that there is a guy in Westminster, Holyrood, Glasgow etc who is actually there to represent me if need be. I think it’s good to know they’re there.
And in each council area, by dint of multi-member STV PR, you have councillors to choose from.
Of course, the problem when you start thinking about removing layers is: which layers? Do you really want your bind emptied by fiat of Holyrood? You’re probably too young to remember the disaster tat was Strathclyde, the council that covered half of Scotland, and never did anything on time. Subsidiarity is a fine goal, but it takes some to run it, and it’s better that they be elected, don’t you think? Anyway, local cooncilors are a lot cheaper than MSPs, MPS and MEPs…
Definitely, being able to broadly shape the direction of society is excellent and the alternative is not to considered in the slightest but the issue is not exactly removing layers, it’s just avoiding duplicating layers. Presumably an elected Lords would read and send bills back to the Commons pretty much like it does right now.
Liberalism thinks that heterogeneity is a benefit in government – so you have the separation of powers etc. I would wonder to what extent you could really say that elected members of the Lords, voted for at a general election(?) differ from elected members of the Commons, voted for at a general election. The more localised representatives differ from each other in their scope but you don’t even have that in Westminster. I think you really have just one big house with two rooms and a weird two tier voting system.
To be honest, at the moment, with the current extensive timetabling of bills, no one is actually reading, never mind scrutinising, legislation (resulting in a lot of bad law that will take years to fix). Both Commons and Lords are effectively redundant.
Other places, like France and the US, manage their upper house by placing it on a longer, unsynchronised, election schedule. Of course, they are both presidential, so perhaps we should be looking to Ireland, where they have a strange, complicated, and unsatisfying, hybrid system, with both appointed and indirectly elected senators.