Baroness Stowell of Beeston was Leader of the House of Lords from 2014-2016.
The Lord Speaker recently called for more independent experts and fewer party-political peers to be appointed to the House of Lords. Lord McFall is concerned that the balance between political and non-party appointees is out of kilter – and that’s before publication of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s resignation lists of new peerages.
He’s not alone, and he may be right. But it’s not just more experts and fewer political appointments that the Lord Speaker is calling for. Like nearly everyone else, he believes the Lords needs to be much smaller – preferably around 600 peers max, and certainly no larger than the Commons. But more independent experts and smaller isn’t possible. Let me explain why and offer a way forward.
The only person controlling the flow of new peerages is the Prime Minister. The Lord Speaker plans to ask Rishi Sunak to show restraint when it comes to Tory peers, and lift the cap David Cameron imposed on the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), so it can create more crossbenchers. Currently, HOLAC can create no more than two new crossbenchers each year.
Even if the Prime Minister agreed to this (and I’ll show in a moment why he might not want to), fewer party-peers means more crossbenchers will be needed. That’s because crossbenchers don’t attend the House or vote as often. That doesn’t mean crossbenchers are less diligent or effective, just that they’re motivated differently: they are more likely to participate in legislation only when their expertise is relevant and attend the House for votes on ‘big issues’.
When it comes to the size of the Lords, it’s always worth remembering there were 1200 peers when it was mainly hereditary, with 400 Members on average attending each day. Since 2010, the House has hovered at around 800 peers, with 500 on average attending each day. The best size measure is therefore not the total number of peers, but the average rate of attendance. Whilst the former has gone down, the latter has clearly grown as a proportion of total House size, arguably as peers have become more political, both in composition and behaviour.
So, even if less politics and more expertise means a bigger House of Lords, that equals better, right? Maybe. But we must ask: what’s the Prime Minister’s incentive to change the process and who he appoints, if his top priority is meeting voter demands? Can the Lords and Prime Minister align in what they’re trying to achieve? To answer those questions, we also need to examine the behaviour of the Lords – and look at it through the eyes of the Prime Minister.
First, the annual percentage of Government losses in the Lords is going up. Indeed, the Government has lost more than 50 per cent of divisions each session since the 2015 General Election. In two of these sessions, the tally of defeats reached almost 70 per cent.
Except for the 2004/05 session (which lasted little more than three months), it’s important to understand that no Government has faced this rate of defeats in the Lords before. The combined efforts of Labour and the Liberal Democrats is the main cause, but the role of the Crossbench is still important to understand.
Again, it’s worth remembering that divisions in the Lords are on amendments, not on the principle of legislation. In other words, a division is rarely called on the overall merits of a Bill. So it’s not surprising that the annual percentage of crossbench votes is normally a majority against the Government. But the average spread of actual crossbench votes for or against amendments was, historically, fairly even over the course of a year with, at most, about 2:1 against.
After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019, however, crossbench votes against the Government increased significantly (in the 2021/22 session the total votes by crossbench peers against were 5,023 compared to 1,439 with the Government).
People will debate what’s behind these shifts against the Government, and it’s fair to say some Bills have not arrived for scrutiny in the greatest of shapes. But even so, the combination of Brexit, other contentious legislation (such as stronger border and immigration controls, more police powers against disruptive protesters etc), has also seen the Lords overall adopt a more assertive approach.
Whilst Government defeats are not justification for prime ministerial largesse in using their power of patronage, seeing the Lords through the Prime Minister’s eyes shows why he might be reluctant to cede power to HOLAC and/or increase the number of peers whose support he can’t count on. As things stand, at least the Commons can hold the Prime Minister to account for who he appoints. But I don’t believe a Prime Minister should appoint peers once they’ve resigned and aren’t answerable to anyone. It would be a positive step if Sunak announced an end to this.
Just to be clear, detailed scrutiny and improving legislation is the legitimate role of peers, and governments will always, at least sometimes, deserve to be defeated by an effective second chamber. The problem is when peers’ collective distaste of the Bills which reflect what the majority of voters want inspires Government defeats. That’s dangerous when the fundamental flaw of the Lords is its democratic deficit. Which brings me back to the question of aligned incentives, and whether the Lords and the Prime Minister could be united in a common aim, albeit with different roles and responsibilities.
Democratic events in recent years have exposed the political class’s failure of accountability to those who have used the ballot box to demand change. Could increasing accountability be a guiding principle for both the Prime Minister and Peers? Greater transparency between the Prime Minister and HOLAC in the appointments process, and a more expert and less judgmental approach by the House of Lords to scrutinising and improving legislation so that it delivers what the majority of the public want?
In short, increasing the effectiveness of an unelected House of Lords so that the public gets good quality laws which deliver what they vote for is possible – but focusing on the size of the House isn’t how it will be achieved. Real improvement will require peers, not just the Prime Minister, to change our ways.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston was Leader of the House of Lords from 2014-2016.
The Lord Speaker recently called for more independent experts and fewer party-political peers to be appointed to the House of Lords. Lord McFall is concerned that the balance between political and non-party appointees is out of kilter – and that’s before publication of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s resignation lists of new peerages.
He’s not alone, and he may be right. But it’s not just more experts and fewer political appointments that the Lord Speaker is calling for. Like nearly everyone else, he believes the Lords needs to be much smaller – preferably around 600 peers max, and certainly no larger than the Commons. But more independent experts and smaller isn’t possible. Let me explain why and offer a way forward.
The only person controlling the flow of new peerages is the Prime Minister. The Lord Speaker plans to ask Rishi Sunak to show restraint when it comes to Tory peers, and lift the cap David Cameron imposed on the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), so it can create more crossbenchers. Currently, HOLAC can create no more than two new crossbenchers each year.
Even if the Prime Minister agreed to this (and I’ll show in a moment why he might not want to), fewer party-peers means more crossbenchers will be needed. That’s because crossbenchers don’t attend the House or vote as often. That doesn’t mean crossbenchers are less diligent or effective, just that they’re motivated differently: they are more likely to participate in legislation only when their expertise is relevant and attend the House for votes on ‘big issues’.
When it comes to the size of the Lords, it’s always worth remembering there were 1200 peers when it was mainly hereditary, with 400 Members on average attending each day. Since 2010, the House has hovered at around 800 peers, with 500 on average attending each day. The best size measure is therefore not the total number of peers, but the average rate of attendance. Whilst the former has gone down, the latter has clearly grown as a proportion of total House size, arguably as peers have become more political, both in composition and behaviour.
So, even if less politics and more expertise means a bigger House of Lords, that equals better, right? Maybe. But we must ask: what’s the Prime Minister’s incentive to change the process and who he appoints, if his top priority is meeting voter demands? Can the Lords and Prime Minister align in what they’re trying to achieve? To answer those questions, we also need to examine the behaviour of the Lords – and look at it through the eyes of the Prime Minister.
First, the annual percentage of Government losses in the Lords is going up. Indeed, the Government has lost more than 50 per cent of divisions each session since the 2015 General Election. In two of these sessions, the tally of defeats reached almost 70 per cent.
Except for the 2004/05 session (which lasted little more than three months), it’s important to understand that no Government has faced this rate of defeats in the Lords before. The combined efforts of Labour and the Liberal Democrats is the main cause, but the role of the Crossbench is still important to understand.
Again, it’s worth remembering that divisions in the Lords are on amendments, not on the principle of legislation. In other words, a division is rarely called on the overall merits of a Bill. So it’s not surprising that the annual percentage of crossbench votes is normally a majority against the Government. But the average spread of actual crossbench votes for or against amendments was, historically, fairly even over the course of a year with, at most, about 2:1 against.
After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019, however, crossbench votes against the Government increased significantly (in the 2021/22 session the total votes by crossbench peers against were 5,023 compared to 1,439 with the Government).
People will debate what’s behind these shifts against the Government, and it’s fair to say some Bills have not arrived for scrutiny in the greatest of shapes. But even so, the combination of Brexit, other contentious legislation (such as stronger border and immigration controls, more police powers against disruptive protesters etc), has also seen the Lords overall adopt a more assertive approach.
Whilst Government defeats are not justification for prime ministerial largesse in using their power of patronage, seeing the Lords through the Prime Minister’s eyes shows why he might be reluctant to cede power to HOLAC and/or increase the number of peers whose support he can’t count on. As things stand, at least the Commons can hold the Prime Minister to account for who he appoints. But I don’t believe a Prime Minister should appoint peers once they’ve resigned and aren’t answerable to anyone. It would be a positive step if Sunak announced an end to this.
Just to be clear, detailed scrutiny and improving legislation is the legitimate role of peers, and governments will always, at least sometimes, deserve to be defeated by an effective second chamber. The problem is when peers’ collective distaste of the Bills which reflect what the majority of voters want inspires Government defeats. That’s dangerous when the fundamental flaw of the Lords is its democratic deficit. Which brings me back to the question of aligned incentives, and whether the Lords and the Prime Minister could be united in a common aim, albeit with different roles and responsibilities.
Democratic events in recent years have exposed the political class’s failure of accountability to those who have used the ballot box to demand change. Could increasing accountability be a guiding principle for both the Prime Minister and Peers? Greater transparency between the Prime Minister and HOLAC in the appointments process, and a more expert and less judgmental approach by the House of Lords to scrutinising and improving legislation so that it delivers what the majority of the public want?
In short, increasing the effectiveness of an unelected House of Lords so that the public gets good quality laws which deliver what they vote for is possible – but focusing on the size of the House isn’t how it will be achieved. Real improvement will require peers, not just the Prime Minister, to change our ways.