Today the Constitution Unit publishes a wide-ranging new report. The Constitutional Landscape: Options for Reform briefly summarises 31 areas of constitutional policy, describing the current state of affairs and the options for reform. In this post Lisa James, one of the report’s authors, explores its contents.
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Labour and the constitution: an uneven start for Starmer
Today the Unit published Monitor 88, providing an analysis of constitutional events over the last four months. This post by Alan Renwick and Meg Russell, which also serves as the issue’s lead article, reviews the new government’s early months, highlighting positive first steps, but also many opportunities for quick wins not taken. It highlights some positive action by the new government, like the publication of a revised Ministerial Code, a speech by the new Attorney General on the rule of law and small steps on parliamentary and electoral reform, as well as some less positive behaviour and inaction, such as failing to further strengthen of standards in public life, rushing legislation and not making further progress with parliamentary and electoral reform.
Continue readingLabour’s removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords: 10 key questions answered
Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto promised to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Today, the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons. In this post, Constitution Unit Director and House of Lords expert Meg Russell explores 10 key questions about the bill and Labour’s policy. For example, who are the hereditary peers? How did they get into the House of Lords? How have they survived so long? And what effect will their departure have on the House of Lords?
- How long have the hereditary peers been in the House of Lords?
The history of the House of Lords is long and complex. It is an ancient institution, but has changed very substantially over the years. The roots of the chamber can be traced to bodies that were drawn together to advise the monarch as long ago as the medieval period. Individuals called to those early assemblies were powerful figures, including major landholders and representatives of the church. Around the 14th century they began meeting separately from others representing the people – so that parliament developed into two distinct chambers, which became the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Initially, there was no guarantee that an individual called to one meeting of the upper chamber would be called to the next. But membership gradually stabilised, and it became established that the members of the nobility who took seats would pass these down the family line along with their titles. By the 13th century the chamber included earls and barons, while the titles Duke and Marquess date to the 14th century
Continue readingThe Brown commission’s proposals on reform of the House of Lords
In December, the commission chaired by Gordon Brown for the Labour Party proposed ambitious reform of the House of Lords, to create an elected ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’. In this first of two posts considering Labour’s options for Lords reform, Meg Russell dissects the proposals, in the light of previous UK and international experience. She suggests that the Brown report leaves much detail unspecified, making ambitious Lords reform unlikely before the second or third year of a Labour government.
The commission chaired for Labour by Gordon Brown, reported in December, proposing that the House of Lords should be replaced by an elected ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’. This post explores the merits of its proposals, and how feasible they are, as the first of two posts considering Labour’s options for Lords reform. The two posts summarise arguments in a report to be jointly published on Friday by the Constitution Unit, the Institute for Government and the Bennett Institute at the University of Cambridge.
The Brown commission wanted a reformed House of Lords to underpin and strengthen the UK’s territorial settlement. Much of its report was focused on economic inequalities and the benefits of decentralising power, plus a desire to strengthen the Union and discourage separatism. The proposals for the second chamber appeared late in the report, after various proposed reforms to devolution, and were intended to tie the whole system together.
Whether such an Assembly of the Nations and Regions could successfully meet these goals would depend on three things: its functions, its composition, and the practicalities of implementation. Each of these is considered briefly below, in the light of previous Lords reform proposals, and overseas experience.
Continue readingThe problem(s) of House of Lords appointments
Lords appointments are back in the news, with rumours of resignation honours from Boris Johnson, and even possibly Liz Truss. The current unregulated system of prime ministerial patronage causes multiple problems, and new Constitution Unit polling shows widespread public demand for change. Meg Russell reviews the problems and possible solutions, in the context of a bill on Lords appointments due for debate tomorrow. She argues that small-scale changes are now urgently required, and urges party leaders to embrace them – whatever their longer-term aspirations for Lords reform.
Recent weeks have seen revived controversies about appointments to the House of Lords. These include concerns about Boris Johnson’s long-rumoured resignation honours list, now joined by concerns that Liz Truss may want resignation honours of her own after just 49 days as Prime Minister. While the personalities may be different, controversies over Lords appointments are nothing new. The central overarching problem is the unregulated patronage power that rests with the Prime Minister. As this post highlights, a series of other problems follow: regarding the chamber’s size, its party balance, the quality of candidates appointed, the chamber’s reputation and widespread public dissatisfaction with the system.
An end to the Prime Minister’s unfettered appointment power is long overdue. Tomorrow a bill will be debated in the Lords aiming to tackle some of the problems, but as a backbench bill it is unlikely to succeed. Its contents nonetheless provide a useful (though incomplete) guide to the kind of important small-scale changes needed. Both main party leaders now need urgently to propose short-term packages of their own.
The problem of the size of the Lords
Much attention has focused in recent years on the spiralling size of the House of Lords. The current system places no limits whatsoever on the number of members who may be appointed to the chamber by the Prime Minister. Most – though not all – prime ministers have appointed unsustainably. Particularly given that peerages are for life, over-appointment drives the size of the chamber ever upwards. This is a historic problem, visible throughout the 20th century. The Blair government’s reform of 1999 brought the size of the chamber down (from around 1200 to just over 650). But since then it has risen again. Two reports from the Constitution Unit – in 2011 and 2015 – analysed this problem, calling for urgent action. In 2016 the Lord Speaker established a cross-party Committee on the Size of the House, which made recommendations the following year. Centrally these included restraint by the Prime Minister based on a ‘two-out-one-in’ principle – so that only one new peer would be appointed for every two who left, until the chamber stabilised at 600 members. These principles were endorsed by the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and respected by Theresa May. But Boris Johnson ignored them. In 2021, the Lord Speaker’s Committee lamented how he had ‘undone progress’ achieved by his predecessor.
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