Tag Archives: Pete Dorey

No end to hereditary peer by-elections in the House of Lords?

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downloadThe House of Lords is not entirely unelected; July saw two new peers appointed following elections involving a very small, select group of electors. In this post, former Clerk of the Parliaments David Beamish discusses the process by which hereditary peers can be elected to the Lords, how the system came to exist, and the continuing efforts to remove the remaining hereditaries altogether. 

It was announced on 18 July that Lord Bethell had been elected to fill a vacancy among the 90 elected hereditary peers in the House of Lords – the 34th such vacancy to be filled by means of a by-election. The vacancy arose from the retirement of the Conservative peer Lord Glentoran (the House’s only Winter Olympic gold medallist) on 1 June. These by-elections are conducted using the alternative vote system and, despite there being 11 candidates, Lord Bethell did not need any transfers of votes, receiving 26 of the 43 first-preference votes cast by Conservative hereditary peers.

This was the second by-election this month: on 4 July the Earl of Devon was elected to fill a Crossbench place vacated by the retirement of Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, grandson of Stanley Baldwin and a tireless campaigner against water fluoridation. The Earl of Devon received 7 of the 26 first-preference votes of Crossbench hereditary peers and it took five transfers of votes for him to be elected.

Viscount Mountgarret was a candidate in both by-elections, receiving no votes in either. His optimism when deciding to stand the second time might have been fuelled by the success of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who was elected by the whole House in 2014 and sits as a Liberal Democrat, having previously been an unsuccessful candidate in a Crossbench by-election in 2011 and in Conservative by-elections in 2011 and 2013.

At least one more by-election is in prospect: Lord Northbourne, a Crossbench hereditary peer, has given notice that he will retire on 4 September.

Where do by-elections come from? The House of Lords Act 1999

The present arrangements whereby 92 hereditary peers sit in the House of Lords derive from the House of Lords Act 1999, which removed most of the 750 hereditary peers but provided, under the so-called ‘Weatherill amendment’, for two office-holders (the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain) and 90 elected hereditary peers to continue as members. The 90 comprised 15 peers willing to serve as deputy speakers or committee chairs, elected by the whole House, and 75 peers representing 10 per cent of the hereditary peers in each party or group: 42 Conservatives, 28 Crossbenchers, 3 Liberal Democrats and 2 Labour peers; they were elected by the hereditary peers in their respective groups. Continue reading →

The Labour Party’s long-standing lethargy over House of Lords reform

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s200_pete.dorey (1)Labour recently announced that any new peers it nominates must commit to abolishing the House of Lords. In this post, Pete Dorey discusses Labour’s track record on Lords reform and why the party has failed to enact serious reforms when in government, arguing that the subject has suffered from a lack of intra-party consensus and a lack of serious interest in reform at ministerial level.

It is a clear reflection of the political turbulence and febrile atmosphere wrought by Brexit that some prominent Conservatives, and pro-Conservative newspapers, have attacked the House of Lords for daring to obstruct ‘the people’s will’, with regard to tabling significant amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. Of course, there is delicious irony in such condemnation, given that support for Brexit has long been couched in a discourse about restoring parliamentary sovereignty, whereby Westminster, not Brussels, should be the locus of all political decisions affecting the British people.

That it is also Conservatives who have recently denounced the unrepresentative and undemocratic character of the House of Lords is even more ironic, not to say hypocritical, given that the Conservative Party has hitherto been a staunch defender of the unelected second chamber – bitterly opposing the 1999 removal of most hereditary peers – particularly when Labour has mooted reforms to render it more politically representative, and/or curb its (limited) power.

That such reforms have only occasionally and sporadically been enacted by Labour governments has not been due to Conservative opposition, however, but to disagreements within the Labour Party itself over the desirability and details of Lords’ reform. Condemning the socially and politically unrepresentative character of the House of Lords, and its veto power, has been easy for Labour MPs and ministers, but intra-party agreement on what exactly should be done to remedy these apparent defects has proved rather more elusive. There are four main reasons why Labour governments have only pursued House of Lords reform sporadically, rather than systematically. Continue reading →