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The Grocott Bill and the future of hereditary peers in the House of Lords

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Today the House of Lords will announce the election of a new hereditary peer. Lord (Bruce) Grocott has once again put a bill before parliament to abolish the by-elections by which departing hereditary peers are replaced, following the removal of their automatic right to a seat in parliament in 1999. As David Beamish explains, the bill is unlikely to succeed despite having a great deal of support both inside and outside of the Lords. 

Following the Labour government’s reform of the House of Lords in 1999, 90 elected hereditary peers (as well as two office-holders, the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain) remained part of the House of Lords, with – pending the promised second stage of reform – a system of by-elections to replace any who subsequently departed. The second stage did not happen and the by-elections remain as one of the strangest quirks of the UK constitution. In a 2018 blog post on the ongoing frustrations of those who sought reform to this system, I was rash enough to conclude that ‘there may nevertheless be some prospect of real progress in relation to both the size of the House of Lords and the ending of the hereditary peer by-elections’. The past three years appear to have proved me wrong.

House of Lords Standing Order 9(5) requires a by-election to be held within three months of a vacancy occurring among the hereditary peers (due to a death or retirement). This was suspended after the start of the pandemic in March 2020, alongside the postponement of local authority elections, initially until September, and then to the end of that year. Following a report from the Procedure and Privileges Committee, there was then another extension of the moratorium. A further report from that committee proposed yet another ‘short further suspension, until after Easter 2021, at which point the position should be reviewed again’. Finally, following another report from the committee, by-elections restarted, with a backlog of six vacancies to be filled.

There are five different electorates for by-elections: 15 of the 90 were elected by the whole House, and all members can vote in by-elections to replace them. The other 75 were elected by hereditary peers in their respective groups: 42 Conservatives, 28 Crossbenchers, three Liberal Democrats, and two Labour. The remaining hereditary peers in those groups can vote in by-elections to replace departed colleagues. Only four separate elections were needed when the moratorium on by-elections ended, as three of the vacancies were among the Conservative peers, and all three were filled together. For the first time, the arrangements were for the ballots to be conducted ‘using electronic means’, with the option of a postal vote for members ‘who have accessibility needs which mean they cannot use the online voting system or who do not have a parliamentary email address’. The four by-elections took place in June and July 2021.

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Mandatory reselection: lessons from Labour’s past

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At the Labour Party conference in September, a union-backed compromise led to changes in the way parliamentary candidates are selected by their constituencies. Eric Shaw explains how the debate is reminiscent of the internal party struggles of the 1980s, and how the current struggles over this issue differ from the discord of the past.

At the recent Labour Party conference two issues appeared to provoke the most heated debate: Brexit and the issue of the ‘mandatory reselection’ of MPs. The former was predictable and understandable. But mandatory reselection? It is an issue about which the vast majority of the population knows little and cares even less, a matter so arcane and abstruse that even the small number who follow party conferences could be forgiven for feeling baffled.

Yet selection rules do matter. In recent years the capacity of the rank and file in political parties to directly influence policy, always rather restricted, has tended to shrink further with influence over candidate selection surviving as one of the few effective ways in which members can assert some measure of control over their party. Because many seats do not change hands, those who select candidates within a party are often in effect choosing their constituency’s MPs, hence influencing the composition and ideological direction of the governing elite. Many years ago, Eric Schattschneider, a notable American scholar, contended that ‘The nature of the nominating procedure determines the nature of the party; he who can make the nominations is the owner of the party. This is therefore one of the best points at which to observe the distribution of power within the party’. Candidate selection is about power.

It is for this reason that clashes over selection rules have been, at least since the 1970s, a flashpoint of controversy within the Labour Party. In 1973 the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) was established to press for the introduction of what was called mandatory reselection, the principle that before each election an MP must seek and gain the nomination of his or her constituency party. Why was this deemed so important?

Events during both the 1964–70 and the 1974–79 Labour government had shown that, whatever the formal position, in practice party members who lacked a seat in parliament or a role in the government lacked any effective mechanism by which it could compel a Labour cabinet to implement a manifesto on which it had campaigned and been elected. No means existed by which the PLP could be held collectively responsible to the wider party but, if a procedure for ‘mandatory reselection’ was instituted MPs could be made individually answerable to their local parties. If an MP had to compete before each election for the right to stand as the party’s candidate, they would have to be more receptive to constituency opinion or risk losing their seat. Continue reading →

Why the UK holds referendums: a look at past practice

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Since the first referendum in the UK above the local level was held in 1973, there have been three UK-wide referendums and ten referendums covering parts of the UK. In order to inform its recommendations about the circumstances in which referendums should be held, the Independent Commission on Referendums is examining the circumstances in which UK referendums have been held. In this post, Jess Sargeant explores the political history of referendums in the UK.

1973 Northern Irish Border Poll

The first non-local referendum in the UK, the 1973 Northern Irish border poll, followed the sharp deterioration in the security and political situation in the preceding years. When the UK government imposed direct rule, it pledged to hold a referendum on Northern Ireland’s future status within the UK. The purpose was to demonstrate public support for the Union, which would act as baseline for future negotiations. Although the referendum was largely boycotted by the Catholic population, the overwhelming vote (98.9%) in favour of remaining part of the UK was used legitimise the continuation of the constitutional status quo.

1975 European Economic Community membership referendum

The UK’s first national referendum was held just two years later, in 1975, on membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). The UK had joined the EEC in 1973. In opposition, Labour was deeply divided on this. A referendum was first proposed in 1970 by Tony Benn, who opposed EEC membership. The idea gained little traction at the time, but future Prime Minister James Callaghan described it as ‘a rubber life-raft into which the whole party may one day have to climb’. Labour adopted the policy of putting EEC membership to a public vote in 1973, and this occurred after the party’s return to power in 1974. Continue reading →