13th November 2021
Over at the Financial Times, there is an interesting and informative piece about the hereditary peers in the house of lords.
And the point of the article is compelling: they make no sense.
The hereditary peers, as with the bishops of the established church of just one(!) of the four home nations, have no place in the legislature.
The only possible plausible argument for their presence is that, at least, there are members of that chamber that do not own their place to patronage.
But that is not much of an argument.
The biggest problem about the house of lords is not so much that of personnel but of function.
And unless we work out the proper function of the upper chamber then there can be no consensus on how to replace the hereditary peers and English Anglican bishops and on how to reform the house more generally.
What is the house of lords for?
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Some may aver that the chamber should have a representative function – perhaps of the home nations or the regions.
(This like the old notion that the house of lords was there to represent the agricultural/landed interests and church interests so as to balance the interests of those represented in the commons.)
Or its membership at least based on being elected by some different configuration than the house of commons.
Like the senate in the United States having two senators per state as opposed to the variable number of representatives per state in the other house of congress.
But this view raises the potential problem of rival mandates, with both houses claiming the legitimacy of the electorate.
In the United States that problem is avoided in part because of tradition, but also because the two houses have some different functions and are elected on separate cycles.
Such a balance would not be easy, at a stroke, to transplant into the United kingdom.
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Far more important than any representative function is, in my view, to retain and improve the revising and scrutiny role.
Here the house of lords, despite its lack of democratic legitimacy, serves the public interest in legislation often being better than it otherwise would be.
Placing the house of lords on some sort of democratic basis would risk losing this valuable role.
But other than through the patronage of the prime minister and others, how should members of this upper house be appointed?
On one hand they need to have the experience, ability and independence to say ‘no’ to a government so as to force reconsideration (though not to veto completely).
On the other hand, they need to have some legitimacy in a democratic society, and so whoever appoints them must have some direct relationship with the electorate.
Indeed, it may even be that there cannot be any reform of the house of lords until there is prior reform of the over-mighty house of commons.
And that in turn may need electoral reform and so on in an almost innate political regression.
Where would you start?
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So, back to the immediate question: how do we solve the problem of the house of lords?
There is no obvious solution – at least not one that does not risk losing what is valuable about a revising and scrutinising upper chamber.
And an unchecked house of commons is not an attractive prospect.
Like the crown, the constitutional significance of the house of lords may be not so much what powers it does have, but what powers it prevents others from having.
Getting rid of the hereditary peers and the bishops – although welcome – leaves the more general issue of what the house of lords is for unsolved.
Perhaps there is no practical and immediate solution.
And that is why in 2021 – 110 years after the temporary retention of peers in the 1911 Parliament Act – we still have this odd system.
(Emphasis added.)
Perhaps in another 110 years we will have a solution.
Or perhaps not.
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“The only possible plausible argument for [hereditary peers’] presence is that, at least, there are members of that chamber that do not own their place to patronage.”
Perhaps we should all get a turn in the upper House, via a similar system to the one which selects juries?
In relation to the notion of an elected upper chamber, I think the reason that MPs have never bitten the bullet on that is because it would inevitably be based on some kind of proportional representation system (with political parties nominating members based on each party’s % share of the vote in the previous general election, or on the average of recent opinion poll showings). And if the upper chamber was populated on a PR basis, then the members could legitimately claim that their mandate is more valid (more in line with public opinion, as well as more recently granted) than the mandate enjoyed by MPs.
Or perhaps if you wanted to retain the concept of “expertise” and so direct sortition from the populace wasn’t desirable, there could be a half-way house.
You might retain life appointments to the Lords for people supposed to have some particular expertise, but take the appointments out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of the people. That also removes the corruption aspect in one fell swoop!
Maybe a certain number of life peerages would be awarded each year, and a citizen’s jury drawn from the electorate each year to decide who would get them. People could make representations to the jury, but the jury would decide. So if a millionaire banker or an ex-minister really would be a good appointment they could still get into the Lords, but they’d have to convince representatives of the public of their worth, and not just donate to a political party or do political favours for the Prime Minister of the day.
“You might retain life appointments to the Lords for people supposed to have some particular expertise, but take the appointments out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of the people.”
The Labour government established something along those lines, they were dubbed the People’s Peers. Not sure how this is going. I do remember someone making a sniffy comment that it’d lead to Hairdressers being appointed to the Lords.
Bring it on!
I have a section about just this in the book which I am writing.
I believe that DAG is correct when recognises that clarifying and agreeing the purpose of the second chamber is a vital precursor to reform. And, when that is done, it all becomes easier.
Assuming universal recognition that what is needed (as a “foil” to geographically-based democratic representation) is “democratic” national expert representation. There are usually professional bodies or mechanisms which could handle the election – say on a three year cycle – of individual representatives. The only challenge is to agree what fields ought to be represented. In my mind, examples ought* to include doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, SME entrepreneurs, shop workers, parents, students, plumbers…and so on.
(*IMHO – based on decades as a professional Business Architect)
Assuming that the retention of the United Kingdom is positive, the replacement of the House of Lords with a federal chamber, equal in power to HoC. Power split, 3-2-2-2.
The advantage of the House of Lords is that it is made up largely of educated experienced and often distinguished people who, once appointed, are answerable to themselves and their reputation only. The exceptional lords spiritual are, contrary to your point, a product of patronage – that is Bishops are appointed by No 10 from a community of the religious, not the political. They should go – with some being included by dint of their general distinction if you like, but for life like the others. Peers are there for life and they don’t have to be re-elected. That makes the task of appointing them all the more important – and it is the appointing that is currently disappointing. Alternative means, including election and, worse, reelection, removes the strength of the body. So what needs reform is the way Lords are appointed. That is, not for cash to the Tory or any other party, in particular. In fact, insisting that they are not subject to the whims of government or opposition at all, is a good baseline from which to proceed.
I don’t see why unicarmeralism is so objectionable. The current HoC can avoid accountability by voting one way, and then letting changes happen in the Lords. the simple solution of accountability is more frequent election (annually, for preference).
There is simply no good argument for a second chamber, save opposition to democracy: the US Senate is an expressly anti-democratic institution, for example.
It’s usually said that England doesn’t have the three estates system common on the continent; the monarch, the first estate of the clergy, the second estate of the nobility, and the third estate of the proles.
But look at parliament for a faint echo of this; the Lords has the first and second estates — the lords spiritual and temporal — and the Commons has, well, the commons.
And I said England quite deliberately; the unions of 1707 and 1800/01 were unbalanced; all the lords of England were retained, but only ‘representatives’ from Scotland and England. (Weren’t there initially Irish Lords Spiritual until the Church of Ireland was disestablished? Do you know if there were any ‘representative’ lords from N Ireland?)
Trying to unbundle this will be difficult; it might just be better to bite the bullet and scrap the Lords and start afresh with a ‘Senate’.
The Senate/House of Representatives structure originated in the composition of the English House of Commons being 2 county members and borough members. To create a bicameral legislature the Founding Fathers made an upper house of state/county nominees and a lower house of equivalent of borough representatives.
On another historical note until the Reformation Parliament of Henry VIII the Lords Spiritual included the “great fat abbots” and were more numerous than the Lords Temporal.
With FPTP operating in the Commons there is a clear need for a second chamber to put the brake on excesses of power and properly scrutinise badly drawn legislation coming from the Commons. I like the idea of an elected Senate, one third of the senators up for election every two years, so a six year cycle. Elections for the second chamber would give it legitimacy. A government with a large majority would have to take care not to become too unpopular or divisive and cause a swing to the opposition in the Senate. Of course it would be possible for a party to have a majority in both houses, but if that was the case it would be no worse than a single chamber.
The often expressed concept of the Lords being a chamber of subject experts is really derived from the defence used for the life peerage patronage system: they are experienced experts appointed for the purpose. It’s bogus and undemocratic, there’s no need for the second chamber to have any appointees and removing that removes the power for the government to appoint its friends to the it.
“a citizen’s jury drawn from the electorate each year to decide who would get them.”
Why have them select someone else when they could do the job themselves? Pick the membership of the second chamber by ballot, like a jury.
Could some subset of the organisations with a royal charter provide a route to filling a replacement upper chamber?
The list as it stands is brimming with reasonably uncontroversial sources of expertise and service to the public good, whilst allowing for their selection in a way that isn’t particularly arbitrary due to the common link of a charter.
This is far from a simple plan, with many huge problems such as:
-how to generate a sitting member from something like “Sport England” or “The College of Paediatrics and Child Health”
(Let each organisation work it out themselves? The head of each? Some set process dictated in statute? Use those with charters as some kind of appointments panel or electoral college? Serving for how long?)
-whether such organisations would want to take up their seats for fear of being tarnished by the mucky day-to-day of politics (perhaps mitigated by convention of abstaining outside of their field of experience?)
-how to future-proof the process of issuing new charters to limit every ex-minister and donor just spinning out a “think tank” that then conveniently happens to get chartered or the likes of the IEA or the Taxpayer’s Alliance ending up in the upper chamber.
-how to mitigate the withdrawal of charters being used as a threat by a rogue parliament to get their way(our current constitutional settlement making the total elimination of this impossible)
-where to draw the line of who gets in to avoid 1000+ members of this new house
(Cities probably not as their geography is uneven, represented the commons already and we’re looking for expertise, but Universities? Livery companies? There’s a lot of grey to negotiate).
Solving the above would probably require a mountain of fudges and unsatisfactory compromises.
However I personally can’t think of a better existing list containing respected and inoffensive sources of expertise, experience, learned wisdom, and conscientious servants of society without huge political ambition or desire for patronage.
This could only form a part of the solution if used at all, with these members sitting alongside either some directly elected or selected in the style of a jury, but could provide the necessary mixture of legitimacy, scrutiny, but weaker mandate than the commons currently desired in a replacement for the lord’s.
I have thought the same, but also had an idea that it should include other civic organisations such as unions, tenants bodies, a cross-section of charities, local government associations (LGA, NALC) and so forth, and also extend it to the nations by having nominations from backbench representatives from the devolved assemblies and parliaments. How each organisation sets its representatives would be up to them, but perhaps with a proviso that it must have a democratic basis, and a term be limited to a set period – seven or ten years, say.
From my experience inside these sorts of organisations, they are populated by a significant number of people who volunteer for this as their form of public service, so I do not think there would be a shortfall of good and expert people who would take part. In essence, it would move from a House of Lords to a Civic Chamber, with a good dollop of British fudge to make it a body that felt right and representative or all parts of all of the nations, but would not be a direct challenge to the elected mandate of the House of Commons
As for the risk of of a rogue government, perhaps giving it a statutory basis, with the ability of the upper house to veto or very heavily delay? Something that would give it more solidity, whilst still open to gradual change, other than the dreaded ‘enshrined in law’
“Elections for the second chamber would give it legitimacy.”
The last thing the Commons wants is a second chamber with equal legitimacy. (And it’s the Commons which will have to endorse it.) It’s something that could unite even Benn and Powell.
Two recent comments on the FT site say it all – use them for target practice or keep them as-is.
Short of a revolution and upending our system with all that implies, we are a bit stuck. Whilst it might amuse to see JRM et al trudging barefoot over ploughed fields bearing slopping buckets of excrement, losing my house to some local commissariat and being sent for re-education might not be so amusing. Whether such a dramatic change would be good for the UK – far too early to say.
Meanwhile we have more immediate problems that require competent administration. Sadly we are a bit stuck on that front as well.
It seems to me one solution is to have a party-list like system where people vote for a party list. However, some lists that you can vote for would be incorporated by Royal Charter, and one of these could be to choose the people best placed to revise legislation. Since you think that is the most valuable role for them, you could vote for that list.
So each person could vote for the list that they thought was the thing most lacking in the Commons.
It is a solution, but an exceedingly bad one. Party list systems grant a lot of undemocratic power to political parties. Party power is already a huge problem with FPTP – the major parties can get people elected with very little popular support. The way to analyse the effects of political parties is to count how many people you would need to subvert to get your chosen candidate elected. In the UK, you need to subvert the selection process in one party for a safe seat – that’s very few people.
If the second chamber is to be useful, it needs to rein in party power – not enhance it. That pretty much requires it to have its members chosen by a mechanism that political parties have little influence over. There are two obvious candidates: choose members at random (similar to jury service) or make membership by inheritance. You could also have a mixture of these two. To prevent party political interference, membership by inheritance would have to be different to how it used to be – when new members are needed (which should be almost never), a person is nominated and their next born child is the new member (so those choosing the new member have only the remotest control over them).
Membership by inheritance only perpetuates the worst of the existing system. Choosing at random (aka sortition) is better, but since relatively few people have an interest or knowledge of politics and governance I don’t think it would be an improvement.
Elections to the second chamber ensures candidates are at least interested in public service and the outcome is democratic.
Why would you nominate in proportion to a Commons seat share that itself is a poor representation of the electorate? At the very least it would have to be based on the vote share. The problem then, though, is that it will have greater legitimacy than the Commons.
One thing I remember well from my first ever training course on briefing ministers was that briefing for a debate in the HoL was MUCH harder than in the HoC.
There is a reasonable chance that whatever the topic is in the HoC, not many (if anyone) would really have much expertise.
In contrast, no matter how obscure the topic, there will be someone in the HoL with in-depth knowledge way beyond you or you minister.
I fear that an elected (or “jury service” type” second chamber would lose this expertise and weaken its the effectiveness.
I agree, though, that there is no space for the Lords Spiritual or any inherited peers to be there. This cannot be justified.
And no level of expertise will address the question of what it is for.
Sometimes, but only sometimes, your excellent blog reminds me of a random American citizen who commented dismissively that there is just “no practical solution” to solving the health care problem in his country, thereby completely ignoring that the problem has, in fact, been largely solved in many other countries than the one he happens to be living in.
Without dismissing the specifics of the United Kingdom parliamentary and electoral systems, would it not be worthwhile to explore a bit how things have been set up in neighbouring countries?
The exact same question can actually be posed more often, for example when you discussed animal rights, the licenses by government agents to kill, and perhaps policing.
Sometimes the doubtful are wrong, and sometimes they are right.
I said an election would be better than random selection. I didn’t say they should be nominated on the basis of the Commons seat share. I meant an election for the second chamber. Elections for both chambers should be proportional but out of phase with each other. Otherwise the two chambers would be identical in make up. The second chamber could be smaller, on a regional constituency basis. One third up for reelection every two years.
Once the Lords becomes elected it loses its current function which is useful. The only point of a second chamber in parliamentary system is to be doing detail work on legislation. Beyond that to just encourages gridlock
The question is how should the members of the Lords be selected. Why does it lose its current function if members are elected? Gridlock happens with the current system of political appointees too. Election does not destroy the revising function, and it provides the electorate with the opportunity to choose who does the revising on their behalf. Any system of appointments is open to abuse by those with the power to appointment.
There is much discussion about the mechanism to be deployed in respect to the existence of the House of Lords.
I fear the essence of it all is somewhat lost.
Accepting that there may need to be representatives in the establishment, to act as an impartial balance against political bias, what is the ultimate purpose?
Accepting that the Lords could be overseers of legislation, to what end?
As I have indicated, in comment on this blog, and elsewhere, the ultimate must (mustn’t it?) be to achieve a fair and just system for decent individuals in the UK. By this, in particular, I mean a legal and judicial system.
My experience over some 15 years (civil cases) is that the UK legal and judicial system is a failure.
This has nothing to do with the law, but more so with individual solicitors, barristers and judges, who ignore the law and the rules for personal gain and advantage.
Until this very serious matter is addressed, frankly all talk about who or what creates or sanctifies legislation is pointless.
“It is not the gun that kills, but the finger on the trigger”.
Personally, I don’t care where establishment representatives come from.
What I do care about is whether such representatives are honest, decent individuals, who act with integrity and a genuine sense of duty (for ALL) in what they do.
And herein lies the problem. Whether this is in the Commons, the Lords and/or any powerful force – most importantly the UK Judiciary
Having experienced (and here I need to temper my words for fear of publication ban) ‘improper’ conduct by both members of the legal ‘profession’ and, worse still, judges in the UK judiciary, designed, as I see it (and can prove), ‘diverting’ justice and creating injustice (often by hidden agendas, contrary to the law), my faith in any decent system of authoritarian control, is, shall we say, in doubt.
From what I have seen, honesty, morality, integrity and decency make for easy and vulnerable victims in a very dubious country.
(I would refer readers to the current Judicial Discipline process, seemingly to assess what if anything can be done about the discipline of ‘wayward’ judges.
It is not lost on me that the ‘Forward’ to the process, starts with – and is repeated – by the alleged ‘independent body, of the usual self-congratulatory back-slapping praise of the UK judiciary.
It is doubtless a foregone conclusion that the outcome of the report will maintain this perspective of an admirable system.
Some chance of any improvement (and, arguably, none intended)
The function of the Lords feels about right. The membership clearly is not.
Reform starts by defining a maximum number. 800 or so is clearly far too many. If British taste is still to enoble then borrow from the French and enoble with or without sitting rights (Noblesse de la robe vs de l’epee). 4-500 be more than enough.
Second put in term limits. 10-15 years with the chance to be renominated. If a Lord isn’t active (TBD), then relegation to a worthy without sitting rights.
Third, the tricky one. How to nominate. Roughly in proportion to party presence in the Commons feels right with perhaps England’s quota being split for a small regional nomination given how centralized the system is. Elections, public or by bodies, complicate and increase the temptation to be blatantly political. Perhaps a cap on retired MPs. No bishops. no hereditaries.
Phase it in so that after a while roughly the same number are nominated and retried each year.
The maximum number should be well under 400. What other country of comparable size has such a large upper house?
Term limits, yes, but I would suggest a single term (10-15 years) without any possibility of renomination. A member of the upper house would therefore have one chance to make their mark, and no need of political patronage for re-election, since that would not be on the cards.
Nomination in proportion to party presence in the Commons feels quite WRONG to me while the Commons is elected by FPTP. Nomination in relation to votes cast would be much fairer. Some regional element would also be fair. A one-term system could help deal with the temptation to be blatantly political.
It would be important that the elections for the upper house be out of phase with elections for the Commons but that would be difficult to mandate (perhaps impossible) while the PM has the power to call elections at will.
If the UK had a written constitution (sorry DAG!), it could be possible to include such provisions and to ensure that they could not be changed at a PM’s whim. Other countries have clear rules in relation to how their constitutions can be changed eg 60% votes in favour in both houses. It is true that written constitutions have their drawbacks but our unwritten one is proving to be very weak indeed against Prime Ministerial fiat.
By wanting public elections and proportional representation you are disagreeing with DAG (and me) about the role of the Lords. If it is to be a check and fix legislative chamber, it make little sense to create the image of being an alternative representation of the people. There really is no point in encouraging a gridlock system.
A rolling appointment based on party presence in the Commons would create a body that was not simply the GE result but also had some relationship to GEs over time.
10-15 years seems about right. I can see argument for and against re-nomination: perhaps a limited number. Given the inevitable desire of parties to reward their own and the likely age of appointees, I doubt renomination would ever be for more than a few anyway.
I picked 400 max based on members not being full time. Also it was 400 max, not 400.
There’s a danger that the electorate could comprehensively eject a party from government only to find that its power and influence lingers on in the second chamber like a bad smell. Not very democratic.
That danger exists today. With limited numbers and rolling nominations only very long lived governments (3 terms) would get close to having appointed the majority. Anyway the scope of the Lords to do much more than delay is limited and that could be made more explicit if need be. Popular elections using a different suffrage would be far more likely to create a danger of conflicting mandates. The alternative is to abolish the second chamber altogether and create extra capacity for the Commons to properly review legislation.
No, it doesn’t, as no party has a majority. And because no one is removed (other than by death or choice) there’s no likelihood of any party gaining one. Currently, for instance, the Tories would need to appoint over 200 new peers to take control.
The only valid means to select members of the upper house in modern times is public election. Appointing people, even for only a limited time, is open to patronage and corruption. You assume the upper house would be elected at the same time as the lower house. I agree that would be a problem. I’ve suggested elsewhere in this discussion a rolling election, with upper house members (Senators?) having a fixed six year term with one third being up for election every two years. Thus the upper house would not be an exact reflection of the lower.
Elections to a bicameral parliament seem to work OK in Australia. The US Congress has both Senate and House of Representatives elected. Gridlock there arises from the Executive being directly and therefore there is a possibility that the President might be of the opposite party to both houses of Congress. In a parliamentary system the executive is derived from the lower (legislating) house. Given that the upper house is mostly revising and reviewing it can’t permanently oppose the will of the lower house, just as now, because bills can only be returned to the Commons for reconsideration twice.
I do not agree with this.
What is the House of Lords for, and which bits of it work now? In my view it is role as a revising chamber, a place to allow older and wiser heads to influence, and where expertise from all parts of society come to be heard.
Will direct elections keep this? I am not so sure. From what we see of the US Senate, it leads to deadlock – almost irrespective of what the executive seeks.
So, can we create an upper chamber that has some democratic accountability whilst retaining expertise? I believe so – by seeking nominations from the full range of civic organisations as I outline in a previous comment. The establishing legislation could set a requirement that each nominating body puts forward its representative via a democratic means. So for example a nomination from an organisation – such as a Royal College, or a Chartered organisation, or a union, or a regional assembly / national parliament – could be based on a one-member-one-vote selection.
There are more ways to achieve democratic accountability than simply plumping for direct elections. Do we want direct elections for judges, police chiefs, school board superintendents, like they have in the US? That’s not a model I would like emulate here. I would rather arm bears.
Older and wiser? A gerontocracy. No thanks.
Okay. So let’s just keep it as a revising chamber and have experts from all parts of society, but no-one older than, what, 50?
(Full disclosure – I am 48)
How many members would you need to cover all areas of expertise? The answer is far too many. We need to get away from the idea that the Lords is a chamber of experts contributing their knowledge to legislation. It is not, and has never been, this.
Lords reform should be radical. Replacing an appointed chamber with nominations by professional bodies and unions is more of the same. It has never been a panel of experts, that’s just the figleaf used to defend the appointments made in the past. You could never cover every eventuality in terms of expertise with a few hundred members. If you need professional advice then invite experts to committee sessions. It’s also not just revising Commons legislation either. Bills can originate in the Lords, for example.
Far better then not to have a second chamber at all. In a parliamentary system there really should only be one elected chamber. Second chambers either have limited powers which begs the question what for, or become an alternative power base. Far better to focus voters on a single accountable choice
Possibly, only that would require the voting system to be reformed. FPTP elections make a second chamber vital. Abolition of the Lords would therefore require simultaneous Commons reform (not to mention reform of the justice system).
Abolishing the Lords with the current situation in the Commons (the government having a large majority only supported by a minority) would be a gift for a government willing and able to pass sweeping undemocratic changes to keep them in power.
“I picked 400 max based on members not being full time. Also it was 400 max, not 400.”
Sorry to be picky, Simon, but your original comment said “4-500” and I was arguing for 400 max.
I think it is too easy to assume an elected upper house would lead to gridlock. That’s the US problem and is well dealt with by Kevin Hall (below). There are other bicameral systems that do work so gridlock doesn’t necessarily follow.
Nominations following GE representation in the lower house would simply perpetuate the lack of proper representation there. If that were done, politicians would say “we’ve reformed the House of Lords; nothing more to see here; move on” and we’d be stuck with (effectively) FPTP in two houses. That would be even worse than what we have now, in my view.
America’s experience is of little relevance since we have a parliamentary system, not a presidential one. The Commons, which effectively appoints the government, would never surrender its powers to overrule the House of Lords or its successor.
The bicameral system works in parliamentary systems too, for example Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Ireland and The Netherlands. It simply is not the case that a parliamentary system must be unicameral. It may actually be necessary for the Commons to give up it’s supremacy on power to prevent constitutional excesses.
Absolutely right. Many comments here have suggested that having an elected upper house would lead to gridlock. It wouldn’t, for the reasons you give. I wish commenters would stop using the irrelevant US system as an argument for frightening away discussion of an elected upper house.
It would be politically unsustainable for the situation to prevail whereby the upper house is elected on a more proportionate basis
– and therefore has a more legitimate claim to speak for ‘the people’ – than the lower house.
Which is precisely why the ruling party in the Commons has never implemented reforms to bring about an elected House of Lords.
“It simply is not the case that a parliamentary system must be unicameral.”
Obviously. Nor should it be.
Recycling proportional representation by having an elected upper house is not addressing “what is it for”. Having 2 chambers elected on different rules would make for gridlock and endless fighting: that way lie dragons.
Far better just a single chamber. And stick with FPTP.
“Far better just a single chamber. And stick with FPTP.’
The worst of all possible options.
I disagree that an elected upper house would compete with the Commons in terms of legitimacy. What is needed is for the Commons to attain greater legitimacy than it currently has by moving to a system of proportional representation. The upper house could then be elected on some sort of geographical constituency basis similar to how the Commons is currently elected. The upper chamber would then be complementary to the lower one, being somewhat less perfectly democratic but having the compensating advantage of representing localities in a way that a Commons elected by PR would seem to lack
PR can certainly have a constituency link. The Single Transferable Vote system does this. The hybrid systems used in the devolved Scottish and Welsh parliaments does this (albeit with list candidates to top up membership to create proportionality). Why do people always assume it means a party list? PR for the Commons is an essential reform if our democracy is to survive.
I agree an elected upper house on a regional constituency basis would be a good idea as long as these elections are out of phase with General Elections.
Switzerland has a bicameral parliament. One house is elected on the basis of PR throughout the country, though organised by canton. While there is a quota for election, the least populous canton is guaranteed a single representative.
The other house is elected on the basis of cantons; two representatives for each canton (one for each half-canton).
Neither house is superior; they are equal. This system works well.