The House of Peers

I love the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe in which we learn how the House of Peers does nothing in particular and does it very well.

So much of the UK constitution is anachronistic that it is always difficult to enact reform in one area without introducing anomalies somewhere else. Like a worn jumper, pulling upon just one thread can threaten to unravel the whole thing. We need only consider our haphazard devolution process which subsequently threw up the unanswerable West Lothian Question and has made internal relations within the UK very much worse.

The current concern has been aroused by the House of Lords defeating a government financial proposal.  By convention they are not allowed to do this.  I suppose it mighty have been a good idea if successive governments had thought about these conventions before appointing large numbers of party donors and superannuated political hacks to the red benches. Since they didn't, we now have yet another cry for reform.

If you want someone to fly a plane, you choose a pilot. Designing a building is best left to an architect and treating the sick needs a doctor. The same principle applies to any task that requires expertise. Government of the country however has for some reason been opened up to any megalomaniac, plutocrat or ideologue willing to put himself forward, with no qualification required.

It seems odd that we should be so exercised about achieving a well-constituted House of Lords when we make no efforts whatsoever to achieve a well-constituted Commons. Surely if the Lords is to consist of well-qualified people it must inevitably outclass the Commons?  Yet the latter will still govern because they are democratically elected (sort of).

A century ago when the long slow process of reforming The Lords began, Lloyd George described the house as “five hundred men, ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed.” It seems to me that we now have something considerably worse.

Perhaps, like juries, availability for service in the upper house should be one of the obligations of citizenship and the membership chosen randomly from the electoral roll.

Of course such a chamber might still outclass the Commons

Devolution, subsidiarity and national influence

The European Union has a doctrine of subsidiarity. This holds that in order to be well informed and appropriate in their application, all political decisions should be taken at the lowest practicable level. For example, it should not be the business of the Union to regulate local taste in beer; on the other hand since pollution recognises no local boundaries the environment has to be tackled collectively.

In the remorseless drive towards ever closer union, seemingly defined in Brussels as centralised authority, this principle of subsidiarity is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. It is particularly frustrating when combined with majority rule. For example, island states such as the UK have a good deal more to lose from a badly designed common fisheries policy than landlocked central European countries.

The corollary however is that the more we demand local control, the less influence we have with those at the centre who exercise powers collectively.

When we examine the political future of Scotland, we should not lose sight of the fact that Scotland has supplied two prime ministers and three Chancellors to the UK in the last two decades, which suggests its influence at the national level has significantly exceeded that of England.

The more powers are devolved to Holyrood, the less there is for Scottish MPs at Westminster to do, unless we are to inflate the West Lothian Question to unanswerable proportions. How likely is it that underemployed Scottish MPs in London will be able to hold high public office in future? And whose fault will that be?