The system I would like to see is selection for life by a committee of the House of Lords from recommendations by the leaders of the three main parties with the proviso that the paty political element, say 70%, tharked the current poll ratings. The leaders from the commons would also recommend the cross benchers. The number of sitting bishops should be halved. Members should be encouraged to retire to non-voting status if they are unable to play an active part in the house.

David

My view would be to have elections of people until retirement, resignation or death, thus they would be semi-detached from the efforts of whips and would start to lose legitimacy (compared with regularly elected MPs) as time went on. If a bishop wanted to stand for a seat in such a senate, then fine and join the competition. The senate would still revise. People could stand on the basis of achievement in life and make a case to the people.

I doubt that +Tom is concerned about patronage. He has a secure job and doubtless has plans for durham he wants to see through as well as his lecturing and writing commitments. He is a northerner who has gone home. In any case it is unlikely that there will be a more senior vacancy until he is approaching retirement.

In his comments on democracy he does acknowledge the main virtues or democrcy. It does at least mean that a bad government can be removed without violence. Democracy is the only basis on which the present government can legitimise itself. That said the current voting system does not produce a parliament which faily represents public opinion. All parties find it difficult to have a fiar proportion of women and ethnic minorities elected. In some ways an appointed house may be more representative. That said method of appointement needs review. The church of England must expect to give up some of the bishops seats due to the declining size and influence of the church and to allow proper representation of other churches and religious groups. In the general membership all religions will be respresented but there is a need for theological expertise as well. This will be significant in such ethical areas as defense policy, aid, climate change, medical ethics and welfare of the poor and infirm.

David

It was brave of Tom Wright to hazard his chances of patronage from No 10 in this way.  It was also brave of the Fulcrum hierarchy to try to move on from discussions of schisms & sex, but the strength of the response to this article typifies this forum's reluctance to engage with secular politics. 

However, a superficial reading of his piece did cause pots & kettles rapidly to come to mind.  How we would all love to replace the faulty instrument that is democracy with government by the people we know & trust, whose company we can enjoy at our dinner tables - government by "experts from many walks of life" chosen "by their peers in many professions".  This sounds dangerously like the purported plot against Harold Wilson's government, though this time it is not a retired army officer but a politicised cleric making the moves.

While Anglicans may be comfortable with government by the self-perpuating middle classes, others of us would not lose lightly the gains made by the movements for emancipation of ordinary people which had their roots in 19th century Methodism & the trade union movement.  The humiliation of the powerful by an electoral system which regularly turns over its governments is a welcome earthly reminder that the last shall be first & the first last.

But a closer reading of Tom Wright's article reveals that he is not my straw man.  He is merely questioning the democratic credentials & accountability of our present leaders - a critique I share after a decade & more of spin, deceit & unpopular warmongering.  The moral compass in public life has largely disappeared from view, & party politics has become a matter of cold calculation about how to woo the voters in the middle ground.  Political principles have been sacrificed for the advice of the PR man.  No wonder the electorate is cynical.

The answer is not to throw out democracy but to reinvigorate it.  Helena Kennedy's commission last year made some proposals that deserve attention.  And proportional representation would quickly change the electoral dynamics substantially.  These are the issues to pursue, & any reform of the House of Lords should reflect them.  The interested views of its current members should be discounted.

Our web manager is unwell at the moment - and so this article is being put up here.

Reform of the House of Lords

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham

Last week's Commons vote on Lords reform was full of irony. Tony Blair has created more life peers than any previous Prime Minister; charges from the media of cronyism and corruption swarm around him. What will all those donors say if their ermine robes are whisked away? New Labour has shown more contempt for parliamentary procedure and debate than any other modern British government. Does it really suppose we are taken in by the rhetoric of 'more democracy'?

 

The debate itself demonstrated how our 'democracy' actually works. A particular mood gripped the House. Diametrically opposed agendas swirled to and fro and finally made common cause. The blunt instrument of a late vote endorsed a proposal that wasn't in anybody's manifesto. The Prime Minister, instead of leading the nation at a critical moment, slipped out half way through. If that's 'democracy', do we really want more of it?

 

The mantra of 'democracy', in fact, (and its opposite, the catch-all abuse-word 'undemocratic') may comfort those who still believe, like the French Revolutionaries, that voting leads to utopia. But the reason fewer people vote in elections than in Big Brother is that hardly anybody believes that any more. The Divine Right of Voting is just as threadbare as the Divine Right of Kings. Voting is important but insufficient. Good government needs not only some kind of popular mandate, but also proper accountability. How rulers become rulers matters. What they do in office matters even more. Threatening them with the next election isn't nearly enough.

 

Our western 'democracies' are showing their age. Like some other eighteenth-century inventions, if you hold them up to the light you can see straight through them. Votes today are 'bought', on both sides of the Atlantic, just as surely as in the old rotten boroughs; the fact that it's done through glitzy advertising rather than barrels of beer doesn't alter the reality. If we were serious about democracy, we wouldn't start by reforming the Lords. We would make voting attractive (as in Italy) or even mandatory (as in Australia, or ancient Athens). And less purchaseable. It isn't that the Lords needs to come into line with 'democracy' as we know it. Democracy itself needs to be shaken up, dusted down, and put into proper running order. I suspect our leaders know that. They are fighting yesterday's battle in order to avoid tomorrow's.

 

The Lords has, after all, had a new lease of life. With experts from many walks of life, it has become the primary location of checks and balances. The two-party system has for many years now failed to provide effective opposition; would an elected Second Chamber do any better? One correspondent suggested that it would simply contain 'more prattling nonentities'. That is unkind and unjust to many MPs, but one can sympathize with the frustration at the growth of a class of political careerists who know everything about Westminster machinations and nothing about real life. Do we really suppose that the leading experts in the present Lords - people who have run hospitals, made films, created businesses and even led churches - would stand for election? As the Bishop of London said in an earlier debate, the 'appointed' Lords have been chosen, repeatedly over a long period of time, by their peers in the professions, a far more testing and serious poll than we would get in a low-turnout election with a ballot paper full of faceless party hacks. For appropriately appointed working peers to scrutinize, and sometimes to veto, what the elected government dreams up is only 'undemocratic' in a tired, technical and irrelevant sense.

 

The Lords can, of course, sometimes become embarrassingly dysfunctional. Last November, only the Lib Dems protested against the government's capitulation to America over the unbalanced extradition treaty. The Conservatives decided not to prolong the discussion (it was almost time for a recess; perhaps they just wanted to go home), and finally said that they wouldn't oppose the will of 'the elected house'. A Second Chamber that disbelieves in its own legitimacy invites redundancy.

 

But the question is not about whether to reform a bizarre institution. The question is whether we actually want good, wise, shrewd and intelligent decision-making processes. Until and unless these issues are faced, we are in danger of doing with our political institutions what developers did in the 1960s: bulldozing historic buildings to make way for concrete-and-glass monstrosities. Yes, the historic buildings may need major repairs. But let's learn from our architectural mistakes, not repeat them. The Lords this week have a chance not only to comment strongly and wisely on what the Commons have said, but thereby to demonstrate the proper functioning of a balanced constitution.

 

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham