The unreformed House of Lords was the best second chamber in the world
May 11, 1998 Ottawa Citizen
It is going to be a long time before Canada's Senate is reformed or abolished. Britain's House of Lords will likely be radically changed in the next couple of years. This will be a pity, because the unreformed House of Lords is undoubtedly the best, as it is the oldest, upper house in any parliament in the world.
Tony Blair's New Labour had to find some policies to distinguish themselves from the Tories as they embraced Thatcherism. They hit on constitutional change as a safe novelty. They moved quickly to set up a Parliament in Scotland and an Assembly in Wales, where there was at least some local demand for change. Elimination of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords is next on their agenda. They are not quite sure how to reform the Lords, but they believe that they are not cool and so must be changed.
Giving people a seat in Parliament because their ancestors had one is generally dismissed as an absurdity in the modern world. This is no argument, but an appeal to prejudice against what is old. The wiser prejudice is in favour of what is old until there is a clear understanding that it does not work and what would work better. New Labour has not got that far yet.
At the worst the hereditary principle simply produces a random selection from the population. Stories appear from time to time of Lords who are policemen or merchant seamen or school teachers. Many Lords still live in stately homes but after several generations the range of experience, talent, interests and conditions that heredity makes available to the House of Lords is much greater than democratic politics yields in the House of Commons. If the preponderance of lawyers in politics is declining, it is only to be replaced by cohorts of professional politicians, an even more suspect group. The chief distinction of the Lords from the general population is that they know from an early age that they may be called to the House of Lords and so are more likely to think about the nation's business.
Heredity is not the absurdity dogmatic modernists maintain. It is common in life that interests and talent pass from generation to generation. In Chrétien's cabinet Paul Martin's father was a cabinet minister for over twenty years, Sheila Copps father was Mayor of Hamilton and Jane Stewart's father was Ontario Liberal Leader and Treasurer. The heirs of distinguished people are distinctly more likely to be distinguished than the general population. The hereditary principle simply recognises this.
And while it recognises this natural fact, the hereditary principle eliminates something that we have too much of. The public is suspicious of the ambition of politicians. This is really absurd, as no one gets anywhere in politics without ambition. Heredity eliminates ambition. You cannot strive to be the Earl of Onslow. You either are or you are not. You go to the House of Lords because you are called. You may even have a touch of what is almost completely gone from politics: a sense of duty.
It would not do to give the interesting selection of people who make up the House of Lords much power. And the Lords never have had much power. Under the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 the Lords can delay a bill for about a year unless it is a money bill, which they can only delay for a month. The Parliament Acts were salutary reforms, but the Lords have never had great power. The sovereign has always been able to create peers to assure a compliant majority. Knowing this, the Lords always exercised their powers with restraint until Lloyd George's 1909 budget enraged them. As far back as 1711, Queen Anne created twelve Tory peers to assure a House of Lords compatible with the Tory Commons elected in 1710. An upper house should not be powerful. Its contribution of sober second thought and delay while sober thought and political pressure can sink in is enough if the quality of it deliberations is high.
The House of Lords as now constituted consists of about 760 hereditary peers, 26 bishops of the Church of England and 460 life peers, who are mostly old politicians, but also academics, artists, businessmen and scientists. Most of the hereditary peers never show up, either out of modesty or lack of a sense of duty. The Lords are unpaid, though they can receive up to about $300 a day in expenses when they attend. Compared to our Senate they are a bargain. The final test of the Lords value is the quality of their debates. The Lords went on television a couple of years before the British House of Commons. Their Lordships' House became quite a hit of late night television. Their debates are free of the juvenile partisanship of the Commons, informed, thoughtful, good humoured and occasionally eccentric. They are available on the Web at Lords Hansard full text database menu. Check them out. They are cool.