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Lords Joint Committee

The joint committee on Lords reform has been welcomed but is it flawed?

The joint committee on Lords reform has been welcomed but is it flawed?

Creating a largely or wholly elected second chamber will be the most long drawn-out and bitterly fought legislation of this parliament. So there has been a widespread welcome for the creation of a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider the draft House of Lords Reform Bill. This is just the type of pre-legislative scrutiny which reformers have been urging for years. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the process looks deeply flawed.
 
The purpose of pre-legislative consultation is to examine the detailed provisions of a bill and see whether they are workable. Joint committees are seen as a way of settling questions. But there is no agreement among members of the Joint Committee on the underlying aims. Several members, notably from the Lords, are strongly opposed to a predominantly elected second chamber. It was quite clear from last month’s two day debate on Lords reform that many peers see the Joint Committee as a means of delaying and obstructing change. But, even before the inquiry has started, many peers are already seeking to extend the tight deadline of reporting back by the end of February next year. Too many members ? Moreover, the Joint Committee on the Lords bill is far too large at 26 members ( (in contrast to the 12 now considering the Draft Defamation Bill). This is in order to get a balance both of parties and of opinion within each House, rather than across both Houses. But the result is likely to be unwieldy and ineffective. The evidence from previous large Joint Committees, notably the one on constitutional reform in the last parliament, is that attendance is uneven, with peers more likely to turn up than MPs ( (even more so in this case, given how strongly their lordships feel about the bill). Such large committees also result in rambling questions, as members jump around from topic to topic and points are not followed up. Similar problems arise when the Prime Minister appears before the equally bloated Liaison Committee of select committee chairs. It is counter-productive for a committee of 26 to believe it can behave like a usual select committee of just 12. The members need to adopt a self-denying approach: that only some members will question specific witnesses, or to establish sub-committees to pursue particular issues. There are a whole series of highly contentious questions: from composition to the relative powers of the two Houses. Merely asserting the supremacy of the Commons, as the draft bill does, obscures key questions about the role of the Parliament Acts and likely changes in the behaviour of a reformed second chamber. Realistic goals The Joint Committee needs to concentrate on what can realistically be achieved in this parliament, where there is a large measure of agreement. Many of these have been included in a bill already introduced a number of times by Lord Steel of Aikwood, the former Liberal leader, which would, amongst other matters end by-elections for hereditary peers when they die ( (making current ones life peers); put the appointments commission on a statutory basis; enable peers guilty of serious offences to be removed from the House (currently two peers are in prison in the UK and one in the USA); and calling for a retirement package to reduce both the size of the House and its average age. The Lords has so far largely ducked the retirement issue which requires legislation to work. The Steel package can be seen either as a necessary transition to longer-term reform in the next parliament or as justified in itself. The risk is that the Joint Committee’s work will merely underline the extent of disagreement—and that, yet again, nothing will happen in this parliament.
Publisher
Institute for Government

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