This broken House of Lords doesn’t need reform. It needs scrapping

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/31/house-of-lords-reform-scrapping-peer-claimed-allowances

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Imagine this for a gig. You get paid £50,000 for doing no discernible work, occasionally get to wear some funky-looking scarlet and ermine robes, prance around one of the world’s most iconic buildings, and even have subsidised meals thrown into the bargain. This is lifestyle that David Brookman, a Labour peer in the House of Lords, might recognise, according to a Guardian investigation. You, as a taxpayer, forked out the equivalent of two nurses’ salary last year in attendance and travel expenses for Baron Brookman of Ebbw Vale, who in a 12-month period didn’t participate in a single debate or submit any written questions. Still, who needs nurses?

Peer who never spoke in Lords last year claims £50,000 expenses

One in nine peers, in a full year between 2017 and 2018, did not participate in any House of Lords business (defined as speaking in a debate, holding a government post or participating in a committee), and 46 didn’t even vote: yet one of these still claimed a cool £25,000. (Lord Brookman did at least vote regularly.)

You don’t have to be possessed by the ghost of Madame Guillotine to consider this a little provocative, not least in a society where the state has imposed a real terms pay cut on public sector workers who work extremely hard and save lives, all justified because there apparently isn’t enough money in the exchequer. If your blood pressure hasn’t yet risen sufficiently, these revelations come at the same time ex-Telegraph owner Conrad Black has declared he plans to return to the House of Lords after receiving a presidential pardon from his friend Donald Trump – just after publishing a book praising him.

Some will doubtless say: ah but the House of Lords provides an invaluable function, the executive already has too much power as it is, you don’t want to live in a de facto dictatorship, do you? But here is an institution beyond reform. It has been stuffed full of lobbyists, party donors, ex-party staffers and well-connected businesspeople. Even if you believe in granting unelected figures political power, the Lords is not brimming with specialists and experts who would never have found their way on to the green benches of the House of Commons: it’s riddled with nepotism. The Lords even has bishops with full voting rights, making Britain the only country other than Iran to automatically reserve places in its legislature for unelected religious figures.

But in any case, its very existence is an affront to democracy, offering no good answers to the five questions set by the late Tony Benn that should be put to those in positions of power: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”

The obvious alternative, of course, is to simply replace it with an elected chamber. But this is fraught with problems: it is extremely unlikely, to say the least, that such a chamber would be elected with the same electoral system, and would instead almost certainly have a proportional electoral system. Unless our voting system in the Commons was simultaneously reformed, a clash could emerge between the two chambers over which is more legitimate.

Instead, we should look to countries such as New Zealand, Norway or Finland, which have unicameral systems: that is, only one legislative chamber. No one can seriously impugn their democratic credentials. But to avoid concentrating power in the executives, we should simply boost checks and balances within parliament: give select committees and backbenches more power, for example. There is a strong argument that such a reform could be accompanied with a wider constitutional upheaval encompassing electoral reform but also, say, creating a federal Britain.

It’s certainly a debate to be had. But there can be no question that the House of Lords is a broken, morally corrupt, anti-democratic institution,. Instead of tinkering with it, we should do what no government has had the courage to do, and simply dispose of it.