« Lords Reform Day | Main | Robin Cook's funeral: Labour without Blair »
August 12, 2005
Democracy Vs meritocracy in the House of Lords
Among the 38 writers who agreed to blog about Lords Reform for the Elect the Lords campaign, Nosemonkey, with impressive chutzpah, has argued against electing the Lords! He writes:
“The Lords does not need democracy - it needs meritocracy.”
I thought that was where we started off. After all, the aristocracy were well educated, nicely spoken, had good family connections, international contacts, knew a lot about farming, were occasionally artistic etc. However Nosemonkey explains his ideas about the best way to select the Lords :
” … the 1917 Bryce report proposed a House three-quarters elected indirectly on a regional basis, one quarter chosen by a joint standing committee of both houses, with a proportion of hereditary peers and bishops. I’d obviously ignore the elected part. I’d scrap the hereditary peers. I’d scrap the majority of bishops …. So we’d be left with the joint standing committee of both houses to make appointments… .”
Selection by the joint standing committee of both houses sounds like a glorified system of horse trading, but he goes on:
“If we accept that the Lords’ prime purpose is to scrutinise legislation that will affect the country … If we accept that their prime purpose is to ensure that we end up with the very best laws possible, I do not think that this can be done within a party-political system. … And that is what - if we had an elected upper House - we would end up with, because elections cost time and money. Those standing for election would need the kind of support that only a party could provide.”
Why should the second chamber should be restricted to revising? Surely that is committee work. Second chambers in other countries are not used just to revise legislation. The purpose of reform should be to improve the performance of parliament as a whole, by making it more responsive, more democratic, and more efficient, while eliminating the corruption that is implicit in patronage. (I happen to believe that parliament is inefficient but that’s outside the scope of this piece.)
Political parties are there to enable ordinary individuals to become politicians. Without them only rich people could stand for election.
” … once you are beholden to an electorate, and rely on re-election to maintain your position, you are less able to act on your conscience, instead having to second-guess what the people who will be voting for you might want.”
True, but this problem can be addressed easily enough by restricting members to a lengthy single term. That way they would be able to act on their consciences without looking to re-election.
“The peers … are supposed to be the country’s best and brightest. They include experts in almost every field on which the government may legislate: economics, law, science, media - you name it, there are members of the House of Lords who are world-leaders on the subject at hand. Would we be able to ensure such a spread of expertise through election?”
I don’t know how best to describe Blair’s latest batch of appointments but ‘best and brightest’ and ‘world leaders’ don’t come immediately to mind. The present crew who turn up (or not) in their thespian-style robes and coronets are a mixture of ex lobby fodder MPs, civil servants, clerics, lawyers and aristocrats etc. with the odd genuine meritocrat, appointed to distract attention from big donor appointees, looking conspicuously like a fish out of water. Many of the lords would frankly be better employed doing shows for tourists, than attempting to contribute to politics.
In any case, the place for experts is in the government ministries, helping to research the issues and draft legislation. Politicians, by definition, have to be generalists, seeing broad trends and inter-connections in public policy. They have to understand the issues but also anticipate the consequences of actions addressing them.
There is a long history to experiments in government that give power to wise men, hereditary leaders, oligarchs, meritocrats, technocrats, party elites etc. rather than the representatives of the people. All kinds of justifications have been made for these arrangements, and continue to be made, all over the world. However ultimately we have to choose; do we uphold democracy or not? Do we side with Churchill and agree that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried”?
“I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.” Alexander Woollcott of the New Yorker.
europhobia.blogspot.com/2005/08/94-years-of-equivocation-and.html
Posted by Simon Holledge at August 12, 2005 10:36 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.skakagrall.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt-tb.cgi/525
Comments
Your argument seems to be based on the principle that, if monarchy were the best known form of government, two kings would therefor be better than one, as that would be a greater quantity of monarchy.
Not sure those people around at the time of the wars of the roses would agree.
soru
Posted by: soru at August 12, 2005 12:38 PM
Welcome Richard,
Given that my posting was a hearty endorsement of democracy, I am not sure I understand your 'two kings' comment.
If you are suggesting that a unicameral system would be preferable to a bicameral one, that's an interesting debate that we haven't had yet. It's complicated by the fact that the Commons themselves are not properly representative.
Posted by: Simon Holledge at August 12, 2005 02:05 PM
All sensible points - except about the current make-up. Of course there are lots of pointless hangers-on in the Lords - that's because of the current set-up - there are arguably even more in the Commons. But there's also the odd Skidelsky, Dahrendorf or Winston to make up for them, just as in the Commons we get the odd decent MP. For my proposal we'd have a vast load more of that kind of expert peer. And, as is an unwritten rule at present, the expert peers wouldn't get too involved in areas outside their expertise - there'd be hundreds of the buggers, so should be plenty to concentrate on specific legislation.
As for the whole democracy vs. other forms of government thing, Churchill was pretty much spot on. But there's no reason why you can't have a combination of democracy and meritocracy - or any other system - taking the best aspects of each. That's pretty much what we've got at the moment, after all. I'm just suggesting a tweak...
Of course, to make it REALLY work there'd also be a separate supreme court (with some judges also sitting in the Lords to advise on legislation) and - as far as I'm concerned vitally importantly - a directly-elected executive, also separated (if only partially) from the legislature. Considering how infrequently Blair bothers to turn up for debates and votes, I doubt we'd notice the difference if the PM was no longer in parliament...
I basically rather like the US system, and would import that almost wholesale if I could. But you'd need a few alterations to keep up the more direct constituency link - an aspect of parliament which seems to have declined drastically in recent decades...
Posted by: Nosemonkey at August 12, 2005 02:25 PM
A lot of the points made against meritocracy arguments like Nosemonkey's is that it is in some way advocating status quo, which is more than a bit crude.
As NM said, such arguments are as much against Blairite patronage as the usual elected house arguments are. There are far too few Skidelsky types about, in comparison to old politicos. A meritocratic make-up would get rid of the undesirables far more effectively than another elected chamber.
But obviously this isn't easy. If there was any legally definable subsection of 'intelligent chaps' to which we could leave the running of the country, we'd have done it years ago. Doesn't mean we can't try.
Posted by: Paul Davies at August 12, 2005 04:15 PM
Talking about democracy they are interviewing right now Amanullah on CNN and he just said . . . [Ed. Sorry but I don't see the relevance of all this.]
Posted by: Imperial Mission at August 12, 2005 04:45 PM
Welcome Nosemonkey,
We would all like to see high-calibre members in the Lords, but how can that be done? Closed selection processes result in the appointment of people with vested interests. We have seen this often enough in Britain. Free elections have always been the most successful way of finding leaders that communicate with the people.
One of the problems with 'meritocracy' is that it can't be defined. Your ideas and mine may be quite different. I might require members to be computer literate, speak two languages and have spent a minimum of 5 years abroad. You may require them to be property-owning, Oxbridge-educated churchgoers with children.
We can agree on specialist and expert qualifications. As noted above, it's important that ministries take advice from people who have studied particular issues - that's not a problem.
I am with you on the Supreme Court point, though I think the legislature should be strictly separate from the judiciary, and I also admire many aspects of the American system, especially the emphasis on individual liberties and the secular basis of the state. However the Senate is not really a model for us, if only for the fact that their geography and federal system are so different from ours.
Posted by: Simon Holledge at August 12, 2005 05:26 PM
Welcome Paul,
Nosemonkey has just mentioned the US system. This is based on the clear separation of the executive, legislative and judiciary. The problems with having an appointed 'meritocrat' House of Lords is that it confuses the first two.
Posted by: Simon Holledge at August 12, 2005 05:39 PM
Don't see the point uh? It looks to me, you are the classical lefty(s) philosophising on things in their little houses, when the outside world keeps going its own ways happily ignoring you. I guess the Muslims are not really *that interested* in your democracy. Ask them... even the ones born and raised in UK. Have a look at islamonline (also their UK brand) they are not really talking about democracy and the house of lords :-)
Posted by: Imperial Mission at August 14, 2005 01:17 PM