Can we defend the House of Lords?

Run for shelter, stock up on non-perishables and dust off your Erskine May: we’ve got a crisis. Things got horribly upside down this week in Westminster. The rich and powerful came to the rescue of the working poor; lifelong liberals crossed the road as democratic process came under attack; and Tories were complaining about an unelected élite!

The government’s tax credit “reforms” have been a car crash waiting to happen since they were announced nearly six months ago in the Chancellor’s summer budget. At the time, all the focus was on the introduction of a National Living Wage, set at £9, as Osborne rebranded the Conservatives as the “true workers’ party”. But while a higher minimum wage is expected to boost earnings among the low paid by £4bn, the £12bn in cuts to welfare are set to hit even harder for some households. The £9 NLW won’t come into effect until 2020, even though cuts to tax credits start in April 2016. (Here’s a quick primer.)

Opposition to Osborne’s plans – in particular the lack of transitory accommodations – has come from all quarters, including his own backbenchers. But the government was able to whip its Commons majority into shape. The Treasury used a statutory instrument – rather than a full blown bill – to limit Commons debate on the measures and keep the whole issue out of the spotlight. Their strategy backfired spectacularly last Monday night, however, when the House of Lords carried an amendment by a Labour peer to freeze this specific proposed implementation by three years. For Osborne and Cameron, the Lords had gravely overreached its mandate as a secondary chamber by blocking a financial policy of the democratically elected government of the day. Peers argued that the proposals were about welfare reform, thus they were well within their rights to act; the government countered that the £4bn in savings were essential to its overall deficit reduction strategy, which had won clear public support just five months ago. Osborne ominously threatened to “deal with” errant lords and ladies.

The House of Lords is, in its constitution and scope, essentially undemocratic.

It’s hard not to agree that the implementation of the government’s reforms was thoughtlessly conceived. But for those happy to see the Tories thwarted, a sticky question arises: was the Lords’ vote undemocratic? And to Conservatives who have resisted major constitutional reform for generations, the issue of the legitimacy of the Lords has never gone away.

The House of Lords is, in its constitution and scope, essentially undemocratic. There are a staggering 817 peers (with the number regularly increasing). The place is filled with party stalwarts sent out to pasture; retired civil servant with greasy hands; and twenty-five bishops from the Church of England – because who better to advise on legislation than the guy who came up with the Ten Commandments? Laughably, the most democratic aspect of the Lords is the haphazard election (among Lords) of a new hereditary peer when one of the ninety-two shuffles on to the other other place. Only within the wider constitutional context of a hereditary head of state, an established church and aristocratic class does the House of Lords start to look a little less out of place. Sort of like an establishment clubhouse.

The House has the power to ride roughshod over the will of a democratically elected government. The last time the House blocked a major government financial policy was nearly a century ago, in 1919, when Chancellor Lloyd George tried to pass his People’s Budget. That incident established the convention which many believe was broken on Monday: the unelected chamber should not block the financial policies of the elected government.

On any rational and objective basis, the House of Lords cannot be defended. It even looks somehow morally wrong: the ornate throne gilded with gold and the red ermine robes decorating a sea of grey-haired white men. (To say nothing of the criminals and oddballs which populate the place.)

The last time the House blocked a major government financial policy was nearly a century ago, in 1919, when Chancellor Lloyd George tried to pass his People’s Budget.

The “constitutional crisis” which Tories were talking up this week is uniquely British given the Lords did not technically break any rules. And that’s because, technically, there are no rules. There is no written constitution. We are governed by precedent. That, in part, is why Britain is such a deeply conservative (small ‘C’) nation. Our “constitution”, such as it exists, and our history are so deeply intertwined that radical reform would be alarming to many. We don’t do change very well. When the Lib Dems proposed changing the voting system in 2011, nearly 70% rejected the idea. Polls measuring public interest in constitutional reform over the last twenty years have found, at any given time, less than 10% of the population consider it a “very important” issue.

There’s only one really plausible defence for maintaining the House of Lords in its current form. And it’s the same defence for the monarchy, the established Church and myriad other quirks of British public life: it’s not all that bad. In Washington, the perpetual stand-off between Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House of Representatives regularly shuts down the Federal government. And despite the separation of church and state in the US, religion has an influence on politics that most in this country find unsettling.

This week’s vote was not as severe the Tories have tried to make out. It’s an obvious attempt to shift the debate away from their own cack-handedness. The prime minister appointed Lord Strathclyde to conduct a “rapid review” into parliamentary procedures, to ensure the House of Commons retains supremacy on financial matters. It’s hard to imagine that peers would have dared challenge the government if the proposed reforms had been introduced by way of a financial/money bill. On this occasion, the ambiguity of the statutory instrument combined with public will put peers on the right side of the line, just. The review will likely propose some specific amendment to parliamentary procedure – a small, iterative change. And, with characteristic common sense, the House of Lords will give its assent. Keep calm and carry on.