Ep. 220 Should the House of Lords be elected?

Hello and welcome to the A-Level Politics Show for March 2026. Now today we will be looking at the House of Lords and whether it should be elected. Righto, so I last recorded a pod on this about six years ago, so it's high time for a redo because a little bit or a big bit of change, depending on your point of view, has just happened. The Labour government has steered through a bill that has abolished the remaining 92 hereditary peers, which are those members of the Lords who inherit their title from a family member, building on what Blair did a generation ago when the majority of hereditries were removed in the House of Lords Act 1999. But should the reform go further in this wholly appointed chamber, ought it to be elected? How to structure such an essay as this, evaluate the view that the House of Lords must now be elected? What I am going to do is something I think seems a little bit obvious, indeed it was staring me in the face when I was thinking about this. I'm going to think about the House of Lords and whether electing it would improve its legislative function, its representative function, and its scrutiny function. What is my direction? It is absolutely the House of Lords must be elected. I'll start with a weaker argument in each section, i.e. that things are working perfectly well at the moment, and that electing it would damage the specific function I'm talking about, and then I'll trash all of that and end each section explaining why electing the Lords would indeed improve everything it does. Okay, let's start first with its representative function. Let's start with the idea that when it comes to representation, the Lords already does a good job, and that electing it would make representation worse. The hereditories have now gone, and these peers were the biggest bone of contention as far as the reformist were concerned. Representation is not just about elections either, it is also about independence of thought and standing up for unpopular causes. These two things, the Lords does very well at present, partly because the current chamber benefits from the presence of ex-ministers and other experts, willing to stand up for worthwhile causes that an elected chamber might sideline. Issues like the rights of refugees, for example, as we saw when the Lords attempted to amend the Safety of Rwander Act, or when Baroness Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen, advocates for police reform to remove the scourge of institutional racism. Elections would likely remove the wisdom experiences and independence of thought of peers, people like Baroness Lawrence, and people like Lord Dubbs himself a child of the Kindertransport and World War II, who sought to add amendments to the Brexit legislation that would have given protections for child refugees separated from their parents. This expertise and this compassion more importantly would likely be replaced by people who placed loyalty to their parties above the cause that they want to fight for. No group symbolises that independence of thought and that compassion more fully than the cross-bentures who hold the balance of power in the House of Lords and who are not answerable to any party wit. Elections would sweep them and their tendencies to stand up for unfashionable causes out of the chamber forever. And what for? What would replace it? Who would decide how would it be decided? On this last question, a referendum on the issue could well see less than half of the electorate participate thereby undermining the process. Paul suggests that electing the Lords is very low on the list of the public's priorities and they would much rather the government of the day focus on schools and hospitals to elect something against the people's will is hardly democratic. Yet this argument suggests keeping things as they are is more democratic, which it is not. The Lords is open to accusations of corruption for example. Some peers have used their access to decision makers to enrich their own pockets. Conservative Baroness Michel Mone lobbied extensively for Medpro to be awarded lucrative PPE contracts during the pandemic. It later transpired that the company then awarded both Mone and her husband millions of pounds as a reward. Likewise, Tory Peter Gummer was suspended from the Lords for 12 months in March 2026 when it emerged that he had lobbied former health secretary Matt Hancock for PPE contracts during Covid also a clear breach of rules that forbid lobbying for financial gain. This comes after Labour peer Lord Evidence of Watford was suspended in 2025 over a cash for access scandal related to house building. These examples show that peers are in it for themselves rather than in it for the public good. So while electing the Lords wouldn't make it onto people's top 10 priority list, they still have a decisive that's the public that is still have a decisive view on it, especially given these recent controversies alongside the awarding of a peerage in itself. Peers often get their title purely due to opening their wallet, i.e. donating to a political party or shutting their mouth, i.e. serving the government loyally. The public were outraged at Boris Johnson's resignation on his list which attempted to award his own dad a man accused of domestic abuse, a peerage. Sunak made David Cameron foreign secretary by fast tracking his peerage to the Lords despite Cameron's questionable ties to China and his controversial role in the Green Sill lobbying scandal. Perhaps this is why the public are overwhelmingly in favour of an elected House of Lords. A youth gauve Paul in October 2024 showed that only one in seven Britain's had a positive view towards the House of Lords with 55% in favour of an elected upper House. Thus, electing the Lords would improve the representation function because it would indeed reflect what the public wants. An elected Chamber would not dare defy the will of the people, as pro Brexit voters felt they did when the unelected House of Lords held up triggering article 50 adding two amendments to the bill. Furthermore, representation may be not just about elections, but it's not about them either. And representation can certainly be improved by considering ideas around resemblance and having a Chamber that looks and sounds like the country. A fully elected second Chamber would give greater representation to the regions. Some 46% of peers currently reside in London and the southeast, despite the fact that only a quarter of the UK's population live here. It could, an elected Chamber that is, it could better reflect multi-party politics that is clearly emerging in the UK. If the House of Lords was elected using a system of proportional representation, let's say, it could be said to accurately represent the wishes of the people and would allow small parties to have more influence on the legislative process. At present, there are only two green peers and no reform UK peers, despite the fact that the latter received 14% of the vote in the last general election to elect the House of Commons. It would likely do a better job of improving descriptive representation or resemblance. Only a quarter of peers currently are women and over 50% are over 70. This has led to accusations that the Lords is a daycare centre for the elderly. Religious groups are also overrepresented. There are 26 Lords spiritual. The only other country that has spiritual leaders in its legislature is Iran. In an increasingly secular and at the very least multi-religious country shouldn't this anachronism be dealt with. Even the parts of the representative function that the Lords is deemed to perform well at the moment, standing up for minority and marginalised groups, could be performed better if it were elected. The House of Lords ultimately failed in its bid to protect the post-Brexit rights of EU citizens in the UK because as an unelected Chamber, it did not have the legitimacy to take on the government that wasn't prepared to guarantee them. The same was the case when it attempted to protect the rights of refugees by inserting an amendment into the EU withdrawal bill in January 2020. This amendment was easily defeated upon return to the Commons. And again, in its attempt to amend the aforementioned safety of Rwanda Act 2024, all of the Lords' concerns about silent seekers were stripped out of the final bill. All of these defeats came as a result of a lack of legitimacy. A more legitimate chamber would make its amendment stick rather than back down and do a better job therefore of fighting the corner of the marginalised. But what about legislation? Would electing the Lords hinder that important function? Find out after the break. In terms of legislation, the Lords is seen as the revising chamber. A place where bills rush through the Commons are then looked at in a more careful line by line way. They are seen, that's the Lords, as the Parliamentary Worms, where some foul smelling odours are turned into rich manure to fertilise the legislative soil. Since it is unelected, the Lords does not have to rush to conclusions in a bid to curry favour with the public. Let's consider Housebuilding, which everyone agrees is needed and needed fairly quickly. Yet the Lords asked the Government to think again on where those houses and how those houses ought to be built. In 2023, it prevented the Tory Government from scrapping pollution rules surrounding the building of new housing. In the 2026 children's wellbeing and schools bill, the House of Lords made a number of amendments to strengthen procedures around online harm, including one that would stop children using VPNs to bypass age verification systems. Legislative ping pong, where a bill goes to the House of Commons and then the the Lord and then back again until both. the chambers agree on the exact wording of a bill is an important way to deliberate and improve legislation. The Lord's focus on banning children from social media forced the commons to consider this idea more depth when it returned to the commons in March 2026, even if the government did ultimately vote down the Lord's proposals. Thus the Lord's facilitates the careful consideration of law. You could also make the case that the current arrangement still ensure that business can get done, that legislation can pass and that important changes can be made as it is clear that the elected commons ultimately has the final say in the current arrangements. This situation has been confirmed in the 1911 Parliament Act that gave the commons financial privilege rights over the budget for example. In the 1949 Parliament Act that limited the Lord's power of delay for just one year and curtailed its ability to ping pong up to three times and in the Salisbury Convention that ensures the Lord's cannot block an elected government's manifesto. Arguably replacing the current format with an elected second chamber would result in gridlock as it would render all of these limitations as null and void. The Parliament Act would become unjustified. If used with an elected House of Lords, it would force through a bill against the wishes of a chamber that was chosen by the people. The Salisbury Convention which forbids the Lords from scrutinising manifesto bills alongside rules and financial privilege would no longer apply as peers would enjoy their own mandate from the people. In short, electing the Lords could lead to a do nothing Parliament as the Lords would claim co-equal status. Buy camel systems, that's a Parliament's with two chambers with co-equal chambers have resulted in some places around the world in government shutdowns and failures to pass budgets as shown when the US nearly deforted on its debt at the end of 2024 and in the October 2025 government shutdown that resulted in thousands of federal workers going without pay. However, this scenario can be easily avoided with an elected second chamber. Electing the chamber will not result in any new powers for the Lords. The Parliament Act would remain on the statute book as the House of Commons would not pass a law that gave parity to the Lords. Thus gridlock would not occur because the Lords would still only possess the power of delay. Other countries elect both their chambers and it is clear which ones are the most powerful still. The National Assembly in France, for example, has pre-eminence over the French Senate and both are elected. Current arrangements do not allow for well-crafted legislation anyway. Witness the decision to allow the government to take over British steel which was simply way through the Lords in 2025 and passed in one day. Maybe a further slowdown in legislation is necessary. A bit of gridlock might be beneficial. Businesses might certainly feel that way over Labour's 2025 Employment Rights Act that gives employees day one protection from unfair dismissal alongside strength and paternity and maternity rights. Employers feel that the law may result in more unemployment as the risk of hiring becomes too great. In addition, we could make the case that the Lords in its current form is abusing its revising function when it comes to legislation. It has essentially blocked the passage of the assisted dying bill by tabling hundreds of amendments, meaning that at the time of recording the bill voted on by majority of elected MPs will run out of time. So if the current arrangements are leading to gridlock anyway, especially on this important matter, then the argument for electing it grows further. What about scrutiny though? Would that go by the wayside if the chamber was elected? Find out after the jingles. In terms of scrutiny, the current chamber is arguably more able than the commons to stand up to the government because the governing Labour Party just like the Tories before them do not have a majority of seats. Removing the hereditary peers ended the Tory dominance of the Lords and since 1999 no one party enjoys a majority which leads to better scrutiny of government proposals. Indeed, cross benches, those peers with no party affiliation, hold the balance of power and thus prevent the dissent into partisan tribalism. As a result, the Lords has a much better record at holding the government to account. In 2005, it denied the government the power to introduce ID cards without going first through normal parliamentary procedures. In 2012, it delayed coalition plans on benefits that would have cut support to cancer patients. In 2022, the Lords held up for a time at least government proposals that gave police new powers to break up noisy protests as part of the police crime sentencing and courts bill. As of February 2026, the current Labour government elected in 2024 has suffered over 130 defeats in the Lords yet none in the elected commons. Electing the chamber, so these arguments go, could produce a government majority in both houses, further cementing the executive dominance of Parliament. Yet this issue can be addressed by a PR system that would deny any one party a majority, so I'm not having that. You can also have staggered elections, ensuring that the commons and Lords are elected at different times, thus reducing the likelihood of executive dominance of both chambers. Or you can have longer terms so that peers will not always be beholden to the electric but could think more independently. And that would improve scrutiny of government too. The Lords, if it was elected, would be able to stand up to the government more if it enjoyed greater democratic legitimacy rather than being sidelined due to the Southbury Convention and other limitations. A fully elected second chamber could be more willing to challenge the commons since it would have a democratic mandate from the people. This can only be a good thing in a country that has a lower house elected by first past the post that almost guarantees the government an inbuilt majority on the back of a minority of votes. In most cases where the Lords is unhappy with the government, it has eventually backed down. This was the case in the Employment Rights Act, the Safety of a Wander Act and pretty much all of the bills mentioned on this pod. It was also the case when in 2025, peers advocated for stronger copyright protections for artists whose work has been lifted by AI companies. The government won the day electing the Lords would lead to greater challenges to these ill-thought-out government bills which can only be a good thing. Thus the House of Lords ought to be elected, it would improve its representation function because it would resemble more closely the regions of the UK while not necessarily hindering the good work it currently does on standing up for the rights of vulnerable groups. It would improve its legislative function because it would feel emboldened to play ping pong for longer and that in turn would make the government think more carefully when crafting proposals having a knock-on effect for good scrutiny. I hope you found this pod insightful. If so and if you haven't already, why not subscribe to Plus Plus Plus. For just £1.99 a month, you get access to the complete back catalogue of 220 A-level politics shows. That's an incredible deal for less than a price of a couple each month. You get access to all the revision that you need. No hidden fees, just great learning. Cancel anytime, deets in the show notes. Okay, peeps. That's it from me today. See you again soon. Bye. [Music]