Vocal Voices

The new size for the House of Lords.

It is the biggest second chamber in the world: 628 are male. It costs £94.4m to run and of that £20.7m is for allowances and expenses.

It only has 400 proper seats yet the average daily attendance is 483! All of those claim £300, tax-free daily allowance. However, those not in attendance can still claim £150 a day for working from home.

The vast majority, even cross-benchers, are there due to the patronage of Prime Ministers. Very few are there on merit. The Queen, playing the elitist game, officially appoints them.

The damned thing needs tearing down and a new one put in its place.

I think the whole damn thing is a gigantic farce.

Why do people allow this to continue?
It's obvious that the system is being misused for party political purposes.

The damned thing needs tearing down and a new one NOT put in its place.

Actually that would not be a good idea. Just imagine Blair running amok without a second chamber to block him..... The HOL managed to curb many of his excesses even with a Labour majority.

I'm very in favour of having a second chamber which has absolutely NO direct affiliation with the voters. It's more like the Dictatorship thing you talk about Aggers. Simply put they can decide based upon whether it makes sense or not and they can even break party lines. After all, nobody is going to vote for them. Which means that when Labour or the Tories are going overboard, the Labour and Tory peers can get together and block them.

As for £94M.

You tell me where there is a cheaper second chamber for a country which is in the G10????

I mean America, with their 100 senators, pays somewhere around One Billion Dollars to upkeep them. It also costs around another One Billion Dollars to put them in place (estimated 10M per senator). That's One Billion of vested interest money paid by businesses to, quite literally, BUY the vote of their senators.

You want either of the Scenario's above?????

I think we get excellent value for money and the press need to shut up about it. Granted I'd much rather see only the Queen giving honours not the PM's. Were stuck with an overstuffed house until the peers Cameron has created are balanced out by the huge number of peers Blair created dying off.....

Honestly tell me we can have a better, cheaper, elected system, because we sure as hell can't trust that 650 odd snout in trough merchants in the lower house to not go crazy....

Fine if you can guarantee a non-partisan House of Lords. But unfortunately you can't.

And 826 is ridiculous. Cut it back to 300 at a maximum.

TheOstrich wrote:And 826 is ridiculous. Cut it back to 300 at a maximum.

Well OK you tell me how many to sign up to the "involuntary euthanasia club" and we'll ship them off to Syria....

OK probably joke in bad taste.

The problem I have is it is the life peers who make the real issue. They're the one's who are mired in the political system and make decisions based on their own personal immediate well being or their party whip. The hereditary peers tend to take a longer term view.

Personally I'd stop any more life peers and dole out hereditary peerages on an absolutely merit based system.

I'd also make it easier to strip a hereditary peer of their peerage if they become a total lout throwing their weight around. Which is exactly how it used to be under an absolute monarch. Throw your weight around with the King/Queen and you would be lucky to keep your life, let alone peerage....

We are supposed to live in a democracy.

Patronage to the second chamber by the PM, with the Monarch's blessing, is not democracy. Nor is membership due to historical heritage.

Not only does it need its membership to be cut - to about 100 - it also needs to be an elected cohort from anyone who cares to apply.

Actually we live in a constitutional monarchy with two chambers, one democratically elected and one appointed.

Whilst we may call ourselves a "democracy", our democratic process is nowhere near that of the US. Which is why they call themselves the only real "Democratic State". Not that I particularly agree with them.

Our system pretty much works. The US system is almost totally dysfunctional. Want a "true" democracy? Not at that price.

BTW, 100 leaves it too open to partisan following. 800 odd is actually better in many ways as people can really vote their conscience and not their party.

It's cheap. Really cheap. It would even be cheap at 10 times the price. It wasn't Broken but Blair was determined to "fix" it. Now we see what he has wrought and it doesn't work all that well. Time to stop and look around rather than pushing the pedal down further in the wrong direction... All we will do is become ever more hopelessly lost.

Why does the US always get a mention when reform of our Monarchy or HoL crops up?

Canada is the only other country with an unelected second chamber, and New Zealand and Denmark do not have one at all. But so what? The talk is of reform for the UK. What is best for the UK.

Even members of the HoL have come out and criticised the way its members are chosen and how it operates. Quite a few have said that it is ridiculous for it to have more members that the Commons. A figure of 500 is often quoted, but for me that is at least 200 too many.

I mentioned the US as an example of the shining light of Democracy (which is what everyone tries to justify the HOL restructure under), which patently does not work and costs a small fortune.

I highlighted it as a shining example of what it _would_ cost us if we go down that route. Apparently the HOL costs us too much. Really? So we should replace it with a bunch of elected consumers (of money), who would vote to keep on pushing their expenses above inflation. Of course their wages would also need to be full wages because it would be their "job" rather than a compensated "responsibility" which is more what the HOL should be....

I raise these things because people keep on talking about an elected second chamber as if it's a good thing. In fact, in the experience of the world around us, it's mainly dysfunctional.

When talking about "reforming" the UK chambers, it's good to look around and see what doesn't work. Because there is absolutely no point in replacing it with a broken mess that costs 100 times as much and will be totally impossible to remove or change...

That is my caution.