October 15, 2024
By Samuel Mace
The House of Lords is one of the largest legislative chambers in the world, with over 800 members. Composed partly of hereditary peers but mostly of appointed legislators, Britain’s upper chamber of government is seen by many as an anachronism out of place in modern government. Yet it remains stubbornly resistant to abolition. Much like the British constitution, the Lords has been slowly reformed over centuries, even against its will, ostensibly creating a space as a chamber where expertise acts as a check on the popularly elected House of Commons. There are even those, such as the political scientist Richard Johnson, who argue the current system is worth protecting.
While previous defenders argued for the representation of noble families and landed property, today’s case for the Lords rests on the value of expert knowledge. Whereas the Commons is more nakedly political, the Lords is supposed to be focused on the content of legislation. Limited in their ability to oppose the government, Parliament’s upper house relies on cross- party committees where healthy scrutiny of legislation takes place above electoral politics. In many ways, this is the antithesis of the Commons, whose members lack legislative competence.
The Lords’ constitutional role represents both the past and the present. Despite resplendent appearances, the Lords has changed significantly over time. Far from being the powerful chamber it once was, today it merely acts a check on executive overreach through a complex combination of norms and law. The 1911 Parliament Act stripped the Lords of veto authority, leaving only the power to delay legislation, and subsequent reforms limited the number of hereditary seats. Yet, despite this change, the Lords remains unelected, with Prime Ministers appointing ‘worthy’ people to the second chamber.
The process of appointment is one area where the Lords is coming in for criticism. Far from being an ‘expert chamber’, it has been enlarged by PM’s using it as reward for loyal cadres. Both major parties have indulged in this practice, with Blair and Cameron stacking the chamber with supporters. Even more troubling is the close relationship between recent nominations of peers and political donors with one in five peers appointed in the previous decade having donated to a political party. Pretending that the upper chamber is solely the place for experts, Nobel Laureates, and tireless legislators no longer serving in the Commons is unhelpful for honest debate.
Demand for reform is not simply coming from outside the House. Even the Lord’s speakers committee have recommended a cap on the total number of peers. The more controversial proposal, though, is Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to abolishing hereditary peers altogether. If successful, the plan would fulfil an ambition that Tony Blair was never able to realize.
Much of the political community, though, sees Starmer’s plan as unsatisfactory. On the left, it is seen as a half measure that does not truly reform a desiccated system. On the right, it is regarded as an unfair and unneeded attack on constitutional heritage that risks upsetting the delicate balance of Parliament. It’s important to remember that the British constitution is not unwritten, as often claimed, but rather uncodified. Because it is composed oof a variety of documents, norms, case law, apparently minor changes can have unpredictable long-term impact.
In truth, both sides have a semblance of a point. The Lords is the only upper chamber in the Anglosphere which is neither elected nor territorially representative of the country. Instead, the upper chamber is appointed and contains a significant number of hereditary peers. Uniqueness is no guarantor of antiquatedness, but in our increasingly democratic world, it is difficult to call it anything else.
Still, the UK requires a second chamber. The UK’s lack of other checks and balances on the executive makes it vulnerable to elective dictatorship, a charge levelled not only by older theorists such as Jean Jacques Rousseau but by commentators today. And one need not be a staunch Burkean to oppose overturning a millennium of constitutional tradition in response to recent abuses.
There is also value in making the upper chamber unelected. As we can witness with the US Senate the potential for gridlock in a political system remains substantial. One of the strengths of the UK constitution is its flexibility allowing successive governments to make real changes. Unelected officials acquire different modes of legitimacy compared to those who are elected. Without a specific constituency and worries about re-election, the upper chamber creates more space for experiments in governance.
If an upper chamber is necessary, but heredity and appointment are unreliable means to secure independence and expertise, why not try sortition—that is, a lottery? It may sound odd, but sortition was one of the first methods by which constitutional government was organized. In Ancient Athens the role of sortition allowed not only for a more representative model of government but greater rotation of actors, participation, and equality of who gets to participate and why. Of course, Athens disqualified numerous participants making it democratically unacceptable today. In theory, though, sortition remains a practical solution to existing democratic deficits.
Sortition is also making a comeback in practice. Randomly chosen assemblies are springing up in Ireland, France, and the United States to name but three examples. Instead of being beholden to rich donors or major parties to make laws which we reluctantly accept, we citizens could be a direct part of the legislative process. A citizens’ chamber wouldn’t rely on money or ugly electioneering to acquire power, and its members could be a more authoritative check on the Commons than the diminished Lords.
It would be insufficient to merely throw people together and hope for the best. Indeed, sortition in this form has been critiqued as being undemocratic, unsafe, and a shortcut to the difficult challenges plaguing our democracies. These are certainly risks. But they are not sufficient reasons to dismiss especially sortition, especially when it only makes up a portion of the constitutional order. Prioritising ballot democracy over other forms of representation narrows the democratic field. Sortition may not solve all our democratic problems, but it can produce a different form of democracy incorporating greater citizen participation than voting alone. Far from unsafe and undemocratic, sortition provides a unique opportunity for citizens to get involved with the guts of institutional decision making.
We also need to compare sortition with the real-world alternative, as political theorist Helen Landemore argues. Given the well-known problems associated with electoral democracy, it is well worth turning towards another type of system procedurally centered upon all types of people rather than a specified elite. Rather than using a pure sortition system, the House of Lords could be moved towards what Alexander Guerrero describes in his forthcoming book, Lottocracy, as a genuine chamber of expertise. A newly designed second chamber would not really be a chamber at all. Instead, it would be a series of committees where citizens are selected by lot to consider, discuss, and eventually recommend policy after being informed by panels of experts.
The experts would not merely be academics and former parliamentarians, but would come from a wide array of backgrounds, including practical experience in the relevant areas. Experts could be chosen according to a register compiled by civil servants independent of party and ideological favor. Ensuring experts are well compensated makes them immune from financial influence. Creating a wide pool of experts narrows the reliance on any single ideological perspective as does the pulling ‘experts’ from a variety of experiences.
Guerrero’s book demands not simply a change in the system of governance but a change in the political context in which we exist. “Lottocracy” requires not simply to promote random people to positions of power but also to ensure they cannot be overly influenced by outside actors. This surely embodies the modern function of the Lords: offering considered advice from outside the daily political tussle. Citizens chosen by lot may be as vulnerable as professional politicians to influence, but there’s no reason to think that people serving a temporary term would be more vulnerable. Political corruption may emerge from either a revolving door or representatives staying in power for an inordinate amount of time. However, a regular rotation of citizens helps avoid overt influencer access due in part to the randomness and time of serving. This not only makes it more difficult for actors to buy access but narrows the incentive for law makers to do so. This is especially the case when the law makers are already well paid for their work.
In any case, their power would be limited by the elected Commons. Some conservatives might wish for a return to the days of the classical mixed constitution, but democratization is not going away and it cannot be held back. Instead of attempting a gallant final defense of a benighted institution supporters of the Lords should switch their allegiance to a renewed vision of an unelected second chamber. The answer to a powerful executive is not an unbalanced unicameral system nor is it clinging to a relic of the past .
Instead, lottocracy renews an older philosophy with new forms of implementation. Bringing people into the decision-making process with advice from experts puts the second chamber out of the hands of an unelected elite and into the hands of the people. Acting as a check on an all-powerful executive, a sortition chamber would better guide the Commons not only to common feeling around the country but also provide judicious advice. The notion of the wisdom of crowds is not a false hope but a genuine chance for legislative excellence and democratic representation.
Samuel Mace has a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Leeds and writes Theory Matters. He tweets at @thoughtgenerate
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