Political

Norman Lamont is an excellent example of why the Lords should be reformed

Yesterday Conservative peer Norman Lamont was the latest in a sequence of Tory peers to take to the pages of ConservativeHome to argue against their own party’s policy and opposed elections to the House of Lords.

However, Norman Lamont is also an excellent example of why the Lords should be reformed, for he is just the sort of MP I had mind when writing a piece for Left Foot Forward last year:

The voters have cast their verdict and an MP is out of office. What should happen to them next? Most people’s answers to that are somewhere on the spectrum from the polite (let them tidy up their affairs and see their staff properly treated as their contracts end) through to answers best not to be repeated before the watershed.

But our political system has a remarkable answer. For a lucky group, the answer to being voted out of parliament is to say to them “now you’ve been voted out, you can have a seat in parliament for life instead”.

The way ex-MPs get recycled back into parliament courtesy of a seat in the House of Lords is often reported, but the democratic offensiveness of it is rarely commented on. Voted out? Have a seat for life.

I don’t begrudge the defeated politicians who take up the offer because, after all, if they say “no” then their own party usually cannot transfer the offer to another person. Moreover, some rescued defeated MPs of all parties have turned out to be great members of the Lords.

But it’s right up there with the duck houses in showing a political class out of touch with basic common-sense to think it is acceptable to stick with a system where defeat doesn’t mean defeat but means a seat for life instead.

Norman Lamont was voted out of by the public in the 1997 general election. How did the political system respond? It ended up giving him a seat in Parliament for life instead.

It is not only that the Lords is not democratic, that way of behaving undermines the democracy of the Commons too.

4 responses to “Norman Lamont is an excellent example of why the Lords should be reformed”

  1. So what would you say to peers from our own party, like David Steele, who also oppose this reform?

    • I would remind him of the many manifestos, party political broadcasts and speeches that he fronted as party leader and which called for Lords reform…!

    • OK, but it's a question of practicality.As you yourself remind people, as a party, we are not in power. We need the help of others to bring this off, and that help is simply not forthcoming.

  2. ~Well, he clearly doesn't see it as a priority now, and neither do the electorate. They will see it as another LibDem nostrum, rather than the main business of government.

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