Interesting Links for 20-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Labour plans to abolish the House of Lords

(tags:labour houseoflords reform politics )

2. How to build your own living sphinx (I probably shouldn't do this with Jim)

(tags:cats sand video )

Comments

[cmcmck]

They still seem to want a second house though.

[andrewducker]

I have to say that I've never really seen the point of a second chamber.

[skington]

AIUI there are two reasons for having a second chamber.

The classic House of Lords reason is to have a revising chamber where unelected but seriously-minded people (ideally retired politicians with no skin in the game any more, or domain specialists) look at laws carefully and say to the House of Commons "did you actually mean this?". This is supposed to be the "nobody would have designed a system like this, but it turns out that it's really useful" genius of the UK constitution. Given that recent governments have packed the Lords to get a majority, and we still have hereditary peers and bishops, arguably the Lords no longer serves this purpose.

The other reason is to have a chamber which is not purely democratically elected, to act as a check on the democratically-elected lower house. This is a checks and balances and "we really have to agree a whole lot", although depending on the power of the upper house the impact can be limited. In France, the Senate is indirectly elected by local authority (council, département, region) officials, and tends to be more rural and right-wing (but I repeat myself) than the Assemblée Nationale. It doesn't have much power other than brief annoyance, though. In the US, the Senate is prestigious (fewer members so each member gets proportionally more media exposure; government and legal appointees have to be voted in by the Senate), and there's a saying that every Senator sees a future President of the US when they look in a mirror.

I suspect that Gordon Brown's plans are for a second chamber which is deliberately (a) elected somewhat proportionally locally, so to give smaller parties (e.g. Greens, Mebyon Kernow, but I suppose also Respect unfortunately) a say, but also (b) deliberately non-proportional at a state-wide level, so to favour non-England nations and non-SE England regions. This feels like a stable-door way of saying "OK, but the next time we think of doing something as stupid as Brexit, we need everyone to agree".

Either way, while I take your point that if we have some kind of PR, there's no need for two chambers, this isn't what's being proposed now.

[calimac]

A second house has proved to be a very good thing. It adds greatly to available parliamentary time to consider details of laws and contemplate broader issues that the Commons doesn't have time to deal with. And as long as it can only make suggestions to the Commons and doesn't have any power to enact anything of its own - and it doesn't - it doesn't matter that it's not elected. (Though goodness knows the appointment process could stand improvement.) If it's elected, pressure will grow to give it some of its power back.

In the US, and in almost all of its states, we have two elected legislative houses, which often clash but are very useful to have working in tandem.

[dewline]

It seems at times like our Senate in Canada has been a pain in the neck, whether they were rubber-stamping bills or putting the brakes on. Other times, not so much, for the same reasons.

[rhythmaning]

I think we need a second house to truly scrutinise legislation, particularly if governments have a large majority - it is too easy for the lower house to force through badly thought out legislation.

[andrewducker]

If the lower house is elected democratically then a large majority means a large majority of voters selected them, and they should be able to vote things through.

An upper house only seems useful if you've got a fundamentally undemocratic election system, as we currently do.

So if you're fixing something, fix *that*.

[calimac]

Speaking, again, from a country with several dozen legislatures of two democratically elected houses, this doesn't mean they work in lockstep or that they do what their voters want.

If you've been following our recent federal midterm election, that gave a fine illustration of that.

[andrewducker]

The USA is based on the same fundamentally undemocratic voting system.

I do not see what a second house would add to a proportionally elected house.

[calimac]

You actually think a proportionally elected house would eliminate the current usefulness of a second chamber? I startle at such naivite.

[andrewducker]

If you have an argument then make it.

If you're just going to insult people then feel free to leave.

[calimac]

I'm very sorry: I did not mean to be insulting. I couldn't initially think of anything to say except to lay down a marker of disagreement, and I accept that I phrased this badly.

[andrewducker]

That's fine, I appreciate the differences of opinion, and will work on a proper reply. Probably tomorrow though, as I'm bathing a child at the moment, and by the time I've then got her to bed my brain will be entirely made of goo.

[calimac]

I should be fair and elaborate on this.

1. There would still be massive pressure on parliamentary time. A second chamber relieves that.

2. A proportionally elected house would not be less contentious and argumentative, in fact more so, because in your present system the government can almost always get what it wants. That would be a lot dicier in a proportionate house.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure how (1) isn't solved by just having more committees, and plausibly more representatives to staff them. Why you would need to split the committees into two whole houses and elect them separately makes no sense to me.

I'm not sure how argumentativeness is a factor here? What's the issue with people arguing?

[calimac]

Committees are very useful, but they're still taking up the time of the same people whose time is already packed with the functional chamber. More representatives wouldn't help: the Commons is already awkwardly overpopulated as it is. A second chamber is different people with a separate agenda.

I'm not sure how argumentativeness is a factor either, but I couldn't figure out why you said "I do not see what a second house would add to a proportionally elected house." What would make it less needed then than it is now?

[andrewducker]

Assuming PR for both chambers, what makes them a different group of people, and what makes their agenda different?

[calimac]

What makes them a different group of people? That they are different people. The one house's members are the people whose agenda is to be members of the House of Commons, which is the governing body of the country. The other house's members do not have that responsibility, and have the ability to undertake duties that the first house's members don't have time for, as described earlier. That's the main point of having a second chamber under the current UK system, however its membership is determined.

As for their political-issue agenda, we don't in any case want these to be too different, or debilitating conflict will occur even if one house holds the political power and the other does not. But differences will naturally arise in the course of things, if only because the members are human beings and not party automatons. That's true even under the present situations of party discipline and three-line whips.

And they will especially arise if the two houses are elected at different times, and consequently the PR allocations are likely to differ.

What MTBC and Rhythmaning wrote is also applicable here.

[rhythmaning]

I agree the current situation needs fixing!

But a second house, providing reflective scrutiny, would still improve legislation. Even if a lot of people vote for them, idiots writing laws would still be idiots!

[andrewducker]

Why does it need to be a separately elected group of representatives to do this, and assuming PR, what would lead them to come to different conclusions?

[rhythmaning]

I'm not certain that it does need to be a separate chamber. I accept the point (I think you made it!) earlier that a committee system, properly constituted, should be able to apply sufficient scrutiny.

But - and this is just a feeling! - having a second house on a different political cycle may remove poitical pressure from the legislative scrutiny. I'm not sure that a committee system would be seen as sufficiently independent.

[mtbc]

I like the idea of a second house with long terms and no reelection, as moderator/advisor on shorter-term populist fads or government turning delusional mid-term. Second chamber can have those properties while still be democratically elected somehow.

(The restoring trust sounds hiliarious, as if it's the Commons that's the paragon of integrity.)

[andrewducker]

I somewhat like the idea, while also worrying about having terrible people with outdated ideas that you can't remove for a very long time.

[mtbc]

I'll take that. (-: Perhaps we can somehow arrange it so that they'll at least have different terrible ideas from each other …