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

[danieldwilliam]

I am in favour of a second, (mostly) elected revising chamber. Certainly in the current circumstances. I have some more radical proposal at the end of this note.

I think a second revising chamber should do some or all of the following

1) take some load off the primary chamber. Not just in terms of raw time but also cognitive bandwidth and political capital - this last interacts with point 2 and point 3

2) the second chamber should have a different source of legitimacy to the primary chamber and this should link to its role in the constitution and the legislative process.

Examples include the Australian Senate which are elected at state level using PR, compared to the House of Representatives who are elected in relatively small constituencies using the Alternative Vote or the German Budesrat who are are delegates of the Lander

3) similar to 2) the revising chamber should have a different time horizon to the primary chamber.

Again, examples include the US Senate (6 year terms for Senators vs 2 year terms of Representatives, the Australian Senate 6 year terms vs 3 years of the Representatives. Some Italian senators are life appointments.

4) Part of the role of the second chamber is to slow down legislation and to ask "are you sure?" I think it is helpful that the second chamber have a somewhat different mandate from the primary chamber so that its delay and confirmation role has some legitimacy.

5) The second chamber in a UK context should be a source of expertise and experience (at least arguably). Not just subject matter expertise but expertise in how politics, government, legislating

6) less driven by a) party politics, b) personal aspiration c) role in the executive


So my suggestion for a UK second chamber would be

1) a large chamber (mostly) elected by Single Transferable Vote from the nations and regions (I think this holds true whilst the House of Commons is elected by FPTP, AV+ or STV in smaller constituencies). The Australian nexus sees the lower chamber at approx twice the size of the Senate. Working that backwards, a 600-seat House of Commons implies a 300 seat Senate. With 7 English regions, plus 3 region-nations, you get 30 senators from each region.

2) rolling 12 or 15 year terms (if the UK ends up with fixed parliamentary terms of 4 or 5 years then 3 of those terms) if we retain the current system of indeterminate terms then senators serving term of no less than 12 years and seats being vacated at the General Election after the senator has served 12 years. 10 senators from each region up for election each general election - roughly.

3) single terms only and / or a ban on serving in any elected office after being a senator

4) no senator able to serve in the government. Government sits in the lower house and must command a majority there.

5) I would entertain the the appointment of a small number of senators by local councils, by a special committee or ex officio e.g. former Prime Ministers are entitled to a seat in the senate

6) deliberately weak links to geographical constituencies

7) senators may be elected on a party ticket but they are explicitly personally elected - no chuntering on about senators who cross the floor having to stand for re-election or parties having a right to appoint replacements for casual vacancies.

8) revising and delaying powers only for legislation, scrutiny powers over government ministers, policy development ability, enquiry ability, elevated powers for the curation of human rights


One could take a more radical approach. Three suggestions below

1) Use sortition to create a system of Citizen Assemblies and Citizen Juries to scrutinise legislation and policy. However, that seems unlikely to happen.

2) Take something of the Lander Bundesrat and have senators appointed by local government

3) A system of my own devising is that we make the second chamber a place explicitly for special interests. Thusly,

(1) a very large chamber

(2) made up of members nominated by representative membership organisations. Any membership group in the UK could register to be a "representative group." So trades unions, the National Trust, the RSPB, the Manchester United Supporters Club. (There would need to be some sensible rules about what qualified and a way of excluding political parties) . I would also allow smaller membership groups to form coalitions if they wanted - so the Manchester United Supporters Club could group up with the Manchester City Supports Club to be, for the purposes of the second chamber the Mancunian Football Watchers representative group.

(3) you can be a member in good standing of more than one membership organisation (we might need some rules here about what counts as a member in good standing to include some form of membership activity and / or to limit the total number of membership organisations you can be member of for second chamber election purposes so that wealthy people can't become members of dozens of groups just by paying a membership fee)

(4) Using the d'Hondt system (or similar) seats are allocated to those membership organisations based on the number of members they have

(5) there must be some form of democratic process for the membership organisations appointment process. Not necessarily direct election by the members but control of the organisation in total or control of the organisation's second chamber appointment process must ultimately be democratic.

(6) membership organisations send representatives to the second chamber.

The people sent ought to end up with 1) some form of democratic legitimacy 2) subject matter expertise 3) orthogonal legitimacy and interest from the lower house