Lords Reform

Some of you may have noticed the image on my sidebar. It's the huge one under the "Save Parliament" one. It says "Elect the Lords". It's a campaign supported by Charter 88 (www.charter88.org.uk) and, if it is successful, will result in a massive Constitutional change for the UK.

For those who do not know, the House of Lords is the Upper House of the British Parliament. It used to be very powerful. It was able to block Government legislation, introduce its own and basically do everything the House of Commons could, except take part in the formation of a Government (although the Priem Minister could be a Lord, until Douglas-Holme). After Asquith's "People's Budget" ws rejected, Asquith, in 1911, passed the Parliament Act limiting the power of the Lords. The Lords could no longer block legislation, only delay it. The basis for this was that the Lords were not democratically elected and therefore had no right ot interfere with the business of the people's representatives. However, the preamble to that act said, among other things, this:

"And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation"

That was 95 years ago (for the exact period of time, see thign on sidebar).

I believe that now, it can be put into operation.

We need two things to funciton as a proper Democracy:

1. An upper house with the power to place checks and balances on the Government and review legislation.

2. We need an elected upper house, so that it has the mandate and the right to do this.

In order for this to be the case, we need to scrap the House of Lords and replace it with a democratically elected institution.

Now, there will have to be laws governing this and here is my suggestion:

1. The upper house is elected by proportional representation on a fixed term basis. This is to ensure that it represents the will of the whole people, but also to ensure that we don't just get a carbon copy of the House of Commons, which would be no good when it came to reviewing legislation.

2. The upper house cannot take part in the forming of a Government, nor can it block the great financial bills (these being very important). This is also to preserve the seniority of the House of Commons.

The Parliament Act of 1911 was only ever supposed to be temporary, as the preamble suggests. It is time we got an elected upper house that can actually do its job. For more information about the Elect The Lords campaign, go to www.electthelords.org.uk .

It's time we got some more democracy in this country.