Douglas Carswell's Blog

What should we think about Lords reform?

Not a great deal, is the short answer. With the country on its knees, there are all kinds of things that the government could usefully be doing to improve the economic mess we are in. Faffing about with the Lords when the country is crying out for real change would be absurd.    

If, however, one must take a view on Lords reform, it should be this; those who make the law ought to be answerable to those who live under the law. Currently those who sit in the Lords are not answerable to the rest of us. In an ideal world this ought to change.

The trouble is that the SW1 gang have managed to come up with a proposal for Lords reform which would actually make things worse.

As an MP, I am accountable for what I do now not so much because I was elected two years ago, but rather because I face the prospect of an election in two or three years time. It is that "having to be re-elected" bit that keeps politicians on their toes.

Yet the proposal for Lords reform we are being offered would mean members of the upper House having a single, 15 year term of office – with no re-election at the end of it.

Think about the decade and a half of broken pre-election promises the rest of us would have to endure. Once in, their Lardships could do as they pleased. Constituency casework?  If the constituents were lucky.   

And just imagine what a 15 year term would mean in practice? If we had it today, we’d be having laws made for us by people elected in the late 1990s. A time when people still thought Tony Blair was a “pretty straight kinda guy” and Gordon Brown was an economic genius.

There’s only one way to make sure that proposals for change are sensible; put it to the people in a referendum. If – as with AV – the reformist side manages to come up with an asinine proposal, they will lose. Knowing that they have to put it to the people, might just make them suggest something sensible.

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