Having only been an MP since 2019, Scott Benton has probably not yet set his sights on a peerage. These days, though, who can be sure? Mr Benton has been suspended as a Conservative MP this week after offering to lobby ministers for a fake gambling company. His Commons career hangs in the balance. But he need not give up all hope. Judging by today’s contemptible Lords appointment system, and by the system’s resistance to change, even Mr Benton is still in with a shot of eventual ermine.
House of Lords reform is often regarded in political circles as a niche subject, of great fascination to constitutional anoraks but of no serious interest to ordinary voters. That could be about to alter. There are three main reasons. The current appointments system makes things worse. The system is being increasingly abused to reward unworthy donors, cronies and time servers. And any new Labour government will have to make changes in order to govern effectively, even if it does not see the issue as a priority.
Britain’s upper house is ludicrously and indefensibly large. It contains more members than the elected House of Commons. Officially, there are now 776 members, as well as 53 others who are still peers but are classified as not eligible or non-attending. Numbers have ballooned, largely because of political appointments that have substantially redefined the balance of the house. The lord speaker, John McFall, complained to the Guardian this week that only two non-party independent peers can be added each year. Even so, the House of Lords is around a third larger today than it was in 1999.
Capping the total at 600 has been intermittently discussed but – since turkeys do not normally vote for Christmas – not implemented. Reformers have put forward more radical changes, including the election of some or all members of the Lords. None of these efforts has yet got very far either. Now the irresistible dynamic of a corrupt political patronage system is about to reassert itself. The already overlarge upper house is poised to become not smaller, as it should, but larger still.
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have both submitted lists under the so-called resignation honours process, a sleazy system that has been allowed to spread unchecked in recent decades. Mr Johnson’s initial list of rewards for failure reportedly stretched to more than 100 names, including his own father. Some names have now apparently been trimmed. Ms Truss, who set an all-time record last year for the 49-day brevity of her premiership, has also submitted her own list of shame, from which anyone possessing a moral compass would surely plead to be excluded.
These lists will thrust the whole House of Lords nomination process back into the public arena, whether the beneficiaries and the political parties like it or not. Rishi Sunak still has the chance to claim some moral high ground by stopping the Johnson and Truss lists in their tracks and abolishing the resignation honours process altogether. He should seize the opportunity while he can. If he does not, a more drastic and democratic reform of this corrupt and abused process must surely follow before too long.
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