Elect the Lords

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Elect The Lords is a campaign established in September 2004 by the New Politics Network and Charter88 calling for the United Kingdom House of Lords to be replaced by a predominantly elected Second Chamber. The campaign was established following Charter88 and the Network's decision to establish a partnership agreement called the Democracy Project designed to kick start a number of democratic reform initiatives in the UK.

House of Lords reform was chosen as a key issue following a controversial vote in Parliament in 2003 when 5 options for reforming the Lords were proposed and all of them were voted down. The least unpopular option however was for an 80% elected / 20% appointed chamber, which fell by three votes in the House of Commons. The most unpopular option was for a wholly appointed House. Despite this, the government went on to pursue the fully appointed option, moving to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords in 2004. This option was strongly opposed in Parliament.

Singer-songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg went on to receive significant attention for his secondary mandate system, in which members of the House of Lords would be appointed from party lists in proportion to the number of votes cast for each political party. This proposal appears to have found favour among a number of government ministers including Peter Hain and Lord Falconer (though Mr Hain later switched to supporting a system of direct election independent of the choice of the Commons). A secondary mandate has not enjoyed any support outside of the Labour Party and is opposed by many democratic reformers as it would exclude independent candidates and severely disadvantage smaller parties. On 21 February 2005, at the launch of the cross-party sponsored Second Chamber of Parliament Bill, Tony Wright (Labour MP for Cannock Chase) described such a system as "dangerous and mad".

Some people favour the idea of an entirely elected Second Chamber, but opponents say that such a chamber would simply duplicate the Commons and become entirely politicised, losing the independence and specialist knowledge that non-political appointed members could provide.

Supporting organisations

The following organisations are supporters of the Elect the Lords Campaign:

External links

[Elect the Lords]

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