Lords Reform: Some Inconvenient Truths CONOR FARRINGTON Abstract The failure of the Coalition government’s attempt to reform the House of Lords has by no means taken further reform off the political agenda. The commitment to installing an elected upper chamber is still widely shared across the political spectrum, on the basis of percep- tions that the House of Lords lacks democratic legitimacy. Against this view, this article con- siders recent literature upon non-electoral representation, deliberative democracy and bicameralism, which together highlight the possibility of an unelected second chamber play- ing a legitimate role within a wider (democratic) system of government. The article then con- siders the House of Lords from this perspective, reflecting on changes in the upper chamber since the 1999 reforms and evaluating its role within the wider political system. The paper concludes by suggesting that political debate should focus upon small-scale reforms to ensure that the Lords becomes more effective, representative and legitimate, within the con- straints of its present role. Keywords: Constitutional reform, House of Lords, House of Commons, British politics Introduction ‘REFORM of the House of Lords is on the agenda (again).’ That was the opening sen- tence of my 2012 article on Lords reform for The Political Quarterly, 1 but it would serve just as well for this one, and indeed for any article on the Lords for the past century or so. The failure of the Coalition government’s attempt to reform the upper chamber has by no means taken Lords reform off the politi- cal agenda, and all the main parties are likely to include commitments to installing a wholly or largely elected upper chamber in their General Election manifestos. Ed Mili- band has signalled, for instance, that a Labour government would replace the Lords with a wholly elected ‘Senate of the Nations and Regions’ composed of senators elected on a geographical basis. Alex Salmond, meanwhile, has called for a ‘peasants’ revolt- type’ vote (i.e. a referendum) to abolish the House of Lords and articulate ‘something forward-looking and modern in England’. (Given how the original peasants’ revolt ended, one wonders if this is the best source of inspiration for reformers.) The left-leaning media has also devoted increasing attention to the need for reform, building on a longer tradition of negative coverage of the Lords to highlight perceived weaknesses of the current upper chamber. A recent Guardian editorial is characteristic of the genre: emphasising the excessive size of the Lords and the patronage-dominated appointments system, it calls for a ‘smaller, democratic and federally based second chamber, perhaps not in London, as part of the wider and urgent renegotiation of the UK’s whole constitutional framework’. 2 Many academics, too, have embraced reforming zeal in recent years, often leading to indulgence in surprisingly dogmatic lan- guage. Patrick Dunleavy and John Dryzek, for instance, stated in 2009 that ‘[t]he Lords still lacks any democratic legitimacy’, while in 2010 Iain McLean stated bluntly, if injudi- ciously, that ‘[n]o intellectually defensible claim can be made for retaining an unelected house of Parliament’. 3 This article argues not only that such claims can indeed be made in an intellectu- ally defensible manner, but also that much of the political, media and academic rhetoric about the upper chamber misunderstands and/or misrepresents key arguments surrounding Lords reform. Calling for an elected upper chamber is a popular tactic The Political Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 2, April–June 2015 © The Author 2015. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2015 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 297