Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree 921AA Doctor of Philosophy in Government

DE-MYSTIFYING INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN TRANSITION

Richard Reid

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree 921AA Doctor of Philosophy in Government

University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis

April 2016

Abstract

This thesis evaluates the role of ideas in the reform of the House of Lords in the United

Kingdom. A multi-dimensional theoretical approach has been devised which integrates

Parsons’ (2003; 2002) concept of the cross-cutting idea, Hirschman’s (1991) reactionary theses, and Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change. This theoretical approach was applied to primary data gathered through semi-structured interviews conducted with a representative sample of 77 members of the House of Lords in late 2012 and early 2013. The data from these interviews has been supplemented, where necessary, with documentary analysis of secondary sources.

Two key empirical findings emerge from the research. First, changes in the House of Lords in the period since 1997 have often been caused by factors other than direct legislation. For example the types of people appointed to the House of Lords since the election of the Blair government in 1997 have affected the culture and work of the Lords in significant ways.

Second, the positions adopted by peers towards Lords’ reform are not as materially driven as has been claimed. This thesis provides evidence for the conclusion that ideas about British democracy and government, and the role of the House of Lords within the governance of

Britain, are of central importance to the positions taken by peers; more important than their position within the House of Lords itself.

Building on these findings, this thesis demonstrates that the influence of ideas on continuity and change in the House of Lords is more complex than is evident in the existing literature.

Both incremental cultural changes within the Lords, and critical importance of ideas are

iii shown to be fundamental to understanding reform. These findings provide a clearer understanding of how the House of Lords could, and should, be reformed in the future.

Contents

List of Figures Ix List of Tables Xi Acknowledgements xiii

1. Introduction 1 Research Context 1 Research Problem 2 Research Questions 3 Contribution to Empiricism 4 Contribution to Theory 5 Research Methods 5 Organisational Structure 6 Ethics 10 Audience 10 Contribution 11

2. House of Lords Reform in Historical and Literary Perspective 13 Introduction 13 Review of the Academic Literature 14 The Origins of the House of Lords: The Witenagemot to the House of 25 Parliament In Conclusion 32

3. Understanding Lords Reform – a Multi-Dimensional Institutional 33 Approach Introduction 33 The Rationale for the Theories Selected 34 Streeck and Thelen’s Theorisation of Gradual Transformative Change 36 Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction 43 Parsons’ Theory of the Cross-Cutting Issue 48 In Conclusion – Towards a Multi-Dimensional Institutional Approach? 51

4. Research Design 55 Introduction 55 Epistemology and Ontology 55 The Methodological Approach 59 Methods 60 In Conclusion 71

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5. A Story of One Act and a Flop – Historical Institutionalism and the 73 House of Lords post-1997 Introduction 73 Streeck and Thelen’s Types of Institutional Change 75 The House of Lords Act 1999 76 The Impact of the House of Lords Act 1999: An Application of Streeck and 88 Thelen’s Heuristic The Cameron-Clegg Reform Attempt 98 Application of Streeck and Thelen’s Heuristic 111 In Conclusion 117

6. The Question of Election – Hirschman’s Rhetorical Typologies 121 Introduction 121 Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction 122 The Context 124 Dominant Narratives on Reform 127 The Three Theses Explored 131 Progressive Rhetoric – The Righteous Quest 143 In Conclusion 149

7. Ideas or Interests? – Parsons and the Crosscutting Issue 151 Introduction 151 Parsons’ Theory of the Cross-Cutting Issue 153 In Conclusion 169

8. What Have We Learned? 173 Introduction 173 Summary of the Findings from the Three Empirical Chapters 173 What Have We Learned? The Research Questions Revisited 179 In Conclusion 186

9. In Conclusion – Towards a Multi-Dimensional Institutional Approach to 187 Change Introduction 187 The Purpose of the Research Revisited 187 Theoretical, Methodological, and Empirical Findings 188 Strengths and Weaknesses of the Approach 193 What’s next for Lords reform? 198 Future Avenues of Research 204 Conclusion 207

References 209 Appendix 219 Appendix 1 – Consent Form 219 Appendix 2 – Plain Language Statement 221 Appendix 3 – Contact Email 223

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List of Figures

Figure 3.1 Crosscutting individual mobilization – why ideas matter 50

Figure 4.1 Interview schedule 64

Figure 5.1 Membership of the House of Lords since 1958 113

Figure 5.2 Number of House of Lords members January 2000 – April 2011 114

Figure 7.1 Crosscutting individual mobilization – why ideas matter 154

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Types of institutional change – processes and results 40 Table 3.2 Types of gradual transformative change 41 Table 3.3 Summary of the empirical rationale for the theories 52

Table 4.1 Positivism, interpretivism and realism compared 58 Table 4.2 Methods employed by the three theories 61 Table 4.3 Breakdown of sample group by gender 67 Table 4.4 Breakdown of sample group by peerage 68 Table 4.5 Breakdown of sample group by party 69

Table 5.1 Types of institutional change: processes and results 75 Table 5.2 Types of gradual transformative change 76 Table 5.3 The stop-go cycle of reform of the House of Lords 77 Table 5.4 Streeck and Thelen’s heuristic applied to the House of Lords Act 97 1999 Table 5.5 Members of the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords 103 Reform Bill Table 5.6 Streeck and Thelen’s heuristic applied to the Coalition reform 116 attempt

Table 7.1 Voting figures from the free vote on the composition of the 158 House of Lords, 4 February 2003 Table 7.2 Voting figures from the free vote on the composition of the 158 House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 Table 7.3 Fully appointed, voting figures by party from the free vote on the 160 composition of the House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 Table 7.4 Fully elected, voting figures by party from the free vote on the 160 composition of the House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 Table 7.5 Fully appointed, voting figures by party from the free vote on the 163 composition of the House of Lords, 4 February 2003 and 14 March 2007 Table 7.6 Fully elected, voting figures by party from the free vote on the 163 composition of the House of Lords, 4 February 2003 and 14 March 2007

Table 8.1 Summary of the key findings of the three empirical chapters 179

Table 9.1 Party positions on Lords reform 2015 203

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to acknowledge the peers who agreed to be interviewed as part of my research. Without their participation this project would not have been possible.

The kindness and generosity showed to me during the interview period made this project not only possible, but very enjoyable. I would also like to thank Anne Evans for being my

British-‘grandmother’ during my time in the United Kingdom. Anne made me feel at home in

London, and her support during that period will never be forgotten.

To Dr Phil Larkin and Professor David Marsh, my panel members, I owe immense gratitude.

Phil has been supporting me since supervising my honours dissertation, and was a most amiable host during parts of my time in London. Dave has been such an asset to me during the last three years. Many thanks are also due to Professor Gerry Stoker who throughout the course of my candidature has been an invaluable source of advice, and to Lorna Evans who was so instrumental to my completing. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the following Australian-based academics that have provided advice and kindly read and commented on various drafts of chapters over the years – Dr Kerryn Baker, Professor Linda

Botterill, Dr Selen Ercan, and Dr Paul Fawcett.

Of all my academic supporters I would like to thank most Professor Mark Evans. If it was not for Mark’s ongoing support I would never have been able to complete this thesis. Mark provided me with so many opportunities which made my time as a PhD student immensely rewarding and enjoyable. To Mark I owe so very much, and to him I will be forever grateful.

My final thanks go to my incomparably supportive family – to Mary, Dad, Alison and

Michael. To my partner, Mitiana, your love and understanding during the final stages of my

xiii thesis enabled me to keep on going. Now that it is finished I hope to be much less difficult!

Of all though thanks must be given particularly to my unfailingly amazing mother! Not only do I owe this thesis to Mum, but everything I have in my life. My gratitude to her is beyond that which words can express. All I can say is – I completed the thesis Mum!

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Chapter One – Introduction

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Research Context

The Blair Labour government elected in 1997 had a commitment to a two-staged approach to reforming the House of Lords. The first stage would be to remove the hereditary peers from automatic membership of the Lords; the second stage was to provide a comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. In 2000, the Labour government legislated to remove the bulk of the hereditary peers, but conceded an amendment, forced by the Conservatives in the House of

Lords, which allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain until the second stage of reform took place.

Through the remaining ten years in office there were various proposals for stage two of reform. These included white papers, a royal commission, votes in both Houses – twice, and various other schemes and recommendations coming from those outside of government.

Irrespective of all these proposals stage two of reform was never achieved, and when the

Labour Party left office in 2010 the House of Lords was still unfinished business.

Due to the coalition formed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (who had a longstanding commitment to reform of the Lords) in 2010, comprehensive reform of the

House of Lords re-emerged on the political agenda. The Coalition proposed electing 80% of the membership of the House of Lords. This bill, when introduced into the House of

Commons, was a complete failure in almost every respect. Not only did it fail to pass, but it seemed to only strengthen opposition against the introduction of elections to the House of

Lords.

It was in the period immediately following this latest reform failure that this research was conducted. As a result there were few peers interviewed who had not formed a view on reform of the House of Lords. Indeed many of the views put forward were clearly in response to the recently defeated legislation. This made the period of research timely and was fortuitous.

As a result of the Coalition’s failure to introduce elections to the House of Lords, it now appears that wholesale reform is unlikely in the near future. This does not mean however that there is acceptance of the status quo – in 2015 Ed Miliband signalled his support for an elected British Senate – the question of reform of the House of Lords is far from settled. It therefore seems a propitious moment to explore the issue of reform of the House of Lords in more detail, and to consider what issues are at the heart of the debate from the perspective of peers.

Research Problem

The House of Lords, and in particular its reform, has been the focus of much academic endeavour. This being said, there are still important aspects of Lords reform requiring further attention. These are not so much gaps but rather areas where there is work to be done in moving towards a more complete understanding of reform of the House of Lords. The first such area concerns the views of peers on reform. Although much research utilises the views of peers within a broader methodological framework, little research has taken the views of peers to be its focus. The result of this is that those closest to reform, a potentially invaluable resource for understanding the issue, have been under-utilised in academic discussion of the issue. This is the first problem which this research will seek to address.

The second research problem is more theoretical in nature. There has been extremely important research into the House of Lords which has approached the topic with a theoretical framework, in particular the work of Kelso (2009; 2006) and Russell (2000). However, beyond these examples, there has been little other theoretically-informed research into reform of the House of Lords. This research therefore seeks to address this under-explored area of inquiry by applying a multi-dimensional theoretical approach which integrates Streeck and

Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change, Hirschman’s (1991) Rhetoric of

Reaction, and Parsons’ (2003; 2002) conception of the cross-cutting issue.

Each of the theories where selected for the different perspective which they can give to the issue of Lords reform, and in particular their help in understanding the views of peers.

Historical institutionalism allows for the current reform period to be contextualised within the history of the debate, highlighting the importance of gradual changes, and in particular how these can affect the evolution of the broader discussion. Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction was selected as it provides one way in which the many views and positions of peers can be categorised to provide a clearer framework through which to then understand what is at the core of these different perspectives and how these relate to the broader question of Lords reform. Finally, Parsons’ cross-cutting issue allows for the role of ideas to be demonstrated empirically, as far as is possible.

Research Questions

This research project addresses three core research questions:

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained by applying a

theoretically informed approach to understanding stability and change?

What are the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords?

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further

understanding the views of peers on reform?

In combination, it is argued that they provide for a comprehensive understanding of Lords reform.

Contribution to Empiricism

This thesis is primarily concerned with making a contribution to further understanding the

House of Lords and its reform. This empirical contribution is grounded in the research problem discussed above. First, this research has focused on the views of peers by conducting

77 interviews with members of the House of Lords. The purpose of these interviews is to gain an understanding of the views of peers on the House of Lords, how it has been reformed, and their views on how the House of Lords should be reformed. In addition to this, through interviews with key protagonists who have been involved in the reform process, this thesis also seeks to contribute to knowledge of the story of reform of the House of Lords, information which is not currently available elsewhere.

The other contribution to empiricism which this thesis seeks to make, relates to the second part of the research problem discussed above, namely the need for more theoretically informed exploration of the issue of reform. This thesis will apply a multi-dimensional theoretical approach to further understanding the views of peers on reform of the House of

Lords. The application of this theoretical approach provides key insights into both how the

House of Lords has been reformed and the issues surrounding any future reform.

Contribution to Theory

The purpose of the theoretical exploration of reform is primarily focused on providing further understanding of reform of the House of Lords. A multi-dimensional theoretical approach has been constructed which seeks to integrate three distinct theories – Parsons’ (2003; 2002) cross-cutting issue, Hirschman’s (1991) Rhetoric of Reaction and Streeck and Thelen’s

(2005) typology of gradual transformative change. Not only does this thesis contribute to understanding reform of the House of Lords through this theoretical approach, but it also advances the development of the three constitutive theories.

In regards to the contribution to theory, House of Lords reform provides the testing ground upon which to explore the three theories, assessing not only their usefulness in further understanding reform, but also uses empirical application to reflect on the theories themselves. Through empirical exploration the strengths and weaknesses of the three theories will also be analysed.

Research Methods

A methodological approach consistent with the three component theories has been adopted.

Whilst fully recognising the deep issues involved in ontological and epistemological debate, rather than taking a strong a priori position this thesis has allowed the research questions to dictate the direction of the study. This is consistent with the broad position adopted with the field of institution studies – a tradition quite comfortable with mixing range of forms of knowing.

This research is centred on a case study – reform of the House of Lords. This case study was selected as it provides an important and contemporary example of contested institutional

5 reform. This protracted reform period raises questions about the role of ideas in political reform, and the nature of incremental reform, stability and change.

The core of the research question required a sophisticated use of qualitative research in order to examine the subtle relationship between institutions, ideas and interests. As such, the primary method of data collection employed was semi-structured elite interviews. A representative sample of 77 members of the House of Lords was interviewed during late 2012 to early 2013. Peers were asked questions drawn from a standard interviewing schedule, with selected supplementary questions asked. In addition to semi-structured elite interviews, analysis of secondary sources was also an important avenue of data collection. These included debates in Hansard, pamphlets, books and papers produced by government and peers during the debate over reform of the House of Lords. These secondary sources were used primarily to supplement the material gathered through the interviews.

Quantitative voting data, such as the outcomes of votes in the House of Commons and the

House of Lords, was also used as part of the data set underpinning this research project. This data is used to demonstrate the cross-party nature of views on Lords reform, and the protracted nature of the contestation. Although important, quantitative analysis was not the focus of this thesis – future research will pursue quantitative lines of inquiry.

Organisational Structure

In exploring the House of Lords in transition, this thesis will be organised into three substantive parts. The first part of this thesis will be concerned with situating the reform of the House of Lords within its historical, institutional and political context and will also provide an exposition of the theoretical and methodological approach which will be adopted.

In Chapter Two consideration of the case of the House of Lords and its reform will begin.

This chapter will provide a review of the secondary literature will be conducted in the second part of Chapter Two. Although the literature on the House of Lords is by no means exhaustive, there has been some very significant work done in this area. This review will contextualise this research into the House of Lords within the broader literature on parliament in the United Kingdom. The review will also highlight the important gaps in the existing literature – such as the lack of theorisation of House of Lords reform, and the limited attention paid to the views of peers – gaps which this research will be seeking to address.

Following this, an abridged account of the history of the House of Lords from its beginnings to before the 1997 General Election will be presented. This history is intended to familiarise those with little knowledge of the House of Lords to its history, and is also intended to contextualise the post-1997 period, which will form the focus of this research.

The next chapter, Chapter Three, will focus on presenting the theoretical approach adopted in this research. In order to enrich theoretically-founded research in this area, this thesis will adopt a theoretical approach which integrates three distinct theories of institutional continuity and change. The first of these comes from the broader work of historical institutionalism. In particular, Streeck and Thelen’s (2005, pp. 18-33) typology of gradual transformative change which consists of five types of such change: displacement, layering, drift, conversion and exhaustion will be discussed. The second part of the theoretical approach is Hirschman’s three reactionary theses. Hirschman’s (1991) argument is that most reactionary rhetoric can be reduced to three theses – perversity, futility and jeopardy. The final component of the theoretical approach which will be adopted is Parsons’ (2003) cross-cutting issue. Parsons’ argument is that when we find a case where an issue cross-cuts normal boundaries of division, we can most clearly see the role of ideas in politics.

The first part of the thesis concludes with the discussion of the research design informing this project in Chapter Four. In this chapter the ontological and epistemological foundations of this research will be briefly discussed. The purpose of such a discussion is to highlight the consistency of the methodological approach undertaken in comparison with other applications of the theories which form part of the theoretical approach of this project. In addition to this, there will also be a discussion of the methods of data collection which form the foundation of the empirical research conducted, namely semi-structured elite interviews with members of the House of Lords.

The second part of the thesis forms the core contribution of this research project. The purpose of the three chapters in this part is to apply the theoretical approach to the case study of reform of the House of Lords. Chapter Five is focused on applying Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change. This chapter focuses on the two most significant periods of reform in the period since 1997 – the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999 and the recent attempt by the Coalition to introduce a primarily elected second chamber. Through an application of the gradual transformative change concept it is argued that there have been important non-legislative changes to the House of Lords which have been under-researched and may explain changes in the House of Lords since 1997.

The second theory to be applied to the case is Hirschman’s reactionary theses of perversity, futility and jeopardy in Chapter Six. Chapter Six presents substantial evidence for the argument that much of the opposition to introducing a primarily elected second chamber from members of the House of Lords is based on Hirschman’s reactionary theses. In addition to this finding, evidence is also discussed which suggests that a fourth reactionary thesis should be added, namely the “temporality thesis”. The temporality thesis is based on the argument that although a reform proposal may be worthy, or reform may be necessary, the timing of the reform might not be right.

The third and final theory to be applied to reform of the House of Lords is Parsons’ notion of the cross-cutting issue. The application of Parsons’ theory in Chapter Seven begins with a discussion of the four-part criteria which Parsons’ identifies for an issue to be cross-cutting. It is argued that reform of the House of Lords indeed meets these criteria and can therefore be considered a cross-cutting issue. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what this means for the role of ideas in reform of the House of Lords, addressing, and disputing, the often made claim that reform of the House of Lords is all about self-interest for the various parties involved.

The final part of this thesis is concerned with the discussion of the findings of the research, and the consequent conclusions. Chapter Eight discusses the findings of the three empirical chapters which made up the second part of this thesis. The findings from part two will be presented, and then explored in relation to the research questions which emerged from the literature review in Chapter Two. The key insights which arise from the theoretical approach will be highlighted and the argument made that a theoretically-driven approach to exploring reform of the House of Lords provided important insights into furthering understanding of both the process, and the effects, of the post-1997 period of Lords reform.

In Chapter Nine an overview of what has been discussed in the preceding chapters will be presented. This includes a reassessment of the aims of the thesis, the theoretical and methodological findings, and the empirical findings. In addition, a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach adopted in this research will be presented, which centre on the limitations of the qualitative approach and the need for mixed methods. The chapter concludes with an overview of future avenues for research into reform of the House of Lords.

Ethics

This research project was conducted in accordance with statutory ethical requirements. The project was vetted by the University of Canberra Human Ethics Committee under Project

Number 12-168. Approval was received from the Human Ethics Committee on the 31st of

August, 2012. As part of the process of applying for ethics approval various documents were produced which were provided to potential participants when the request to be interviewed was sent. These involved a consent form, and a Plain Language Statement (PLS).1 In addition to these documents, ethics approval was also provided for the contact email or letter which accompanied the consent form and the PLS.2

Audience

This thesis has two primary academic audiences. The first audience is very specific and is made up of researchers concerned with understanding reform in the British parliament, in particular those scholars who are interested in reform of the House of Lords. The material of most interest to this first audience will be the insights into Lords reform which have been gained by both focusing on the views of peers, and by applying a theoretical approach to further understanding these views. The second audience is much broader and consists of political scientists both in Britain and internationally. The material which will be of most interest to this second audience concerns the use of reform of the House of Lords as a case study through which to explore empirically the theoretical approaches which form the means of analysis in this thesis. This thesis is also intended for those researchers outside of political science, such as the cognate disciplines of history and sociology.

1 Please see Appendix 1 and 2 for copies of the consent form and the PLS. 2 Please see Appendix 3 for an example of the contact email sent to peers.

In addition to the two different academic audiences this thesis is also intended for those involved with politics outside academia. The findings of this research provide key insights into the tactics of reform in general and the reform of the House of Lords in particular, and the associated issues with moving towards an elected second chamber. This material may be useful to those involved with the design of any future reform proposal. Although this thesis by no means offers an ideal method for introducing future reform, it does provide a forensic understanding of the issues which will need to be addressed if any future reform proposal is to be successful.

Contribution

The core contribution of this thesis then is to explore the issue of reform of the House of

Lords in a unique and innovative way. The combination of focusing both on the views of peers, and introducing theories which have not before been applied to this question previously, enables this research to provide important insights into Lords reform. This research is therefore able to provide an original theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of the reform of the House of Lords.

Chapter Two – House of Lords Reform in Literary and Historical Perspective

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Introduction

With this chapter begins consideration of the case study which will form the focus of this research – reform of the House of Lords. The first substantive section of this chapter will provide a discussion of the academic literature on the House of Lords. The House of Lords has been the focus of much research, although academic interest in the House of Lords increased following the reform of the Blair government in 1999. This increase in scholarly attention has continued in the 15 years since the removal of the majority of the hereditary peers.

The second section of this chapter will provide an overview of the history of the House of

Lords until 1997. This history will be by no means exhaustive but will rather highlight some of the important changes in the House of Lords over the centuries, drawing on sources which have outlined its history in much more detail elsewhere. The House of Lords has a long history. This history is important for understanding the House of Lords as it was at the election of the Blair Labour government in 1997, the period which will be the focus of this thesis. As Meg Russell has argued:

… one cannot fully understand today’s chamber without some grasp of its history. The same

could be said of all institutions to some extent, but it is rarely more true than in this case. The

Lords has an extremely long history, and continues to be governed partly by conventions and

traditions that have settled over centuries. A better understanding of the chamber’s past can

therefore help to explain what it is today (2013, p.13).

Review of the Academic Literature

Parliaments have existed for millennia with many examples, including the famous Senate of ancient Rome. However, it is ‘The nineteenth century [which] has often been represented as a golden age of parliaments, where they enjoyed greater discretion and influence’ (Halligan et al., 2007, p.2). Since this ‘golden age’ of parliaments, ‘legislatures came to be seen as increasingly marginalized’ (Norton, 2005, p.3) as the result of a fusion between the legislature and the executive, with the executive dominating the parliament. This domination was a result of the rise of organised parties, which through the enforcement of strict party discipline, meant important decisions were often taken within caucus rather than on the floor of the chamber. As Uhr and Wanna argued in relation to Australia, although equally applicable to Britain, parliament ‘is frequently marginalised from the decision-making and policy processes of executive government’ (Uhr and Wanna, 2000, p.10). The overall result of this marginalisation has been the prominence of the following view: ‘In the first half of the twentieth century, the power of parliamentary institutions around the world suffered a distinct decline’ (Halligan et al., 2007, p.1).

Although this view of the marginalised parliament may still be prevalent, the academic world has begun to return to the subject of parliaments. This resurgence is due in part to the focus on different views of power, as Philip Norton argues: ‘Looking at the different definitions of power is suggestive of a wider relevance [of parliaments]’ (Norton, 2005, p.7). Moving away from the traditional coercive definition of power results in a greater relevance of parliaments

14 as agenda-setting institutions which resolve disputes through both coercion, and also importantly, persuasion (Norton, 2005, pp.5-7).

The evolving academic views concerning the role of parliament has coincided with the revival of parliament over the latter half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries ‘on the back of extensive institutional change and adaption’ (Halligan et al., 2007, p.1). This institutional change can be seen, most appropriately for this thesis, in the renewed debate surrounding reform of the House of Lords following the Blair Government’s 1999 reforms removing the majority of hereditary peers from the House.

This resurgence of interest in parliaments is not confined to new or emerging parliamentary states, but also extends to interest in ‘well-established parliaments in Western Europe, where parliamentary roles have evolved as a result of constitutional and electoral changes’ (Halligan et al., 2007, pp.1-2). Interest and research into parliament and its institutions is, as around the world, resurgent in Britain. Examples of this resurgence include Philip Norton’s Parliament in British Politics which, as Norton states in its preface, ‘seeks to provide a rich description of the institution of Parliament [in Britain]’ (Norton, 2005, p.xi). Thus, consistent with the wider academic world, Britain has renewed its interest in its political institutions, and their changing functions and roles.

In response to this renewed interest in the roles and workings of legislatures, two broad categories of research have developed. The first explores the nature and role of legislatures from a comparative perspective. The comparative approach, typified by the work of Arend

Lijphart in his seminal Patterns of Democracy (1999), is utilised for many reasons. One purpose of the comparative approach is to understand the role of some feature of parliament, by exploring the feature through the ways it functions in differing legislatures. Two recent examples of the use of comparative research are Russo and Wiberg’s (2010) comparative

15 looks into parliamentary questioning, and Andre Kaiser’s (2008) comparative exploration of parliamentary opposition in legislatures based on the Westminster model. A classic general work of comparative research is found in Mezey’s (1979) Comparative Legislatures.

Another purpose for employing the comparative approach is lesson-drawing. From this approach, researchers explore and compare legislatures to see if any lessons can be learned.

This research is focused on exploring varieties of institutional examples for use in institutional reform of other legislatures. A particularly relevant example of this is the research conducted by Meg Russell (2000). In her book, Russell explores second chambers around the world with a focus on gleaning ideas for future reform of the House of Lords.

The second broad approach to the study of parliament is single-country studies which focus on one institutional arrangement or one legislature. This approach is aimed at understanding a particular country’s political institutions, their history, practices, and often their future. This research approach can be found focused on many countries; an example of this approach is the work of Singleton et al. (2006), who provide an in-depth overview of the Australian political institutional landscape, and Richards et al.’s (2014) study of British governance.

Another area of this research type takes as its focus solely the legislature, rather than the whole institutional framework. An example of this type of research can be seen in the work of Philip Norton (2005) on the British Parliament. The single-country approach can also have a comparative focus when it is used to provide empirical foundations for use as case-studies.

There is, however, a strong non-comparative strain within this research approach.

Within this country-specific focus of research there has been much research on the British parliament. Research into the British parliament is an established field within political science; important examples of such research include Vernon Bogdanor (2011; 2009), Mark

Evans (2003) and Matthew Flinders (2002), who discuss parliament within the broader and

16 evolving constitutional framework, and Norton (2005) who focused on an in-depth exploration of the British Parliament itself. The rise of the career politician has been another area of interest regarding the British Parliament (Cowley, 2012; King 1981; Riddell, 1995).

In addition to this literature concerned with the British Parliament generally, are two specific literatures focused on the House of Commons and the House of Lords specifically.

As the House of Commons is by the far the pre-eminent chamber at Westminster, it is therefore no surprise that the bulk of research on Britain’s parliament has focused on the

House of Commons. Some of this research is focused on the historical House of Commons, for example the recent contribution of Eggers and Spirling (2014) who explore the history of party cohesion in the 19th and early 20th century House of Commons, although most recent research is concerned with the contemporary House of Commons. Of this research there has been much interest in the role, and changing role, of parties in the House of Commons, with a focus on voting behaviour; much of this research being provided by Patrick Cowley and

Mark Stuart (2014; 2012; 2010). In addition to this literature there has been research on the role of debates in the House of Commons (Cobb, 2009; Kellerman, 2012) and a focus on the

House of Commons and equality and minority representation (Evans, 2012; O’Brien, 2012;

Saalfeld, 2011).

Two further themes of research have been prominent in recent research on the House of

Commons, namely the burgeoning role for committees and reform of the House of

Commons. In the recent period the Select Committees of the House of Commons have grown in importance in the British political system. With high-profile inquiries, these committees have garnered unprecedented media attention. It is no surprise therefore that recently Select

Committees of the House of Commons have received increased attention from academics, with many examples such work (Benton and Russell, 2013; Kubala, 2011; Thompson, 2013;

2014).

The other area of recent interest has been reform of the House of Commons. This is particularly pertinent for this thesis, as it is reform of the House of Lords which will form the focus. It is important, therefore, to acknowledge that there has been recent interest in reforming the House of Commons (see Kelso, 2009). There have been different causes of such interest, although the expenses scandal where MPs and their expenses came under intense media interest and thus public attention is a notable example. The first stream of research in this area focuses on the actual reform blue-print which came out of the Wright

Committee, such as Meg Russell’s (2011a) piece in this area. The other stream in this area concerns particular changes to the House of Commons, such as pre-appointment scrutiny hearings (Hazell et al., 2012) and the election of the Speaker (Armitage, 2012).

From this we can see that there has been much written on the House of Commons both in terms of volume and breadth, although of more interest for the purposes of this thesis is the literature on the other chamber of the parliament as Westminster – the House of Lords. After reviewing the literature on the House of Lords there emerges three currents of interest. The first research theme explores the House of Lords with a focus on the historical House of

Lords, while the first research theme, the second theme of research focuses on the contemporary House of Lords. The final of the three themes of research on the House of

Lords concerns reform of the House of Lords. Research in this area appears to have both contemporary and historical elements. Therefore, although it is possible to differentiate three different currents of research, there is naturally a level of overlap between them; a key example of such overlap can be seen in the work of Donald Shell (2007), which covers the history of the House of Lords, the current work of the Lords, and reform of the House of

Lords in one book. In this section we will now consider each of the three identified research themes in turn.

The first stream of interest in the House of Lords relates to its history. Due to its long history, the House of Lords has been of interest to historians and political historians. There is an extensive literature which examines different aspects of the historical House of Lords. Some of which, like the work of R.W. Perceval (1953) and D. Large (1963) was drawn from in the first section of this chapter. This research often takes a certain period of the history of the

House of Lords as its focus, for example Thomas’ (2012) research on the Conservative Party and the House of Lords following the Parliament Act 1911. Another notable example of this type of period-specific research is Richard Davis’ (2008) book on the House of Lords from

1811-1846.

Within this historical theme of research on the House of Lords, sits a large body of literature devoted to the former judicial functions of the Lords. These functions ceased to be performed within the House of Lords with the establishment of the Supreme Court in 2005. The

Supreme Court was established by means of the Constitutional Reform Act, which in addition to the establishment of the Supreme Court also attempted to abolish the Lord Chancellorship.

This research on the judicial function of the House of Lords is varied in both its aims and its methods. Scholarship in this area ranges from historical discussion of the Law Lords such as the work of Paterson (2013) and Blom-Cooper and others (2009), to more specific discussions employing the Law Lords as a case through which to explore legal theory, for example the work of Hanretty (2013; 2014). Although varied in its focus, this stream of interest is very focused on the judicial functions of the House of Lords, and is therefore not considered directly relevant for further discussion in this chapter. This being said, this literature does offer a valuable insight into a role performed by the House of Lords generally, and in more recent times a committee of the House of Lords specifically.

The final type of research within this theme is work which at the time was considered a contemporary study but do its age can now be considered as part of the historical literature on

19 the House of Lords. Some of this literature has already been presented in the first section of this chapter when discussing the pre-1997 history of the House of Lords. Further to this, there are many such examples of this work including the earlier research of Donald Shell (1992), and Shell and Beamish (1995). In making such a conclusion about formerly contemporary research, 1999 is taken as the cut-off point with work published prior to the House of Lords

Act 1999 considered historical. This point will be developed further later in this thesis, but briefly, as the period since 1999 has seen so much change within the House of Lords, any work published before this period must be considered historical and although much has remained, too much has changed for this research to be considered as exploring the contemporary House of Lords.

The second stream of interest in the literature on the House of Lords focuses on the contemporary House of Lords. Research in this area seeks to understand the House of Lords as it currently is. Although this work will often provide short histories of the House of Lords, it is the contemporary House of Lords which remains the focus. There emerge three areas of research within the literature on the contemporary House of Lords: the House of Lords itself, the policy effects of the House of Lords, and the House of Lords as a case study for those with an primary interest outside of politics. Let us now consider each of these in turn.

Much has been written on trying to understand the House of Lords as it currently exists.

Research in this area often focuses on a particular aspect of the contemporary House of

Lords, mirroring the same approach which characterises the work of those who explore the historical House of Lords. For example, Johnston and Pattie (2011) examine the voting of parties and the crossbenchers on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which was a most controversial piece of legislation enabling the re-drawing of the electoral boundaries with many seeing the Conservative Party as those with the most to gain. Other examples of research in this area are Eason’s (2009) work on the effect of an increasing

20 number of women peers since 1999, and Adi et al.’s (2014) analysis of the tweets of the

Labour frontbench in the Lords, and Russell and Sciara’s (2007) discussion of voting in the

Lords.

The most prominent recent contribution to this area of study is Meg Russell’s (2013) The

Contemporary House of Lords. In this substantial and impressive work, Meg Russell seeks to move beyond questions of reform to understand the House of Lords as it is today. As Russell

(2013, p.2) argues:

Given the failure of repeated reform schemes, and the level of controversy that has

surrounded them, it is no wonder that the Lords is so widely associated with the need for

reform. But this is now off the government’s agenda until at least 2015, and the obstacles to

large-scale change remain daunting. In the meantime the Lords gets on with its daily business

of scrutinizing and amending government legislation, questioning ministers, and conducting

debates and committee work – all of which largely goes on away from the public gaze.

The above quotation illustrates the argument that large-scale reform seems unlikely, at least in the short term, therefore we must dedicate more attention to understanding the House of

Lords as it is rather than constantly focusing on reform. Of course there is no disputing the value of understanding the House of Lords as it current exist, although it is the contention of this thesis that there is still much about reform of the House of Lords which is under- researched. In addition, the tumultuous nature of Lords reform makes it an excellent case study for theoretical application.

There have not been a substantial number of studies of the House of Lords from a theoretical perspective. Although there are important pieces of research exploring the concepts of democracy, legitimacy and representation in debates over reform of the House of Lords

(Bochel and Defty, 2012; Kelso, 2006), and an application of public choice theory (MacLean,

2011), there are two important recent theoretical contributions.

The first of these is Kelso’s (2009) book Parliamentary Reform at Westminster. Kelso (2009) employs an historical institutionalist approach to exploring parliamentary reform at

Westminster. Although this book spends most attention on reform of the House of Commons, it also provides substantial, historically informed, analysis of the debates over reform of the

House of Lords.

The other recent theoretical contribution in this area comes from Meg Russell. Russell in various publications (2000; 2010) has discussed reform of the House of Lords within the broader conceptual framework of bicameralism. In particular, Russell employs effectively the

House of Lords as a case study through which to explore the theory of bicameralism further.

There has therefore been important theoretically informed research into the House of Lords and its reform, and it is this literature in particular which this thesis seeks to contribute.

The second strand of research on the contemporary House of Lords is concerned with exploring the policy effects of the House of Lords. The classic example of this type of research comes from Russell and Sciara (2008), who conducted extensive research into the policy impacts of defeats in the House of Lords. This research was further developed in another piece by Meg Russell (2010) with more of a focus on the effects of the impact of the

House of Lords following recent reforms, and the lessons for bicameralism generally.

Another interesting example of research in this vein comes from Bochel and Defty (2010). In their work, Bochel and Defty explore the notion of expertise, a concept often linked with the merits of an unelected House of Lords. They explore this perceived expertise through a look at welfare policy.

The third strand of research within those studies of the contemporary House of Lords is the interest in the contemporary House of Lords from those outside of the study of politics. One notable example of this is Emma Crewe’s (2005) Lords of Parliament: Manners, rituals and politics. In this substantial piece of research, anthropologist Emma Crewe provides an extremely rich and detailed study of the House of Lords during the period around the House of Lords Act 1999. This book provides much material on the House of Lords on the ground, including many interactions between Crewe and members of the House of Lords. This interaction with peers is something which this thesis seeks also to focus. Another example of the use of the House of Lords as a case study for those outside of politics is Matthew Bond’s

(2012) research into club memberships held by peers.

The last of the three main areas of research into the House of Lords is that research which focuses primarily on reform of the House of Lords. Although much of the literature on the

House of Lords touches on the question of reform, this stream in the literature focuses explicitly on reform. It is possible for the purposes of this discussion to divide this literature into two, those with an historical focus and those with a focus on Lords reform into the future. Let us now consider these in turn.

First, there has been much written on the history of reform of the House of Lords. This historical literature divides into that with a focus on large periods of reform, and that which focuses on specific reforms. Since 2011 there have been two significant books published on the history of reform of the House of Lords in the period since the passage of the Parliament

Act 1911. The first of these comes from Peter Dorey and Alexandra Kelso (2011), with their book House of Lords Reform Since 1911: Must the Lords Go?3. In this book Dorey and Kelso examine the various attempts at reform and their successes and failures, concluding that:

3 The title is adapted from an early Labour Party manifesto.

There is, in the final analysis, only one certainty with regard to House of Lords reform;

political expediency invariably prevails over institutional idealism. (Kelso and Dorey, 2011,

p.228)

The other book recently published on the history of reform of the House of Lords since 1911 is the work of Chris Ballinger (2012) entitled The House of Lords 1911-2011: A Century of

Non-Reform. In this substantial piece of history Ballinger relies on much archival research, resulting in an illuminating piece of work. Ballinger (2012, p.2) characterises the last century as a period of non-reform:

… none of the changes which have been realised constitutes ‘reform’ as it was understood

when the Preamble to the Parliament Act was written.

Although this is position of Ballinger, much of the literature would disagree with this assessment of the last century in the history of the House of Lords. It could be argued that

Ballinger’s narrow criteria for reform results in his under-valuing the substantial reforms to the House, particularly those of a non-legislative nature.

The second type of research into the history of reform of the House of Lords is that which focuses on particular reforms, or periods of reform. Of this type of research there are several examples. The first is the work of Peter Dorey (2006; 2008) on the Labour Party and reform of the House of Lords. Other research in this area takes as its focus the House of Lords Act

1999. An example of this research comes from Cockerell (2001) in his piece on the politics of the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999.

The second strand of literature on reform of the House of Lords looks to the future. This research is focused on making suggestions for the future of reform of the House of Lords.

The first example of this type of research was mentioned earlier and comes from Meg Russell

(2000). In this book Russell discusses second chambers around the world with the purpose of

24 gleaning some lessons for reform of the House of Lords. Another example of work which seeks to draw lessons from overseas comes from Archer’s (2013) research into lessons which can be drawn for reform of the House of Lords from Australia. Other examples of this literature include the work of Borthwick (2001), and two pieces by Baldwin (1999; 2007).

This research appears to focus on the future composition of the House of Lords, the question which seems to dominant contemporary discussion of Lords reform.

The Origins of the House of Lords: The Witenagemot to the House of Parliament

This section will provide an overview of the history of the House of Lords from the Saxon

Witenagemot to the election of the Blair Labour government in 1997. This history will be structured around four periods. The first period focuses on the beginnings of the House of

Lords from the Saxon Witenagemot. Following this, the second period covers the Tudor,

Stuart and Hanoverian dynasties. The third period covers the House of Lords in its zenith, the

19th Century. This history of the House of Lords will conclude with the period from the

Parliament Act 1911 to the election of the Blair government in 1997.

As Meg Russell argues, based on the work of Perceval (1953):

… it is indeed not straightforward even to say when the chamber first came into existence.

While parliamentary bodies in many other states have clear-cut founding moments, the

English parliament emerged gradually, and evolved over centuries into the UK parliament

that exists today. (Russell, 2013, p.14)

It has been argued that the House of Lords was not an entirely new creation but was rather a reform of the Saxon Witenagemot (Perceval, 1953). It is therefore reasonable to argue that the

House of Lords has been in a state of reform since its inception. Also important to note here

25 is that the House of Lords had its origin in the Saxon Meeting of Wise Men – from this we can already see the House of Lords acting in the role of a council of advice to power; a role which some see for the House of Lords today. The Witenagemot developed under William the

Conqueror with the Curia Regis, or King’s Court, as Perceval argues ‘An attempt was therefore made to amalgamate the Witenagemot with the King’s Court, and so produce one organ which should be, as of old, the supreme formal authority of the State’ (Perceval, 1953, p.34).

In the second half of the thirteenth century developed the notion of parliaments which included representatives of the Knights of the Shire, Citizens and Burgesses and Proctors on one hand and the King and his court on the other (Perceval, 1953, p.36). From this development we can see Britain’s bicameral parliament emerging from an earlier unicameral legislature (Russell, 2013, p.14; Shell, 2001, p.5). This developed further ‘Between 1300 and

1500 [when] the parliaments became Parliament, the periodic conferences became an institution in their own right’ (Perceval, 1953, p.37); in this period ‘the Lords ceased to be the

King’s Court and became a House of Parliament’ (Perceval, 1953, p.38).

The House of Lords under the Dynasties: The Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian Periods

The House of Lords developed in a very important way during the reign of Henry VIII, and this has been characterised as ‘a turning-point for the Lords’ (Perceval, 1953, p.38). During this period the House of Commons took over control of taxation and the King separated himself from the House of Lords – ‘Their place as Royal advisers had been taken by the

Privy Council’ (Perceval, 1953, p.38). For our purposes this is an important change. First, the power of the Commons over taxation proceeded to a new level, a development which would prove very important in the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament to the present day. Second, the role of the House of Lords as the King’s source of advice weakened. This is

26 important as the House of Lords in this period began to develop a sense of independence as advisors to the sovereign but distinct, more removed, which potentially sowed the seeds for the Lords to become more assertive, and even confrontational, in the future. However, this independence and assertiveness was not immediate, as the House of Lords drifted aimlessly throughout the long reign of Elizabeth I (Perceval, 1953, p.39).

The aimlessness of the Lords ceased with the Stuart dynasty when the Lords ‘saw themselves, and to some extent were accepted by the Lower House, as mediators between

King and Commons’ (Perceval, 1953, p.39). This prominence abruptly ceased during the period in which the Lords was abolished from the Interregnum until the Glorious Revolution

(Perceval, 1953, p.40). The interregnum however proved to be important in the development of the Lords, as Perceval (1953, p. 41) argues:

… the Lords were the more prepared by the ten-year break in their continuity, which had cut

them off completely from the middle ages and their feudal origins; at the Restoration they

adopted, in their methods of voting and procedure generally, the habits of the House of

Commons.

Perceval’s claim that the Interregnum had cut the Lords off completely from the middle ages is debatable, clearly the procedures of the Lords were modernised following the Restoration, although the values underpinning the House of Lords remained fairly consistent with the pre-

Interregnum chamber – the role of the Lords as a representative of powerful interests, as advisor to power and with membership as an honour – all remained consistent with the medieval House of Lords. In addition, although at the time of Queen Anne ‘the two Houses were of equal weight in Parliament’ (Perceval, 1953, p. 41), the House of Lords was still subordinate in important ways in regards to the financial authority of the Commons and the prerogative of the sovereign. As Meg Russell argues:

In the late 17th century the Commons asserted its financial privilege, and this was established

more firmly. In 1671, in response to what it considered inappropriate action by the Lords, the

Commons passed a resolution stating that ‘in all aids given by the Commons the rate of tax

ought not to be altered by the Lords’. When in 1678 the Lords sought to amend a financial

bill, this resulted in a more strongly worded resolution. (2013, p.19)

Regardless of the financial privilege of the Commons, at this stage the House of Lords certainly enjoyed a place of importance within the British political system. This fact leads

Perceval to argue that ‘Such incidents [of deadlock] made it clear that the good of the country was not served by Lords and Commons having equal and similar pretensions in Parliament’

(Perceval, 1953, p.42). This view has continued from this period to the present day with many peers and politicians concerned that any reform which increases equality between the chambers might also increase the likelihood of deadlock in the Palace of Westminster.

The 19th Century House of Lords

By the 19th century the House of Lords had thus reached a very recognizable form.

Parliament’s policy-making role was well established, clear political party blocs had formed,

and regular appointments to the chamber were made, with patronage largely in the Prime

Minister’s hands. It was also in this century, with the gradual extension of the franchise for

House of Commons elections, that the Lords’ power came to be severely questioned. (Russell,

2013, p.22)

As highlighted above, concern with the near equality between the two chambers was heightened with the rise of democratic ideals in Britain, particularly in the nineteenth century

(Russell, 2013, p.45). During the period other changes within and between the institutions of government in Britain also had serious effects of the position of the House of Lords; ‘There was no longer any question of Royal government; power was in the hand of the preponderant party in the Commons’ (Russell, 2013, p.22). This diminution in the power of the Crown was

28 also felt in the House of Lords by the waning consistency and influence of ‘the Party of the

Crown’ in this period (Large, 1963). Also the financial prerogatives of the Commons had made them central in the political system, ‘with the rise of democratic ideals the political supremacy of the Commons was gradually established’ (Shell, 2007, p.8).

This transfer of ultimate power from the sovereign to the House of Commons continued the tradition of the Lords as a reluctant subordinate to a power centre, all that changed was where that power centre was to be found. Although much of the political change in the nineteenth century was focused on the House of Commons and the monarchy, the Lords were not immune from internal reform. During this period the Lords began to divide much more along party lines than previously, in line with the House of Commons (Large, 1963; Perceval, 1953, p.46).

Although the rise in democratic ideals and the concomitant primacy of the House of

Commons in the British political system had naturally weakening effects on the House of

Lords, it was the Lords themselves who were the cause of the Parliament Act 1911.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the Lords became a road-block to successive Liberal governments, as Perceval argues ‘After 1867, the Lords became even more of an immovable object to the Liberals, and the Commons an even more irresistible force’ (1953, p. 46). The predictable effect of this contestation was that ‘Radical schemes began about 1880 to be ventilated for abolishing or reforming the House [of Lords]’

(Perceval, 1953, p. 46).

The Lords’ continued obstruction of the Liberal government led the Commons in 1907 to pass a resolution stating ‘that the power of the other House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall

29 prevail’ (Perceval, 1953, p. 47). The resolution was within half a decade enshrined in law via the Parliament Act 1911 which finally secured total Commons primacy in law.

The Parliament Act 1911 to the election of the Blair Government

For the purposes of this thesis there will be a brief outline of the legislative reforms to the

House of Lords since 1911. It is not argued that these are the only recent reforms to the

House of Lords, but as this thesis is not concerned with providing a comprehensive or particularly insightful longer history of House of Lords reform, this brief legislative history of reform will suffice. It is helpful to break-up the last 104 years of reform into three categories: reform to the powers of the House of Lords; reform to the composition of the House of

Lords; and the Blair government reforms.

Prior to the constitutional upheaval of the Liberal Government which culminated in the

Parliament Act 1911, the House of Lords enjoyed a complete veto over all legislation. The

House of Commons had, of course, become the pre-eminent chamber as the result of the widening of the franchise in the course of the 19th century, and the concomitant reticence of peers to intervene in money bills. The Parliament Act 1911, introduced by Asquith’s Liberal government was the result of consistent vetoing by the House Lords, particular their veto of the 1909 “People’s Budget” (see Ballinger, 2011). The 1911 Act removed the right of the

Lords to reject or amend money bills, and reduced the outright veto of the Lords over other bills introduced in the House of Commons to a suspensory veto of two years, except any measure to prolong the life of a Parliament.

The second of the two major reforms to the powers of the House of Lords was the Parliament

Act 1949. This Act was a pre-emptive strike by the Attlee Labour government to enable the government to circumvent any future opposition by the House of Lords to their radical legislative programme; as stated clearly in the 1945 Labour Party manifesto ‘we give clear

30 notice that we will not tolerate obstruction of the people’s will by the House of Lords’

(Dorey, 2006, p.600). The 1949 Act further reduced the Lords’ suspensory veto over

Commons legislation from two years to one (see Dorey, 2006).

Moving to composition, this was significantly reformed by two Acts prior to the reforms of the Blair government. Prior to the first of these two reforms, the Life Peerages Act 1958, the

House of Lords was composed of hereditary peers (of the peerages of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom) by right of birth, representative peers from the peerages of Scotland and Ireland (from 1922 onwards no new elections were held for Irish representative peers), the 21 most senior bishops of the Church of England by time in office, as well as the

Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of Durham, London and Winchester who sat ex officio, and the Law Lords (since 1876).

Harold Macmillan’s Life Peerages Act of 1958 […] had, cumulatively transformed the

chamber, filling it with the ‘respected revisers’ for whom Walter Bagehot had called in 1867

if the Upper House was not to ‘atrophy’ and ‘decline’. (Hennessy, 2012, p.138)

The Life Peerages Act 1958, introduced by the Macmillan Conservative government, began the process of making life appointments to the House of Lords, including the introduction of women for the first time. This reform was aimed at injecting fresh blood into the House of

Lords to enable it to continue to function, and proved to be a very important reform in the history of the House of Lords (Dorey, 2009).

The second reform to composition, the Peerages Act 1963, had three purposes: it allowed all

Scottish hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords; it allowed hereditary peeresses to enter the Lords without a life peerage; and it allowed newly inherited titles to be disclaimed for the life of the holder (prompted by the case of Tony Benn, Viscount Stansgate, who wished to remain in the House of Commons upon inheriting his father’s viscountcy) (see Bromhead,

1963). The House of Lords remained mainly unchanged in the period from the Life Peerages

Act 1963 until the election of the Blair Labour government in 1997.

We leave this history of the House of Lords at 1997. The post-Blair House of Lords will be the focus of the case study chapters, particularly chapter five which will explore the period from 1997 in much detail. From this first section we can see that the House of Lords has changed in many different ways throughout its long existence. However, there have been some enduring themes throughout the centuries. First, the House of Lords has never been a

‘people’s chamber’. It has always represented a very particular interest, primarily land.

Second, its relationship with the House of Commons has always been an important issue.

Third, and finally, there seems to have been perennial interest in reforming the House of

Lords. These three themes are important in understanding the core essence of the House of

Lords, and the questions of its reform, as inherited by Tony Blair in 1997.

In Conclusion

This chapter has provided two functions. First, it discussed in detail the existing literature on the House of Lords, contextualising it within broader debates over parliament in general, and the British parliament in particular. What emerged from this discussion was that although much impressive work has been conducted on the House of Lords, there are two weaknesses in the existing literature: the lack of application of theory, and the lack of attention paid to the views of peers. These weaknesses will be further explored in the following chapter. Second it provided a short overview of the history of the House of Lords from its foundation to the election of the Labour government under Tony Blair in 1997. The purpose of this history was to contextualise the discussion to follow in the empirical chapters.

Chapter Three – Understanding Lords Reform: A Multi-Dimensional Institutional

Approach

______

Introduction

This chapter embarks on the theoretical discussion underpinning the thesis. In exploring reform of the House of Lords from the perspective of peers this thesis will employ three theoretical lenses. The first of these comes from within the extensive historical institutionalist

(HI) literature. In this thesis the HI concept gradual transformative change will be applied to

Lords reform. The second theory is that developed by Albert Hirschman (1991) in his book

The Rhetoric of Reaction. This theory seeks to explore the universality of the arguments employed by those who oppose reform. The final theory which will be here applied to reform of the House of Lords is the concept of the cross-cutting issue. This concept, developed by

Craig Parsons (2002; 2003), is concerned with providing a methodologically conservative approach to isolating the role of ideas in motivating political actors. These three theories will each be considered separately, with an overview and a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the particular theory in understanding the role of ideas in political reform.

This chapter will be structured into five substantive sections. First will be a discussion of the rationale for selecting the three theories to be applied to the case of reform of the House of

Lords. In the second section, the first of the theoretical approaches, Streeck and Thelen’s concept of gradual transformative change, will be presented. Following this, in the third section, will be a discussion of Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction. Craig Parsons’ concept of

33 the cross-cutting issue will form the focus of the penultimate section of this chapter. The final section of this chapter will consider the three theories together and will reflect on the strength of the three theories when explored as a multi-dimensional approach.

The Rationale for the Theories Selected

From the review of the literature in the preceding chapter it is clear that there has been a sustained interest in reform of the House of Lords amongst political scholars, which has only increased since the House of Lords Act 1999. Research into reform of the House of Lords is either focused on the history of reform, or the effect of historical reform on the contemporary

House of Lords. Of course those focused on the contemporary House of Lords naturally must consider its history, there is clearly a division between the focus of research as being either on the past or the present.

What is clearly absent from this academic literature is the presence of a broader discussion of theoretical approaches available from political science. The exceptions that confirms the rule is the work by Alix Kelso (2009) employing an historical institutionalist approach, and Meg

Russell (2010; 2000) which focused on situating reform of the House of Lords within the broader literature on second chambers in particular, and bicameralism in general. Other than these notable exceptions, academic discussion of the House of Lords and its reform has been noticeably atheoretical.

Identifying this atheoretical approach to Lords reform was an interesting conclusion of the preceding chapter and provides evidence of an interest gap in existing research on Lords reform. However, that there is very little theoretical work conducted on the House of Lords does not in and of itself mean that this is a problem which needs to be addressed. This being said, neither does the lack of theoretically-framed research mean that the introduction of a

34 theoretical approach is not potentially very valuable to deepening our understanding of reform of the House of Lords. This thesis therefore seeks to explore whether a theoretically- framed exploration of reform of the House of Lords provides any insights which aid in our understanding of reform.

In the preceding chapter the lack of attention paid within the academic literature to the views of members of the House of Lords themselves on its reform was highlighted. Similar to the point above, this lack of attention to the views of peers might not in itself be an important issue in understanding Lords reform. This being said, it is the contention of this thesis that peers may provide a potentially invaluable source of information on reform of the House of

Lords. In addition to this, peers are often dismissed as having too much a concern for their own self-interest when questions of reform arise. This claim and the concomitant dismissal of peers as a source of knowledge on reform due to this self-interest are also in need of closer assessment – something which this thesis will also seek to do.

Each of the theories where selected for the different perspective which they can give to the issue of Lords reform, and in particular their help in understanding the views of peers.

The use of a theoretical approach to understanding reform of the House of Lords is therefore based on three motivations. First, this thesis seeks to explore whether the introduction of theory into study of the House of Lords provides any interesting insights into reform. In other words, the first motivation for applying a theoretical approach is to explore and assess the very usefulness of a theoretical approach. Second, as peers themselves are rarely the focus of research into reform of the House of Lords, this thesis seeks to uncover whether a richer understanding of the views of peers on reform provides any interesting insights into the question of Lords reform. And thirdly, the view that peers are too motivated by self-interest and material concerns to provide a useful perspective on reform of the Lords will also be explored.

In this section then the rationale for applying a theoretical approach to exploring reform of the House of Lords has been provided. This rationale developed as the result of the conclusions reached in the preceding chapter. These conclusions highlighted some areas in need of further exploration and interrogation. The specific and more detailed rationale for selecting each of the three theories themselves will be discussed, in turn, with the presentation of the three theoretical concepts to come.

Streeck and Thelen’s Theorisation of Gradual Transformative Change

Let us now turn to the first of the three theories which have been selected for application to the case study, Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change. In order to understand Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) argument we must first situate their contribution within the broader theoretical landscape of historical institutionalism from within which their contribution has originated. It is important to note that historical institutionalism has been previously applied to reform of the House of Lords by Kelso

(2009). However, this thesis focuses rather a specific typology coming out of historical institutionalism, and therefore takes a different focus than Kelso’s (2009) book.

This section will first discuss historical institutionalism and the place of Streeck and Thelen’s

(2005) contribution within this broader discourse. The second part will discuss in detail the theory of gradual transformative change. This section will conclude with a discussion of the rationale for applying Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology to the case of reform of the

House of Lords.

Elizabeth Sanders sums up well the thrust of historical institutionalism (see also Kelso, 2009, pp.9-14 for a discussion of historical institutionalism):

The central assumption of historical institutionalism (HI) is that it is more enlightening to

study human political interactions: (a) in the context of rule structures that are themselves

human creations; and (b) sequentially, as life is lived, rather than to take a snapshot of those

interactions at only one point in time, and in isolation from the rule structures (institutions) in

which they occur. (Sanders, 2006, p.39)

Sanders’ first point relates to the argument within historical institutionalism that the rule context within which actors are operating has been constructed by actors in the past. The second point highlights the crux of the focus of historical institutionalism: ‘Historical institutionalists see institutions as continuities’ (Rhodes et al., 2006, p.xv).

This focus on continuity in historical institutionalism is reflected in the idea that institutions are the results of the past, and that this historically produced institutions confronts and constrains the actions of current actors. In the parlance of historical institutionalism this is referred to as path dependency. Paul Pierson identified two definitions of path dependence.

Path dependence, in the broader sense, was taken to refer to ‘the causal relevance of preceding stages in a temporal sequence’ (Pierson, 2000, p.252) – or that ‘history matters’.

The second, and narrower, definition of path dependence was taken by Pierson from the work of Margaret Levi (1997):

Path dependence has to mean, if it is to mean anything, that once a country or region has

started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high. There will be other choice points, but

the entrenchments of certain institutional arrangements obstruct an easy reversal of the initial

choice. Perhaps the better metaphor is a tree, rather than a path. From the same trunk, there

are many different branches and smaller branches. Although it is possible to turn around or to

clamber from one to the other – and essential if the chosen branch dies – the branch on which

a climber begins is the one she tends to follow. (Pierson, 2000, p.252)

This second, and narrower, definition of path dependency has left historical institutionalism open to the claim of being far too determinist, leaving little space for explaining institutional change, however, others would argue that ‘path dependency is not synonymous with path determinacy’ (Marsh, 2010, p.99).

When dealing with path-breaking change, the concept of the critical juncture was often employed as an explanation in historical institutionalism. The critical juncture concepts refers to the idea that ‘Long periods of institutional continuity, where institutions are reproduced, are assumed to be interrupted only at critical junctures of radical change, where political agency (re)fashions institutional structures’ (March and Olsen, 2006, p.12). The argument of the critical juncture has been much critiqued for its inability to explain more gradual yet still transformative change, as March and Olsen go on to argue, ‘The assumption, that institutional structures persist unless there are external shocks, underestimates both intra- and inter- institutional dynamics and sources of change’ (March and Olsen, 2006, p.12).

This point has been picked up by others, as Mahoney and Thelen argue, ‘most institutional analysts have considered change during moments of abrupt, wholesale transformation. Yet it

38 is not clear that such episodes of institutional upheaval capture the most common ways through which political institutions change over time’ (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010, p.xi).

Although major shifts appear to be the prime concern of political scientists, ‘A growing body of work suggests that important changes often take place incrementally and through seemingly small adjustments…’ (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010, p.xi). This point was earlier explored by Thelen in collaboration with Wolfgang Streeck (2005). It is the work of Streeck and Thelen on gradual transformative change which will be applied to the case of reform of the House of Lords.

Streeck and Thelen were concerned with exploring institutional change, in particular they were interested in differentiating processes of change from the results of change (see Table

3.1). Streeck and Thelen distinguished ‘between processes of change, which may be incremental or abrupt, and results of change, which may amount to either continuity or discontinuity’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.8). Streeck and Thelen go on to argue that

‘equating incremental with adaptive and reproductive minor change, and major change with, mostly exogenous, disruption of continuity, makes excessively high demands on ‘real’ change to be recognised as such and tends to reduce most or all observable changes to adjustment for the purpose of stability’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.8). We can see then that

Streeck and Thelen were interested in providing evidence and a theoretical basis for their argument that incremental change in institutions can lead to gradual transformation of the institution. In other words, they were arguing that the punctuated equilibrium model and others which seek to equate incremental reform to reproduction and abrupt reform to change fail to recognise the importance of incremental reform to change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, pp.8-9).

Result of change Continuity Discontinuity Incremental Reproduction by Gradual Process of change adaptation Transformation Abrupt Survival and Breakdown and Return Replacement Table 3.1 Types of institutional change – processes and results (Streeck and Thelen, p.9).

In exploring gradual transformative change, the top right box in Table 3.1, Streeck and

Thelen develop a typology. This typology, which can be seen in Table 3.2, consisted of five types of change: displacement, layering, drift, conversion and exhaustion. Streeck and Thelen referred to change which resulted in one institution moving from subordinate to dominant status as displacement. The second type was layering which involved new institutions attaching to existing institutions. These new institutions then effect change in the existing institution. The next type of change was drift. Drift involves a degree of institutional stagnation at a formal level, resulting in practical change below this formal level. The fourth type of change was conversion. This involves an existing institution performing new functions than those previously associated with its practice. The fifth and last type of change in Streeck and Thelen’s typology is exhaustion. Exhaustion is change due to a lack of change, when an institution remains unreformed and gradually ceases to perform a function.

We have now discussed Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change.

This theory seeks to explain ways in which gradual change in institutions can, over time, transform the institution. This focus on gradual transformative change was to counter the over-emphasis, in the opinion of Streeck and Thelen, on institutional continuity through incremental change or institutional change as the result of abrupt events. The question now is does this theory potentially offer any valuable insights into the case of reform of the House of

Lords? This will be considered in the following section.

Displacement ‘Slowly rising salience of subordinate relative to dominant institutions’ Layering ‘New elements attached to existing institutions gradually change their status and structure’ Drift ‘Neglect of institutional maintenance in spite of external change resulting in slippage in institutional practice on the ground’ Conversion ‘Redeployment of old institutions to new purposes; new purposes attached to old structures’ Exhaustion ‘Gradual breakdown (withering away) of institutions over time’ Table 3.2 Types of gradual transformative change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005).

The decision to consider the historical institutionalist concept of gradual transformative change arose from within this literature itself. In the work by Mahoney and Thelen (2010, p.15), which built on that previously done by Streeck and Thelen (2005), we find a direct reference to reform of the House of Lords as an ideal case study for the effects of incremental changes gradually transforming an institution:

Once created, institutions often change in subtle and gradual ways over time. Although less

dramatic than abrupt and wholesale transformations, these slow and piecemeal changes can be

equally consequential for patterning human behavior and for shaping substantive political

outcomes. Consider, for example, the British House of Lords. This is an institution that began

to take shape in the thirteenth century out of informal consultations between the Crown and

powerful landowners. By the early nineteenth century, membership was hereditary and the

chamber was fully institutionalized at the center of British politics. Who would have thought

that this deeply undemocratic assembly of aristocrats would survive the transition to

democracy? Not the early Labour Party, which was founded in 1900 and understandably

committed to the elimination of a chamber from which its constituents were, more or less by

definition, excluded.

Yet Labour did not dismantle the House of Lords – despite recurring opportunities to do so

during the twentieth century. Instead, the institution was reformed over time in a series of

more measured moves that, successively: circumscribed its powers (especially in 1911 by a

Liberal Party government), altered its composition (especially in 1958 under a Conservative

government, with the addition of life peerages), and rendered it less unwieldy and – in the

eyes of some – more legitimate (in 2000 under a Labour government, by reducing

dramatically the number of hereditary peers). The cumulative effects of these changes have

allowed the chamber not just to survive but to position itself as a significant play in, of all

things, the defense of civil liberties in Britain (The Economist, February 11, 2006, 51). This is

quite a change – from undemocratic bastion of tradition interests to champion of individual

rights – and it illustrates that incremental shifts often add up to fundamental transformations.

(Mahoney and Thelen, 2010, pp.1-2)

From the above quotation then we can see that those closest to the theory of gradual transformative change themselves consider the House of Lords an ideal case study. This leads to the first part of the rationale for applying this theory to reform of the House of Lords, namely a potential theoretical contribution. Mahoney and Thelen identify the House of Lords as an archetype of gradual transformative change yet they do not explore this view in any detail in their work. Therefore, this application seeks to explore the applicability of the theory to the House of Lords, and as the House of Lords is identified as an archetypal case, there is possibly much to be learnt about the theory itself.

Although the decision to apply the theory of gradual transformative change grew from the key theorists in this area themselves identifying the House of Lords as an ideal case, there was a second part to the rationale for this application. This second reason stems from the fundamental focus of this thesis on understanding reform of the House of Lords. Much has been written, as discussed in detail in the previous chapter, about the reforms to the House of

Lords and the various effects which have been argued to have resulted from these reforms.

By applying this theory to the House of Lords it is also hoped that greater clarity can be brought to the discussion of reform of the House of Lords. By exploring reform in the period since the election of the Blair government in 1997, through this lens, it is hoped that the effects of these reforms can be fully understood, particularly from the perspective of those people who actually form the membership of the institution, peers themselves.

Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction

The second theory which will be applied to the case study is Albert O. Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction. This section will first outline Hirschman’s contribution to understanding reactionary rhetoric. The discussion will focus be on the three reactionary theses proposed by

Hirschman: perversity, futility and jeopardy. Following this, this section will then discuss the rationale for selecting this theory to be applied to reform of the House of Lords.

Although less well known than Exit, Voice, Loyalty (Hirschman, 1970), Hirschman’s (1991)

Rhetoric of Reaction was an interesting contribution to the study of rhetoric and its deployment in debates over political reform. In the Rhetoric of Reaction, Hirschman provides an interesting three-fold typology for understanding the arguments used by reactionaries to oppose reform. Hirschman argues that there are three rhetorical theses put forward by generations of reactionaries across time and space – perversity, futility and jeopardy. These three rhetorical imperatives, as Hirschman names them, are explored through three case studies, his love of symmetry apparent. The three cases are the French Revolution, the road to universal suffrage in Britain, and the welfare state. Through these historically important reform periods Hirschman traces the use of the same rhetorical arguments of perversity, futility and jeopardy demonstrating ‘how the protagonists followed certain invariants in argument and rhetoric’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.164).

Through his exposition Hirschman argues that ‘some “deep thinkers” who had invariably presented their ideas as original and brilliant insights are made to look rather less impressive, and sometimes even comical’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.164). However, Hirschman does accept that ‘The fact that an argument is used repeatedly is no proof, to be sure, that it is wrong in any particular instance’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.166). Although he does add that ‘much of the time, the arguments I have identified and reviewed are intellectually suspect on several counts’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.166; emphasis in original). This intellectually suspect conclusion of Hirschman is the foundation for this typology. In essence, because of his conclusion that the arguments of reactionaries are consistent across time and space,

Hirschman therefore seeks to classify these arguments to better understand them. The point to better understanding the arguments employed by reactionaries is to assist proponents of reform to overcome.

Perversity thesis

The first of Hirschman’s threefold typology is the perversity thesis, which argues that ‘any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.7). Put another way ‘the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving alright, but in the opposite direction’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.11; emphasis in original). The perversity thesis is employed to undermine the very foundation of a reform argument. If one wishes to oppose a reform there really is no simpler argument then the one that says “although you pursue this reform for x reason, the effect of it will be the opposite of x”. In addition, as consistent with his ambition to undermine conservative rhetoric, Hirschman not only argues that the perversity thesis is often employed and has ‘proven popular with generations of

“reactionaries’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.12), but also that ‘it is unlikely to exist “out there” to

44 anything like the extent that is claimed’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.35). The effect of the perversity thesis is that ‘Reactionaries therefore recommend extreme caution in reshaping existing institutions and in pursuing innovative policies’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.159).

Futility thesis

The second of Hirschman’s typology is the futility thesis which holds that: ‘the attempt to change is abortive, that in one way or another any alleged change is, was, or will be largely surface, façade, cosmetic, hence illusory, as the “deep” structures of society remain wholly untouched’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.43). Differing from the jeopardy thesis which argues a reform will have the opposite effect to the one intended, the futility thesis posits that any reform is futile as there are natural-type laws which govern human society and are unreformable; ‘attempts at social transformation will be unavailing[…] they will simply fail to “make a dent”’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.7). In the cases explored by Hirschman he concludes that proponents of the futility thesis ‘are not quite comfortable with their own argument, however neatly it has been made: whenever possible, they look to the perverse effect for reinforcement, adornment, and closure’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.58).

Hirschman seems to take particular offence to the futility thesis, largely based on the ‘relish’ those who advance the futility thesis seem to display in contradicting ‘the commonsense understanding of these [reform] events as replete with upheaval, change, or real reform’

(Hirschman, 1991, p.70). In a similar vein Hirschman contends:

Whether or not the advocates of “progressive” policies and programs are naïve or selfishly

crafty, the futility thesis thrives on “unmasking” or “exposure”, on demonstrating the

inconsistency between proclaimed purposes (establishment of democratic institutions or of

redistributive welfare programs) and actual practice (continued oligarchic rule or mass

poverty) . (Hirschman, 1991, pp.77-78)

Jeopardy thesis

The last of Hirschman’s typology is the jeopardy thesis. Of the three rhetorical arguments the jeopardy thesis has the most sophisticated potential. Put simply, the proponents of the jeopardy thesis argue that ‘the proposed change, though perhaps desirable in itself, involves unacceptable costs or consequences of one sort or another’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.81). In other words, the thrust of the jeopardy thesis is that ‘The old hard-won conquests or accomplishments cannot be taken for granted and would be placed in jeopardy by the new program’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.84). Hirschman believes that the jeopardy these ‘should involve a more complex, historically grounded argument than the other two’ (Hirschman,

1991, p.84). This being said, Hirschman argues that in the cases he explored, this potential for sophisticated argument was not achieved:

This expectation has been disappointed. Instead of the rich historical argumentation to which

I was looking forward, the purveyors of the jeopardy claim from Robert Lowe to Samuel

Huntington, have often been satisfied with simple affirmations of the ceci-tuera-cela [This

will kill that] type. (Hirschman, 1991, p.123)

Hirschman himself refers to the case of Britain as being particularly susceptible to the jeopardy thesis due to the understanding of British history as being a series of positive progressions (otherwise known as the Whig interpretation of history), as he argues, ‘This is the reason, of course’, ‘why the jeopardy thesis has been invoked primarily in England’

(Hirschman, 1991, p.128).

As we have seen Hirschman sought to better understand the arguments employed by those who oppose political reform. He concluded that there were the rhetorical imperatives which dominated reactionary argumentation, namely: perversity, futility, and jeopardy. Now that

Hirschman’s argument has been considered, the rationale for selecting this theory for application to the case of reform of the House of Lords will now be presented.

Although debate over reform of the House of Lords has been hotly contested with fierce defences of the merits of both election and appointment, it is clear that peers themselves have by a large majority been consistently in favour of appointment. This position of the majority of peers as opponents of the introduction of elections to the House of Lords has been seen as primarily self-interest by many commentators. It is this argument concerning the Janus-faced nature of the rhetoric of peers on reform which is in need of empirical interrogation. As peers overwhelmingly oppose wholesale reform of the House of Lords, this puts them firmly in the reactionary camp on this issue. It therefore seems appropriate to explore the rhetoric of peers on reform through a lens which was devised primarily with the intention of understanding and classifying reactionary rhetoric.

By applying Hirschman’s typology to the case of reform the House of Lords this thesis seeks to achieve two aims. First, this thesis is using the case to explore Hirschman’s typology through a practical application. Although Hirschman’s typology developed out of his empirical investigation, its testing on an additional case might provide interesting insights into the theory and its broader applicability. In other words, the first aim is to explore whether

Hirschman’s theory holds up in the case of reform of the House of Lords. The second aim, and the more important, concerns the hope that by applying Hirschman’s typology to the case, insights into House of Lords reform may be garnered. In particular, by applying

Hirschman’s typology it is intended that a more sophisticated understanding of the views of peers and the reasons they provide for their positions in regards to reform of the House of

Lords will be possible. Such an understanding would possibly provide greater insight into the rhetoric employed, and the ideas behind this rhetoric, furthering understanding of the broader question of reform of the House of Lords.

Parsons’ Cross-Cutting Issue

This section will provide an overview of Craig Parsons’ theory of the cross-cutting issue and also the rationale for its application to the case of reform of the House of Lords. Parsons was interested in exploring the role of ideas in supranational institution-building, in particular the case of the formation of the European Union. In so doing, he encountered the issue of demonstrating ideas as causally important, as he states: ‘For students of politics, the basic problem for ideational argument is to separate the causal effects of actors’ beliefs from direct structural or institutional pressures’ (Parsons, 2003, p.10). Parsons goes on to argue:

This problem occurs at two levels. First, ideas are by their nature Janus-faced. In some cases

actors’ beliefs may guide their actions; in others their apparent beliefs simply rationalize

strategies chosen for other reasons. Telling the difference between the two situations is

difficult. Second, even assuming ideas do have causal impact, they do so as interpretations or

“filter” of the objective environment. Wherever ideas have causal effect – in Max Weber’s

famous phrase, acting as “switchmen” among various material possibilities – so too does the

objective context they interpret. Causal ideational argument must separate the ideational filter

from its context, isolating the subjective components of actors’ “interests” from their direct

responses to the environment. (Parsons, 2003, p.10)

To aid in this research task, Parsons developed the idea of the cross-cutting issue as a way to demonstrate the causal role of ideas in political action, he argues:

Where ideas strongly crosscut prevailing lines of organization in a political arena, we can

display their autonomous impact in robust, methodologically conservative ways that should

convince even the staunchest skeptics. Such cases will not provide that ideas matter

everywhere, but they will establish that ideas can be major causes in politics. (Parsons, 2003,

pp.11-12)

The cross-cutting issue is based on Parsons’ argument that ‘We could isolate ideas precisely if we found an extremely close comparison, contrasting actors in near-identical places in the objective world to highlight the purely subjective variation in their behavior’ (Parsons, 2002, p.51). Parsons argues that ‘Cross-cutting ideas have particularly clear effects because they offer the sharpest possible contrast to the expectations of objective-interest theories. All such theories define actors’ interests in terms of objective conditions at some level of organization’

(Parsons, 2002, p.50). Differing from these objective-interest theories, Parsons’ argues that

‘Ideational approaches posit, in contrast, that actors interpret their interests through ideas that can vary independently from their objective positions’ (Parsons, 2003, p.12). To illustrate his point Parsons’ employs an example from his case of the European Union:

Take two French diplomats, with similar social backgrounds and party sympathies, in the

same office of the Foreign Ministry in 1950. One insists on French interests in a new

“supranational” Franco-German federation; his colleague sees French interests in policies

based on an informal partnership with Britain. These similarly placed individuals face all the

same objective pressures but seem to interpret them differently (Parsons, 2003, p.12).

Parsons goes on to argue that:

Two further kinds of evidence are necessary to draw this conclusion with confidence,

however. First, debate within groups must persist to and past important collective decisions.

Otherwise initial debates may simply reflect a vetting of options, from which a consensual

group position coalesces as the need for a decision approaches. Second, to show that

crosscutting debates reflect competing ideas rather than simple chaos, we need the kind of

“interpretive” evidence typically offered by ideational accounts: that actors consistently say

and write that they believe certain things, and that their peers think differently. Given a deeply

crosscutting pattern of debate across a range of options, persistent divisions, and good

rhetorical evidence, we can conclude that ideas alone are causing individual variation across

that range. (Parsons, 2003, p.13)

To illustrate his point further Parsons provides a figure (see Figure 3.1 below).

Figure 3.1 Crosscutting individual mobilization – why ideas matter (Parsons, 2003, p.14)

Let us now breakdown what exactly is required then, according to Parsons, for an issue to fall into the cross-cutting category:

1. The objective position of the actors being researched must be as close as possible;

2. Actors with close objective positions must take different views on the issue being

researched;

3. The debate over differing positions taken on the issue must be sustained both prior to

and post decision points; and,

4. Actors must consistently say and write that they believe certain things and that others

do not.

The criteria above will be applied in chapter seven to exploring the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords.

As with the previous two theories discussed in this chapter, now that an overview of Craig

Parsons’ theory has been provided it is now time to discuss the rationale for selecting this theory for application to the case. Parsons’ theory is concerned with isolating ideas from objective interests to provide evidence of the importance of ideas in understanding political reform. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the position of peers on reform of the House of

Lords has been characterised as being based on self-interest. Put plainly it is often said that peers oppose appointment because they would lose their seats. This is clearly relying on objective interest to explain the position of peers, yet this assertion has yet to be tested in the literature of reform of the House of Lords (as discussed in the previous chapter). Therefore, the purpose of applying Parsons’ concept of the cross-cutting issue is to interrogate this assumption of the motivations of peers by exploring whether there is any role for ideas in understanding the positions taken by peers of the question of reform.

In Conclusion – Towards a Multi-Dimensional Institutional Approach?

The preceding three sections have outlined the three theories which will be applied to reform of the House of Lords. In addition to this in each section the rationale for the selection of the particular theory was also provided. In each case there was a dual rationale for the application of each theory, one theoretical and the other empirical. Each theoretical contribution was concerned with adding value to the particular theory. What the application of three theories has in common is the intention of employing them to further understanding reform of the

House of Lords. It is by integrating these three theories into an analysis of Lords reform that this thesis seeks to provide original insights into the case. Table 3.3 below summarises this discussion above by providing a definition of each theory and the empirical rationale for their selection. As can be seen in Table 3.3 each theory has a particular purpose for its application,

51 all aimed at deepening understanding of reform of the House of Lords. The theory of gradual transformative change is aimed at understanding the effects of the reforms since the election of the Blair government up to the recent Coalition reform attempt on the House of Lords.

Hirschman’s typology of reactionary rhetoric is aimed at understanding the views of peers and the reasons they provide for the positions they take on Lords reform. Parsons’ theory of the cross-cutting issue was concerned with exploring the question of the role of ideas vis-à- vis objective self-interest.

Theory Definition Rationale for Selection Gradual Transformative That incremental changes to That the effects of these Change institutions can have reforms can be fully transformative effects on the understood, particularly from institution over time the perspective of those people who actually form the membership of the House of Lords. Typology of Reactionary That the rhetoric employed That a more sophisticated Rhetoric by those who oppose reform understanding of the views of follows three imperatives: peers and the reasons they perversity, futility, and provide for their positions in jeopardy regards to reform of the House of Lords will be possible. The Cross-Cutting Issue Issues where traditional lines To interrogate the of organisation in an assumption that peers are institution are cross-cut motivated by objective self- provide the clearest evidence interest and exploring for the role of ideas in whether there is any place for political analysis ideas in understanding the positions taken by peers. Table 3.3 Summary of the Empirical Rationale for the Theories

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter there are three motivations for the use of a theoretical approach to understanding reform of the House of Lords. The first, and overarching, motivation was to explore whether the introduction of theory, something which has been largely missing from analysis of Lords reform, provided any interesting insights. By

52 focussing on different aspects of Lords reform, each of the three theories contributes to this overarching aim.

As peers themselves are rarely the focus of research into reform of the House of Lords, the second motivation of a theoretical approach was to explore the views of peers in the hope that this may provide a deeper understanding of Lords reform. In achieving this aim, the theories were selected for their focus on the views of peers themselves. In each case, the three theories focus on the views of peers in different ways. In the case of the first theory by exploring the opinions of peers on the effects of the reform period under consideration, and in the case of the second theory by exploring the positions of peers themselves on Lords reform.

The third motivation of employing a theoretical approach in this thesis was to explore the dismissal of peers as a valuable source for understanding the issues of Lords reform due to their being too motivated by material self-interest. By applying Craig Parsons’ theory of the cross-cutting issue this thesis is able to interrogate this assumption, common amongst many commentators and academics alike. And in so doing, building on the contribution of

Hirschman’s reactionary theses in deepening understanding of the motivations of peers and why they take the positions they do on reform of the House of Lords.

From this discussion then it can be seen that each of the theories which will be applied to the case provide potential insights. Each of the theories has been selected to address different issues raised in the review of the literature in the preceding chapter. By addressing these issues this thesis seeks to contribute to further understanding reform of the House of Lords. It can also be seen that in isolation each of these three theories provides only a partial potential insight in Lords reform. Although, of course, no claim is being made here that this multi- dimensional theoretical approach has the potential to provide a complete and comprehensive understanding of reform of the House of Lords, rather, by applying a multi-dimensional

53 theoretical approach it is intended that this thesis can contribute to the literature concerned with understanding Lords reform.

Chapter Four – Research Design

______

Introduction

Now that the theoretical approach which will be applied in this thesis has been outlined, let us consider the methodological approach which will be employed. This consideration of the methodological approach of this thesis will be structured in three sections. The first section will discuss the broader conceptual foundations of the methodology, considering the ontological and epistemological foundations of the study. Following this, the methodological approach consistent with the approaches employed in previous studies applying the three theories discussed in the previous chapter will be presented. The third and final section of this chapter will discuss the specific methods employed in conducting the research, and their strengths and weaknesses.

Epistemology and Ontology

We find that students who conduct qualitative studies are prone to spend an inordinate

amount of space explaining the philosophy of science supporting the design. Such long-

winded explanations seem unnecessarily apologetic; after all, a quantitative dissertation

doesn’t require a treatise on logical positivism. (Rudestam and Newton, 2007, p.106)

The above quotation provides a warning to students employing a qualitative research methodology, encouraging brevity in the explanation of the foundations of their research design. In discussing the broader theoretical foundations of the methodological approach of this research project, the above warning has been taken very much into consideration.

Therefore, there will be no extensive discussion of the philosophy of science here; such a task is better suited to those with a particular expertise in philosophy. This being said, the philosophical foundations of this thesis still need to be articulated and their effects discussed.

As Marsh and Furlong argue ‘Each social scientist’s orientation to their subject is shaped by their ontological and epistemological position’ (Marsh and Furlong, 2002, p.17). Therefore, rather than leaving the ontological and epistemological positions of this research to emerge gradually, instead they will be explicated here in the first section of this chapter.

Ontology is the starting point of all research, after which one’s epistemological and

methodological positions logically flow. (Grix, 2002, p.177)

For this reason the ontological position of this thesis will be presented first. Rather than founding this discussion of ontology in the philosophy of science literature, this discussion will rather be framed within the political science literature, for as Stanley argues ‘philosophy and social theory have different aims from political science, suggesting that they also require different conceptions of ontology’ (Stanley, 2012, p.94). Therefore as this research is a study in political science rather than a study in philosophy, it is the political conceptualisation of ontology which is pertinent. Stanley goes on to argue that ‘ontology in political science concerns the implicit and simplifying assumptions about political ‘reality’ that underpin explanations of political phenomena’ (Stanley, 2012, p.95). In other words, ontology should be considered as ‘the world as political scientists assume it to be’ (Stanley, 2012, p.95; emphasis in original).

It is therefore important here to provide clarity about the worldview which underpins this research into reform of the House of Lords. This thesis is founded on an objectivist ontological position. Bryman defines objectivism as:

…an ontological position that asserts that social phenomena and their meanings have an

existence that is independent of social actors. It implies that social phenomena and the

categories that we use in everyday discourse have an existence that is independent or separate

from actors. (Bryman, 2008, p.19)

In other words, those who take this ontological position assert that the world exists independent of actors. This position is in contrast to constructionism or constructivism, which holds that:

social phenomena and their meanings are continually being accomplished by social actors. It

implies that social phenomena and categories are not only produced through social interaction

but that they are in a constant state of revision. (Bryman, 2008, p.19)

The implication of this position is that when exploring reform of the House of Lords the effects of the reform exist independently of how actors perceive them. In other words, the reality is not necessarily what actors consider it to be, but rather exists independently of the perceptions of actors. This point regarding access to this reality leads nicely into a discussion of the epistemological position of this research.

If ontology is about what we may know, then epistemology is about how we come to know

what we know. (Grix, 2002, p.177)

Within political studies there appears to be three dominant epistemological positions: positivism, interpretivism and realism (Furlong and Marsh, 2010, pp.193-205). Let us consider each of these in turn, although this will be by no means exhaustive.

Table 4.1 above presents the three dominant epistemological positions in political science. It is clear from Table 4.1 that these different epistemological approaches are founded on different positions in relation to certain questions. In many respects it can be argued that positivism and realism have more in common with each other, than both do with

Positivism Interpretivism Realism The world exists The world is socially or The world exists independently of our discursively constructed. independently of our knowledge of it. knowledge of it. The world is real and not Social phenomena cannot be Although the world is real socially constructed. understood independently of and not socially constructed, our interpretation. not all social structures are observable. Aim to make causal Focus on identifying Aim to make causal statements. discourses and traditions and statements. establishing the interpretations and meanings they attach to social phenomena. Social science can be Objectivity is unattainable. A belief in objectivity but objective and value-free. think interpretation is theory- dependent – so theory is what allows us to explain what we can see by references to deep structures which we cannot observe. Table 4.1 Positivism, interpretivism and realism compared (Furlong and Marsh, 2010, pp.193-205)

interpretivism, although they are by no means the same. As this thesis is based on an objectivist ontology, asserting that the world exists independently of our knowledge of it, interpretivism is therefore ruled out as a possible epistemological approach for this thesis, as interpretivism is based on a constructivist ontology.

As can be seen in Table 4.1 the primary difference between positivism and realism is that realism posits that although the world exists independently of our knowledge of it, it is not possible to observe all the social phenomena and structures which make up the world. It is for this reason that this thesis is based on a realist epistemology. There are structures which researchers are not always able to explore, and some observable phenomena may be caused by unobservable factors. As Furlong and Marsh (2010, p.204) argue:

…to a realist there is often a dichotomy between reality and appearance. This is a very

important issue because it has clear methodological implications. It means that realists do not

accept that what appears to be so, or, perhaps more significantly, what actors say is so, is

necessarily so.

The above quotation indeed raises a very important epistemological issue for this research project. As this research is concerned with the views of peers on reform of the House of

Lords, a realist epistemology raises the point that what actors say is so, is not necessarily so.

This point is completely accepted, there is no guarantee that what actors say is an accurate reflection of the reality. However, as there is an independent reality, those actors who are closest to the institution, it is argued here, may provide the most accurate information about the institution. In addition, this issue is addressed by interviewing many peers. This will help to reduce the risk of inaccurate perceptions as there can be a level of triangulation between responses enabling analysis of recurring themes or positions. It is argued that by collecting a critical mass of information, we increase the likelihood of gaining an accurate understanding of the effects of reform of the House of Lords.

The Methodological Approach

Now that the ontological and epistemological foundations of this project have been outlined, this section will consider the methodological approach employed in this thesis. As outlined in the previous chapter, this thesis will explore reform of the House of Lords since the election of the Blair government in 1997. In so doing, it will apply to the case study the three theories of Streeck and Thelen’s gradual transformative change, Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction and Parsons’ cross-cutting issues. In formulating the methodological approach of this research, the three theories are therefore fundamental. Due to the importance of the three

59 theories, and the need to be consistent with previous applications of these theories, the methodological approach of this thesis will be to employ methods which are consistent with the theories to be applied in later chapters.

Table 4.2 below presents the three theories outlined in the previous chapter, their core proposition, their method of investigation, and their domains of application. From this Table we can see that each of the theories employ a qualitative approach to evidence gathering, which will be followed in this thesis. In addition, each of the theories employs a case study approach, which again will be followed in this thesis. Although, differing from the theories of gradual transformative change and the Rhetoric of Reaction, this thesis will not employ a comparative case study approach. This is because the empirical focus of this research is furthering understanding of reform of the House of Lords, therefore keeping this case study central is of much empirical significance. Consistent with the theories of gradual transformative change and the cross-cutting issue, this research will also make much use of elite interviews. Finally, consistent with all three theories, this thesis will also employ documentary analysis as a method of investigation.

Methods

In this chapter’s third and final section the research methods will be presented. This project employed two methods of qualitative research, namely: semi-structured elite interviews and document analysis. In addition to which statistics on voting data were also used, and will be discussed in Chapter 7.

The focus of the research was the semi-structured interviews with members of the House of

Lords. The document analysis was the secondary research method and involved analysis of debates in the House of Lords, comments by peers in the media, and papers and reports

60 produced by peers on reform of the House of Lords. In this section there will be a discussion of these methods. In addition to this, will be an overview of the sample group of peers with whom interviews were conducted.

Gradual Rhetoric of Reaction Cross-cutting Issue Transformative Change Core Proposition Incremental changes The rhetoric Issues where to institutions can employed by those traditional lines of have transformative who oppose reform organisation in an effects on the follows three institution are cross- institution over time. imperatives: cut provide the perversity, futility, clearest evidence for and jeopardy. the role of ideas in political analysis. Method of Case Study Comparative Case Case Study Investigation Comparative Case Studies Documentary Studies Documentary Analysis Documentary Analysis Elite Interviews Analysis Elite Interviews Domain of U.S. Welfare State French Revolution, Formation of the Application (Hacker, 2005). Universal Suffrage European Union Social Policy in (UK) and the (Parsons, 2003). France (Levy, 2005). Welfare State Changing Political (Hirschman, 1991). Economy in Japan (Vogel, 2005). Early Retirement in Germany (Trampusch, 2005). Health Care Reforms in Brazil (Falleti, 2010). U.S. House of Representatives (Sheingate, 2010). Table 4.2 Methods employed by the three theories

Semi-structured elite interviews

Semi-structured elite interviews were used in an attempt to penetrate the surface manifestations of political behaviour to more accurately understand the views of members of

61 the House of Lords. Of particular interest was to uncover the views of peers on reform of the

House of Lords, the foundations for these views, and the way these views are articulated.

Although interviewing can be criticised for its lack of standardisation, as Burnham et al. argue ‘if one is interested in actors’ perceptions of the world in which they live, the way in which they construct their world and the shared assumptions that shape it, there is much to be said for the model of the elite interview as an extended conversation’ (Burnham et al., 2008, p.246). As this research is focused on understanding the views of peers, interviews were the most effective way of accessing these views.

A potential criticism of using interviews concerns the reliability of the responses given by interviewees. This criticism is one that can be levelled at any research using semi-structured elite interviewing. There appear to be two weaknesses here, both of which are concerned with the reliability of responses given by interviewees. First, not all agents are conscious of their motivating values and beliefs and, second, when asked about their motivating values and beliefs, there is potential for interviewees to provide misleading responses.

Finkelstein (1999) discusses the issue of how one conceptualises and operationalises the distinction between a person’s conscious and unconscious mental states. Finkelstein (1999) posits that the key distinction concerns the ability of self-ascription. If one is able to self- ascribe to a belief or motivation, then it is conscious. In contrast, if one is unable to self- ascribe, then the belief or motivation can be considered unconscious. Therefore actors may be motivated by beliefs or principles to which they cannot self-ascribe and which are therefore unconscious.

Misleading responses are a well-known weakness of interviewing. Misleading answers may result from interviewees being not fully conscious of their values and beliefs. However, importantly interviewees may also wilfully mis-lead interviewers. This is particularly

62 pertinent when discussing with political elites their motivating values and beliefs in reference to political reform. Some peers may not necessarily wish to express their true motives to an interviewer and, therefore, be tempted to mislead the interviewer with more socially acceptable justifications for their position. This is particularly pertinent when discussing reform of the House of Lords, as there are many very acceptable reasons to oppose an elected chamber. This being said there was little alternative to conducting interviews. Therefore the interview questions were developed in a way that peers were asked similar questions in different ways to ensure consistency, and the development of questions which did not explicitly identify the underlying aim of the question. In regards to the re-phrasing of questions to ensure consistency, this was carried out on a case-by-case basis.

These questions were developed prior to the interviews, and a standard interviewing schedule was developed (see Figure 4.1). There questions, as consistent with a semi-structured approach, were tailored to the particular and interviewee and interview environment. As a result two interviewees were very rarely asked the same questions, although there was a core group of questions asked in all interviews. The first section of the questions related to the overall impression of the interviewee on the House of Lords, their experience in it, and their views on its past and current working practices. The second section focused on reform of the

Lords in an explicit way. In addition to these questions about reform, some questions in the second section were also developed to encourage the interviewee to begin to think about their foundational views on parliament and politics more broadly. These questions were designed to facilitate a conversation about the foundations of the views of peers on reform of the

House of Lords. The last part of the second set of questions asked peers about the key supporters and opponents of reform. These questions were designed to ensure that the key peers on the issue of reform were being targeted, as well as those peers with a less prominent role in the reforms debates.

Section One: Current/Past Working Practices 1. What is your overall impression of being in the House of Lords? 2. What is your overall impression of the way the House of Lords works? 3. What were your views of the House of Lords before you entered? 4. Since you entered, how do you think the works of the House and its role within the broader political system have changed? 5. Do you think that change has been for the better or for the worse? 6. In relation to the other House, how would you describe the nature of the power relationship in informal terms? 7. What, for you, are the fundamental differences between the Commons and the Lords? 8. A question regarding an specific role or function the interviewee may have held and performed in relation to the House of Lords.

Section Two: Issues around Reform 9. What future role do you believe the House of Lords should play in the British political system? 10. You have consistently voted for an x House of Lords. Why is that? 11. How do you think electing peers would alter the institution? Do you believe this would be good or bad? Why? 12. What reforms other than elections would you like to see and would support? 13. What factors motivate your decision to support or oppose measures aimed at reforming the House of Lords? 14. What do you think gives parliamentarians legitimacy? 15. How would you describe your view on representation? a. Delegate b. Free Elections c. Representativeness 16. What are your views on responsibility? 17. Should parliament act on the conscience of its members or the will of the people? 18. How independent should parliament and the government be from the people? 19. Should the government make decisions in what it considers the national interest even if this differs from the views of the people? 20. Who were/are the key supporters of reform? Why do you think they support/ed reform? 21. Who were/are the key opponents of reform? Why do you think they oppose/d reform? 22. Are there any questions or issues you feel if have not covered? 23. Do you have any additional comments? Figure 4.1 Interview schedule

The decision was taken to conduct the interviews with peers in a semi-structured format. This decision was taken as it was the most effective way of engaging peers in such a way as to enable the foundations of their views to emerge. A structured interview would have created

64 too rigid an environment, and was inconsistent with the interviewing approaches most members of the House of Lords would be familiar with.

Target group

In order to gauge the opinions and beliefs of peers, this research sought to go beyond Hansard and secondary sources, instead focusing on interview data. Of course, the House of Lords is both on paper and in practice (although these numbers are substantially different) a large institution and, thus, not members could have been interviewed. Due to this limitation, it was decided that the best approach would be to interview a sample of peers, based on a cross- section of members of the House of Lords. This cross-sectional sample reflected party, time spent in the Lords, gender, professional background, route into the House of Lords

(hereditary, House of Lords Appointments Commission, working peers lists etc.), and positions held within the Chamber. As this research was concerned with the views of peers, it is acknowledged that identifying a cross-section of views would be difficult. Therefore sampling focused on background, as this was important for the application of Parsons’ cross- cutting issue. However, peers prominent on both sides of the debate over reform of the House of Lords were identified to ensure a representation of the various positions.

The target group will consist primarily of current members of the House of Lords and possibly former members of the House of Commons. The target group will consist of peers who sat: prior to the reform period, during the early stages of the reform period, during the middle stage of reform, during the latter stages of reform, and those who sat following the reform period. In addition to this the target group will also consist of those who were in parliament during the entire reform period. The interviewees selected will consist mainly of those heavily involved in the reform process, as Burnham et al. argue ‘one of the defining

65 features of elite interviewing is that some respondents may count more than others in terms of their influence on the decision-making process’ (Burnham et al., 2008, p.231).

The interviews

In total 77 peers were interviewed as part of this project (which is 10% to the nearest whole number of the total members at the time). These interviews were conducted between October

2012 and April 2013 and were conducted mainly at the House of Lords, but also at various offices of peers in central London. In choosing which peers to interview there were three reasons for selection:

1. Peers who had played a prominent role in the reform process. This group included

both those who had been important in particular reform periods, and those who have

taken an active role in the Lords reform debate.

2. Peers who either currently or formerly held important position in the House of Lords.

These included Leaders of the House, party leaders, crossbench convenors and whips

etc.

3. Peers of certain characteristics, to ensure an appropriate sample which provided a

cross-section of the House.

The primary concern was to ensure the right proportion of peers by type of peerage, gender and party or group affiliation. In addition, an effort was made to select peers who entered the

House of Lords at different times. The following tables present the cross-section of peers interviewed. Each table presents the number of interviewees from each type, the proportion of the sample, the number of peers from each type, and the proportion of the whole House of

Lords. To achieve these percentages peers were sent interview requests until enough had agreed from a certain group.

Table 4.3 provides a breakdown by gender. It was considered important to ensure a cross- section by gender as there is a far larger number of men in the House of Lords than women,

3:1. This being established, there was a concern that if peers were chosen without keeping gender in mind then there was a potential that the sample might be dominated, even more than already proportionally, by men. From Table 4.3 it can be seen that the proportion of the sample was within 2% of the proportion of the total House of Lords.

Sample Proportion of Total House of Proportion of Sample Lords Total House Male 59 75% 588 77% Female 19 25% 172 23% Total 77 100% 760 100% Table 4.3 Breakdown of sample group by gender (UK Parliament, 2013)

In Table 4.4 a breakdown by type of peerage is presented. It is important here to briefly discuss the types of peerage. The overwhelming majority of members of the House of Lords

(85%) were appointed as Life Peers. Life Peers are recommended by the Prime Minister to

HM The Queen. The Life Peerage enables the recipient to sit in the House of Lords for their lifetime, unless they are disqualified. A Life Peerage does not pass to the original recipients heirs but is simply for their lifetime.

The second type of peerage is an hereditary peerage. Hereditary peerages are, as the name suggest, inherited, this differs from the Life Peers which cannot be inherited. Prior to the

House of Lords Act 1999 all those who held hereditary peerages were entitled to sit in the

House of Lords. Following the Act, 92 hereditary peers remained in the House of Lords. Two of these were by virtue of their holding the offices of Earl Marshal and Lord Great

Chamberlain. The remaining 90 hereditary peers were elected by either the House as a whole, or the hereditary peers within the specific groups (i.e. the three main political parties or the

67 crossbenches). These peers are entitled to sit in the House of Lords for their lifetime and on their death or retirement there is an election for a new hereditary peer to replace them.

The third type of peerage relates to the bishops. By virtue of the Bishopric of Manchester Act

1847 the number of bishops permitted to be members of the House of Lords is capped at 26.

Five bishops are entitled to sit in the House of Lords ex officio, there are the Archbishops of

Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of Durham, London and Winchester. The remaining

21 bishops are selected by seniority (that is by amount of time served as a bishop). Once a bishop retires from their bishopric they cease to be members of the House of Lords in this capacity, although some former bishops have been made life peers and re-entered the House.

Sample Proportion of Total House of Proportion of Sample Lords Total House Life 59 77% 647 85%

Hereditary 14 18% 88 12% Bishops 4 5% 25 3% Total 77 100% 760 100% Table 4.4 Breakdown of sample group by type of peerage (UK Parliament, 2013)

As can be seen from Table 4.4 there is an under-representation of life peers and an over- representation of hereditary peers and bishops in the sample. First, the over-representation of hereditary peers, this was due to the length of service of many of the hereditary peers, which made their opinion of particular value in order to obtain a perspective on changes in the

House of Lords over time. Secondly, the over-representation of bishops was due to two important factors. First, bishops have no official political position, therefore, in order to more accurately gauge general opinion amongst bishops, this required interviewing more bishops.

Second, as the bishops make up such a small group within the House more needed to be interviewed than their proportion in the House would suggest in order to overcome the

68 potential, say, of interviewing two bishops who agree very strongly and therefore suggesting bishops in general may be of a certain view.

Table 4.5 provides a breakdown of the sample by party. This was by far the most important breakdown, as parties are the dominant organisational line within the House of Lords, something which will be discussed in much more detail in Chapter Seven. From Table 4.5 it can be seen that the sample from the three main parties – the Conservatives, Labour and the

Liberal Democrats, were all within 3% of the proportion of these groups in the House of

Lords as a whole. In addition the proportion of peers sampled from the cross-benches was in- line with the proportion of crossbenchers in the House. Similarly to Table 4.4 there is a small over-representation of bishops which has been discussed above.

Sample Proportion of Total House Proportion of Sample of Lords Total House Conservative 20 26% 213 28% Labour 20 26% 222 29% Liberal Democrat 11 14% 90 12% Crossbench, Non- 22 29% 210 28% Affiliated and Others Bishops 4 5% 25 3% Total 77 100% 760 100% Table 4.5 Breakdown of sample group by party (UK Parliament, 2013)

As is demonstrated in Tables 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5, the sample group of peers is as close to a representative sample of the House as a whole as is possible. There were some qualifications which have been discussed. It must be noted however that the representativeness of this, or indeed any sample, could be questioned. This is particularly so due to the subjective nature of the questioning regarding perceptions of change, and the role of ideas in the reform debate.

This being said, as close to a representative sample as possible, has been attempted in the design of this research project.

Following data collection, data analysis took place in the format outlined here. First after each interview the key points from the interview were written up as a summary. The recordings were then transcribed (if the interviewee had given permission for their interview to be recorded). The transcriptions were then read through by the researcher and key sections or quotes highlighted based on their relevance to the theoretical lens being applied. Once all the interviews had been transcribed and considered the different highlighted sections were collated. The empirical chapters which follow were built on these collations. Quotes were then selected for illustrative purposes, representing the broader arguments made by the interviewees.

Documentary analysis

Although this research project is founded primarily on the semi-structured elite interviews, documentary analysis was also conducted. The purpose behind the documentary analysis is to explore, although briefly, the positions of other peers who were not part of the sample group of those interviewed. This material is centred on debates and questions in the chamber as recorded in Hansard. Supplementary material included:

1. Papers – e.g. those produced by the Office of the Clerk of the Parliament.

2. Pamphlets – e.g. the alternative report produced by some members of the Joint

Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill.

3. Reports – particularly from the Royal Commission and other committee inquiries.

This analysis is focused primarily on providing additional and background information to support and triangulate the interview material. In addition, this documentary analysis enabled the selection of certain peers for interviewing, those who had been prominent speakers in debates on reform, and/or authors of certain reform-focused documents.

In Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the methodological approach of this thesis. The first section presented the ontological and epistemological foundations of the research and discussed the implications for this thesis of objectivist ontology, and a realist epistemology. Following this the methodological approach was discussed. This approach is founded on the methodologies utilised by previous application of the three theories of gradual transformative change, the

Rhetoric of Reaction, and the cross-cutting issue. The final section of this chapter presented the methods which will form the basis of the empirical interrogation of the questions – elite interviews and documentary analysis – focusing on elite interviews which form the basis of the theoretical application to follow.

Chapter Five – A Story of One Act and a Flop: Historical Institutionalism and the House of Lords post-1997

______

Introduction

The Blair government ushered in a raft of reforms to Britain’s constitution including devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the creation of the Supreme Court; and the passage of the Human Rights Act (Bogdanor, 2005). Hazell has gone so far as to argue that ‘constitutional reform will be seen as the greatest single legacy of the Blair government’

(Hazell, 2007, p.3). Amongst these other changes, the House of Lords also found itself as a target for reform by the Labour government.

When the Labour Party took office in 1997 there were no members of the House of Lords chosen by election (Evans, 2003, p.132). The Labour Party had signalled its intention to reform the upper house, as Bogdanor (2005, p.91) argues:

By the time of the 1992 general election, however, which Labour lost, the Party had become

committed to a directly elected second chamber. But it recoiled from implementing so drastic

a solution immediately, and in 1994, Tony Blair, during his campaign for the Labour

leadership, proposed a two-stage reform. The first stage would involve disenfranchising the

hereditary peers, who comprised around two thirds of the House, “within months.” This

would be followed by some method of elucidating consensus on a second stage, such as a

Royal Commission.

In 1999, Tony Blair moved to legislate for the first-phase of reform – the removal of the hereditary peers; a long-held ambition of the Labour Party (Dorey, 2006). Along with ending the right of hereditary peers to sit by birth, other reforms to the Lords during the Labour years were: the removal of the law lords, the abolition of the Lord Chancellorship, followed by its re-establishment and move to the Commons, and the introduction of a Lord Speaker

(Bogdanor, 2005, p.91).

This chapter will focus on the major reform of the Lords carried out under Tony Blair – the

House of Lords Act 1999. This chapter will also discuss the reform attempt of the Coalition government in 2012. In this endeavour, the chapter has one primary aim: to evaluate whether the typology of gradual transformative change, developed by Streeck and Thelen (2005; in particular see pp.18-33), assists in understanding the post-1997 period of reform. A history of the period outlining the key reforms – the reform narrative – will be presented. This will draw on material gathered through interviews with some of the key figures in the Lords reform debate during this period. As this material provides information not available elsewhere, an empirical contribution is therefore an important part of this chapter.

The structure of this chapter will be in four parts. The first part will briefly outline Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) five types of gradual transformative change, as presented in more detail in Chapter Two. The second will turn its attention to the House of Lords Act 1999. The third part will focus on the reform attempt of the Coalition government. This chapter will conclude with an assessment of the utility of Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology for understanding the post-1997 period of House of Lords reform.

Streeck and Thelen’s Types of Institutional Change

We will begin by first outlining Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) types of institutional change

(see Table 5.1). Streeck and Thelen distinguished ‘between processes of change, which may be incremental or abrupt, and results of change, which may amount to either continuity or discontinuity’ (2005, p.8). Streeck and Thelen go on to argue that ‘equating incremental with adaptive and reproductive minor change, and major change with, mostly exogenous, disruption of continuity, makes excessively high demands on ‘real’ change to be recognised as such and tends to reduce most or all observable changes to adjustment for the purpose of stability’ Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.8). We can see then that Streeck and Thelen (2005) were interested in providing evidence and a theoretical basis for their argument that incremental change in institutions can lead to gradual transformation of the institution. In other words, they were arguing that the punctuated equilibrium model (Krasner, 1988;

Pempel, 1998; Pierson, 2004) and others which seek to equate incremental reform to reproduction and abrupt reform to change fail to recognise the importance of incremental reform to change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, pp.8-9).

Result of change Continuity Discontinuity Incremental Reproduction by Gradual Process of change adaptation Transformation Abrupt Survival and Breakdown and Return Replacement Table 5.1 Types of institutional change: processes and results (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.9)

In exploring gradual transformative change, Streeck and Thelen (2005) develop five types of results of such change: displacement, layering, drift, conversion and exhaustion.

Displacement ‘Slowly rising salience of subordinate relative to dominant institutions’ Layering ‘New elements attached to existing institutions gradually change their status and structure’ Drift ‘Neglect of institutional maintenance in spite of external change resulting in slippage in institutional practice on the ground’ Conversion ‘Redeployment of old institutions to new purposes; new purposes attached to old structures’ Exhaustion ‘Gradual breakdown (withering away) of institutions over time’ Table 5.2 Types of gradual transformative change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.31)

The typology presented in Table 5.2 has been applied to other cases. Within their edited collection, the typology is applied to different cases by different researchers. For example

Hacker (2005), applies the concept of policy drift to the politics of U.S. welfare state retrenchment. In addition to the first edited collection, the typology of gradual transformative change is also applied to cases in a second collection, this time edited by Mahoney and

Thelen (2010). Therefore this application to the case of reform of the House of Lords is contributing to a field of research which employs Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change.

The House of Lords Act 1999

The House of Lords Act 1999 was the most significant reform to the House of Lords in the post-1997 period. The Blair Labour government which was elected by a landslide in the 1997

UK General Election:

had an unconditional promise to make a first strike for House of Lords reform. Unlike all

previous Labour administrations, New Labour sought first to amend the composition of the

Lords, eliminating the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote and therefore moving to end the

Conservative predominance in the House, before later considering the powers of the House

and, indeed, a longer-term settlement. (Ballinger, 2012, p.164)

1983 and 1987 The Labour Party’s election manifestos call for the abolition of the House of Lords. 1992 Labour’s election manifesto shifts from calling for abolition to proposing reform. The reform proposed is an elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords. 1993 Policy document A New Agenda for Democracy: Labour’s Proposals for Constitutional Reform, articulates the idea of a two-staged approach to Lords reform. 1994 Tony Blair becomes leader of the Labour Party. He prefers a two-staged approach to Lords reform. 1997 Labour wins the General Election and forms government for the first time since 1979. A two-staged approach to Lords reform forms part of its election manifesto. No mention of House of Lords reform is included in the new Labour Government’s first Queen’s Speech. January 1999 White Paper Modernising Parliament: Reforming the House of Lords published. Royal Commission into reform of the House of Lords announced. Bill introduced to remove the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. November 1999 Royal Assent given for the House of Lords Bill. 2000 Royal Commission chaired by Lord Wakeham publishes its report. Table 5.3 The stop-go cycle of reform of the House of Lords (Adapted from: Dorey, 2006; Dorey and Kelso, 2011; Russell, 2000; Shell, 2000)

The Labour government moved to realise its election commitment to end the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords by virtue of their peerage with the House of

Lords Bill. As Ballinger (2012, p.173) argues:

The House of Lords Bill was a very short Bill, which sought to achieve two ends: first, to end

the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote by right of their hereditary peerage in the House of

Lords; and, second, to overturn common law restrictions on those hereditary peers who would

no longer have a seat in the House of Lords, in order that they could vote in parliamentary

elections, and stand for election to, and sit in, the House of Commons without the need to

renounce their titles under the Peerages Act 1963.

The introduction of the House of Lords Bill in 1999 not only embodied an election manifesto, but also attempted to bring about the long held ambition of the Labour Party – to remove the hereditary peerage from an automatic place in the British parliamentary system (Dorey, 2006;

Russell, 2000, p.13).

In this section will be a discussion of the House of Lords Act 1999. This will begin with a recounting of the negotiations between the Conservative leadership in the House of Lords and the new government. Following this, the second part of this section will discuss the

Weatherill Amendment which allowed for 92 hereditary peers to remain following the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999. Finally, the typology of gradual transformative change discussed above will be applied to the 1999 reform.

Negotiating the House of Lords Act

The account presented below of the negotiations over what would become the Weatherill

Amendment to the House of Lords Act 1999 is based on interview material with some of those who were closely involved with this period of reform. Much of this account is publicly known and when this is the case reference is made to secondary sources which corroborate

78 the narrative presented here. It is important to acknowledge that this is the version of events according to the interview material gathered as part of this research project. It is therefore based on the personal reflections of some, not all. There may naturally be disputes over the content of such conversations and the order of events, particularly those over a decade and a half ago.

Prior to the election of the Labour Party in 1997 informal talks had been carried out by Lord

Cranborne, leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, and Lord Richard, leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords (Dorey and Kelso, 2011, p.178). However these talks ceased after Lord Richard was removed as Leader of the House by Tony Blair, arguably for his support for a primarily elected second chamber (Dorey and Kelso, 2011, p.177), and replaced with Lady Jay of Paddington, the daughter of former Labour Prime Minister James

Callaghan. Lady Jay had been a member of the House of Lords since 1992 and prior to being made Leader of the House of Lords had been Health Spokesman and Minister for Women in the House of Lords.

Following the 1997 election, the Conservative Party, bolstered by the hereditary peers, still held an impressive majority in the House of Lords, in contrast to the much altered balance of the parties in the House of Commons. Lord Cranborne believed ‘the Labour Party had a mandate to reform the House of Lords, we couldn’t in any way stop it in the House of Lords, although theoretically we could’ (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November

2013). So although possible, Lord Cranborne did not think it right to interfere in any serious way with the new government’s reform plans (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27

November 2013). However, this did not stop Cranborne from using this strong position in the

Lords to bluff the Labour Party into entering negotiations (Cockerell, 2001, p.120), in the words of Lord Cranborne ‘making a new and inexperienced government think that I was

79 perfectly capable of doing it – in other words bluffing them’ (Interview with the Marquess of

Salisbury, 27 November 2013).

With the permission of William Hague, the new Leader of the Opposition, Cranborne planned:

to so frighten the government when it first came in so that it would come to us suggesting that

we should do a deal, and I think my phrase was “we’ll threaten them with a Somme and

Passchendaele” and that we’d ramp up the difficulty to such a degree that they would think

that their lordships would threaten their entire legislative programme. When they realised that

that would cause a tremendous amount of difficulty for them and their zeal for new Britain

they would come and ask for it. (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November

2013)

Lord Cranborne then proceeded to ‘ramp up’ the threat of the Conservative majority in the

House of Lords (Cockerell, 2001, p.120). At this point, Lord Cranborne began talks with the

Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg (Cockerell, 2001, p.123; Dorey and Kelso, 2011, p.178), who contacted Lord Cranborne around March/April 1997 and said ‘“I think we’d better have a chat”’ (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013). After receiving permission from Hague, Lord Cranborne met with Lord Irvine and a paraphrased version of their conversation is:

Lord Irvine: I suppose you want to keep a number of hereditaries.

Lord Cranborne: that would be one way of going forward and I explained that I didn’t give a

monkey about the hereditaries really, it’s just that I didn’t believe there would be a stage two

after a stage one. I want to put some sand in the shoe as a constant reminder after phase one

that this is unfinished business.

Lord Irvine: how many do you want, 15?

Lord Cranborne: that’s a bit mean Derry what about 100?

Lord Irvine: You must be joking? (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November

2013)

The pair continued to meet, and Lord Cranborne felt it necessary to prove to the Labour Party that he could carry out his threat to their legislative programme in the Lords. In the end the piece of legislation chosen was the European Elections Bill to be taken to the Parliament Act provisions for dispute between the two chambers (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury,

27 November 2013). Following this Lord Irvine rang Lord Cranborne and offered him 75 remaining hereditary peers (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013).

In addition to this 75, Lord Cranborne asked for an additional category of 15 hereditary peers to fill positions within the House, and to be elected by the whole House (Cockerell, 2001, p.124). With the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, whose place was to be retained by right of birth, this took the total number to 92. In response Lord Irvine agreed to talk to ‘young Blair’, to which Lord Cranborne responded ‘well remember the European

Elections Act Derry and all that’ (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November

2013), which was still ping-ponging between the Houses at that time. Lord Cranborne also agreed to speak to Hague about the proposed deal (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury,

27 November 2013).

Lord Cranborne then contacted William Hague and again a paraphrased version of the conversation is:

Lord Cranborne explained the proposed deal to Hague.

Hague: Oh, I see you’ve done pretty well.

Lord Cranborne: Thank you very much William, can I go ahead?

Hague: Oh well you know I’m a new leader and I’m not sure whether I can do it on my own

authority, we’ll have to take it to shadow cabinet.

Lord Cranborne: Well the difficulty of the shadow cabinet is it will leak.

Hague was not convinced they could act.

Lord Cranborne: I do have another idea, why don’t we invent a very very great committee of

the shadow cabinet which we will call the Shadow Cabinet Constitutional Committee and it

can consist entirely of Privy Councillors who had been members of the last government.

Hague: That’s a good idea. (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013)

After this discussion Lord Cranborne and William Hague met to discuss further. On the morning of the meeting Lord Cranborne arrived, and in the room was George Osborne. Lord

Cranborne gathered that Hague was being talked out of the deal, but nothing was said. That evening was the first meeting of the committee of the shadow cabinet which included Joe

Arbuthnot, the Chief Whip, Michael Ancram, Michael Howard, Lord Strathclyde and some others. The deal was not agreed to. The committee agreed to meet again the following week where again Lord Cranborne lost. This put Lord Cranborne in a position where he had to decide to accept the decision of shadow cabinet or to resign:

Then I [Lord Cranborne] suddenly thought well since I’m going to go anyway and there’s a

deal which Hague actually agreed to and I think is rather a good sort of next stage in this

century long saga, why don’t I bloody well do it anyway? (Interview with the Marquess of

Salisbury, 27 November 2013)

Following this decision to continue with deal, Lord Cranborne contacted Lord Irvine and a paraphrased account of their conversation follows:

Lord Cranborne: look not a chance of getting my party’s agreement now, even though as you

know I kept Hague informed throughout, but I have a thought – my political life is over

anyway, why don’t we just do it?

Lord Irvine: fine, well I’ll talk to young Blair. (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27

November 2013)

The Prime Minister agreed to the deal. Discussions were then had as to how to proceed and, it was thought best to contact Lord Weatherill to see if he would propose the amendment. The next concern was to avoid it leaking and after two encounters, Lord Cranborne realised the deal was becoming known around Westminster (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury,

27 November 2013). As a result of this, Lord Cranborne contacted Lord Irvine and voiced his concerns the plan would be leaked so Lord Irvine suggested Lord Cranborne meet with the

Prime Minister in Downing Street. The meeting went well and agreement to continue was reached.

Whilst Lord Cranborne was on a tour of constituencies in the North East, he was contacted by

Alastair Campbell4, a paraphrased version of the conversation is:

Campbell: I think this is all very complicated because I think that Hague when he hears what

you’re going to do I think he’ll raise it at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Lord Cranborne: What possible advantage would it be? The sensible thing for him to do is to

accept that this was a good deal, rather than bang the drum and accuse Blair of buckling under

pressure.

Campbell: That’s what we think he’s going to do. Can you come into Downing Street on

Monday morning?

4 Downing Street Press Secretary (1997-2000), Director of Communications and Strategy (2000-2003).

Lord Cranborne: Yes, of course. (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November

2013)

On his return to London, Lord Cranborne met with Alastair Campbell, the first time the two had met. In this meeting they agreed on the mechanics of how the plan would work

(Cockerell, 2001, p.125). Following this Lord Cranborne made arrangements with Lord

Weatherill to introduce the amendment. Meetings with the opposition front bench in the

Lords and the Tory peers were then arranged. After these plans were made Lord Cranborne told William Hague what was going on and was Hague clearly upset with him (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013). At the meeting of the opposition frontbench all but one peer supported Lord Cranborne’s plan.

Lord Carrington had come over from the United State of America to support Lord Cranborne in the meeting the same afternoon with prominent Tory backbench peers. During this meeting

William Hague arrived ‘mob-handed’. Earlier William Hague had raised the deal in Prime

Minister’s Questions, where Blair shot him down (Dorey and Kelso, 2011, p.179). After an exchange in the meeting between Lord Cranborne and Hague, a peer present intervened and said ‘we’re not getting anywhere why don’t you just go in and sort it out?’ A group including

Cranborne, Hague, Strathclyde, Ancram and Carrington met in the Opposition’s room in the

Lords. In the room, an extended version of the paraphrased conversation below ensued:

Lord Cranborne: Well you’re clearly very upset with me, and I absolutely agree that I haven’t

behaved very well, but to be fair neither did you, and I only started behaving badly when you

sort of shafted me and what do you want me to do? Do you want me to resign or do you want

to sack me?

William Hague: I want to sack you, you behaved absolutely disgracefully. (Interview with the

Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013)

Following this Cranborne was sacked and the whole of the opposition frontbench in the

Lords, except three, resigned, although Cranborne persuaded them to withdraw their resignations (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013). It is important at this point to note the strong admiration in which Cranborne was held by some

Conservative hereditary peers for his conduct in this period:

I always admired what Robert Cranborne did and I’m grateful to him. (Interview with a

Conservative Hereditary Peer, 8 November 2013)

I think what William Hague was trying to do at the time was quite wrong. (Interview with a

Conservative Hereditary Peer, 8 November 2013)

He [Cranborne] was prepared to put the House of Lords before his career. (Interview with a

Conservative Hereditary Peer, 8 November 2013)

Lord Cranborne was then replaced with Lord Strathclyde as leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords5. Lord Strathclyde accepted the position on three conditions: (1) he should have complete control over House of Lords policy in the shadow cabinet, (2) that

Hague should accept the deal and, (3) that Hague should appear on the Today programme the following day accepting it (Interview with the Marquess of Salisbury, 27 November 2013).

What is clear from this account of the negotiations over the House of Lords Act 1999 is the independent way in which Lord Cranborne carried out the negotiations, informing William

Hague of events, but only to a degree. Once the difference in opinion between Lord

Cranborne and Hague became too large, Lord Cranborne then carried out the negotiations in secret. The result of which was the sacking of Lord Cranborne as leader of the Conservative

Party in the House of Lords in 1998. The main victory in the negotiations for Lord Cranborne

5 Strathclyde had been part of the negotiations between Viscount Cranborne and Lord Irvine.

85 was the retention of the 92 hereditary peers. This became known as the Weatherill

Amendment.

The Weatherill amendment

…a classic example of a short term compromise turning into a long term fact. (Interview with

a Bishop, 15 January 2013)

We have now seen the behind-the-scene negotiations, between key Conservative figures in the House of Lords and the Labour Government, which resulted in the Weatherill

Amendment to the House of Lords Bill 1999. The Weatherill Amendment allowed for 92 hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords. The period following the introduction of the

House of Lords Act 1999 was to be considered an interim, as the House of Lords Act was to be the first of a two-phase reform process which would result, at its conclusion, result in a democratically elected second chamber. Although the House of Lords Act failed to achieve its ultimate goal in removing the hereditary peerage from the House of Lords, it did remove the hereditary principle from the House, as the remaining 90 (excluding the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain who sat ex-officio) hereditary peers were to be elected rather than gain a seat in the House of Lords through automatic succession. With the removal of the hereditary principle from the House of Lords, and thus the ending of a centuries old tradition, the Labour Party certainly achieved an important objective.

Although the Weatherill Amendment allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain in the House of

Lords, the remaining hereditary peers were excluded. This was a naturally difficult period for many of the hereditary peers, and other peers as well, as the following quotes from some hereditary peers attest:

… the most unpleasant fortnight of my life…unbelievably awful. (Interview with a

Conservative Hereditary Peer, 15 January 2013)

… there was a lot of bitterness. (Interview with a Hereditary Peer, 14 November 2012)

… there were grown men in here physically with tears. (Interview with a Conservative

Hereditary Peer, 5 February 2013)

… it was a sad affair, but it was necessary. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November

2012)

There were, however, a number of hereditary peers who did not see the removal of the bulk of the hereditary membership in such a dramatic fashion:

It was inevitable. I think it took place rather smoothly. There were some hereditaries who

were deeply resentful of the fact, but most of them weren’t. (Interview with a Conservative

Hereditary Peer, 8 November 2012)

However, this resentment seems to have found its focus on the Labour administration in the

Lords, and in particular the then Leader of the House of Lords Margaret Jay:

… she treated us like pariahs. (Interview with a Hereditary Peer, 14 November 2012)

The manner of their leaving caused some disquiet, because it was felt it wasn’t done as well it

could be…I don’t think they departed with a feeling of goodwill, shall we say, because of the

way they’d been treated by the government. So it wasn’t the best of periods. (Interview with a

Conservative Peer, 4 November 2012)

… it was done purely by Mr Blair out of pique and jealousy, it served no useful purpose

whatsoever. If indeed he had waited and let nature take its course on the basis that the average

age of the House was pretty elderly and if he had just had an Act of Parliament which said

that the future after the current one’s death no hereditary peer would automatically have a seat

in the House of Lords probably within 30 years the vast majority would have been gone.

(Interview with a Conservative Hereditary Peer, 5 February 2013)

This has left some lingering feelings of bitterness amongst some peers, although for the most part this seems to have abated:

… the club atmosphere had gone, it took a while for it to become friendly again, I think there

were probably a few recriminations about how the Labour Party had behaved; like everything

else in life in settles down. (Interview with a Conservative Hereditary Peer, 5 February 2013)

A further complication which resulted from the Weatherill Amendment was the need for the creation of a mechanism by which to replace members of the 90 elected hereditary peers when they died. A system of by-elections was chosen for this task. This was not seen by the

Labour government, at the time, to be particularly significant as there was an expectation that phase two would arrive before the need for any by-election (Interview with a Conservative Peer,

22 November 2012).

The Impact of the House of Lords Act 1999: An Application of Streeck and Thelen’s Heuristic

The previous section has provided the narrative of the politics surrounding the introduction and passage of the House of Lords Act 1999. This section will begin the assessment of the effects of this period on the House of Lords. In particular, this will focus on an application of

Streeck and Thelen’s theory of gradual transformative change introduced at the beginning of this chapter. In so doing, each of the five types of gradual transformative change will be considered in turn, linking these with the views expressed by peers on the effects of the 1999

Act.

The first type of change articulated by Streeck and Thelen was displacement. Displacement occurs with the ‘Slowly rising salience of subordinate relative to dominant institutions’. As the result of the House of Lords Act 1999 the hereditary peerage was certainly displaced,

88 although this was not gradual, but rather took effect in a very short period after the introduction of the House of Lords Act 1999. However, more consistent with displacement is the gradual displacement of the hereditary peers by the life peers, which had been occurring since the passage of the Life Peerages Act 1958.

The particular effect though of the House of Lords Act 1999 on the displacement of the hereditary peers is much contested by peers themselves. There are two clear views put forward in answer to this questions, there are those peers who argue that there was a substantial change to the House of Lords following the Act of 1999:

Of course the removal of the hereditaries in 1999 changed dramatically the nature of the

House. (Interview with a Conservative Hereditary Peer, 8 November 2012)

... the tone of the place changed a bit. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012) and those peers who argue the opposite, that there was very little change as the result of the reform:

I don’t think it made much difference…My feeling was that the number that remained was

sufficient to continue the quality that had prevailed before. (Interview with a Conservative

Peer, 6 November 2012)

… it was more in perception than in reality in that the hereditary peers who used to attend

frequently to the House were people who were very capable, very knowledgeable and you

made an incredibly important contribution to public life, so that I suppose in terms of whether

the House is more or less effective I don’t think that I could say it is more effective, I hope it

is as effective. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 26 November 2012)

I don’t think it made as big a difference as some people thought it might, because many of the

Hereditary Peers that were booted out were very, very inactive, rare attendees. And some of

those who were very much more involved were able to stay on in the 92, group of 92.

(Interview with a Labour Peer, 29 November 2012)

In addition to these two clear views regarding the amount of change following the removal of the majority of the hereditary peers in 1999, is a more nuanced view put forward by some.

These peers argue that there was change but that it was not substantial, and did not affect the core ‘ethos’ of the chamber:

I don’t think it made a big difference to what you might call the ethos of the chamber.

(Interview with a Labour Peer, 5 December 2012)

During the course of the interviews it became clear that the majority of peers believed there were changes to the House following the removal of the hereditary peers but that these changes were not as instant and dramatic as many may have expected:

… the culture changed in a sense, not quite as dramatically as one might think… I can’t think

of the right word to use but it became more ordinary. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 28

November 2012)

The second of Streeck and Thelen’s types of change is layering. Layering is when ‘New elements attached to existing institutions change their status and structure’. Layering is certainly highly applicable to this case. The increase in new peers following the election of the Blair government introduced people of backgrounds and interests different to those who had previously dominated the House of Lords. The following changes have been argued to have resulted from the layering of new peers, and the removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers: increased professionalization; reduction in small ‘c’ conservatism; and increased partisanship.

Professionalisation

Although peers differ when asked about the effects of the House of Lords Act 1999, there was clearly a belief that the House of Lords has become more professional in the period since

1997. The following quotations illustrate this point:

… [Before the Act] it was to be fair rather more relaxed and it was undoubtedly less

professional. (Interview with a Conservative Hereditary Peer, 15 January 2013)

… after that [the removal of the majority of the hereditary peers] it became much more

professional but what did surprise everybody I think, and I think that Tom Strathclyde must

take a lot of credit for this, all really of the old standards remained – the quality of debate, the

courtesy, the friendliness, the cross-party relationships were probably enhanced. (Interview

with a Conservative Hereditary Peer, 15 January 2013)

Reduction in conservatism with both a big and a small ‘c’

Another commonly mentioned effect of the House of Lords Act 1999 was the removal of the dominance of the Conservative Party. The vast majority of the excluded peers were

Conservative:

… changed politically of course, because it meant that the Tories couldn’t bring all the

backwoodsmen in at any time they felt like it because they were no longer there. (Interview

with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012)

Before the hereditary peers were largely removed, the House was very socially conservative -

more socially conservative than the Commons. Their removal led, quickly, to a significant

change. The lords became much more socially liberal - more so than the Commons.

(Interview with a Labour Peer, 12 December 2012)

… the obvious driving force of that was the political one, that you cannot operate a chamber

with a built-in Conservative majority. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012)

As Russell argues, as a result of the House of Lords Act 1999, ‘the second chamber’s dominance by the hereditaries, and consequently by the Conservative party, was at an end’

(Russell, 2010, p.867).

However, this view is contested by others:

I think that's true here in the House of Lords, there's no one party that has an overall majority,

whatever the numbers looked like in the old days of the hereditary peers you still had to get

the cross benchers on your side if you were a Conservative Government in order to get

something through. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 9 November 2012)

Increased partisanship

An effect often argued as being the result of the House of Lords Act 1999 is an increased partisanship in the House, and a less collegial atmosphere. In regards to the increasing partisanship, the following quote illustrates this position:

it’s more political in the sense of the House feeling more politically confident in how it deals

with government…because as one of my Life Peer colleagues put it, it’s the hereditaries that

keep us modest. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 4 November 2012)

Academics have also written on this point, seeing it in fact as a main motivator for the legislation:

The removal of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords could clearly be argued on

principle. It was widely accepted that inheriting seats in the legislature was anachronistic.

However there were also clear political motives for Labour to pursue reform. Immediately

before the 1999 Act, 301 of the 640 hereditary peers registered to attend the House took the

Conservative whip and only 19 took the Labour whip. There were also 217 hereditary

‘Crossbenchers’ who took no whip, but were suspected of Conservative leanings. (Russell,

2010, p.867)

In regards to the third point regarding a less collegial atmosphere, this could be seen as a natural corollary to an increase in partisan behaviour. However, it was argued that the less collegial atmosphere had begun to take hold before the bulk of the hereditary peers were excluded.

Drift is the third part of Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change.

Drift refers to: ‘Neglect of institutional maintenance in spite of external change resulting in slippage in institutional practice on the ground’. This does not seem to be particularly insightful when applied to the case.

Another type of change identified by Streeck and Thelen which applies is exhaustion, which involves ‘Gradual breakdown (withering away) of institutions over time’. It could be argued that there was an element of withering away of the institution of the hereditary peerage in the lead up to the House of Lords Act 1999. The wealth of the hereditary peers had already been significantly eroded, and many peers had also ceased to attend the House of Lords regularly.

These two factors are clear example of exhaustion, which made the passage of the House of

Lords Act 1999 much easier than it would have been 50 or 100 years before.

The final type of gradual transformative change identified in Streeck and Thelen’s typology is conversion. Similarly to the effects of layering, there is evidence that as a result of the new peers, mentioned above, and the removal of the hereditary principle, there is evidence to support the conclusion that the Lords became more assertive. As Russell argues:

The most measurable and visible sign of Lords impact is government defeats, of which there

have been more than 400 since 1999. The chamber also now appears more reluctant to back

down when confronting the government. But one of the most important changes is that the

government’s own procedures now explicitly anticipate and seek to avoid conflict with the

Lords. (Russell, 2010, p.880)

This increased assertiveness has been seen particularly in the area of civil liberties (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010, p.1). This more active role is certainly akin to a new purpose for the Lords, within its traditionally weak constitutional position.

The qualitative data suggests that the House of Lords Act 1999 is an example of an incremental reform which has resulted in gradual transformation of the institution. It is an incremental reform for two substantive reasons. First, as the majority of the regularly attending hereditary peers remained after the removal of the bulk of the hereditary peerage, as the result of the Weatherill Amendment, there was not a substantial change in the regularly attending membership of the House of Lords. Second, much interview material supports the position that although there have been changes in the period since 1999, that these changes were not as instant or as dramatic as might at first be thought; these changes took form gradually throughout this period.

Although the House of Lords Act 1999 clearly had some effects on the House of Lords, there is also evidence that other incremental changes were also occurring in this period. It is argued here that the effects of these other, non-legislative, changes have been conflated by some to be the effects of the House of Lords Act 1999. The position may be contested, as it would be very difficult to be certain which particular change resulted from which particular cause, where there is evidence to support multiple propositions; it can be difficult, particularly when exploring incremental change, to discern that actual cause of the effect. However, by considering the non-legislative changes, this case raises an important question about the

94 actual cause of the changes, such as the increased professionalisation of the Lords and an increase in partisan behaviour in the House of Lords in the period since 1997.

One peer argued that these changes were the effect of the turn to MPs as the prime source of new members of the House of Lords:

... the pool from which government and party leaders drew to fill the benches in the House of

Lords, focused much more on the House of Commons...there was a time when basically you

had to be junior minister in the other place to get a peerage... (Interview with a Labour Peer,

28 November 2012)

And that, as a result:

... the normal courtesies have slightly diminished...[and] there is a sharper tone which reflects

the much larger number of former Members of Parliament who are here. (Interview with a

Labour Peer, 28 November 2012)

This position is somewhat substantiated by quantitative data. Although longitudinal demographic data is currently unavailable, Russell and Benton (2010) concluded that 27% of peers in 2010 had a background in ‘representative politics’. Although this included local councillors and former MEPs, there is clear evidence that former MPs make up a large portion of the membership of the House of Lords.

One interviewee also mentioned how there used to be a common women’s peers room shared by all parties, but after the intake of new Labour women peers, these new peers began to separate themselves from the other women peers (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 14

November 2012).

As demonstrated in Table 5.4, Streeck and Thelen’s typology provides an interesting lens through which to explore this period of House of Lords reform. Most significantly by

95 applying this lens and considering the interview material in this light, it appears a fair conclusion that the House of Lords Act 1999 was an incremental change, but not a particularly significant one for the workings of the House of Lords. Clearly, it was a period of much conflict, and for some turmoil, but on the whole, most hereditary peers who attended frequently remained. It seems of more significance was the appointment of new peers by

Tony Blair both prior to, in small numbers, and after, in larger numbers, his election victory in 1997. The effect of the numbers of these peers was contested in the interview material, but more significant was the background and purpose of these new peers. In other words, not only were these new peers different from the existing membership of the House, they saw their purpose for being there differently, and seemed to, so it has been argued, approach their time in the Lords more professionally, and more politically. This is an important finding, and only occurred as the result of the application of Streeck and Thelen’s typology, demonstrating the usefulness of such a typology in considering periods of reform such as that surrounding the 1999 House of Lords Act.

Displacement ‘Slowly rising salience of Sudden displacement of subordinate relative to the hereditary peerage dominant institutions’ occurred in 1999. In addition there had been gradual displacement of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords since the Life Peerages Act 1958. Layering ‘New elements attached to The increase in new existing institutions gradually peers following the change their status and election of the Blair structure’ government introduced people of backgrounds and interests different to those who had previously dominated the House of Lords. Drift ‘Neglect of institutional This does not seem to maintenance in spite of external apply to this period of the change resulting in slippage in House of Lords. institutional practice on the ground’ Conversion ‘Redeployment of old There is evidence that as institutions to new purposes; a result of the new peers, new purposes attached to old and the removal of the structures’ hereditary principle, the Lords became more assertive, particularly in the area of civil liberties. Exhaustion ‘Gradual breakdown (withering The wealth of the away) of institutions over time’ hereditary peers had already been significantly eroded, and many peers had also ceased to attend the House of Lords regularly. These two factors are clear example of exhaustion, which made the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999 much easier than it would have been 50 or 100 years before. Table 5.4 Streeck and Thelen’s heuristic applied to the House of Lords Act 1999

The Cameron-Clegg Reform Attempt

The attempt in 2012 by the Coalition government to introduce a primarily elected second chamber to Westminster was a complete failure. Indeed it has been argued: ‘As with so many previous attempts, last week’s push to reform the House of Lords descended into farce’

(Lodge and Kenny, 2012). Although the reform proposals have been widely critiqued as being ill-thought through, and much criticism has been placed at the feet of Deputy Prime

Minister Nick Clegg, this failure by the Coalition is but the latest failed reform attempt.

Therefore it should be acknowledged that the failure of the latest reform attempt was not wholly the fault of Nick Clegg, as Patrick Dunleavy has argued ‘The coalition government’s draft bill on Lords reform shows tremendous progress in coming up with a workmanlike road to reform’ (Dunleavy, 2011, p.41). This being said, the draft bill had much which required improvement (Dunleavy, 2011).

In this section will be an analysis of the failed attempt of the Coalition government in 2012 to reform the House of Lords. This analysis will begin with a discussion of the 2010 election result which saw a coalition formed between the Conservative Party and the Liberal

Democrats, the least and most convinced parties in terms of reform of the House of Lords.

This discussion will also consider the subsequent coalition proposal for reform. Following this, the Joint Committee on the Draft which was established by the Coalition government will be explored. In particular, it is clear that the Joint Committee was a tense and heated forum with clear divisions between those who supported, and those who opposed, the

Coalition’s draft bill. The third part of this section will focus on the introduction of the reform bill into the House of Commons, and the subsequent rebellion by a large minority of

Conservative backbench MPs. This part will not only explore the activities in the House of

Commons but will also consider the types of MPs in the rebellion and their motivations, and

98 the actions of the Labour Party in ensuring the success of the rebellion. The final substantive part of this section will be an application of Streeck and Thelen’s typology to the most recent attempt at wholesale reform of the House of Lords.

The 2010 election and the Coalition reform proposal

A century after the 1911 Parliament Act, House of Lords reform still remained ‘unfinished

business’. (Dorey and Kelso, 2011, p.172)

‘All three main parties had fought the 2010 election with manifesto pledges committing in principle to a largely or wholly elected second chamber’ (Russell, 2013, p.265). Although this is undoubtedly true, there were clearly different levels of enthusiasm between the different parties for wholesale Lords reform ranging on a continuum from an enthusiastic

Liberal Democrats to the Labour Party to an uninterested Conservative Party. The irony of a

Coalition between the most and least interested parties in reform of the Lords was always going to have dramatic effects. Reform of the House of Lords was considered by a cross- party committee chaired by Nick Clegg which ‘considered all the issues in relation to reform of the House of Lords’ (Harper, 2011, p.50). After negotiations between the Coalition partners concluded with the Coalition Agreement, House of Lords reform was clearly on the agenda:

We agree to establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected

upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward

with a draft motion by December 2010. It is likely that this bill will advocate single long

terms of office. It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the

interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber

reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

(HM Government, 2010)

The commitment to an elected second chamber had long been part of the political reform agenda of the Liberal Democrats. This enthusiasm was not matched by many Conservatives, although, as a Conservative peer argued ‘One shouldn’t deny that it’s not just the Liberal

Democrats but a lot of leading Conservatives’ (Interview with a Conservative Hereditary

Peer, 8 November 2012) who support an elected second chamber. Much of the Conservative frontbench in the House of Commons, including the Prime Minister David Cameron, had been known supporters of at least a partially elected second chamber. There was certainly support for reform, albeit not as strong nor as universal as was required for success.

One question which arises is why did reform of the House of Lords make it into the Coalition

Agreement? The simple answer is that the Liberal Democrats have long been committed to introducing an elected second chamber. Of more interest is why did David Cameron feel the need to give such a concession, when he would have known full-well the opposition of many of his backbenchers. It is clear from Nick Clegg’s statement after the defeat of Lords reform in the House of Commons that there was a perceived understanding that if the Conservatives gave the Liberal Democrats Lords reform, the Liberal Democrats would support the redistribution of the boundaries. Although this position has been contested, there was certainly a perceived link between certain proposed pieces of legislation within the Coalition

Agreement.

Although David Cameron has stated his support for reform of the House of Lords, the Deputy

Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg was clearly behind the push for a primarily elected second chamber. This desire for Lords reform only increased

‘Following the defeat of the AV referendum, [after which] reforming the upper house became the focus of Clegg’s efforts to deliver a significant constitutional change for his party’

(Hayton, 2014, pp.14-15). The loss of the AV referendum had two important repercussions which were to cause great clashes between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The

100 first, as the quote from Hayton above demonstrates, was that with the loss of the referendum,

Lords reform became the focus of the Liberal Democrats constitutional reform agenda. The second, was that as the Conservatives who had opposed the Liberal Democrats on the AV referendum and were victorious, and having ‘tasted blood’ (interview with a Conservative

MP, 7 November 2012), the Conservative backbench were now confident enough to defeat the Liberal Democrats again. The first quote below articulates this view from within the

Conservative party, that some MPs were emboldened by their victory against the Liberal

Democrats in the AV referendum:

Of course the question of your attitude to the House of Lords for a number of my colleagues, I

don’t think myself, I hope not myself, in fact I know not myself was significantly coloured by

those who were most hostile to the coalition anyway and it was seen as a Lib Dem thing and

something that wouldn’t have been given priority but for the Lib Dems. And having tasted

blood already on AV and the referendum having slaughtered them out of sight and killed off

the issue in the long term not just the short term of AV/PR., that emboldened people to say

well do we really actually support this? (Interview with a Conservative MP, 7 November

2012)

However, this view is somewhat rejected by other Conservative MPs, and demonstrated in this quote:

I think that there might be a kernel of truth in it, in the sense that Conservatives like the

British Constitution, want to protect it and we don’t like the fact that the Liberals are

constantly trying to change it, so I suppose to that extent, yes, you know, we won the AV

Referendum hands down and we were keen to make sure we didn’t have other unnecessary

Constitutional change. I don’t see that necessarily as tasting blood and following it through.

I see that as people actually standing up for what they’re elected to do. (Interview with a

Conservative MP, 30 January 2013)

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On 17 May 2011 the Coalition released a White Paper on the Draft House of Lords Reform

Bill (Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill, 2012, p.x). The white paper was not well received, with its reception ‘in both Houses and in much of the media, was hostile’ (McLean, 2011).

The Joint Committee on the draft bill

By all accounts the Committee process was as woeful as these things usually are at

Westminster. (Dunleavy, 2012)

The Joint Committee on the Draft Bill was established and began its work on 11 July 2011

(Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill, 2012, p.x). It consisted of 26 members (see Table 5.5) composed of 13 peers and 13 MPs. Of the 13 peers: 4 were crossbenchers (including one bishop), 4 were Conservatives, 3 were from the Labour Party

(including the chair – Lord Richard), and 2 were Liberal Democrats. Of the 13 MPs: 6 were

Conservatives, 1 was from the Democratic Unionist Party, 5 were from the Labour Party, and

1 from the Liberal Democrats.

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Member Peer or MP Party Baroness Andrews Peer Crossbench Bishop of Leicester Peer Bishop Lord Hennessy of Peer Crossbench Nympsfield Lord Norton of Louth Peer Conservative Lord Richard (Chair) Peer Labour Lord Rooker Peer Labour Lady Scott of Needham Peer Liberal Democrat Market Lady Shephard of Northwold Peer Conservative Lady Symons of Vernham Peer Labour Dean Lord Trefgarne Peer Conservative Lord Trimble Peer Conservative Lord Tyler Peer Liberal Democrat Baroness Young of Hornsey Peer Crossbench Gavin Barwell MP Conservative Tom Clarke MP Labour Ann Coffey MP Labour Bill Esterson MP Labour Oliver Heald MP Conservative Tristram Hunt MP Labour Eleanor Laing MP Conservative William McCrea MP DUP Daniel Poulter MP Conservative Laura Sandys MP Conservative John Stevenson MP Conservative John Thurso MP Liberal Democrat Malcolm Wicks MP Labour Table 5.5 Members of the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill (UK Parliament, 2011)

The Joint Committee was tasked with a particularly difficult job, and this was not made easier by the large size of the committee. As one peer stated: ‘it was a huge committee’ (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28 November 2012). The Joint Committee was chaired by Lord

Richard, a Labour life peer who had been a strong advocate of an elected second chamber

(see Richard and Welfare, 1999). Lord Richard clearly had a difficult task: ‘I didn’t envy the

Chairman’s task’ (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28 November 2012). Of those peers

103 interviewed, there was appreciation for the work done by Lord Richard in chairing the Joint

Committee:

… he was a very good Chairman of the Joint Committee. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat

Peer, 6 November 2012)

The Joint Committee was tense from the beginning:

… there was absolutely no consensus on the committee and it was predicted we knew there

wouldn’t be so we were slightly in a bad mood collectively before we started. (Interview with

a Crossbench Peer, 13 November 2012) and ‘very quickly settled into two camps’ (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28 November

2012):

… the split between the elected and the non-elected reformers emerged sort of pretty much at

the first meeting and stayed. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 13 November 2012)

These two camps consisted of those who supported the bill, at least in principle, and those who opposed it for myriad reasons. There seems to be consensus that the Joint Committee involved a lot of work for the members. Some had a negative feeling about the process of the

Joint Committee: ‘The actual process was chaotic, unnecessarily chaotic’ (Interview with a

Crossbench Peer, 13 November 2012), but this was not raised by most members. The forming of the two camps was important as these were not loose groupings, but rather fairly tight factions as illustrated by the following quotes:

… very quickly we were having two lots of meetings outside of the Select Committee

meeting. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28 November 2012)

… when we came to voting, you know both sides were engaged in a whipping operation.

(Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 13 November 2012)

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Although the Joint Committee deliberated for many hours and received numerous submissions, ‘most people came in with their minds made up and I’m afraid that remained the case’ (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21 November 2012).

To the surprise of some, the Joint Committee published its report on 23 April 2012:

I don’t know how he managed to get a report out at all and then there was the alternative

report. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28 November 2012)

The Joint Committee report differed from the draft bill on the number and fulltime position of the elected peers (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 6 November 2012). Also in April

2012 an alternative report was released entitled House of Lords Reform: An Alternative Way

Forward and was endorsed by 12 members of the Joint Committee: Baroness Andrews, Tom

Clarke, Oliver Heald, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, Eleanor Laing, Bishop of Leicester,

Lord Norton of Louth, Lord Rooker, Baroness Shephard of Northwold, Baroness Symons of

Vernham Dean, Lord Trefgarne, and Lord Trimble. As one member of the Joint Committee points out, ‘the Chairman was not pleased’ (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21

November 2012).

These 12 members of the Joint Committee also signed the official report, and although many of this group oppose an elected second chamber some who signed the alternative report – like

Lord Trefgarne – do support a fully elected second chamber6. Although the alternative report does highlight the contested nature of House of Lords reform, as a member of the Joint

Committee, Lord Hennessy, articulates:

But not until I served on the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill in

2011-12 did I fully appreciate how truly sodden the question was – dripping with

complications and awash with unintended consequences – or why so many who have plunged

6 For a statement of Lord Trefgarne’s position see Campaign for An Effective Second Chamber (2012) House of Lords Reform: An Alternative Way Forward, p.3.

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into the reform pool have emerged chilled to the bone, more than a little disoriented and often

resolved on only one thing – never to dive back in. This is partly due to the depth and murk of

the mixture of water in that pool. (Hennessy, 2012, p.150)

The House of Commons and the programme motion

Following the Joint Committee, the House of Lords Reform Bill was introduced into the

House of Commons. The Bill was widely criticised for its weaknesses, which were well rehearsed both within and without the Joint Committee. These criticisms coalesced around the lack of clarity over how the change in composition of the Lords would affect the relationship between the House of Lords and the House of Commons:

… the major flaw in the Government’s bill was that it didn’t address the issue of the

supremacy of the House of Commons. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 30 January

2013)

Any change in the House of Lords has to be absolutely clear about what the role of the House

of Lords is, what the powers of the House of Lords are, and what the relationship is between

the two Houses…The last bill that failed, I believe it failed because it did not define any of

those three things. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 26 November 2012)

In addition to this, there was also much reservation over the perceived lack of accountability of having long, non-renewable terms for the elected members of the Lords. Some peers believed that the Coalition calling for democratic accountability and then instigating long, non-renewable terms was inconsistent; some even went so far as to argue:

… the proposals last time round were intellectually dishonest. (Interview with a Bishop, 25

October 2012)

In order for the bill to proceed in a way which did not disrupt the government’s broader legislative agenda, a programme motion was needed. Programme motions set the timetable

106 for discussion of the bill in the House of Commons, and allow the government to control the length of time spent on debate. The programme motion became particularly contentious in this instance as the Labour Party has made clear their intention to oppose the motion, on the grounds that such important constitutional change should be considered in detail by MPs, and should not be constrained by the government.

It was clear that there was enough opposition from the government’s own backbenches to, when voting with the Labour Party, defeat the programme motion. Proceeding without a programme motion would have forced the Coalition to devote much legislative time to the bill, as those who opposed it would undoubtedly use every means to delay its progress. With the programme motion facing certain defeat the Government withdrew it without going to a vote (Hayton, 2014, p.15). As Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons, announced at the opening of the second day of debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill on

10 July, 2012:

… for Lords reform to progress, it needs those who support reform to vote for reform and to

vote for that reform to make progress through this House. It is clear that the Opposition are

not prepared to do that, so we will not move the programme motion tonight. (Sir George

Young, HC Deb, 10 July 2012, cc 188)

In response to this announcement the widely acknowledged leader of the Conservative rebellion, Jesse Norman (Bale, 2015, p.111), intervened and said:

Let me make it clear from the Conservative Benches that the very substantial opposition from

within the Conservative party, not just that from Labour, was responsible for the withdrawal

of the motion. That should be perfectly clear and reflected in the record. (Jesse Norman, HC

Deb, 10 July 2012, cc 189)

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Following the debate on the 10 July, 2012 the House of Commons voted to give the bill a second reading with 462 Ayes and 124 Noes – which included 91 Conservative Party backbenchers (HC Deb, 10 July 2012, cc 274). Even with this substantial support for the principle of the bill, as the Coalition could not secure the programme motion, Nick Clegg announced on 7 August, 2012, that the Government will not be proceeding with the bill in the current parliament (The Guardian, 2012).

The junior and senior rebels

As was noted earlier in this chapter, from the party manifesto it is obvious that the

Conservative Party was the least committed of the three major parties to introducing an elected second chamber. Although the party had the weakest pledge on the issue of reform of the House of Lords, there are a significant number of Conservative politicians who support the introduction of elections as means of selection to the upper House. This being said, there was a significant minority of Conservative MPs who opposed such a reform. This minority of opposition was well documented in the press, but there has been no attempt to move beyond a superficial appraisal of the Conservative rebellion. In this section, building on interview material, will be an attempt to explore the composition of the rebellion in more detail.

On the surface, the group of MPs who opposed the Coalition government’s reform proposal appeared to be a relatively cohesive group. However, through this research it could be ascertained that the reality of the situation was different. There appears to have been two types of Conservative rebels, rather than a single cohesive group. The Conservative rebels can be divided into two groups: junior MPs and senior MPs.

Let us first consider the group which consisted of junior MPs. It is clear that the thrust of the

Conservative opposition to the Government’s reform proposal came from junior backbench

MPs. This group of rebels were led by Jesse Norman MP. Norman had entered the House of

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Commons at the 2010 election, and like many new Conservative MPs expected to gain junior government positions if the Conservative Party was successful in forming government. Many such new MPs missed out on these positions due to the arrangements necessitated by the formation of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Added to that is what we have termed the ‘Norman Baker factor’. This is the disgruntlement

felt by Conservative MPs who served their party loyally during Opposition and had expected

a position in government, only then to discover that not only were they not going to get any

such post, but they were going to lose out to a Liberal Democrat MP instead. (Cowley and

Stuart, 2012, p.9)

Norman and these other junior MPs were involved in a fairly extensive alternate whipping arrangement in opposing reform of the Lords. Although no doubt this group of rebels were concerned with the rate and type of constitutional reform, it could also be ventured that they may have been influenced by intra-coalition tensions. This well-orchestrated backbench opposition was also supported by peers, as one peer states ‘I liaised extremely closely with

Jesse Norman’ (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 4 December 2012).

The other group of Conservative MPs who opposed the reform proposal consisted of more senior backbench MPs, some of whom were former cabinet ministers. It appears from interviews with some of the senior and long-serving Conservative MPs who opposed the bill, that this group of MPs was only tangentially connected with the well-organised junior MPs.

The MPs of this second group were much less organised, although naturally providing support to the main thrust of the opposition. This group, it could be argued, was less influenced by intra-coalition tensions, and more concerned with the constitutional implications of such a reform. MPs in this camp who featured prominently were Sir Malcolm

Rifkind, Sir Alan Haselhurst and Bernard Jenkin. This camp was also of a more cross-party persuasion, with some prominent Labour MPs also vociferously opposing the reform bill.

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Acting in opposition to the position of their frontbench in this camp were, for example, Dame

Margaret Beckett and David Blunkett.

As was noted in the introduction to this chapter, the Conservative Party was the least committed of the three major parties to introducing an elected second chamber. As was also noted earlier, there are a significant number of Conservative politicians who supported such a reform. There appeared to be two types of Conservative rebels, and they seem to fit comfortably into junior MPs and senior MPs.

The Labour Party

...the Labour Party deciding that they were in principle in favour, but didn’t actually want it to

happen. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 6 November 2012)

No matter how interesting the dynamics behind why those Conservative MPs chose to make clear that they had no intention of supporting the Government’s programme motion, it was ultimately the Labour Party which allowed the rebels to succeed in scuppering Lords reform.

This section makes no attempt to provide an exhaustive account of the machinations that were behind the opposition of the Labour Party to the programme motion, although such an account certainly needs to be written, but will seek to outline briefly the effects of this opposition.

If the Labour Party had chosen to support the programme motion, there would have been no triumph for the Conservative backbenchers. There appears to have been two sources of the opposition of the Labour Party to the programme motion, one obvious and the other slightly eclipsed by the former. First, though, it is important to state the official reasoning behind the opposition of the Labour Party to the programme motion. It was argued that debate of such an important constitutional reform should not be limited, and in particular not be limited to the extent proposed by the government. This was a perfectly respectable argument, although the

110 lack of willingness of the Labour frontbench to propose an alternative timeframe does seem to undermine the sincerity of this position. Most obviously, the Labour Party saw great political advantage in enabling the Conservative backbenchers to defeat their own government’s business. However, this political advantage does not seem to have been the sole motivation. There did appear to be a strong current of genuine opposition to the Bill from within the Labour Party (Bale, 2015, p.112).

Application of Streeck and Thelen’s Heuristic

The first of Streeck and Thelen’s types of institutional change is displacement. In the case of the Coalition’s reform attempt, displacement does not seem to apply. Another of Streeck and

Thelen’s types of gradual transformative change which does not seem to apply is layering.

Layering takes place when ‘New elements attached to existing institutions gradually change their status and structure’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.31). It could be argued that the life peers dominance of the House of Lords was important, however this seems somewhat unconvincing as this was a change which taken place long before the period under consideration here.

In opposing the government’s proposal to reform the House of Lords many arguments were employed. Arguments such as the less partisan nature of the House of Lords compared to the

House of Commons, the potential conflict between the two chambers if both were to be elected, and the expense of such an elected chamber, to name but a few, formed a large part of the debate over reform. Another very salient argument was the value of the expertise which currently resides in the House of Lords as the result of the appointment mechanism. It is argued that if elections were to be introduced, this expertise would be lost, and replaced with second-rate politicians who could not win a seat in the House of Commons.

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It seems then, that the effects of the House of Lords Act 1999 were to be felt in the recent reform debate. There is little doubt that such a case of expertise could have been mounted to such effect if the hereditary peers were still a large proportion of the membership of the

House of Lords. In addition, the prominent position of the House of Lords in debates over increased powers of the state over detention in the new environment of terrorism in the period since 1999, where the Lords had often been seen as the voice of reason and moderation, had made defending the House of Lords slightly less difficult for opponents of the Coalition’s proposal. As Mahoney and Thelen argue, the House of Lords in the period had shifted from the ‘undemocratic bastion of traditional interests to champion of individual rights’ (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010, p.2).

From this brief discussion it can be argued that another type of gradual transformative change, identified in Streeck and Thelen’s typology, conversion, had an important effect of the debate over the recent attempt at reforming the House of Lords. Conversion is when there is ‘Redeployment of old institutions to new purposes; new purposes attached to old structures’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.31). In this case it can be seen that the new purposes which the House of Lords had undertaken in the period since the 1999 reform had made the introduction of elections to the House of Lords even more difficult, as there was now a very prominent argument about the value of the expertise in the House of Lords. Expertise it is often argued which would not be there if election was the primary means of appointment.

During the recent reform debate, there was another prominent argument - that there was a need to control the total number of members of the House of Lords. Most peers and MPs acknowledge that the House of Lords’ membership is becoming much too large, moving ever closer to the 1000 mark. It was argued by some that an efficient way of controlling the membership total would be introduce elections with a capped number of places. This raises an important question as to how numbers got so high again, after they had been significantly

112 reduced following the removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers in 1999. Figure 5.1 demonstrates the drop in total membership after the introduction of the House of Lords Act

1999. Since this period there has been an almost constant increase in the membership of the

House of Lords, as illustrated in Figure 5.2. It seems the temptation to create new peers is irresistible to prime ministers, particularly under the Coalition as the Coalition Agreement signalled the desire to make appointments to the House of Lords in line with proportion of votes won in the 2010 election.

Figure 5.1 Membership of the House of Lords since 1958 (Royal Commission on Reform of the House of Lords, 2000, p.19)

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Figure 5.2 Number of House of Lords members January 2000 – April 2011 (Russell, 2011b, p.7)

The question then becomes: can Streeck and Thelen’s typology illuminate the effect of the increasing numbers of peers on the recent attempt by the Coalition to reform the House of

Lords? This is where the next of Streeck and Thelen’s types of gradual transformative change, drift, comes in. Drift occurs where there is a ‘Neglect of institutional maintenance in spite of external change resulting in slippage in institutional practice on the ground’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.31). It is clear that during the period since the 1999 House of Lords Act, there was an expectation that eventually the second-phase of House of Lords reform would arrive. Therefore, the membership of the House of Lords was allowed to grow, with new members being added whenever the prime minister of the day decided, with little consideration of the cumulative effect of such appointments. This resulted in numbers ever- increasing, becoming completely out of tune with public perceptions of politicians. Indeed, as the British public increasingly mistrusted politicians, there was an ever-increasing number being created by virtue of appointments to the House of Lords.

It is clear then that drift was occurring in the House of Lords in the period since 1999. This was important for the Coalition’s reform attempt as the size of the House of Lords became

114 one of the prominent arguments for the need for reform. Although in the end reform was not achieved, it is clear that drift was occurring in the appointments to the House of Lords, and that this was making the House of Lords seem ever more in need of reform as the figures increased. This ever-increasing membership of the House of Lords remains an issue following the failure of the recent reform attempt; as one peer argued ‘it’s the burning topic’

(Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012).

This failure to reform the Lords has resulted in the potential for another of Streeck and

Thelen’s types of gradual transformative change to become relevant to the case of Lords reform, namely, exhaustion. Institutional exhaustion is the result of a ‘Gradual breakdown

(withering away of institutions over time)’ (Streeck and Thelen, 2005, p.31). In the period following the Coalition’s attempt it was argued by many interviewees that as a result of the failure of the recent bill, there was now pressure for the House of Lords to reform itself, in particular focusing on the need to control the total membership of the Lords. The fear of some peers was that since the government had failed in its attempt, it would pay little further attention to maintaining the House of Lords. This could potentially result in the gradual breakdown of the institution as numbers increase and the practices of the House become tested, and fail, as they try to cope with the increasing size of the House.

Conclusion

The recent Coalition reform attempt is an example of a failed reform attempt. The Coalition not only failed to achieve the reform they desired, they managed to achieve no reform to the

Lords at all. Although this was a failed attempt it was still a visceral and tense period in the recent history of the House of Lords. For this reason it is argued here that recent events have caused a historical break point, the effects of which remain to be seen, but peers certainly recognise that they cannot remain unreformed.

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Displacement ‘Slowly rising salience of This does not seem to subordinate relative to apply to the Coalition’s dominant institutions’ reform attempt. Layering ‘New elements attached to This does not seem to existing institutions gradually apply to the Coalition’s change their status and reform attempt. structure’ Drift ‘Neglect of institutional It was argued in this maintenance in spite of external period that the total size change resulting in slippage in of the membership of the institutional practice on the House of Lords was a ground’ significant motivator for reform. Conversion ‘Redeployment of old The argument around the institutions to new purposes; importance of expertise new purposes attached to old and the place of the structures’ Lords in protecting individual liberties were important in opposing the government’s legislation. Exhaustion ‘Gradual breakdown (withering An ever-increasing away) of institutions over time’ membership may test, and cause to fail, the practices and workings of the Lords. Table 5.6 Streeck and Thelen’s heuristic applied to the Coalition reform attempt

Of most significance though, was a reminder of the importance of the House of Commons, and a strong government, in pushing through reform of the House of Lords. The Coalition frontbench were primarily defeated by their backbenches, not by the House of Lords. As argued in Table 5.6, the new Coalition politics layered on top of more traditional British politics, made it almost impossible for this reform attempt to be successful. Although of course it has been widely recognised that Coalition politics was the prime cause of the failure of this reform attempt, by employing Streeck and Thelen’s typology we gain an interesting perspective on the effect of the Coalition on the reform process, in the form of layering.

It must also be recognised, however, that as the Coalition reform attempt failed to achieve any reform, this period does fit better with Streeck and Thelen’s notion of survival and

116 return, although with one significant caveat. The House of Lords faced an abrupt period in its history, but survived, although the scars of the conflict will linger, and peers now recognise if the House of Lords is to survive largely intact, many house-keeping reforms are now required.

In Conclusion

Streeck and Thelen’s typology provides an interesting lens through which to explore this period of House of Lords reform. By applying Streeck and Thelen’s typology it became clear that a narrow focus on legislative reform was not the most useful approach to understanding the gradual changes in the House of Lords. When discussing reform of the House of Lords much focus is on the recent legislative reforms to its composition. The House of Lords Act

1999 is seen as the most significant reform to the Lords in the last two decades. More recently much attention was paid to the prospective changes to the Lords which may have occurred if the Coalition reform bill had been passed. Although these moments of real, and potential, legislative change provide an ideal skeleton around which to structure discussion of

Lords reform, these moments provide just that, a skeleton. Much fleshing out is still required to provide an accurate understanding of the way the Lords has changed in recent decades. So although this chapter is structured around the two most significant legislative moments affecting the House of Lords recently – the House of Lords Act 1999 and the Coalition reform attempt – it is acknowledged that these form the framework around which reform of the House of Lords has occurred. This point became clear throughout the interviews conducted with peers. Legislative reforms were seen as significant by most, but the vast majority of peers argued that the House of Lords has changed in some many ways during the

117 respective tenures, and that most of these changes were not directly attributable to these legislative moments.

These other, less noticeable, changes might occur as the result of a legislative change, for example the tension over self-regulation and the role of the Lord Speaker has been the result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 removing the Lord Chancellor from the traditional role as chair in the chamber. Other changes might be confused as being solely the result of a legislative reform, but in reality occurred concurrently with the reform and was not causally related. An example of this is the increased partisanship in the House from the time of the

Blair Government onwards. This has not been solely the result of the House of Lords Act

1999 but had already began before the Act was introduced, and has been attributed to the large number of new Labour peers from non-traditional backgrounds who entered the House in this period. Non-traditional backgrounds included for example 5% of peers now coming from a voluntary sector/NGO background and 4% with a trade union background (Russell and Benton, 2010).

This changed House of Lords was very active in defending itself when attacked by the

Coalition. Although, of course the Coalition politics were crucial to the defeat of the reform bill, the effects of the changes during the period from 1997 were also important in the survival of the House of Lords. The removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers in 1999, and the increased diversity and professionalism of members of the House of Lords were all very important arguments used to oppose the introduction of direct elections to the Lords. This demonstrates the very real effects of gradual transformative change. Indeed, more research is required on the various small-scale reforms in the intervening period.

Although the House of Lords provides an insightful case to which to apply Streeck and

Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change, it also provides an example of

118 another of Streeck and Thelen’s results of change, namely survival and return. The Coalition reform attempt was pursuing an abrupt change to the House of Lords; yet its defeat enabled a level of continuity in the House, thus constituting a classic example of survival and return.

Although this is clearly the case, this example does provide for an interesting reflection of this result of change, namely that there can be no real continuity after such an abrupt reform attempt, the scars of which will remain for some time. Already, a smaller reform measure has been passed in the form of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 which allows peers to retire.

Clearly those who wish to retain an appointed second chamber now see the need for some reform to bulwark the House of Lords against future major reform attempts.

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Chapter Six – The Question of Election: Hirschman’s Rhetorical Typologies

______

... there’s also a body of people who just don’t like change. (Interview with a Crossbench

Peer, 28 November 2012)

... it is easy to get swept away by the political topics of the moment and lose sight of basic

issues that underlie politics everywhere. (Miller, 2003, p.17)

Introduction

The preceding chapter was concerned with exploring the House of Lords Act 1999 and the

Coalition’s reform attempt, with a focus on evaluating its impact. This chapter differs in that it seeks to explore in more detail the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords within a broader theoretical frame. The particular frame chosen is Hirschman’s reactionary typology in Rhetoric of Reaction. Hirschman’s typology was selected because it is primarily concerned with discerning whether there are any dominant themes, or lines of argument, employed by those who oppose certain reforms. In the Rhetoric of Reaction Hirschman also offers a typology, albeit a less detailed one, of progressive rhetoric. Although the applicability of progressive rhetoric to reform of the House of Lords will also be discussed, this chapter primarily seeks to examine the rhetoric of those who oppose the introduction of direct election to the House of Lords.

This chapter will be organised into six substantive sections. The first will provide a brief overview of Hirschman’s theory of reactionary rhetoric. The second will introduce the

121 context within which the interviews were conducted, particularly the political context which was introduced in the previous chapter. The third section will present the key themes which emerged from the interview material and the fourth with apply Hirschman’s typology to them. Following this, the penultimate section will briefly discuss Hirschman’s typology of progressive rhetoric. This chapter will conclude with an evaluation of the usefulness of

Hirschman’s typologies in understanding the views of peers towards reform of the House of

Lords.

Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction

Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction (1991) provides an interesting typology for understanding the arguments used by reactionaries to oppose reform. Hirschman (1991) argues that there are three rhetorical theses put forward by reactionaries across time and space – perversity, futility and jeopardy. He explores these three rhetorical imperatives through three case studies: the

French Revolution, the road to universal suffrage in Britain, and the welfare state. Through these historically important reform periods Hirschman demonstrates the use of the same arguments of perversity, futility and jeopardy illustrating ‘how the protagonists followed certain invariants in argument and rhetoric’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 164). This is the point of

Hirschman’s book, to provide a way of classifying and grouping the arguments used by conservatives to oppose reform across different cases. The purpose of this typology is to provide a tool for progressives to oppose specific arguments by understanding them within a rhetorical frame.

The perversity thesis

The first of Hirschman’s threefold typology is the perversity thesis, which argues that ‘...any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only

122 serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 7). Put another way ‘...the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving alright, but in the opposite direction’ (Hirschman: 1991, p.11 emphasis in original). The perversity thesis is employed to undermine the very foundation of a reform argument. If one wishes to oppose a reform there really is no simpler argument than the one that says

“although you pursue this reform for x reason, the effect of it will be the opposite of x”.

The futility thesis

The second of Hirschman’s typology is the futility thesis which holds that: ‘...the attempt to change is abortive, that in one way or another any alleged change is, was, or will be largely surface, façade, cosmetic, hence illusory, as the “deep” structures of society remain wholly untouched’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 43). Differing from the jeopardy thesis which argues a reform will have the opposite effect to the one intended, the futility thesis posits that any reform is futile as there are natural-type laws which govern human society and are unreformable; ‘attempts at social transformation will be unavailing[…] they will simply fail to “make a dent”’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 7). In the cases explored by Hirschman he finds that proponents of the futility thesis ‘…are not quite comfortable with their own argument, however neatly it has been made: whenever possible, they look to the perverse effect for reinforcement, adornment, and closure’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 58).

The jeopardy thesis

The last of Hirschman’s typology is the jeopardy thesis. Put simply, the proponents of the jeopardy thesis argue that ‘the proposed change, though perhaps desirable in itself, involves unacceptable costs or consequences of one sort or another’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 81), ‘The old hard-won conquests or accomplishments cannot be taken for granted and would be placed in jeopardy by the new program’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 84). Hirschman believes that ‘it

123 should involve a more complex, historically grounded argument that the other two’

(Hirschman, 1991, p. 84).

Reactionaries in Hirschman

Before we move onto the case study it is important for reasons of conceptual clarity to provide a brief note on Hirschman’s use of the term reactionary. Hirschman makes no attempt to hide his liberal ideology, and his aim to discredit conservative arguments:

…reactionaries frequently argue as though they were in basic agreement with the lofty

objectives of the progressives; they “simply” point out that “unfortunately” things are not

likely to go as smoothly as is taken for granted by their “naïve” adversaries. (Hirschman,

1991, p. 151)

Hirschman, however, attempts to clarify his intention over the use of the word ‘reactionary’ and makes a half-hearted attempt to demonstrate that he uses the word without negative connotation (see Hirschman, 1991, pp. 8-10). This is not a criticism of Hirschman, and the use of the term ‘reactionary’ would have fit with his intended audience of liberals. However, in this thesis the use of the term ‘reactionary’ to describe those opposing a move to a directly elected House of Lords is only to maintain clarity and consistency with Hirschman’s terminology. In this case there appears to be little to gain from creating a more neutral terminology as those who oppose an elected House of Lords would always object to being grouped together under one label in any case.

The Context

The context of the interviews which form the empirical data in this chapter has been provided in some respects in the preceding chapter. However, a brief overview of the context within

124 which the rhetoric to follow was employed is still important as the arguments employed were not abstract philosophical arguments, but were used within a wider, but also very specific, debate about the future of the House of Lords. The prime context was Coalition government, which whilst the interviews were being conducted was very much in the minds of peers. The other aspect of the political context, which is important in understanding the broader debates within British politics at the time was the poor state of the British economy.

There is little doubt that had the Conservatives been able to form a government on their own in 2010, House of Lords reform would not have been an issue the new government would have given much attention, at least within its first term. Therefore, that there was a bill introduced to reform the House of Commons was a result of the Conservatives forming a governing coalition with the Liberal Democrats. This coalition was not an easy alliance, and we have seen that neither has it been a happy alliance for either party (see Hayton, 2014).

This bitterness, to put it very strongly, was one part of the context for the Lords reform debate (Hayton, 2014, pp.14-15). Indeed, the fact that the bill was defeated in the House of

Commons was the result of the significant opposition of Conservative backbenchers, as detailed in the preceding chapter. Thus for our purposes this tension must be acknowledged as its effects were still being felt in the House of Lords at the time of the interviews.

During the interviews there was a debate going on in Westminster about the redrawing of the electoral boundaries and the reduction of the numbers of MPs returned to the House of

Commons. The Coalition had an agreement which was to facilitate the necessary legislation and, so many believed, enhance the electoral prospects of the Conservative Party at the general election planned for 2015. Although the necessary legislation initially passed both chambers, a group of peers used the self-governing nature of the House of Lords to put an amendment to a completely different bill postponing the redistribution until after the 2015 election. This was widely acknowledged to be retribution by the Liberal Democrats for what

125 they saw as a Conservative betrayal in the defeat of the House of Lords Bill in the Commons

(Bale, 2015, p.112). The matter of whether or not the amendment was admissible was still much in the minds of peers during the interview period. In addition to the debate was also a series of government defeats in the Lords which saw Liberal Democrat peers voting against their own government. So whether or not this context influenced the views of peers on Lords reform, it is certainly important to situate the interview material within such a tense political environment.

The other important contextual aspect which should be considered was the state of the British economy. Following the Global Financial Crisis in 2007 the British economy was in a difficult position. The crisis was ‘transformed from a financial crisis to a fiscal crisis (centred on government debt)’ (Clarke and Newman, 2012, p.300), which required cuts in government spending. As Vernon Bogdanor illustrates:

…there was the economic crisis: the credit crunch, and the downturn and collapse of the

financial markets, including a run on Northern Rock in September 2007 – the first run on a

British bank since the nineteenth century. These economic events seemed to shape public

attitudes, causing resentment, if not anger, directed not only towards bankers and financiers,

who were held to have acted recklessly and ceased to deserve – if indeed they had ever

deserved – their huge salaries and bonuses, but also towards the government of Gordon

Brown, which, so it was alleged, had failed to prevent the collapse. (Bogdanor, 2011, p.1)

The Conservative Party had campaigned in the 2010 General Election for austerity measures, which it began to introduce after it formed government: ‘The UK has taken something of a vanguard position on austerity under the 2010 Coalition government, cutting deeper and harder than most EU countries’ (Clarke and Newman, 2012, p.303). Therefore, the interviews, as well as being conducted in a tense political environment, must also be contextualised within a constrained economic environment.

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Dominant Narratives on Reform

This section will present the dominant narratives which emerged from the interviews.

Although there was, naturally, a diversity of opinion amongst those interviewed, there emerged throughout the course of the interview period seven clear themes on reform. These seven themes were: division over the role of the House of Lords within the political system; the importance placed on the primacy of the House of Commons; the distinctiveness of the

House of Lords from the House of Commons; the role of expertise; that now was not the right time; ‘if it isn’t broken don’t fix it’; and contestation over the future of the House of Lords whilst it remains unelected.

The role of the House of Lords within the political system

When discussing any future reform of the House of Lords it is commonly argued that one must first consider the role of the House of Lords before composition is considered. In the interviews it became clear that there was a fundamental division between peers as about their view of the primary role and function of the House of Lords. The majority see the House of

Lords as an advisory Chamber, asking the Government and the House of Commons to think again about legislation. These peers are also those who support continuing appointments to the House of Lords, rather than election, given their view of the Lords as an advisory chamber they see no useful purpose in electing peers.

A minority of peers, and not an insignificant minority, see the role of the House of Lords very differently. Although they accept that the House of Lords is by no means equal in power to the House of Commons, they still see the House of Lords as part of a bicameral Parliament.

This role of the House of Lords in amending legislation (even though this can be overturned in the House of Commons) leads this minority of peers to argue for electing peers. This

127 simply stems from the argument that in a democracy the governed should choose their governors.

The primacy of the House of Commons

Almost all peers interviewed acknowledged the primacy of the House of Commons in the

British Parliament, because it is elected, whilst the House of Lords is not. In addition to this reverence for the primacy of the House of Commons, many peers not only accept Commons primacy in the present, but also wish to see it continue. This is the second key theme emerging from the interviews, that an elected House of Lords would challenge the primacy of the House of Commons.

Many arguments were put forward about the problems arising from diluting the primacy of the Commons, including the historical importance of the Commons representing the people, but it seemed the most recurrent concerns were that it might lead to gridlock and that clear lines of democratic accountability would be broken. Gridlock is a well-known argument, suggesting that, if you elect the House of Lords, it would use its power more willingly and there would therefore be more conflict between the Lords and the Commons. What was striking here was the very frequent reference to the system in the United States, where they emphasised conflict and gridlock between the two houses. This concern with ending up with

United States-style gridlock seemed a very strong cause for opposing or at least not favouring an elected House of Lords. Those who supported elections countered this by arguing either that challenging Commons’ primacy was not necessarily a bad thing, but more frequently that the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911 would remain intact ensuring the primacy of the

House of Commons over the House of Lords.

We now turn to the issue of maintaining clear lines of democratic accountability. Many peers argued that in the current system there is a clear line of accountability where the elector elects

128 their local MP to the House of Commons, the government is then formed by whoever can command support in House of Commons. The Lords, by virtue of being unelected, is subordinate to the House of Commons and therefore the buck essentially stops with the

Commons. The opposition to electing members of the House of Lords is that this confuses accountability. The elector would then elect two representatives, one in the House of

Commons and one in the House of Lords. With the use of the party-list system in the Lords, the second chamber might feel more entitled to obstruct the government’s legislation. This may then lead to blame-shifting from representatives and the government blaming each other for lack of progress in a particular policy area.

The distinctiveness of the House of Lords from the House of Commons

The third theme arising from the interviews was the importance placed on the distinctiveness of the House of Lords from the House of Commons. This aim to be culturally distinct from, and in the eyes of many better than, the House of Commons was one of the concerns with electing peers. The argument was put that with the introduction of elections to the House of

Lords, the chamber would become more partisan and confrontational, and cherished traditions such as self-governance would no longer be practicable. In other words, the concern is that with elections the House of Lords would become a mirror of the House of

Commons.

The role of expertise

The majority of interviewees pointed to this expertise as an important reason not to elect peers. It was argued that people of such eminent expertise would neither have the time, nor the inclination, to run for election to the House of Lords, and thus the only way to secure their input is to continue either with appointment, or with indirect election from vocational bodies

(a proposal mentioned several times). It was perhaps surprising that there were a number of

129 interviewees who dismissed this argument, generally along the lines that although there certainly are some people of immense expertise in the Lords, there were also a lot of people with very little expertise, and who contribute very little to the eminence of the House.

Timing

The fifth theme which emerged from the interview material was whether or not it was the right time for such a reform. Those who argued that it was not the right time based their position on one or both of the following arguments. First, some argued that now was not the right time for such a reform because it would be very expensive. During the debate different figures were advanced for the costs of reform, with a lot of attention focusing on the salary which would be paid to elected members of the House of Lords. It was argued that in a time of austerity this was an unnecessary expense.

Second, peers argued that now was not the right time for such a reform as the public have no interest in reform of the House of Lords. It was argued that this is an issue for the political class, and is a case of ‘navel gazing’. Although there is a general disinterest in mainstream

British politics amongst the British public (Hay, 2007; Stoker, 2006; Stoker and Hay, 2012), no area of politics is more the preserve of the political class than political institutional reform.

This point is highlighted clearly by the issue of reform of the House of Lords. Polls conducted in 2012 showed majorities for electing members to a second chamber, but it was not an issue with salience amongst the electorate (see for example Watt, 2012). People are far more interested with those aspects of government which directly affect them such as the economy or the health system. In addition, with distrust of politicians high following the expenses scandal it was also argued that introducing a new set of salaried politicians was not aligned with public opinion.

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‘If it isn’t broken don’t fix it’

The sixth theme reflected the age-old adage: “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it”. This was not a unanimous view amongst peers and there are those that believe electing peers is a necessary reform. However, many peers think the system broadly works well, that electing peers is not necessary and, in fact, would be damaging to the British political system. Of course, this argument can seem rather self-congratulatory.

Contestation over the future of the House of Lords

This previous argument of ‘if it isn’t broken don’t fix it’ refers primarily to the issue of election versus appointment, as there is near universal consensus that the Lords cannot remain completely unreformed. Most peers interviewed had a list of reforms they think necessary for the House of Lords to be more effective. Recurring proposals concerned the need to reduce the number of peers, utilising an attractive retirement scheme, the need for a mechanism for removing peers who have been in prison, ending the by-elections to replace hereditary peers when they die, and introducing a statutory appointments commission. These proposals were by no means universal, but were mentioned regularly. Other less popular proposals mentioned included giving more power to the Lord Speaker in questions and reducing the number of bishops sitting ex officio.

The Three Theses Explored

The previous section presented seven dominant narratives which emerged from the interview material. This section will now discuss these themes from the perspective of Hirschman’s typology of perversity, jeopardy and futility. By applying Hirschman’s typology to the arguments put by peers who opposed the introduction of elected peers to the House of Lords,

131 this section seeks to explore whether Hirschman’s typology enhances our understanding of the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords.

Perversity

I think that if you have too many people who are elected in over-lapping roles within given

areas within a country you cloud accountability and therefore affect the functioning of

democracy. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21 November 2012)

First we turn to Hirschman’s perversity thesis. We will remember that the perversity thesis argues that ‘the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving alright, but in the opposite direction’ (Hirschman, 1991, p. 11 emphasis in original). Therefore when exploring the interview material, we must first look to see if peers are arguing that the reform would have the opposite effect to that intended. One of the core arguments for introducing elections to the House of Lords was that in a 21st Century democracy legislators must be elected:

We – all of us here – believe in democracy. We believe that the people who make the laws

should be chosen by the people who are subject to those laws. That principle was established

in Britain after centuries of struggle and it is a principle that we still send our servicemen and

women halfway across the world to defend. Yet right now we are only one of only two

countries in the world —the other being Lesotho—with an upper parliamentary chamber that

is totally unelected and instead selects its members by birthright and patronage. (Nick Clegg,

HC Deb 9 July 2012 Col.24)

This argument of reforming the House of Lords to enhance democracy in Britain is the most important to those who support the introduction of elections to the House of Lords. Every peer interviewed who supported elections to the House of Lords, built their position on their fundamental beliefs about modern British democracy. Some examples include:

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…in a democracy people who make the law should be elected. (Interview with a Liberal

Democrat Peer, 8 November 2012)

Even those peers do not support a fully elected second chamber, and prefer to keep an independent appointed element see the merits of the democratic argument:

I think it is right in a democracy for people to have to stand to seek the views of the electorate

rather than just appoint the whole of the upper house. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 29

November 2012)

As this argument is the linchpin of those who push for an elected second chamber, those who wish to oppose the reform need to address this fundamental argument. One argument which has been used by peers who oppose elections to the House of Lords is that rather than enhancing or furthering democracy in Britain, the introduction of such elections would in fact have the opposite effect. Therefore we can see the perversity thesis features prominently in ways in which some peers express their opposition to such reform. In the British case, the argument is based on the idea that, in the current system, there is clear democratic accountability – every decision ultimately rests with the House of Commons.

The Lords shouldn’t be intruding into the democratic right of the individual voter to see its

government in power, and if its government is not achieving what it should achieve it should

be booted out, and that’s what the Commons does and then you have a general election. What

we would be doing is obscuring that. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 15 January 2013)

Therefore, if you also elect the House of Lords, you would lose this clear line of accountability and encourage blame-shifting between the two chambers:

I regard an elected second chamber as value detracting. It would add nothing. It wouldn’t

actually be the democratic option because it would undermine the core accountability of the

political system, because government would no longer necessarily be responsible to their

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electors for public policy. Because it could be affected by what the second chamber insisted

upon, and the government would then be able to say, “well that wasn’t us and we can’t accept

responsibility for the outcomes,” so who do electors hold to account? (Interview with a

Conservative Peer, 4 November 2012)

Thus the reform would damage, rather than improve, British democracy:

I see the effect of making the change as damaging to the democratic process. (Interview with

a Conservative Peer, 21 November 2012)

There were, of course, other perverse effects which were mentioned by peers:

… had they even thought about the perverse consequences? Had they thought about what it

would look like? Had they thought about where and how the courts would become involved?

Had they thought about what it would actually do to the dynamics of the Commons and the

constituency relationships? Or the relationships with Scotland or the devolved assemblies?

We got no answers on these big, big questions. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 13

November 2012)

The blurring of accountability, however, was the key issue primarily discussed.

Jeopardy

I don’t see that what you gain in terms of legitimacy and accountability offsets what you lose

in terms of expertise, constitutional certainty, and the complementarity of the two Chambers.

(Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 20 November 2012).

The fear was that the law of unintended consequences was kicking in. (Interview with a

Bishop, 15 January, 2013)

We now turn to the second of Hirschman’s reactionary theses – the jeopardy thesis. The jeopardy thesis, put simply, argues that ‘the proposed change, though perhaps desirable in

134 itself, involves unacceptable costs or consequences of one sort or another’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.81). In the case of the interview material there was much evidence to support the importance of the jeopardy thesis in understanding the opposition of peers to a directly elected second chamber. There were five clear manifestations of the jeopardy thesis in the debate over Lords reform: division over the role of the House of Lords; the distinctiveness of the Lords from the Commons; the primacy of the House of Commons and the fear of United

States-style grid-lock; the role of expertise; and the perennial ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’.

First, the division over the role of the House of Lords. It is commonly argued that one must first consider the role of the House of Lords before composition is considered. In the interviews it became clear that there was a fundamental division between peers about their view of the primary role and function of the House of Lords. The majority see the House of

I think that it can have a useful part to play in an advisory role and on the basis of

appointment. So I could never feel sympathetic towards the movement for an elected House.

(Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 19 November 2012)

This role of the House of Lords in amending legislation (even though this can be overturned in the House of Commons) leads this minority of peers to argue for electing peers. This

135 simply stems from the argument that in a democracy the governed should choose their governors.

… there is a fundamental affront to the principle of democracy which is that those who make

the laws of the country do so because they have power invested in them through the ballot

box. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 14 November 2012)

The finding that peers divide on Lords reform with a majority supporting an appointed House and the minority supporting the election of peers is not at all new. However, what is new is that this division is grounded not in ‘turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’ versus democrats, but rather, is the result of a deep-seated tension between the role of the House of Lords as a source of advice and expertise, and its role as a legislative chamber. In other words, this is a contest of ideas about the primary role and place of the House of Lords within the British political system:

… in its essence it’s an advisory body. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 7 November

2012)

Second, the distinctiveness of the House Lords from the House of Commons. This theme came across from the interviews through the almost desperate need for peers to make it very clear how different they are from members of the House of Commons:

The thing that is distinctive about it, maybe unique, but certainly distinctive I would say, is

that this is a Parliament or a House of Parliament comprised almost entirely of people without

ambition. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 15 November 2012)

This aim to be different to (and in the eyes of many, better than) the House of Commons seemed to be one of the concerns against electing peers; they fear that this would make the

Lords more like the Commons. Most peers then want to preserve the differences between the

House of Lords and the House of Commons:

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Now how would it affect the way the House of Lords worked? I think it would inevitably

mean that we would be politicians in a way we’re not now. We would be partisan in a way

we’re not now. We would actually have to argue and fight on the basis of political beliefs

which we’d already set out in the manifestos in which we would have stood for parliament.

So the House would become politicised and it would drive out the opportunity for much more

general debates and consideration and reflection and all these things. It would be a much

more instrumental House. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 13 November 2012)

The first two themes which fit under the jeopardy thesis, lead on nicely to the third theme, and probably the most important – the primacy of the House of Commons. Almost all of the interviewees acknowledge the primacy of the House of Commons, because it is elected, whilst the House of Lords is not. In addition to this reverence for the primacy of the House of

Commons, many peers not only accept Commons primacy in the present, but also wish to see it continue:

… it seems to me that there is pretty general agreement that people want the House of Lords

to go on being roughly what it now is and to do what it roughly now does, and specifically to

be secondary and subordinate to the House of Commons. In other words, nobody wants to

upset the position in which the House of Commons is the supreme legislator. (Interview with

a Crossbench Peer, 29 January 2013)

Well, the former proposals were poorly thought out. They were muddled, they were

incomplete and they were pressing a destroy button for the unwritten constitutional

conventions which include the House of Commons having primacy. I think they would have

produced procedural chaos and I think that the merits of what they were trying to do; the

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laudable merits of necessary parliamentary reform were lost in political considerations.

(Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 7 November 2012)

This is a well-known argument, suggesting that, if you elect the House of Lords, it would use its power more willingly and there would therefore be more conflict between the Lords and the Commons:

… if you are to keep the primacy of the House of Commons which I think is crucial you have

got to have suitable conventions between the two Houses worked out by a convention

committee in advance with the approval of the old House of Lords which will give the old

House of Lords more power but will not seriously interfere with the primacy of the House of

Commons. And unless you do that you really cannot try and change it. (Interview with a

Crossbench Peer, 15 January 2013)

… we would try to overturn anything the Commons sent to us we didn’t agree with it. So it’s

a recipe for deadlock. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 13 November 2012)

What was striking here was the very frequent reference to the emphasis on conflict and gridlock between the two houses. This concern with ending up with gridlock seemed a very strong cause for opposing or at least not favouring an elected House of Lords:

… if it thinks it’s going to be in anyway a rival to the House of Commons we’d be better off

to abolish it, frankly. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 7 November 2012)

But assuming we are where we are then I think the absolute clinching argument as far as I’m

concerned against a directly elected second chamber is that we do not want two houses at

loggerheads. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 15 November 2012)

The fourth theme under the jeopardy thesis was the importance place on the role of expertise in the legislature. The majority of interviewees pointed to this expertise as an important reason not to elect peers. It was argued that people of such eminence would neither have the

138 time, nor the inclination, to run for election to the House of Lords, and thus the only way to secure their input is to continue either with appointment, or with indirect election from vocational bodies (a proposal mentioned several times).

… the joy of this place is the expertise. It really is. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 20

November 2012)

But so long as the traditional role continues then I think one is then talking about non-election

here because you would need expertise. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 17 December

2012)

But I would like to see this House with the expertise that it has. I think it plays a great role in

our democratic society and democratic process doing what it does best, that is amending,

reforming, advising, scrutinising. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 19 November 2012)

It was perhaps surprising that there were a number of interviewees who dismissed this argument, generally along the lines that although there certainly are some people of immense expertise in the Lords, there were also a lot of people with very little expertise, and who contribute very little to the eminence of the House.

I think there’s quite a lot of mythology, including in the House itself, about how expert they

are, and that somehow if you’re an MP at the other end you’re an oink, and the moment you

come here that whiff of ermine invests you with great expertise, which I find worrisome.

(Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 13 November 2012)

The final theme reflected the age-old adage: if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. This was not a unanimous view amongst peers and there are those that believe electing peers is a necessary reform. However, many peers think the system broadly works well, that electing peers is not necessary and, in fact, would be damaging to the British political system. Of course, this argument can seem rather self-congratulatory.

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I’m not convinced at the present that the job can be done much better. (Interview with a

Conservative Peer, 1 October 2012)

This latter argument refers primarily to the issue of election versus appointment, as there is near universal consensus that the Lords cannot remain completely unreformed. Most peers interviewed had a list of reforms they think necessary for the House of Lords to be more effective. Interviewees highlighted a number of suggestions for minor reform including: the need to reduce the number of peers, utilising an attractive retirement scheme, the need for a mechanism for removing peers who have been in prison, ending the by-elections to replace hereditary peers when they die, and introducing a statutory appointments commission. These proposals were by no means universal, but were mentioned regularly. Other less popular proposals mentioned included giving more power to the Lord Speaker in questions and reducing the number of bishops sitting ex officio.

Futility

It is very hard to argue against it on principled terms you have to use really practical

arguments. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21 November 2012)

Now, finally, to the futility thesis. The futility thesis argues that ‘the attempt to change is abortive, that in one way or another any alleged change is, was, or will be largely surface, façade, cosmetic, hence illusory, as the “deep” structures of society remain wholly untouched’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.43). The only argument which employs the futility thesis is over the method of election to an elected second chamber. The argument is that if a party-list system is the method selected (as was suggested in the recent Coalition Draft Bill) then it would still be the political parties who selected peers, as they already do in an appointed

House. Thus, no real change would occur in the democratic sense:

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I think there are also very considerable flaws in the particular proposals and the biggest flaw

was that whatever the system of election being proposed (but particularly closed lists

proportional representation) would have produced a result which was in practice equivalent to

appointment. And so I don’t think that it would have been more democratic. It would have

given the veneer of election without being that in practice. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer,

19 November 2012)

The above quote demonstrates that although unpopular, the futility thesis was still put forward in the interviews. It is interesting that the futility thesis was not appealed to more widely. This leads to the conclusion that perhaps those who opposed the reform could see that it would indeed be a big and important change for the British parliamentary system, however undesirable.

Sin of omission – temporality

Do we need to upset everything at this time? (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21

November 2012)

Hirschman’s typology of reactionary rhetoric is comprehensive, and indeed compelling. In relation to the case study of the House of Lords, perversity, futility and jeopardy represent the major groups of arguments used by those opposing a directly elected second chamber. The empirical research conducted, however, shows that Hirschman’s triad misses an important part of reactionary rhetoric; a part which is particularly important in the case of political reform: temporality. Temporality is a two-pronged argument used by reactionaries, arguing a) it’s not the right time, and, b) the public are not interested. It might be argued that these elements are covered by Hirschman in his futility thesis, however, the key difference between the two is that the futility thesis argues that it is never the right time, the temporality thesis argues that now is not the right time.

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The first argument of the temporality thesis is that it is the wrong time for such a reform.

Essentially this argues that although the particular reform is laudable in its own right, and there is a case to be made for its introduction at some point, now is not the right time. This could be for many reasons but in the case of House of Lords reform it has to be viewed from the context of economic crisis in Britain, and the proposal to reform the Lords was on the back of other failed constitutional reforms of the Coalition government:

No government in its right mind inheriting this situation, inheriting the biggest economic

disaster since the 30s with all manner of challenges would make House of Lords reform a

priority. To do so on the back of a whole raft of incomplete or failed policies was madness.

There was no political engine behind it. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 13 November

2012)

However, some believed this argument was simply an attempt to find excuses to oppose reform:

… the same people who were saying this is a waste of time we should be worrying about the

economic situation etc. were the same people who talked endlessly about how wonderful the

House of Lords was, and you didn’t need any change and so on and so forth. (Interview with

a Crossbench Peer, 28 November 2012)

The second argument of the temporality thesis is that again regardless of how righteous the particular proposed reform is, the public is just not interested, this is an issue for the political class, and is a case of ‘navel gazing’.

Although there is a general disinterest in mainstream British politics amongst the British public (Hay, 2007; Stoker, 2006; Stoker and Hay, 2012), no area of politics is more the preserve of the political class than political institutional reform. This point is highlighted clearly by the issue of reform of the House of Lords. Polls conducted in 2012 showed

142 majorities for electing members to a second chamber, but it was not an issue with salience amongst the electorate (see for example Watt, 2012). People are far more interested in their own lives, and those parts of government which directly affect them. The argument that the public were not interested in reform was employed often by those opposing the reform measure as illustrated by the quotes below:

If it were not the case, given the successive attempts to reform this place, there would have

been a groundswell of public opinion supporting those reforms, demanding them and

demanding the abolition of what people see as an out of touch privileged elite. That is not

generally the view, as far as I can tell, of the electorate at all. (Interview with a Bishop, 25

October 2012)

This disinterest on behalf of the public was also linked to the economy, and the unpopularity of elected politicians in the United Kingdom:

… there is very little evidence that the electorate as a whole wants more expensive and more

elected politicians, they are not a popular breed and there is no general appetite for increasing

the number. (Interview with a Bishop, 25 October 2012)

Progressive Rhetoric – The Righteous Quest

There is no doubt that Hirschman’s focus was almost completely on exploring the rhetorical arguments employed by those who oppose reform, or as Hirschman refers to them reactionaries. This being said, Hirschman digresses briefly in a small penultimate chapter to outline some possible progressive rhetorical arguments; ‘“Reactionaries” have no monopoly on simplistic, peremptory, and intransigent rhetoric’ (Hirschman, 1991, p.149) he argues.

Rather than founding these progressive theses on empirical data, Hirschman instead, which

143 he acknowledges, simply discusses the most likely antitheses to the reactionary arguments he had earlier identified.

First, Hirschman identifies two progressive rhetorical theses which are the antitheses to the jeopardy argument of reactionaries. The first of these is the synergy illusion. Hirschman argues that:

Whereas advocates of the jeopardy thesis seek out every conceivable conflict between a

newly proposed reform and earlier improvements or achievements, […] progressive observers

will focus on reasons why a new and an older reform will interact positively rather than

negatively. (Hirschman, 1991, pp.150-151)

This is a somewhat simple argument - progressives will focus on why the new reform which they are proposing will build on previous achievements in the area.

There appears to be little evidence of this argument being employed in the debate over Lords reform. One argument though which could be applicable is the idea of the ‘stage two’ of reform which was started under Tony Blair. This argument is that an elected second chamber would complete the process of reform. While close to the argument proposed by Hirschman, this argument does not have the same sense of positive interaction which he highlights. The argument is not that an elected second chamber would go well with the earlier reform removing the majority of the hereditary. We can therefore argue that this first progressive rhetorical argument have not been widely applied by peers advocating for an elected second chamber.

The second of Hirschman’s antitheses to the jeopardy thesis is the imminent-danger thesis.

This example of progressive rhetoric is employed to build a sense of looming danger if a certain reform is not introduced, as Hirschman argues:

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... the advocates of a certain policy felt that it was not good enough to argue for it on the

ground that it was right; for greater rhetorical effect they urged that the policy was

imperatively needed to stave off some threatening disaster. (Hirschman, 1991, pp.152-153;

emphasis in original)

This is certainly a very clever rhetorical device employed by progressives which completely turns the table on the reactionary rhetoric about the potential jeopardising effects, by arguing that without a certain reform there will be perverse effects of a worse kind.

The imminent-danger thesis is clearly employed in the debate over reform of the House of

Lords. Its use centres on the issue of the total size of the House of Lords. The total membership of the House of Lords, as at December 2014, was 8477 (Taylor, 2014, p.3).This increasing size of the House of Lords has become a prominent part in the debate over future reform, as the quotation below by Russell (2011, p.19) demonstrates:

The House of Lords’ effective functioning has already been compromised by the recent rapid

rise in membership, in ways which are damaging its effectiveness. Any further increase in

size could fundamentally undermine the chamber’s ability to do its job. As a result, different

mechanisms for reducing the total membership of the House of Lords have been offered.

As mentioned, various proposals for reducing the overall size of the House of Lords exist; as one peer argued ‘...it’s the burning topic’ (Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012).

Proposals include a moratorium on new peers and the setting of cap on total membership.

One small-scale reform was the recent House of Lords Reform Act 2014 which allowed peers to retire.

It is not only peers who support appointment who engage with this debate, as many peers who support an elected second chamber appeal to the impending disaster if the total size of

7 Not excluding those peers currently ineligible to sit.

145 the House of Lords is not controlled. Their argument is that if the House of Lords were elected, it would be relatively simple to cap the total size of the Lords, and therefore stave off the impending disaster.

After providing the antitheses for the reactionary arguments around jeopardy, Hirschman suggests an antithesis for the futility thesis. This progressive thesis is that history is on our side. In other words:

If the essence of the “reactionary” futility thesis is the natural-law-like invariance of certain

socioeconomic phenomena, then its “progressive” counterpart is the assertion of similarly

law-like forward movement, motion, or progress. (Hirschman, 1991, p.157; emphasis in

original)

It is certainly clear that this argument is readily employed by progressives. Miller argues ‘In other periods – most notably the 19th century – the prevailing belief was in the idea of historical progress: history moved in a straight line from primitive barbarism to the higher stages of civilization’ (Miller, 2003, p.6). Miller identifies the most prominent example of this as the work of Karl Marx (Miller, 2003, p.6). There is, though, another less obvious example of this notion of history, more particular to Britain – the Whig interpretation of history. As Wilson and Ashplant (1988, p.2) argue:

Narrowly construed, it refers to an interpretation of British history, prevalent in whig political

and intellectual circles in the mid-nineteenth century, which stressed the growth of liberty,

parliamentary rule and religious toleration since the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth

century.

It is not apparent that this argument has been widely deployed in the debate over reform of the House of Lords. There is certainly a sense of the wave of democracy, but this is not converted to any practical rhetorical argument that history is on our side. In many respects, it

146 seems as though advocates of an elected second chamber, are aware that history may not in fact be on their side, and the many failed attempts to introduce elections to the House of

Lords demonstrate.

The last of Hirschman’s progressive theses is the antithesis to the perversity thesis – the desperate predicament. Hirschman first re-iterates the perversity thesis:

The reactionary position consists in proclaiming the widespread incidence of the perverse

effect. Reactionaries therefore recommend extreme caution in reshaping existing institutions

and in pursuing innovative practices. (Hirschman, 1991, p.159)

The desperate predicament argument contends that we are currently in a dangerous position that needs to be redressed, as Hirschman argues:

By invoking the desperate predicament in which a people is caught, as well as the failure of

prior attempts at reform, it is implicitly or explicitly argued that the old order must be

smashed and a new one rebuilt from scratch regardless of any counterproductive

consequences that might ensue. (Hirschman, 1991, p.162; emphasis in original)

The desperate predicament thesis is certainly the most extreme of the progressive antitheses.

Rather than focusing on the positive effects of change, or the forward movement of progressive reform, the desperate predicament thesis focus on throwing caution to the wind if we are to free ourselves from the fraught position in which we find ourselves. In other words, regardless of the effects we need to instigate wholesale reform. Hirschman concludes that:

In searching for a nonobvious counterpart to the perversity argument, I have come upon a

curious unintended consequence of Burke’s conservative critique of the French Revolution.

By insisting on the perfectibility of existing institutions as an argument against radical

change, his Reflections may have contributed to a long line of radical writings that portray the

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situation of this or that country as being totally beyond repair, reform, or improvement.

(Hirschman, 1991, p.163; emphasis in original)

The debate over reform of the House of Lords, amongst peers, is focused on several key issues. Perhaps the most prominent concerns are the relationship between the House of

Commons and the House of Lords, and the importance of the revising and scrutiny role currently performed by the appointed second chamber. Those who advocate for an elected second chamber appear to be cautious in making any particularly strong statements regarding the potential effects of wholesale Lords reform. Instead there seems to be a preference for under-playing the disruptive potential of such a reform:

This demonstrates that the desperate predicament thesis does not apply to the House of Lords.

In addition, any appeal to such a rhetorical argument would likely harm efforts to introduce an elected second chamber.

In summary then, Hirschman posits that just as there are clear rhetorical devices employed by reactionaries, there are equally recurring arguments to which progressives turn for rhetorical support. These are the synergy illusion, the imminent-danger thesis, the argument that history is on the side of the reformers, and the desperate predicament thesis. As a result of his analysis, Hirschman concludes that ‘Like its [progressive rhetoric’s] reactionary counterpart, it turns out to be richer in maneuvers [sic], than it is ordinarily given credit for’ (Hirschman,

1991, p.163). In other words, it is not reactionaries alone who employ common rhetorical devices when advocating certain reforms.

The case of reform of the House of Lords does not, however, support Hirschman’s conclusions about progressive rhetoric. Only one of his progressive rhetorical arguments appear to be widely employed in the debate, and that is the imminent-danger thesis in discussion of the total size of the House of Lords. It can therefore be posited that there are

148 two potential explanations for this finding: one, progressives in the debate over Lords reform are unique in their approach to advocating for reform, or second, that Hirschman’s progressive rhetorical theses are not as universal or accurate as his reactionary theses.

The former of these explanations is the one favoured here. In the course of the interviews, it became clear that those who advocate, or at least support, the introduction of direct elections to the House of Lords do so based on fundamental arguments about democracy. This could be called the righteous thesis. The righteous thesis is that the reform being advocated rights a wrong in the existing system, and appeals to core beliefs about what is right and wrong in proposing certain reforms. This proposition would clearly need to be empirical tested on other case studies to ascertain its usefulness in understanding progressive rhetoric.

In Conclusion

At the end of the day the forces of reaction won. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 14

November 2012)

This chapter has explored the usefulness of Hirschman’s typology of perversity, futility and jeopardy in understanding the opposition of peers towards a directly elected second chamber.

It demonstrates that, although the House of Lords is a uniquely British institution, and the ideas which are salient are unique to the British system, opponents of reform are employing rhetoric with a universal element. Evidence was found of the use of all three of Hirschman’s theses although to differing degrees. The futility thesis was the least employed of the three which suggests that peers, on the whole, find it difficult to argue that a directly elected second chamber would not have an important impact on the British parliamentary system. The perversity thesis was employed far more often than the futility thesis, although was still not at

149 the core of the opposition of peers. The jeopardy thesis explains best the arguments used by peers against Lords reform.

The jeopardy thesis was at the heart of the opposition of peers to introducing direct elections to the House of Lords. These arguments were that a directly elected second chamber would have disastrous consequences for good governance in Britain, un-doing important traditions for stability and strong government such as the primacy of the House of Commons, the role of expertise in the legislature, and the distinctiveness and complementarity of the two chambers:

Well the ideal role is to be complementary to the House of Commons. To do well the things

that the House of Commons doesn’t do well; which at the moment is line by line scrutiny, to

provide expertise and inquiry on issues that require a longer timeframe, and a less partisan

approach. To hold Government to account by challenging the Executive from the position of

knowledge, rather than ideology. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 20 November 2012)

In addition, to providing empirical support for Hirschman’s argument, this chapter also sought to make a contribution to the theorisation of reactionary rhetoric. The empirical evidence provided the space for a fourth form of reactionary rhetoric, which has been termed the temporality thesis to attempt to create symmetry with Hirschman’s typology. Those who employ the temporality thesis argue that a) it is not the right time for a particular reform either due to the particular economic context or b) because it lacks public support. This thesis appears to be most relevant to political reform as the crux of this argument is that a proposed reform is the result of wasteful ‘navel gazing’ on the behalf of the political class. Although much evidence was found to support the introduction of the temporality thesis, more empirical research in different cases is required to begin to match the comprehensive evidence Hirschman gathered for his theses by demonstrating their use across cases, something this chapter was unable to do in the context of a doctoral thesis.

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Chapter Seven – Ideas or Interests? Parsons and the Crosscutting Issue

______

...the hardest-to-reject evidence for the influence of interpretation is if real actors interpreted

the same conditions differently. (Parsons, 2011, p.137)

Introduction

In the debate over the Coalition’s plan for reform of the House of Lords, the argument was often put that peers opposed the introduction of direct elections for fear that they might lose their seats. As evidenced by the quotations below, this position was put by both commentators and advocates of the reform:

The main obstacles to reform now are not partisan but institutional. Specifically, will the

turkeys vote for Christmas? Received wisdom has it that the existing lords will fight to their

last breath to ensure that they are not abolished. (Facey, 2010)

This overstuffed house of turkeys is never going to vote for Christmas unless the Government

makes it clear that they are prepared to use the Parliament Act. (Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove

Bay, 2011)

Accusations of self-interest have not just been levelled at peers, but also the broader political establishment, for example Clegg (2012) argued:

When the Liberal Democrats came into Government, I knew that creating a democratic Lords

would not be straightforward. This cause has long been blocked by an establishment resistant

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to change and by the vested interests who benefit from maintaining the power of political

patronage, while keeping the power of people out.

The question this chapter seeks to answer is: Is this an accurate representation of the majority of peers in opposing wholesale reform of the House of Lords?

This chapter seeks to address this question through an application of Craig Parsons’ cross- cutting issue. In the preceding chapter the different arguments put forward by those who opposed the introduction of directly elected peers to the Lords were presented, and these arguments were discussed through the lens of Hirschman’s reactionary typology. In this chapter the aim is to not only to explore the position of peers who oppose an elected second chamber, but to explore the diversity of positions taken, and to try to understand whether these positions are based on material interest, party position, or individually-held ideas about democracy in general, and the British political system in particular. The work of Parsons is employed with the purpose of enabling a more sophisticated understanding of the motivation behind the various positions taken by peers.

The following will be structured in four substantive sections. In the first, an overview of

Craig Parsons’ work, and in particular the cross-cutting issue, will be presented. Following this, in section two, will be a discussion of the various backgrounds of peers who both support and oppose the introduction of elections to the House of Lords. This section will be focused on quantitative descriptive statistics in presenting these backgrounds. The penultimate section will involve an exploration of the interview material, by applying

Parsons’ theory. This chapter will conclude with an assessment of the usefulness of applying

Parsons’ work to the case of reform of the House of Lords.

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Parsons’ Theory of the Cross-cutting Issue

Parsons was interested in exploring the role of ideas in supranational institution-building. The difficulty was the problem of demonstrating ideas as causally important. To aid in this research task, Parsons developed the idea of the cross-cutting issue as a way to demonstrate the causal role of ideas in political action. The argument was:

Where ideas strongly crosscut prevailing lines of organization in a political arena, we can

display their autonomous impact in robust, methodologically conservative ways that should

convince even the staunchest skeptics. Such cases will not prove that ideas matter

everywhere, but they will establish that ideas can be major causes in politics. (Parsons, 2003,

pp.11-12)

Parsons argues that ‘Cross-cutting ideas have particularly clear effects because they offer the sharpest possible contrast to the expectations of objective-interest theories. All such theories define actors’ interests in terms of objective conditions at some level of organization’

(Parsons, 2002, p.50). Differing from these objective-interest theories, Parsons argues that

‘Ideational approaches posit, in contrast, that actors interpret their interests through ideas that can vary independently from their objective positions’ (Parsons, 2003, p.12). Parsons illustrates this point further in a figure (see Figure 7.1 below).

Let us now breakdown what exactly is required then, according to Parsons, for an issue to fall into the category of cross-cutting:

1. The objective position of the actors being researched must be as close as possible;

2. Actors with close objective positions must take different views on the issue being

researched;

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Figure 7.1 Crosscutting individual mobilization – why ideas matter. (Parsons, 2003, p.14)

3. The debate over differing positions taken on the issue must be sustained both prior to

and post decision points; and,

4. Actors must consistently say and write that they believe certain things and that others

do not.

The criteria above will be applied in this chapter to exploring the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords.

Criterion one: the objective position of the actors being researched must be as close as possible

In this section the focus will be on exploring whether Lords reform fits with the first element of Parsons’ criteria: that the objective position of the actors being researched must be as close as possible. In the case of reform of the House of Lords, it appears that two aspects of the objective position of peers are relevant to the first of Parsons’ criteria. First, all peers are members of the House of Lords. This is seen as the most important part of their objective position. When considering whether or not direct elections should be introduced, all peers address this question from the position as members of the House of Lords. If direct elections are introduced this would affect each of them. So for the purposes of this analysis it can be

154 said that the fact that all peers are members of the House of Lords is evidence of this case satisfying Parsons’ first criterion.

The second most relevant aspect of the objective position of peers is party membership. Party membership is only important in satisfying Parsons’ first criterion if parties are the usual organisational lines in the House of Lords. Therefore, it is relevant here to have a brief discussion of party cohesion in the Lords. The traditional wisdom is that whipping in the

House of Lords is weaker than in the House of Commons, and some in the Lords still hold this view: ‘the whole whipping system in the Commons is much more substantial’ (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 6 November 2012). However, it appears from the interview material that whipping in the House of Lords is much stronger than is often thought:

‘whipping is quite tight in the Lords, I mean there’s a great myth that the Lords are much more independent’ (Interview with a Labour Peer, 11 December 2012).

Regardless of the differing views on the strength or weakness of the whipping arrangements in the House of Lords, party cohesion is undeniably very strong in the House of Lords, as the following quotations attest:

Behaviour in the House of Lords displays a high level of cohesion without discipline.

(Norton, 2003, p.70)

… the party lines are very tight indeed. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 13

November 2012)

Some would even go as far as to argue that:

… some people inside and outside the House think that there isn’t the same degree of

discipline, and manipulation, and management, as there is in the Commons. It’s more so,

simply because it’s less visible. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 6 November 2012)

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The same peer goes on to argue that:

… because there isn’t a government majority it’s less predictable. I think what sometimes

people think of as being very partisan is sort of knowing what’s likely to happen – well we

are less predictable, and therefore they think we must be less partisan. (Interview with a

Liberal Democrat Peer, 6 November 2012)

The other aspect of the Lords which gives the impression that parties are less important is the presence of the crossbench peers and the Lords Spiritual, neither of whom are members of a political grouping in the Lords. These two groups aside, it is clear that parties are the usual organisational lines in the House of Lords. As Meg Russell argues, ‘voting is almost entirely united in all three parties’ (Russell, 2013, p.114), although she goes on to add that ‘it has declined somewhat in the two coalition parties post-2010’ (Russell, 2013, p.114). So although this discipline, amongst the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, might have declined somewhat in the period in which the interviews were conducted, party lines are still the usual lines of organisation in the House of Lords, and were even stronger prior to the current period when some of the votes on Lords reform, which will be discussed later, were conducted.

From this discussion we can see that the two most important aspects of the objective position of peers in relation to reform of the House of Lords, is that they are members of the House of

Lords, and for the party political peers, party membership is the usual organisational line in the House of Lords. This having been established, we can now move on to the second element in Parsons’ criteria, that actors with close objective positions must take different views on the issue being researched. This will be done quantitatively in the following section.

Criterion two: a quantitative approach

Moving away, for now, from the theoretical aims of this chapter, we will now explore the position of peers on House of Lords reform from a quantitative perspective. The aim of this

156 section is to explore whether Lords reform fits Parsons’ second criterion for a cross-cutting issue, that actors with close objective positions must take different views on the issue being researched. As we have seen in the preceding section there are two important elements of peers’ objective positions – being members of the House of Lords, and being members of party groupings in the Lords. This section will therefore explore whether peers vote differently on reform of the House of Lords first, and then will explore whether peers belonging to the same parties vote differently on this issue.

Do members of the House of Lords vote differently on reform of the House of Lords?

The most effective way of examining the broad position of peers on reform of the House of

Lords is to examine voting behaviour. There have been two significant votes on Lords reform since the exclusion, in 1999, of the majority of the hereditary peers - in 2003 and 2007.

Unfortunately for this thesis, as the Coalition’s reform bill never reached the House of Lords, we have no voting data on the overall position of peers on the most recent reform attempt. As a result, the outcome of the votes in 2003 and 2007 will have to suffice.

Let us begin with the 2003 vote. In 2002 the government established a joint committee on reform of the House of Lords, and the vote in both houses on 4 February 2003 was on the seven resolutions which came out of the joint committee’s first report (see McLean et al.,

2003). As we can see from Table 7.1, there are a range of views taken by peers on the resolutions put to them in February 2003. It is clear though that the biggest content vote was for a fully appointed second chamber. This is perhaps not terribly surprising – appointed peers support an appointed chamber. More interesting though is that the second most popular option was a fully elected second chamber. From these two results we can see that there is certainly a majority of support amongst peers for a fully appointed second chamber, although there is clearly a significant minority of peers who support a fully elected

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100% 80% 60% 50:50 60% 80% 100% Appointed Appointed Appointed Elected Elected Elected

For 335 39 60 84 91 93 106 Against 110 375 358 322 317 338 329 Majority for or 225 -336 -298 -238 -226 -245 -223 Against Table 7.1 Voting Figures from the Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 4 February 2003 (HM Government, 2007, p.17).

second chamber. From the results of this vote, there appears to be evidence to support the view that there is a diversity of opinion amongst peers on reform of the House of Lords.

The next vote on the overall future composition of the House of Lords came in 2007. This second vote followed the release of the government’s new white paper on Lords reform.

Again, seven resolutions were put to both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Two of these motions – 80% Appointed and 60% Appointed – were negatived in the House of Lords before being voted on, therefore peers voted on the five motions outlined in Table

7.2. As is clear by comparing Tables 7.1 and 7.2, the results were fairly similar overall. In

2007, a fully appointed chamber was again the most popular alternative, and a fully elected second chamber was the second most popular, although consistent with the result in 2003, with a large margin favouring a fully appointed House.

100% 50:50 60% Elected 80% Elected 100% Appointed Elected For 361 46 45 114 122 Against 121 410 392 336 326 Majority for 240 -364 -347 -222 -204 or Against Table 7.2 Voting Figures from Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 (House of Lords, 2014).

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From the Tables 7.1 and 7.2, it appears that there is indeed evidence to support the position that there is a diversity of views held by peers concerning reform of the House of Lords.

From the votes of 2003 and 2007 it can be seen that the majority of peers support appointment, although there is a significant minority who prefer election as the means for composing the second chamber.

Do peers of the same party vote the same way on reform of the House of Lords?

Peers overwhelmingly vote with their party in the Lords. Due to this party cohesion, the second and more important test of whether reform of the House of Lords satisfies Parsons’ second criterion - that actors with close objective positions must take different views on the issue – is that peers of the same party take different views. In this section, we will focus on the 2007 vote, and explore whether voting was on party lines or not. In so doing, this section will focus only on the three major parties in the House of Lords: the Conservative Party,

Labour, and the Liberal Democrats.

Table 7.3 presents the voting figures for a fully appointed chamber by party. Conservative peers voted 138 to 13, Labour peers voted 95 to 45, and Liberal Democrat peers voted 14 to

40. From this firstly we can see that support for a fully appointed chamber comes from the

Conservative and Labour parties, with the majority of the Liberal Democrats voting against a fully appointed chamber. Secondly it can be seen that the Conservatives as a party are more clearly in favour of appointment than are Labour peers who seem more divided on this question; Liberal Democrats are quite united, although with a significant minority in dissent.

Third, and most importantly, it can be seen that peers of the same party vote differently on this issue, particularly amongst the Labour peers.

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Content Not Content Conservative 138 13 Labour 95 45 Liberal Democrats 14 40 Table 7.3 Fully Appointed, Voting Figures by Party from the Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 (House of Lords, 2014).

Moving to Table 7.4, which presents the voting figures for a fully elected chamber by party, a similar story becomes clear. As would be expected the figures flip with the Conservative peers voting by a large majority against, although still 10 peers in dissent. The Labour vote becomes more interesting, with the number in support of a fully elected chamber larger than that which opposed a fully appointed chamber, and the numbers of those who oppose a fully elected chamber much smaller than those who voted for a fully appointed chamber. The

Liberal Democrat vote is also interesting with the number of those opposing a fully elected chamber less than half the number which voted for a fully appointed chamber.

Content Not Content Conservative 10 133 Labour 54 79 Liberal Democrats 40 6 Table 7.4 Fully Elected, Voting Figures by Party from the Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 14 March, 2007 (House of Lords, 2014).

From Tables 7.3 and 7.4 it can be seen that the picture is slightly complicated. From all three parties it is clear that there is a strong majority either supporting a fully appointed chamber, in the case of the Conservative and Labour peers, or a fully elected chamber, in the case of the Liberal Democrats. There are significant still majorities in dissent from amongst both the

Labour and Liberal Democrat peers, with the proportion in dissent amongst the Conservative peers much smaller, although present. From this it can be argued that there is evidence that peers of the same party do vote differently on the issue of reform of the House of Lords,

160 although depending on party; the Labour Party providing the most interesting, and divided, voting behaviour on this issue.

Tables 7.1 to 7.4 presented the voting figures from the votes held in the House of Lords on reform in 2003 and 2007. Tables 7.1 and 7.2 demonstrated that peers vote differently on the issue of reform, with a majority supporting a fully appointed chamber, although a significant minority support a directly elected second chamber. Tables 7.3 and 7.4 presented the voting figures from 2007 by party, allowing a discussion of whether Conservative, Labour and

Liberal Democrat peers voted en bloc by party or not. From analysis of these Tables it is clear that peers of the same parties voted differently on the issue of reform. The difference was most significant amongst the Labour peers, and least significant amongst the Conservatives.

It can be concluded that there is evidence that criterion two is met by this case. The data presented in this section provide evidence that actors with close objective positions take different views on Lords reform. First, in the sense that all peers share a similar objective position in regards to Lords reform yet there is a diversity of views taken, and secondly that although party cohesion is quite strong in the Lords, peers of the same party vote differently on Lords reform, although to differing degree depending on party.

Criterion three: debate must be sustained both prior to and post decision points

The two previous sections have so far concluded that reform of the House of Lords satisfies the first two elements of Parson’ criteria for a cross-cutting issue. The focus of this section will be to consider whether criterion three is met, namely that debate must be sustained both prior to and post decision points. Parsons considers this third criterion important to overcome the fact that ‘initial debates may simply reflect a vetting of options, from which a consensual group position coalesces as the need for a decision approaches’ (Parsons, 2003, p.13). In

161 other words, it needs to be ensured that the different opinions are not just the airing of alternatives, but rather consistently held and debated ideas.

Assessing the applicability of reform of the House to the third of Parsons’ criteria is more complicated than the analysis of the first two criteria. It is difficult because in the 15 years since the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999 it is difficult to discern a clear decision point. As there has been no vote in the House of Lords on any actual proposal to introduce elections to the Lords, this idea of a decision point is not easily applied to reform of the

House of Lords. Therefore the only way to address the question of Parsons’ third criterion is to examine whether or not there has been a sustained element to the debate over the future, and ideal, composition of the House of Lords. This section will do this by again examining the votes of 2003 and 2007, as the only votes on the composition of the Lords in the period since 1999. This will be done by discussing these two votes by party and comparing the party votes of 2003 and 2007 to assess the consistency of the figures.

Tables 7.5 and 7.6 present the voting results from 2003 and 2007 together, for both the division on a fully appointed House, and the division on a fully elected House. In Table 7.5 it can be seen that there are some differences in the figures, although these seem to be relatively small. For both the Labour and Liberal Democrat peers the numbers are actually remarkably consistent, with small rises in the number not content with a fully appointed House. This does not seem significant as there are many factors which could result in such small changes, such as changes in the party grouping with new peers appointed. Of slightly more interest are the figures for the Conservative peers with an increase in those content with a fully appointed

House in the period from 2003 to 2007. At the same time as this increase, there has been a decrease in those opposing a fully appointed House from 20 to 13.

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Content Not Content 2003 2007 2003 2007 Conservative 119 138 20 13 Labour 93 95 38 45 Liberal 15 14 34 40 Democrats Table 7.5 Fully Appointed, Voting Figures by Party from the Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 4 February 2003 and 14 March 2007 (House of Lords, 2014).

In Table 7.6, is presented the voting results from 2003 and 2007 on the question of a fully elected House. It is clear that there is slightly more fluctuation than in the vote for a fully appointed House. As consistent with Table 7.5 Conservative support appears to have moved more strongly away from an elected chamber, with Liberal Democrat peer support for election strengthening. The Labour Party has a slight increase in those content with a fully elected House, and those opposing the introduction of full elections falling very slightly.

Content Not Content 2003 2007 2003 2007 Conservative 24 10 120 133 Labour 38 54 85 79 Liberal 32 40 12 6 Democrats Table 7.6 Fully Elected, Voting Figures by Party from the Free Vote on the Composition of the House of Lords, 4 February 2003 and 14 March 2007 (House of Lords, 2014).

From Tables 7.5 and 7.6 then we can see that there has been some slight fluctuation in the voting results when comparing 2003 and 2007. The Conservative peers have shifted slightly towards stronger support for a fully appointed chamber, whilst the Liberal Democrats have moved towards a fully elected chamber; a very interesting finding considering the current coalition arrangements in the Britain. The Labour peers have remained fairly consistent with a very slight shift in the direction of a fully elected House, whilst still the majority of Labour peers support an appointed House of Lords.

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As there has only been slight variation in the voting figures from 2003 to 2007 it can be concluded that there is evidence that there is persistence in the debate amongst parties over

Lords reform. This persistence therefore means that the case of House of Lords reform, in part, satisfies Parsons’ third criterion that debate must be sustained both prior to and post decision points. As discussed at the beginning of this section as there have been no clear decision points it cannot be concluded that Lords reform completely satisfies Parsons’ third criterion.

Criterion four: what the qualitative data tells us

In this section attention will now turn to an exploration of the interview material gathered.

This discussion of the interview material is concerned at assessing whether or not the case of

Lords reform satisfies the final part of Parsons’ criteria for a cross-cutting issue. The fourth criterion is that: actors must consistently say and write that they believe certain things and others do not. In exploring the applicability of this criterion to the case, this section will present quotations from the interviews with a focus on comparing comments made by peers from the same parties. We will take each of the three parties in turn, and present two quotes in favour of election and two in favour of appointment. This is not to undermine the fact that there is more support, on the whole, for an appointed chamber rather than an elected chamber. The point of using to quotes is to illustrate the difference of opinion within parties.

First, consider the views put forward by a selection of Conservative peers:

I know that here at that stage I voted for a fully elected House, I thought since the first step

has been taken we ought to get on and really make it democratic if that was the justification

for getting rid of the hereditary peers. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 9 November 2012)

I think in a modern democracy if you’re going to reform this House and I wouldn’t have done

it in the way anyone has proposed and nor would any of us have started from where we

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started but that’s where we were. But if you’re going to do that, you can’t have an appointed

House in a democracy, you must have a democratic House. The idea that you can’t have two

democratic Houses that don’t clash is absurd. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 8

November 2012)

I’m terribly opposed to election it seems to me that that immediately tramples on the role of

MPs in their constituencies. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 3 December 2012)

Legitimacy is not simply a product of election…it’s because people recognise you are the

most qualified to fulfil that task. That’s why the courts have judges who are not elected, it’s

because they are seen as the qualified people to do it. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 4

November 2012)

From the quotations above it is clear that there is a strong difference of opinion. The first two quotes demonstrate that, within the Conservative Party, those who support the introduction of elections to the second chamber see it as the completion of the reform process began by the exclusion of the majority of the hereditary peers in 1999. In addition to this justification is the view that in a democracy the second chamber must be elected. The second two quotes represent two of the most prevalent views amongst Conservative peers who support appointment. The first is the fear that an elected second chamber would challenge the primacy of the House of Commons, and the second that appointment provides the right people to conduct the job of scrutiny and revision.

Now the views of a selection of Labour peers:

It’s very difficult it seems to me to justify a position in which laws are passed, passed by

people who haven’t been elected by the people who’ve got to obey those laws. (Interview

with a Labour Peer, 11 December 2012)

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I’m afraid I am rather simple minded, I don’t think that in the 21st Century you can have a

second house of parliament which although people argue about whether it actually legislates

because it only revises legislation, I think the fact that we revise legislation to the extent that

we do and the importance of the amendments we put in to big bills and also the fact that bills

are introduced in this House. I mean they wouldn’t have to be but it’s just a kind of operation

of business management which means that they are. This means that we can’t really justify

being here way into the 21st Century simply on the basis of nomination. (Interview with a

Labour Peer, 5 November 2012)

The argument very often that was put for elections was anybody that is a legislator has to be

democratically elected. And I had a quite serious argument with somebody very senior in my

own party, as senior as you can get I think in my own party over this, because I said we don’t

make legislation. We help. We advise. We may make the odd amendment to it, but at the end

of the day the decision is taken by the Commons, so we, in regards to the argument about you

are a legislator therefore you have to be democratically elected does not apply. And I must

say I did get shouted down, but I still think it is right – we don’t actually make legislation.

(Interview with a Labour Peer, 28 November 2012)

You can’t really look at it, sort of, in isolation from everything else. I mean it’s probably the

Commons that needs revising first. (Interview with a Labour Peer, 8 January 2013)

From the first two quotations it can be seen that the argument about democracy is strong for

Labour peers who support election. Of those Labour peers who support election there was no mention of the idea of completing the reform which was begun with the exclusion of the hereditary peers in 1999, which is different from the perspective of the Conservative peers.

The second and third quotes provide an interesting dialogue, and returns to the theme discussed in the previous chapter. These two quotes highlight the point that much of the debate between peers over appointment versus election stems from their view of the role of the House of Lords – is it an advisory body to the House of Commons, or is it a full second

166 chamber of a bicameral parliament? The fourth quote is a slightly different approach again. In the fourth quote the peer is arguing that House of Lords reform should not be conducted in isolation, rather as the Lords is, some would argue, supposed to be complementary to the

Commons, than reform should be of parliament, rather than of the Lords.

The four quotations above represent the real difference of opinion amongst Labour peers.

Although the votes do indicate a majority of support for an appointed chamber, this support is based often on different ideas, and is not a cohesive body of opinion. Although, it can be seen that support for an elected House of Lords is less nuanced amongst Labour peers, with the focus on the centrality of democracy.

Finally, four quotations from Liberal Democrat peers:

It’s a fundamental affront to the principle of democracy which is that those who make the

laws of the country do so because they have power invested in them through the ballot box.

(Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 28 November 2012)

I think we have to move towards a second chamber which has at least some democratic

mandate. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 6 November 2012)

I’m a great believer in not fixing it if it doesn’t need to be fixed. I think a fully appointed

House has been shown to work. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 7 November 2012)

The idea that we have an elected Lords – we will end up almost as a duplicated House of

Commons, essentially people drawn from the same pool as the Commons – I see every

disadvantage. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 14 November 2012)

The first two quotations are along the same lines as we have seen from peers in the other parties. The argument is that in a democracy those who make the laws have to be elected, as the House of Lords makes laws it must also be elected. The third quote raises an argument which will be familiar from the previous chapter – the House of Lords is currently

167 performing its revising and scrutiny role well. As the Lords is currently working well there is no need for wholesale reform – ‘if it isn’t broken don’t fix it’. The fourth quote again echoes a theme presented in the previous chapter regarding the distinctiveness of the House of Lords from the House of Commons, and the fear that if the Lords is also elected it will simply be a mirror of the Commons, something which is seen as undesirable for the British political system.

The debate around reform of the House of Lords has become sharply polarised between advocates for an appointed and an elected second chamber. Although these two positions are at the heart of the contestation over Lords reform, through a discussion of the quotations presented in this section, it is clear that, amongst peers, the debate over reform is more nuanced than simply a contest between those who support appointment and those support election. Perhaps this might be better put that the nuance is more on the side of those who prefer an appointed chamber, as those who support the introduction of an elected second chamber seem to be more cohesive in their reasoning.

In addition to this conclusion about the nuanced aspects of the debate, we must also consider whether there is evidence that reform of the House of Lords meets Parsons’ fourth criterion: actors must consistently say and write that they believe certain things and that others do not.

From the discussion of the quotations presented in this section there appears to be evidence that peers do in fact articulate their position on Lords reform differently, and that this difference crosses party-lines, the usual dividing lines in the House of Lords. Therefore there is evidence that the case of reform of the House of Lords does indeed satisfy the last part of

Parsons’ criteria for a cross-cutting issue.

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In Conclusion

This chapter was concerned with assessing whether reform of the House of Lords met the criteria set by Parsons to be a cross-cutting issue. The preceding sections in this chapter have explored each part of Parsons’ criteria and applied them to Lords reform. There was much evidence to support the conclusion that Lords reform satisfies the first, second and fourth parts of Parsons’ criteria. There was less evidence to support a conclusion regarding the third criterion, as there was no discernible decision point. However, there was evidence that debate amongst peers has been persistent and therefore it can be argued that reform of the House of

Lords does satisfy Parsons’ third criterion, although with the above qualification in mind.

It can therefore be concluded that overall reform of the House of Lords satisfies Parsons’ criteria for a cross-cutting issue. The question now is what are the implications of this conclusion? The purpose of assessing Lords reform against Parsons’ criteria was to explore whether or not ideas are important in the positions taken by peers on Lords reform. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, Parsons’ argues that:

Where ideas strongly crosscut prevailing lines of organization in a political arena, we can

display their autonomous impact in robust, methodologically conservative ways that should

convince even the staunchest skeptics. Such cases will not provide that ideas matter

everywhere, but they will establish that ideas can be major causes in politics. (Parsons, 2003,

pp.11-12)

Therefore, as Lords reform has been demonstrated to be a cross-cutting issue, it can be seen that ideas have an autonomous impact on the position of peers. This is a significant finding: as it means that understanding the ideas peers hold is crucial to understanding their positions on reform of the Lords. This finding is in contrast to the view taken by many, as

169 demonstrated in the following quotations, that peers are opposed to Lords reform because they do not want to lose their seats:

There is also the fact that in practice, life peers may find their time in the chamber cut short

just as soon as the number of elected peers outnumbers the appointees. Knowing this, how

many peers who are concerned with retaining their seat will be so easily bought off? (Facey,

2010)

The findings of the chapter contend that rather than seeing the position of peers as based on their objective interest, the views of peers is much more ideationally founded. This finding could of course be attacked, as discussed earlier in this chapter, by arguing that ideas may be used to rationalise positions taken for different reasons other than those articulated. However, the argument here is that this criticism is addressed in two ways. First, there is a significant minority of peers who consistently vote for, and support, the introduction of direct elections to the House of Lords, surely in contrast to their objective interest. And second, peers within the same parties take very different positions, further demonstrating the contested nature of reform, with even those peers supporting appointment doing so for very different reasons, with very different ideational foundations. This finding is, however, contested by some peers, and it is appropriate here to include some of the views of on the role of ideas in the Lords reform debate:

People really do feel terribly strongly here and it wasn’t just about being kicked out, there was

a range of opinions. (Interview with a Conservative Peer, 21 November 2012)

I think that some of them genuinely believe in the medieval principle…but I suspect for very

man both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the advantage of having this

comfortable retirement home for the politically dead was quite attractive. (Interview with a

Liberal Democrat Peer, 14 November 2012)

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In all parties, a majority in the Conservative Party, probably a majority in the Labour Party,

almost certainly a majority in the Crossbenchers, they were fearful that their concept, not

necessarily their own future, because I think most of them realised by the time we’d finished

that there was going to be a continuum, but that their idea of the way in which the place

operated was at risk, and they were loudly saying so. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat

Peer, 6 November 2012)

The fundamental issues I think are much more principled. It’s one of those areas where there

are real disagreements on principle. (Interview with a Bishop, 5 December 2012)

I think it’s ideas, I’ll be honest. (Interview with a Liberal Democrat Peer, 13 November 2012)

From the above quotations it can be seen that there is, consistent with all aspects of reform, a range of views as to what motivates peers to take the positions they do. Perhaps this debate is best summed up by the following quotation:

Maybe it’s as many reasons as there are people. (Interview with a Crossbench Peer, 28

November 2012)

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Chapter Eight – What Have We Learned?

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Introduction

In this chapter the key findings of the preceding case studies will be analysed within a broader discussion of the research questions presented at the beginning of this thesis. A summary of the findings from the three empirical chapters will be presented first. Following this will be a discussion of these findings within the context of questions which this research sought to answer:

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained by applying a

theoretical approach?

What are the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords?

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further

understanding the views of peers on reform?

Summary of the Findings from the Three Empirical Chapters

In this section the findings of the preceding three empirical chapters will be presented. The purpose of which is to enable integrated discussion. The three empirical chapters will be summarised in the order in which they appeared in the thesis. First will be Streeck and

Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change, discussed in Chapter Five. Following this will be a brief presentation of the findings of Chapter Six which was concerned with an

173 application of Hirschman’s typology of reactionary rhetoric. The last of the summaries will focus on Parsons’ cross-cutting issue and the findings of Chapter Seven.

Gradual transformative change

Through an application of Streeck and Thelen’s typology it became clear that a narrow focus on legislative reform whilst useful was not sufficient to understand the changes in the House of Lords since 1997. Many of these changes appear to have been more gradual than might have been expected due to the pre-existing focus of research on moments of legislative reform. Withstanding this, the House of Lords Act 1999 is seen as the most significant reform to the Lords in the last two decades. In addition, the prospective changes to the Lords proposed by the Coalition provided a valuable context within which to interview peers about their views on reform, in an effort to understand the potential role of ideas in the formation of these views.

Although legislative moments provided an ideal skeleton around which to structure discussion of Lords reform, this skeleton required much fleshing out if it is to provide an accurate understanding of the way the Lords has changed in recent decades. Three types of change emerged in the course of the interviews: direct legislative change, indirect legislative change, and, non-legislative change. It was argued that the second and third types of change are better analysed through Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change.

Specific changes were identified as being characteristic of indirect legislative change or indeed non-legislative change. There were the increased partisanship in the Lords from the time of the Blair government onwards – a change attributed to the large number of recently appointed Labour peers from non-traditional backgrounds entering the House in this period.

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The Lords also became more assertive during the Blair era. This more confident House of

Lords was very active in defending itself when attacked by the Coalition. Although, of course the Coalition politics were crucial to the defeat of the reform bill, the effects of the changes during the period from 1997 were also important in the survival of the House of Lords. The removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers in 1999, and the increased diversity and professionalism of members of the House of Lords were all very important arguments used to oppose the introduction of direct elections to the Lords. This demonstrates the very real effects of gradual transformative change.

Although the House of Lords provides an insightful case to apply Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change, it also provides an example of another of Streeck and Thelen’s results of change, namely survival and return. The Coalition attempted large- scale change to the House of Lords, however its defeat enabled a level of continuity in the

House, i.e. a classic example of survival and return. This example also demonstrates real continuity after such an abrupt reform attempt can be difficult. Following the failure of the

Coalition’s proposals a smaller reform measure was passed in the form of the House of Lords

Reform Act 2014. This allowed for three things: 1. Allowed peers to retire; 2. Allowed peers to be excluded in sentenced to more than a year in gaol; and 3. Allowed peers to be excluded if they did not attend the House during an entire session. Clearly, those who wish to retain an appointed second chamber now most clearly see the need for defensive reform measures to bulwark the House of Lords against future reform attempts.

Hirschman and the rhetoric of reaction

Chapter Six explored the usefulness of Hirschman’s typology of perversity, futility and jeopardy in understanding the opposition of peers towards a directly elected second chamber.

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It demonstrated that although the salient ideas were somewhat unique to the British system, opponents of reform were employing rhetoric with a universal element.

Evidence for the use of all three of Hirschman’s theses, although to differing degrees, was found. The futility thesis was the least employed which suggested that peers found it difficult to argue that a directly elected second chamber would not have an important impact on

British politics. On the other hand, the perversity thesis was employed far more often, but it was the jeopardy thesis which best explained the arguments used by peers to oppose Lords reform.

The arguments building on the jeopardy thesis were that a directly elected second chamber would have disastrous consequences for good governance in Britain. Such a reform would undo important traditions for stability and strong government such as the primacy of the

House of Commons, the role of expertise in the legislature, and the distinctiveness and complementarity of the two chambers.

In addition to providing empirical support for Hirschman’s argument, this chapter also sought to make a contribution to the theorisation of reactionary rhetoric – the temporality thesis.

Those who employed the temporality thesis argue that a) it is not the right time for a particular reform either due to the particular economic context, or b) because it lacks public support. Although substantial evidence was found to support the addition of the temporality thesis, more empirical research in different cases is required to begin to match the comprehensive evidence Hirschman garnered for his theses by demonstrating their use across cases, something this chapter was unable to do in the context of this doctoral thesis.

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Parsons and the cross-cutting issue

Chapter Seven was concerned with assessing whether reform of the House of Lords met the criteria set by Parsons to be a cross-cutting issue. In so doing, each of the four-part criteria were discussed and applied to Lords reform. Enough evidence was found to support the conclusion that Lords reform satisfies the first, second and fourth parts of Parsons’ criteria.

Less evidence was found to support a strong conclusion regarding the third criterion, as there was no discernible decision point. However, there was evidence that debate amongst peers has been persistent and therefore it can be argued that reform of the House of Lords does satisfy Parsons’ third criterion, although with the above caveat in mind.

The question then was what are the implications of these findings? As Lords reform was demonstrated to be a cross-cutting issue, it can be argued that ideas have an autonomous impact on the position of peers. This is a significant finding: understanding the ideas peers hold is crucial to understanding the positions they take on reform of the Lords. This finding is in contrast to the view taken by many that peers oppose Lords reform because they do not want to lose their seats.

The findings of Chapter Seven contend that rather than seeing the position of peers as based on their objective interest, the views of peers are much more nuanced and arguably ideationally informed. Although it could be argued that ideas may be used to rationalise positions taken for different reasons other than those articulated, this criticism is addressed in this thesis by two means. First, there is a significant minority of peers who consistently vote for, and support, the introduction of direct elections to the House of Lords, surely in contrast to their objective interest. And second, peers within the same parties take very different positions, further demonstrating the contested nature of reform, with even those peers supporting appointment doing so for very different reasons, with very different ideational

177 foundations. This finding is, however, contested by some peers. Like with all aspects of reform, a range of views as to what motivates peers to take the positions they do exists.

Table 8.1 below presents the three theories, their definition, their rationale for selection in this research project, and the key findings which have resulted from their being applied to the case study of reform of the House of Lords. As can be seen in Table 8.1 the key finding of the application of Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual transformative change was that there have been changes in the House of Lords which have been gradual yet have had significant effects on the working of the institution. In addition, too much focus on legislative changes can, and have, overshadowed these significant gradual changes.

In relation to Hirschman’s typology the finding was that although many of the arguments employed by peers who oppose reform are specific to the case of the House of Lords and they are consistent with universal reactionary rhetoric. In addition though, the findings of Chapter

Six suggest that a new component of the typology is needed, namely the temporality thesis.

The key finding of the application of Parsons’ cross-cutting issue was that reform of the

House of Lords does meet the criteria to be considered a cross-cutting issue, and therefore we can see that ideas are an important part of the debate over Lords reform, a part of the debate which has been heavily under-researched.

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Theory Definition Rationale for Selection Key Finding/s Gradual That incremental That the effects of these That there have been Transformative changes to reforms can be fully changes in the House of Change institutions can understood, particularly Lords which have been have from the perspective of gradual yet have had transformative those people who significant effects on the effects on the actually form the working of the institution. institution over membership of the In addition, too much focus time House of Lords. on legislative changes can overshadow these significant gradual changes. Typology of That the rhetoric That a more That although many of the Reactionary employed by sophisticated arguments employed by Rhetoric those who oppose understanding of the peers who oppose reform reform follows views of peers and the are case-specific, they do three imperatives: reasons they provide for follow Hirschman’s perversity, their positions in typology of reactionary futility, and regards to reform of the rhetoric. In addition, a new jeopardy House of Lords will be part of the typology is possible. needed – temporality. The Cross- Issues where To interrogate the House of Lords reform Cutting Issue traditional lines of assumption that peers does meet the criteria to be organisation in an are motivated by considered a cross-cutting institution are objective self-interest issue. Therefore, we can cross-cut provide and exploring whether see that ideas have an the clearest there is any place for important role in evidence for the ideas in understanding understanding the debate role of ideas in the positions taken by over reform of the House political analysis peers. of Lords. Table 8.1 Summary of the Key Findings of the Three Empirical Chapters

What Have We Learned? The Research Questions Revisited

The discussion in this section will be structured around the three research questions which emerged from the review of the existing literature which was presented in Chapter Two:

1. What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained by applying a

theoretical approach?

2. What are the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords?

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3. What, is any insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further

understanding the views of peers on reform?

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained by applying a theoretically-driven approach?

One of the primary aims of this research project was to understand whether or not there were any insights to be gained by applying a theoretically-driven approach to understanding reform of the House of Lords. This question emerged through the review of the literature, which identified very little research employing a theoretical approach to this area of politics with most accounts focusing on descriptive institutional narration.

The key findings presented in Table 8.1 clearly demonstrate that there are indeed insights into reform of the House of Lords that can be gained from applying a theoretical approach. These key findings would not have been possible if it were not for the application of the three theoretical approaches which formed the core of this research project. Indeed, this theoretical approach to exploring reform of the House of Lords has clearly resulted in important insights which provide a deeper understanding of reform of the House of Lords. This approach identified important gradual changes to the House of Lords, examined the rhetoric employed by those who oppose reform, and highlighted the importance of ideas in the debate over reform of the House of Lords.

What are the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords?

The other important aim of this research project was to better understand the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords. The literature review identified that peers were an under- explored area of research on reform of the House of Lords. Although, many had interviewed peers as part of their research peers, and their views on reform, had not been the focus of the research.

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Through the interviews clear themes around reform of the House of Lords emerged. The most important finding is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, peers take very different positions on reform. The obvious difference is between those who support the continuation of appointment as the primary method of entry, and those who would prefer to see the introduction of direct elections. This fundamental contest between election and appointment is at the heart of the debate between peers on this issue.

Although there is a broad debate between election and appointment, it became clear through the course of the research that these positions are often more nuanced than might, on the surface, be expected. Not only is Lords reform a question of election or appointment, but also the proportion of each, the method of election, and the method of appointment. In addition to this, there are also peers who wish to see wholesale change to the entire structure and function of the House of Lords with reference to the creation of a type of federal United

Kingdom. It is clear that a simply dichotomous understanding of debate over Lords reform between election and appointment undermines both the range of views amongst peers and the complexity of the various positions taken.

It also emerged that peers, by a large majority, support the introduction of small-scale reforms to the House of Lords, even if they oppose the introduction of elections. Most peers interviewed had a list of reforms they think necessary for the House of Lords to be more effective. Recurring proposals concerned the need to reduce the number of peers, utilising an attractive retirement scheme, the need for a mechanism for removing peers who have been in prison, ending the by-elections to replace hereditary peers when they die, and introducing a statutory appointments commission. These proposals were by no means universal, but were mentioned regularly. Other less popular proposals mentioned included giving more power to the Lord Speaker during the daily question time in the House of Lords, and reducing the

181 number of bishops sitting ex officio. Evidence of the support for some of proposals can be seen in the passage of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014.

The final theme which emerged from the interviews with peers was their frustration with the debate. Many peers were tired of the endless debates over reform which they saw as distracting from the more important work of the House. Other peers also argued that the focus on large-scale reform distracted people from more important small-scale reforms, such as those discussed above. The other frustration which emerged was the complete lack of knowledge about the House of Lords on the part of members of the House of Commons. The majority of peers interviewed believed that MPs had little to no understanding of the House of Lords and how it works, and many of these peers argued that this lack of knowledge about the House of Lords was the cause of many of the, what they saw as, ill-thought out reform proposals for the Lords.

What, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further understanding the views of peers on reform?

The final research question addressed in this research project was: what, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further understanding the views of peers on reform? The first key insight which has resulted from further understanding the views of peers on reform is the effect of gradual change on the House of Lords. It is clear that the

House of Lords has changed since the election of the Blair government in 1997. Much of this change has been the direct result of legislative reforms, such as the reduction in the number of hereditary peers and the removal of the judicial functions of the House of Lords with creation of the Supreme Court. Other change has been an indirect result of legislative reform, such as: the hereditary by-elections which have gained a level of notoriety in the post-1999 period; the tensions over procedure in the chamber and the role of the Lord Speaker, which emerged as the result of the removal of the Lord Chancellor from the House of Lords; and,

182 the traditional chairing role of the Lord Chancellor in the chamber, requiring the creation of a new position to fulfil this function.

In addition to change both directly and indirectly the result of legislation, there has also been important changes to the House of Lords through gradual processes, and without legislation.

The most important of these changes is the changing culture of the House of Lords. Since the election of the Labour Party in 1997, new types of people have been appointed to the House of Lords, slowly changing the culture of the Lords as they increase in number. Such people include more academics, people with an NGO background, and people from minority and lower socio-economic backgrounds. These new types of peers are not the result of any legislation but rather a more gradual shift in appointments under the Labour Party and confirmed under the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

The effects of this cultural change are significant. It is argued here that these new types of peers have had two important effects on the House of Lords. First, the House of Lords have become more professional in the post-1997 era. Many peers now approach the Lords as a job, albeit for many a part-time job, and treat it accordingly. A concomitant change with this increased professionalism has been an increase in the party-political nature of the House of

Lords. Since 1997 the divisions between parties in the Lords has become more evident, for example with women peers no longer all using the same meeting room but rather splitting more into parties8.

The second key insight which has resulted from further understanding the views of peers on reform relates to the complicated nature of the question of reform. It is widely acknowledged that reform of the House of Lords is a very complicated issue, with many competing ideas and interests. The findings of this research provide further support for this conclusion.

8 It should be noted that this is possibly also to do with the increase in the number of women since 1997, another important change to the House of Lords.

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Beyond simply supporting this conclusion in a broad sense, this thesis also provides key insights into some of the elements which make reform of the House of Lords such a complicated issue.

First, peers have very different views on what the role and function of the House of Lords is within the British political system. Through the course of the interviews it emerged that there are two broad, and conflicting, positions on this question. The majority see the House of

Lords as an advisory chamber, asking the government and the House of Commons to think again about legislation. These peers also tend to be those who support appointment as the primary method of member selection; given their view of the Lords as an advisory chamber they see no useful purpose in electing peers.

A minority of peers, though not an insignificant one, see the House of Lords as part of a bicameral parliament. The role of the House of Lords in amending legislation (even though this can be overturned in the House of Commons) leads this minority of peers to argue the merits of direct elections to the Lords. This position is founded on the argument that in a democracy the governed should choose their governors.

Second, through the application of Hirschman’s typology it was demonstrated that peers use particular rhetorical arguments when opposing reform. Although Hirschman would contend that these are rhetorical devices, it is argued here that it is more helpful to see these as themes of concerns. Through the application of Hirschman’s typology it was clear that peers are primarily concerned that introducing elections to the House of Lords would either be a waste of time or resources as in the futility and temporality arguments, or would cause damage to the political system in Britain as in the jeopardy and perversity arguments.

Third, the finding that reform of the House of Lords satisfies Parsons’ criteria to be considered a cross-cutting issue highlighted this role for ideas in the reform debate. Here was

184 a case where interests were very similar, with very different ideas being espoused, clearly demonstrating that ideas play an important role in motivating the behaviour of political actors.

The findings of this research suggest that ideas are important in understanding reform of the

House of Lords, ideas surrounding: the primacy of the House of Commons; the distinctiveness and traditions of the House of Lords; the role of expertise in modern democracy; and the very role and function of the House of Lords within the British political system. It appeared that these were the ideas driving the debate and that, although it would be naïve to suggest that self-interest plays no part, it certainly seems that ideas were demonstrably important. This is an important finding which has been garnered through further understanding the view of peers on reform.

Much has been written recently on the role of ideas as Gofas and Hay (2010, p.3) attest to this growing interest:

After a period of neglect, if not hostility, towards ideational explanations, where

scholarship on ideas was conducted by a few dedicated researchers on the fringes of

the discipline, we are now faced with a burgeoning literature on the role of ideas.

This interest in the role of ideas stems from an appreciation amongst such scholars of the explanatory potential of ideas:

…ideas shape how we understand political problems, give definition to our goals and

strategies, and are the currency we use to communicate about politics. (Béland and

Cox, 2011, p.3)

By applying Parsons’ theory of the cross-cutting issue, this thesis has demonstrated the explanatory utility of the role of ideas in the debate over reform of the House of Lords. It has

185 clearly been demonstrated in this section that there has been significant insights which have been gained through further understanding the views of peers on reform.

In Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the findings of the three empirical chapters of this thesis. The first part of this chapter presented the key findings from the application of each of the three theories: Streeck and Thelen’s typology of gradual institutional change; Hirschman’s reactionary theses; and, Parsons’ cross-cutting issue. The second part of this chapter discussed these key findings within a broader discussion of the research questions which this research project was focused on answering: what, if any, insights into reform of the House of

Lords can be gained by applying a theoretical approach?; what are the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords?; and, what, if any, insights into reform of the House of Lords can be gained from further understanding the views of peers on reform? In discussing these questions it is clear that much has been gained in further understanding reform of the House of Lords by both focusing on the views of peers, and by applying a theoretical approach to exploring these views in more detail.

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Chapter Nine – In Conclusion: Towards a Multi-Dimensional Institutional Approach to Change

______

Introduction

This concluding chapter presents an overview of the thesis’ key methodological, theoretical, and empirical findings, and identifies some future avenues for research. The first section in this chapter will re-iterate the aims and purpose of this research project. Following this will be an overview of the theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions of this research. The third section, will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this research. The penultimate section focuses on the future of reform of the House of Lords. The final section of this chapter presents avenues for future research which emerge as a result of the work undertaken in this thesis.

The Purpose of the Research Revisited

This research sought to address the research problem which emerged from the review of the literature in Chapter Two. The problem, as identified, was that although much has been written on the House of Lords and its reform, there are still important gaps in the existing literature. First, the views of peers on reform have been under-explored, with little academic research focused solely on the views of peers. This has meant that those closest to reform of the House of Lords, a potentially invaluable resource for understanding the issue, have on the

187 whole been sidelined in the discussion of reform. This is the first problem which this research sought to address.

The second problem was that the existing research into the House of Lords has, with some notable exceptions, on the whole been entirely empirical with little attempt to explore the empirical evidence through a theoretical lens of any description. This research attempted to address these two important research problems in an effort to further understand reform of the

House of Lords. This research sought to address these two important limitations in the existing literature by both focusing on the views of peers, and by applying a multi- dimensional theoretical approach to exploring these views.

Theoretical, Methodological, and Empirical Findings

Theoretical findings

The first theoretical finding was that the three theories which were applied to the case study were all useful in further understanding the views of peers. Each of the theories provided insights into different aspects of the reform debate. The theory of gradual transformative change provided insights into the more under-acknowledged way in which the Lords has changed, and, significantly, suggests different causes of these changes than was previously thought. Hirschman’s typology of reactionary rhetoric provided insights into the core arguments employed by peers opposing reform, and the universality of these arguments against reform. Finally, Parsons’ cross-cutting issue highlighted the important role of ideas in the reform debate, which raises a point otherwise little acknowledged in the existing literature on reform of the House of Lords.

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The second important theoretical finding relates specifically to Hirschman’s reactionary theses. Through application of Hirschman’s typology to the views of peers on reform of the

House of Lords the need for an additional thesis emerged. As a result, this project suggests a fourth reactionary thesis, temporality, to be added to perversity, futility and jeopardy.

Temporality refers to arguments which make little judgment on the merits of the proposed reform or its potential effects, but rather focus their opposition around arguments of it not being the right time for such a reform. In the case of reform of the House of Lords these arguments focused on the effects of the financial crisis and failed constitutional reforms, suggesting that reform of the House of Lords was a distraction from more pressing concerns on the time of government and parliament.

The third important theoretical finding of this research relates to the role of ideas. This finding emerged primarily as the result of the application of Hirschman’s typology of reactionary rhetoric, and Parsons’ cross-cutting issue. Both these approaches highlighted the important role of ideas in the debate over reform of the House of Lords. It is these ideas upon which the key rhetorical arguments in the debate are founded, and these same ideas which transcend traditional party lines in the House of Lords. This role of ideas, largely ignored in the study of reform of the House of Lords was an extremely important theoretical finding of this research project.

Methodological findings

The methodological findings are better understood as reflections on the methodological approach of this research. Semi-structured elite interviews, within the case study of the House of Lords, formed the basis of the methodological approach which was adopted, and therefore the findings presented in this section are focused on the interviews. The first methodological finding was that, overall, the semi-structured elite interviews were an extremely valuable

189 method of data collection. As part of this project 77 peers were interviewed from all the major parties and the cross-benches and bishops. Peers on the whole were receptive to being interviewed, although many either declined or did not respond to the request for an interview.

As discussed in more detail below in the section on the empirical findings of this research, much rich data was gathered through the interview process.

The second important methodological finding was that there was much value in spending a large amount of time at the House of Lords. Although this was most certainly not an anthropological study of the House of Lords, as part of this research much time was spent at the House of Lords, observing peers interacting with each other, and observing more formal events such as debates and question time. In addition to this more passive observation, as part of the interview process peers were interviewed in many different types of rooms in the

House of Lords – such as the Royal Gallery, private offices, ministerial offices, the bar, and the tea room – which enabled a greater understanding of the House of Lords outside of the chamber. This was valuable in situating peers in their broader environmental context.

The two previous findings were positive reflections on the interview process, however, there were two important difficulties. As mentioned briefly above, some peers were unwilling to participate in this research. Although an excellent sample of peers was achieved, this unwillingness meant that some peers with close knowledge of the reform process were not interviewed. In addition to this, there was reluctance from amongst Conservative frontbench members of the House of Lords to be interviewed either on principle in the case of some, but in the case of many it appeared to be more an issue of availability of time.

The other important methodological finding of a negative nature concerns the difficulties associated with so many interviews. As part of this project many interviews were conducted in order to gain the broadest and deepest possible understanding of the House of Lords and its

190 reform. In total 77 interviews were conducted, which involved much time. As a result of so many interviews much material was produced which needed to be transcribed, read through and themes coded. This was an extremely time-consuming process, and although the results were valuable, this was certainly an important methodological finding.

This section has presented the most important methodological findings of this research project. The first two findings were positive and were: the value of conducting semi- structured elite interviews as the primary means of data collection, and the value of spending much time in the House of Lords and interviewing peers in many different settings in the

Lords. The second two methodological findings were: the unwillingness of some peers to be interviewed and the difficulties associated with conducting many interviews. Overall, though, the methodological approach of this research produced very rich data which will make an important contribution to furthering understanding of reform of the House of Lords.

Empirical findings

The first relates to the way the House of Lords has changed in the period since 1997. Such as: the increased professionalism of the House, and an increase in party-political division and conflict in the Lords, although still significantly less pronounced than in the House of

Commons. Rather than the result of direct legislative reform, these changes have often been gradual and have been the effect of less obvious shifts, such as the changing profile and background of those being appointed to the House of Lords from the period of the Blair government onwards.

The second key empirical finding was that the debate over Lords reform has key themes at its heart. The first of these themes was the prominent debate over the question of appointment versus election, but also an important point regarding the nuance and complexity within these broad positions on reform. Another important view of peers was the need for small-scale

191 reform to the House of Lords, these small-scale reforms were often supported by those on both sides of the debate. This being said, many peers who support election do not also necessarily support small-scale reforms, which they see as, in part, undermining the case for large-scale reform. The final important view of peers regards the frustration of peers, both in terms of their frustration over the constant debate on Lords reform, but also their frustration at the lack of understanding of the practices and function by members of the Lords by the government and the House of Commons.

The third key empirical finding was that ideas are important in understand the different positions taken by peers. Important ideas included: the primacy of the House of Commons; the distinctness and traditions of the House of Lords; the role of expertise in modern democracy; and the very role and function of the House of Lords within the British political system. It appeared from the interviews that these were the issues driving the debate and that, although it would be naïve to suggest that self-interest plays no part, it certainly seems that ideas were far more important.

The fourth and final key empirical finding relates to the narrative of reform. As a result of access to some of the most important figures from the House of Lords, particularly those of importance during the periods of legislative change, this research project was able to provide rich information about the story of these reforms and how they played out in practice. This contribution is of great significance both to understanding the issue of reform, but also for political historians with an interest in the political episodes such as the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of the Approach

Strengths

This section will provide a discussion of the strengths of this research project, with the weaknesses being addressed in the following section. This thesis has four key strengths. The first is the focus on the views of members of the House of Lords, and in particular the representative sample of peers which were interviewed. The second strength is the use of a multi-dimensional theoretical approach to the material gathered in the course of the interviews. Combining these two strengths is the innovative approach taken by this research project. The fourth and final strength, and the result of the innovative approach undertaken, is that this research makes both an empirical and a theoretical contribution.

Focus on peers, an under-researched group within the process

As discussed in Chapter Two, the pre-existing literature on reform of the House of Lords has not taken the views of peers as a focus. The views of peers were certainly incorporated into previous studies, but this research was different in that it placed the views of peers at the heart of the analysis. This is the first key strength of this research project. By focusing on the views of peers valuable insights into the issue of reform of the House of Lords were achieved. These insights included a greater sense of the issues which divide those involved in the debate, a clearer understanding behind some of the key events affecting the House of

Lords since 1997, and, a first-hand perspective on the changes within the House of Lords in the period since the election of the Blair Labour government. All of these insights were possible due to the focus on the views of peers.

In addition, as discussed in Chapter Four, this focus on the views of peers was strengthened by the representative sample of peers which were interviewed. In total 77 peers were

193 interviewed as part of this research project, which is slightly more that 10% of the total number of peers at the time the interviews were being conducted. This sample of peers was representative in three important ways. First, it closely represented the proportion of men and women in the House of Lords. Second, there was a representative sample of peers by type of peerage – hereditary peers, bishops and life peers. Finally, and most importantly, each of the parties and the crossbenchers where included, with a close representative sample of each. As this research was focused on the views of peers, it was most important to interview a representative sample, particularly for analysis applying theories such as Parsons’ (2003;

2002) cross-cutting issue. As such the representative sample of peers is an important strength of this thesis, and supports the conclusions which were reached as the result of the material gathered in the interviews.

The use of an original multi-dimensional theoretical approach

Enabling greater analysis of the material gathered through interviews with members of the

House of Lords, was the multi-dimensional theoretical approach applied in this research. This multi-dimensional theoretical approach is the second important strength of this research project. This thesis brought together three theories which have not been elsewhere employed simultaneously to explore the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords through three distinct theoretical lenses. The results of this theoretical application, as discussed at greater length in the preceding chapter, were very valuable to further understanding the issue of reform of the House of Lords. These theories enabled insights into the gradual changes which are transforming the Lords, the themes which are at the heart of the debate over reform, and, highlighted the importance of the ideas in understanding the debate, rather than focusing solely on material interests. These valuable insights would not have been possible without the application of the multi-dimensional theoretical approach adopted in this research project.

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An innovative approach to studying reform of the House of Lords

The two strengths discussed above – the focus on the views of peers and the multi- dimensional theoretical approach – together form the basis of the third key strength of this research project, namely the innovative approach employed to studying reform of the House of Lords. By adopting such an innovative approach the many important insights discussed both above and in the preceding chapters would not have been possible. A strength of this thesis, therefore, is its ability to demonstrate the importance of innovative research design, in particular focusing on making both an empirical and a theoretical contribution. In addition, by taking such an innovative approach, this research project also illustrates the under- researched elements of reform of the House of Lords; by taking a different approach than those previously, new and important insights can be gained to aid in broadening understanding of reform of the House of Lords.

Making both an empirical and a theoretical contribution

The fourth and final key strength of this research project was the ability to make both an empirical and a theoretical contribution. By employing the innovative and multi-dimensional approach discussed above, this project was able to provide extremely valuable insights into the House of Lords, and the ways it has been reformed and changed in the period since 1997.

These empirical insights provide important missing pieces in the literature on reform of the

House of Lords. Importantly, these insights also highlight areas where further research is still needed. In addition to providing insights into the empirical case study of reform of the House of Lords, this research project was also able to provide important insights into the theories applied. Not only does this project allow for empirical testing of the theories, it also allows for modifications to the theories to be suggested. These empirical and theoretical contributions are the key strength of this research project and resulted from the innovative

195 approach undertaken incorporating both a focus on the views of peers, and applying a multi- dimensional theoretical approach to exploring and analysing the views of peers.

Weaknesses

Although it is clear from the discussion above that this research project certainly has significant strengths, it also has important weaknesses which should be acknowledged. In this section the discussion of the research’s weakness will focus on three important weaknesses.

The first weakness concerns the inability to interview some of the key figures in the House of

Lords on this issue. The second weakness stems from the decision to focus solely on members of the House of Lords. The third and final weakness to be discussed below relates to the methodological decision to employ only qualitative and non-comparative methods.

Access

The second important weakness concerns the inability to interview all the peers who had played an important part in the recent reform of the House of Lords. Some such figures were not able to be interviewed because they had passed away before this research was conducted.

Peers who had played a part in the negotiations over the 1999 House of Act, such as Lord

Weatherill, are a good example. Other peers are still alive, and some still play an important role within the House of Lords, but for different reasons did not wish to be interviewed as part of this project. Their decision not to participate is completely respected, although their accounts of certain reform processes would have been of immense value, therefore their absence is a weakness of this research.

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Overemphasis on peers

This research intentionally focused on the views of peers, and this is a strength of this project in addressing an important limitation in the existing literature. Although a strength in that by focusing on peers this valuable perspective was introduced into the literature on reform of the

House of Lords, the focus on peers must also be acknowledged as a weakness. It is a weakness particularly in respect to the theoretical application which formed the core of this research project. By focusing solely on peers there are limitations to the breadth of the theoretical application, and the consequent theoretical insights gained, within the case of reform of the House of Lords. For example, Hirschman’s reactionary theses of perversity, futility and jeopardy, which were so insightful in understanding the views of peers, may not have been as applicable to the discourse engaged in by members of the House of Commons.

Although such a claim could be made about any case-study approach, this focus solely on members of the House of Lords is certainly a weakness in the theoretical contribution of this thesis.

Uni-dimensional method

Similar to the issue regarding the sole focus on peers, the final weakness to be discussed in this section concerns the methodological approach of this research project. As outlined in more detail in Chapter Four the methodological approach of this thesis was designed to be consistent with the methodological approach of the previous studies which have employed the theories applied in this research project. This research therefore used a qualitative approach to method-selection. Although the interviews with peers have provided much important data in understanding the views of peers, and consequently furthering understanding of reform of the House of Lords, there are important weaknesses in a qualitative study. These limitations will not be discussed in great detail here as they are

197 consistent with the weaknesses in most qualitative and non-comparative research projects.

These limitations are primarily related to reliability of the information provided by the interviewees, and reproducibility in that the findings may have been different if different peers had been interviewed.

Although this research project has important strengths in that it provides important insights into further understanding both reform of the House of Lords, and the particular theories applied to the case study, it is also has important weaknesses which must be acknowledged.

As discussed above the core strengths of this research were: the focus on the views of peers, an under-researched group within the reform debate; the application of a multi-dimensional theoretical approach bringing three theories together, which have not been brought together elsewhere; the design of an innovative approach to studying reform of the House of Lords; and, as a result this research was able to make both an empirical and a theoretical contribution. The important weaknesses of this research discussed above were: the limited sample due to the size of the membership of the House of Lords; the inability to gain access to all the key players in the House of Lords on this issue; by solely focusing on peers might have missed valuable insights from interviewing MPs and civil servants; and, the inherent limitations of a qualitative and non-comparative methodological approach.

What’s next for Lords reform?

Small-scale reform

There has been small-scale reform to the House of Lords since the period that this thesis was concerned with. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 received Assent in May 2014. This small bill allows peers to retire, and allows for peers to be expelled from the House of Lords for serious criminal misconduct. This legislation is part of a campaign led by peers to reduce

198 the numbers in the House of Lords to address the significant issue of the overall size of the

House. In addition the ability to expel peers brings the House of Lords largely in line with the same means available in the House of Commons.

Wholesale reform

In November 2014, Ed Miliband announced his preference for the establishment of a senate to replace the (still) unelected House of Lords. Miliband’s proposal was for a senate based on the regions, to address the disproportionate overrepresentation of London-based peers in the

House of Lords (BBC, 2014). There has been little detail to accompany this significant announcement, and as they say “the devil is in the detail”. This is no truer than in the case of second chamber reform in Britain, where proposals have historically faltered on the details rather than the principles. There has been no announcement from either the Conservative

Party or the Liberal Democrats as yet.

One alternative – a British Senate

It seems timely to offer a suggestion for one way of approaching such an exciting moment of institutional design. Let us begin with the premise that territorial representation is the main concern of the new second chamber. This focus has two clear strands: first, increasing the representation of those from outside the South-East, and second, addressing the ‘EVEL question’ of English votes for English laws – an issue made ever more prescient with the increased powers expected to be granted to the Scottish parliament over Scottish laws. Before we consider how a new second chamber would assist in addressing these concerns, a brief outline of one potential alternative for a British Senate will be provided.

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Composition

It would need to be a relatively small chamber to overcome one of the chief criticisms of the

House of Lords – namely that it is too big. However, it would need to be big enough to allow for the particular electoral system, to be proposed below, to work effectively. A senate with a total membership of 200 would be ideal. It is also proposed that senators would have the equivalent of two House of Commons terms, with half of the second chamber facing re- election at each general election.

The new senators would be elected by a variant of proportional representation (PR) which would help ensure that no one party was able to form a simple majority in the second chamber. One recognised merit of the House of Lords is it multi-party character which encourages compromise. A PR electoral system would enable this character to continue. In addition, the use of PR would ensure that there was not duplication between the two chambers, as does having only half of the senators elected at each general election.

Senators would be elected from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the regions of

England (this is consistent with Miliband’s skeletal proposal). Each of the electoral regions would be multi-member districts. There are three potential courses for allocating the number of representatives to each region. First, there could be an even number of members for each region, such as is the arrangement for the U.S. and Australian senates. These arrangements were, however, part of compromises in the forming of federations between small and large colonies, which is quite different from the case in the UK. Second, there could be a purely proportional allocation of seats to regions. The limitation of this approach would be the continued dominance of the large centres over the less-populated regions – something which already occurs in the House of Commons.

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The third option is to take a square root approach. An example here illustrates the approach: if there were regions which based purely on proportional representation would each have 1, 4 and 9 seats, by employing the square root approach they would instead have 1, 2, and 3 seats.

This approach still allows for more representatives for more populated regions, addressing the concern of the second option, whilst addressing the potential dominance by more populous regions which is the concern of the first option. This would therefore be the preferred approach in allocating the amount of senators for each region.

Terms of ten years would be the norm so long as five-year fixed-term parliaments continue in the UK, as current legislation intends. Ten years is a long time, and one argument against such an approach would be the lack of accountability of such terms. A mechanism for addressing this potential accountability flaw would be the introduction of the right to recall for the second chamber. The right to recall would need a fairly large threshold to trigger a by- election to ensure that this mechanism was not manipulated by political opponents, but would need rather to represent a genuine groundswell of opinion against a member acting negligently in their duties to those by whom they were elected.

Function and powers

It is clear that the senate outlined above would address the first concern of increasing the representation of the regions. However, this does still not address the second concern regarding English votes for English laws. One proposal would be to address this concern in the senate rather than through reform of the House of Commons. This could be done by establishing a fourth reading of legislation designated by the relevant minister as an English- only law (this would naturally be open to challenge in the Supreme Court). When voting on the fourth reading only senators from the English regions would be permitted to cast a vote.

In this way the West Lothian question can be finally resolved at Westminster.

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This would be an important new function for the second chamber – providing a mechanism for English votes for English laws. In addition to this new function, a second chamber composed of representatives from the regions of the United Kingdom would also be expected to increase its role in pursuing the interests of the regions from which each member is elected. This being said, there would need to be no substantial changes to the powers of the current House of Lords. Although one of the main criticisms of the Coalition’s proposal was its position that there would need to be no changes to the powers of the House of Lords – this is considered here to be a fair assertion.

In time the second chamber may grow in its willingness to push legislation to the Parliament

Act, providing more of an obstruction to the House of Commons. However, this is not seen as a fundamental problem for the British constitution. If the second chamber is wholly elected then there is no particular reason why it should not be free to assert itself within the significant constraints of the Parliament Act. If the House of Commons found the second chamber to be too obstructive it could always curtail its powers in due course through the provisions built into the Parliament Act. In relation to powers, it seems best to adopt a wait- and-see approach to how the reformed second chamber would behave vis-a-vis the House of

Commons.

Exemplars

The idea of regional representation in the second chamber is familiar across the world. A prominent example of this approach is the Australian Senate. In fact, reforming the House of

Lords into a wholly elected second chamber would bring the United Kingdom in line with most second chambers throughout advanced western liberal democracies. However, the second chamber proposed above would be innovative in two important ways. First, the square root approach to apportioning members is not currently in place elsewhere. And second, the

202 subordinate role of the second chamber vis-a-vis the House of Commons is also uncommon amongst comparator democracies such as Australia and the United States. This question of the relationship between the two chambers is, if experience from these two countries is considered, likely to become very important over time. However, as stated above this relationship will evolve and legislation beyond the current provisions of the Parliament Act is not recommended.

The politics of reform

Table 9.1 demonstrates that there is broad consensus around an elected second chamber across the major parties.

Campaign Policy

Conservative Party Move towards an elected second chamber, although this is not a priority

Labour Party An elected senate based on the regions of the United Kingdom

United Kingdom Independence Party No policy

Green Party An elected second chamber with a PR electoral system

Scottish National Party Opposed to an appointed second chamber – unclear whether reform or abolition is preferred

Liberal Democrats An elected second chamber

Plaid Cymru An elected second chamber with STV and a weighted Welsh constituency

Table 9.1 Party positions on Lords reform 2015

However, this was the same position of the parties at the 2010 General Election, and no reform resulted from that Parliament. Past experience makes clear that the more intricate the reform proposal the more likely it is to fail (Raina, 2013). Therefore the problem for the next

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Parliament will not be that there is not broad consensus to introduce elections to the House of

Lords, but how exactly such a change would look in practice.

Future Avenues of Research

Now that this chapter has presented all the key findings and conclusions of this research project, including contributions and strengths and weaknesses, it is appropriate to reflect on the future avenues of research. This section, in so doing, will be divided into two parts. The first part will discuss the theoretical avenues of future research, in particular, the application of the multi-dimensional theoretical approach applied here. The second, and more substantive, part will focus on the empirical avenues of future research. The first of these is a more comprehensive application of the literature on the role of ideas and a more focused study of the role of ideas within reform of the House of Lords. The second avenue for future research would be to apply other theories from political science to the case study of reform of the House of Lords for any potential insights. The third and final avenue for future research to be discussed in this section is the potential for a similar study to be conducted with members of the House of Commons on their views on reform of the House of Lords. The final point to be discussed in this section will be the importance of research into actually reforming the House of Lords. Building on research such as that conducted in this project, there is important work to be done on how to effect change in the House of Lords into the future.

Theoretical directions

In exploring the views of peers, this research designed a multi-dimensional theoretical approach bringing together three distinct theories from political science. These three theories

204 were then applied to the views of peers which emerged from the material gathered through semi-structured elite interviews. The results of this application were very important insights into further understanding reform of the House of Lords. For this reason it is posited here that there is potential future research in applying the multi-dimensional theoretical approach designed in this project to other areas of political reform, both in Britain and elsewhere.

Further applications would both improve the theoretical approach making reflections on its usefulness, and may potentially provide valuable findings in other empirical areas.

Empirical directions

One of the key findings of this research project was that the role of ideas was more important in understanding the views of peers on reform of the House of Lords than was previously discussed in the existing literature. Although the role of ideas was highlighted in this research, it was not fully explored in a comprehensive way. Therefore this first of the future avenues of research into reform of the House of Lords is a more comprehensive analysis of the role of ideas in this issue. In so doing, much more of the burgeoning literature on ideas could be employed to further understand the importance of the ideational in understanding

Lords reform.

Not only did each of the three theories applied provide valuable insights into reform of the

House of Lords, a multi-dimensional approach clearly highlighted the potential value of bringing different theoretical approaches together. Much of the literature on reform of the

House of Lords offers either an atheoretical or single-theory approach to understanding reform. This research project therefore broke with existing research on the House of Lords by applying a multi-dimensional theoretical approach, and the important findings, both theoretical and empirical, of the approach adopted in this research clearly demonstrates the need for more theoretical research not only on reform of the House of Lords, but in other

205 areas of political science which have hitherto previously been explored from a largely atheoretical perspective. Therefore, another avenue for future research would be to apply other theories from political science to the case of reform of the House of Lords.

Another avenue for future research is a similar study to that conducted here with peers, but with members of the House of Commons. This project has focused on the views of peers with the aim of further understanding reform of the House of Lords. However, all acknowledge that if there is to be reform in the future, it must have the support of the House of Commons.

Therefore, the next stage of research into reform of the House of Lords should focus on the views of members of the House of Commons to explore the similarities and differences between the views of peers and MPs. In addition to interviewing current MPs, such a study should also interview former MPs to explore any shifts in opinion over time. Any shifts in thought would be very important, as MPs have a higher turnover than peers it would be interesting to uncover whether the views of MPs have consistency or not.

The final avenue for future work on reform of the House of Lords is focused more on those actively engaged in politics, rather than academic research. As the most recent attempt at large-scale reform by the Coalition government failed there is still much work to be done on constructing a reform proposal which would address the concerns of those who would be involved in any future reform. Building on the findings of this research project, and future research, such a proposal might be designed which may be passable. This is an important task because as the further we move in the 21st century the less defensible an unelected second chamber will become, and the pressure for an elected second chamber is likely to build overtime.

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Conclusion

This thesis has evaluated the role of ideas in the reform of the House of Lords in the United

Kingdom. A multi-dimensional institutional approach was devised which sought to integrate

Parsons’ (2003; 2002) concept of the cross-cutting idea, Hirschman’s (1991) reactionary theses, and Streeck and Thelen’s (2005) typology of gradual transformative change. This theoretical approach was used as a set of lenses for interrogating primary data gathered through semi-structured interviews conducted with a representative sample of 77 members of the House of Lords in late 2012 and early 2013. The qualitative data derived from these interviews has been supplemented, where necessary, with documentary analysis of secondary sources.

Two core empirical findings emerge from the research. First, changes in the House of Lords in the period since 1997 have often been caused by factors other than direct legislation.

Indeed, the types of peers which have been appointed since the election of the Blair government in 1997 have shifted the culture and focus of the House of Lords in significant ways. Second, the positions adopted by peers on reform are not as materially driven as is often claimed. Indeed, this thesis demonstrates that ideas about British democracy and government, and the role of the House of Lords within Britain’s unwritten constitution, are of central importance to the positions taken by peers.

In consequence, through a theoretically-driven approach, this thesis has demonstrated that continuity and change in the House of Lords is more complex than is evident in the existing literature. Both incremental cultural changes and the role of ideas are shown to be fundamental to understanding reform. By implication, the thesis provides clear signposts to how the House of Lords could, and should, be reformed in the future.

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Appendix 1 – Consent Form

De-mystifying institutional change: The House of Lords in transition

Name of participant:

Name of investigator: Richard William Reid BPhil (First Class Honours), BA

1. I consent to participate in this project, the details of which have been explained to me, and I have been provided with a written plain language statement to keep.

2. I understand that after I sign and return this consent form it will be retained by the researcher.

3. I understand that my participation will involve an interview and I agree that the researcher may use the results as described in the plain language statement.

4. I acknowledge that:

(a) the possible effects of participating in the interview have been explained to my satisfaction;

(b) I have been informed that I am free to withdraw from the project at any time without explanation or prejudice and to withdraw any unprocessed data I have provided;

(d) I have been informed that the confidentiality of the information I provide will be safeguarded subject to any legal requirements;

(e) I have been informed that with my consent the interview will be recorded and I understand that recordings will be stored by the researcher and will be destroyed after transcription;

(g) I understand that any quotations will be anonymous unless I provide expressed consent.

I consent to this interview being recorded □ yes □ no (please tick)

I wish my comments, and my participation in this project to remain anonymous □ yes □ no (please tick)

Participant signature: Date:

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Appendix 2 – Plain Language Statement

De-mystifying institutional change: The House of Lords in transition

Plain Language Statement

You are invited to participate in the project De-mystifying institutional change: The House of Lords in transition. This project is being completed as the doctoral project (Doctor of Philosophy in Government) of Richard William Reid at the University of Canberra. This project is being conducted under the supervision of a panel consisting of: Professor Mark Evans, Director of the ANZSOG Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra; Professor David Marsh, Professor of Political Sociology at the Australian National University; Dr Philip Larkin, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra.

This project will include interviews of members of the House of Lords, and your name has been suggested as a possible interviewee. The interview will be conducted at your convenience. A series of questions will be asked concerning reform of the House of Lords, and more broadly the British political system. The interview will be recorded, with your consent (see consent form), for the purpose of transcription. The tapes of your interview will be kept locked by interviewer and then destroyed once an anonymous transcription has been completed. Access to the transcription will only be available to the interviewer and the supervisory panel, and will be otherwise kept confidential (subject to legal requirements). The purpose of the supervisory panel’s access will be to provide guidance to the researcher in the analysis of the interview.

It is hoped that the interview will be conducted on the record. However, a pseudonym will be used in the publications resulting from the interview unless your direct written consent for each directly attributable quotation has been received. Your right to refuse to be attributed is recognised by the interviewer.

Your participation in this project remains entirely voluntary throughout this research. At any time you may withdraw your consent, participation and previously supplied data, until the data is processed. Once the data has been processed you may refuse to be attributed, however the interviewer reserves the right to use data from your interview using a pseudonym.

As mentioned above, the anticipated use of the interview data is primarily for the publication of a doctoral thesis. However, the research may also be used for other publications (for example related journal articles and books) subject to the same anonymity restrictions as this project. This research is being funded as part of the doctoral research of the candidate, and is not being directly funded by any external bodies.

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Appendix 3 – Contact Email

Dear x,

By way of an introduction, my name is Richard Reid and I am a doctoral candidate in the Australia New Zealand School of Government's Institute for Governance in Canberra undertaking research on the House of Lords reform process. I am completing this research under the supervision of Professor Mark Evans (formerly Professor of Politics at the University of York) who has made it clear to me that my understanding of the reform process would not be informed without an interview with you! We would therefore be most grateful if you were able to meet up with me for a discussion on this topic at a time and venue convenient to you.

The interview would be conducted under the Chatham House Rule and would take no longer than one hour. No direct quotations will be attributed to you without your expressed permission. I intend to conduct the interviews later this year and early next year. At this stage I am asking you for an expression of willingness to be interviewed and the actual specifics of when and where the interview would be conducted would be discussed later in the year.

If you are willing to be interviewed as part of this project I will provide you with a Plain Language Statement (PLS), which outlines how the interview process will be conducted, and a consent form, which is a requirement for ethical clearance of the research in Australia (this project is currently in the application process for ethical clearance). If you would like more information regarding the project please contact me via email at [email protected] or via mail at the address below.

I very much look forward to meeting with you to provide me with insights into processes of institution building which are potentially of historic importance both to the reform of the constitution and to the relationship between government and the people in the United Kingdom.

Kind Regards,

Richard Reid BPhil (First Class Honours), BA ANZSOG Institute for Governance University of Canberra Bruce, A.C.T. 2617

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