Paul Bickley examines how Harriet Harman’s proposal to remove bishops from the House of Lords may not be as democratic as it seems. 30/01/2025
Let those not in a glass House throw the first stone
Some years ago, when the then Labour government were attempting to reform the House of Lords, Jack Straw – Leader of the House of Commons – gave a speech to announce the plans. They would recommend a hybrid House of Lords (50% appointed, 50% elected), but would present the House of Commons with a range of other options. In passing, he said that the Bishops of the Church of England would continue to have a place. “Why?” shouted someone from the back benches. Indeed.
Some 20 years later and Harriet Harman, now Peer of the Realm after four decades of distinguished service as a Member of Parliament, has put forward an amendment to the government’s House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill. This amendment obliges the government to bring forward proposals to remove the Bishops within two years. Now is probably an opportune moment, with the moral authority of the Church of England’s episcopal leadership being dragged backwards through the proverbial ditch.
Presently, the House of Lords is made up mainly of appointed life peers and hereditary peers. There is no doubt that this mix offends democratic sensibilities and principles in every way.
Most life peerages are given to political appointees. Governments use their power of appointment to bestow a life–long status as legislator on individuals within their political movement. One by–product is a tit for tat ‘packing’ of the House of Lords with Peers friendly to whichever current government so that said government can progress its legislative agenda (think of it as our version of Supreme Court packing in the US). Another is the unremitting growth of the House, which now has more than 800 members.
Hereditary peers are there because, well, they have inherited a peerage. Most agree that this is not sufficient qualification for elevated office (though I note that Gen Z are increasingly disenchanted with democracy). The present Bill will, in a peculiar way, make the House of Lords less democratic, or at least less aristo–democratic: every time a hereditary peer dies or retires, the other hereditaries elect someone else with a hereditary title to fill the position.
Uniquely in the western world, 26 bishops of the state church also sit in the second chamber. These include the top five bishops ex officio (Canterbury, York, London, Durham, and Winchester). The other diocesan bishops are in a queue, and the 21 at the front go to the Lords. To make the Bishop’s bench gender–representative, there is currently an arrangement which gives eligible women bishops a priority for vacant seats (at the time of writing, it’s 17/7 to the men).
Lords Spiritual can do anything that other peers can do: attend, speak, propose amendments to legislation, vote, sit on committees, and so on. They also open each sitting day in the Lords with prayers. In practice, the Lords Spiritual don’t do as much of any of these things as the Lords Temporal (apart from the praying maybe). This is not because they are lazy or indifferent (though it is widely recognised that some are more ‘up for it’ than others), but because they have heavy episcopal workloads. To cover their responsibilities in the House, the Bishops have a charmingly ecclesial solution: a rota, not for flower arranging or serving weak tea, but shaping the future of the nation. They receive extensive research and speechwriting support from the Church of England.
For some, this is an unwelcome example of the way in which the national church – one Christian denomination among many – continues to flex moral and spiritual muscles in an otherwise neutral (yeah, whatever) public square. For others, their presence, while not a guarantee that faith perspectives shape legislation (the Bishops’ bench almost never swings a vote), is a welcome indication that moral and spiritual perspectives have not yet been wholly excluded from public life. The Church of England argues that it is a legitimate part of their vocation as a national church, and that the bishops have a particularly rooted perspective, precisely because of their wider responsibilities in dioceses across England (just England, that is).
Humanists UK, who are supporting the amendment, have released polling which indicates that only one in five people wanted to retain the bishops in the House of Lords, compared to just over 50 per cent who want to see them go. Humanists UK have not noticed, or do not care to say in their press release, that those figures closely reflect the proportions who would oppose an entirely appointed second chamber – which is exactly what you would have if the amendment went through, and the Bill passed. They also failed to mention that 59 per cent of respondents said they knew not very much or nothing at all about ‘how the House of Lords operates and its role in British politics’. These figures are symbolic of a longstanding barrier to House of Lords reform. While everyone can find something about the status quo that they really do not like, building support for specific reforms is much more difficult. Nobody wants a House of Commons 2.0, which is likely what we would end up with if the House of Lords was abolished.
It is easy to pick on the hereditary peers, and easy to pick on the bishops. The arguments against them run quickly out of the door, and nobody thinks to detain and interrogate them. They are a ‘mediaeval hangover’. This is the 21st century, after all. They have no democratic legitimacy. We live in a religiously diverse country. They’re a relic from when land–holding interests needed to be represented in Parliament. I agree with all these and could add some of my own. But the problem is that the most serious argument for getting rid of hereditary peers and Bishops – the lack of democratic legitimacy – is also an argument for the immediate abolition of the House of Lords. I was particularly irked when, in 2010, an individual who failed to be elected as an MP was promptly ennobled and later made a minister in the Coalition Government. I bear no animus whatsoever against this individual – I think that the consensus was that they were a good minister – but that is not just a lack of democratic legitimacy. It’s a middle finger in the face of democratic legitimacy, from the Liberal Democrats no less.
Life Peers are, by definition, part of the elites with which the country at large is deeply frustrated. Yet, at this time, there is no serious proposal for thoroughgoing reform of the second chamber, no plans that we know of on the part of the Labour government, and certainly no national debate about (or interest in) what we would want from a reformed House.
So shouldn’t Harriet Harman be tabling amendments to abolish herself? Right now, I would honestly say no, because Harriet Harman’s 40 years of experience as an MP and government minister confers a legitimacy other than democratic election. She will be, no doubt, an extremely effective Peer for years to come. In other words, there are forms of legitimacy other than being elected. Nor does election, in itself, guarantee legitimacy.
It is broadly agreed that the second chamber, for all its contradictions, does a good job and in fact is better than the House of Commons at the task of legislative scrutiny. It often revises and resists poorly conceived measures, but ultimately accepts that the democratic mandate of the House of Commons should prevail. Its legitimacy derives from function – the need for a mechanism which effectively says, “are you sure you want to do that?” And it gives a little more space to conscience, to asking ‘is this right?’ when politics is so often driven by the question, ‘is this popular?’ The Lords Spiritual add to the chamber in this respect.
Harriet Harman is, on one level, quite right to seek their removal. On another level, she is quite wrong. If you could banish them tomorrow, the House of Lords would be more constitutionally tidy, less weird, and less daft. It would also be slightly less good at its job.
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