Lords reform has become more urgent

 Boris Johnson's delayed prime ministerial resignation honours list briefly made headline news on Friday. It was soon swept off TV news reports by the double resignations as MPs of Nadine Dorries and Johnson himself. This has inhibited discussion of the implications of the honours list which blatantly comprises only those who have done favours for Johnson. The devaluation of orders of chivalry is bad enough,  but not as dangerous as the awarding of peerages to those who are unlikely to make a positive contribution to the upper house of the UK parliament.

In 2012, an unholy alliance of the Labour opposition and Conservative back-benchers, by blocking a timetable motion, ensured that the Lords Reform Bill initiated by the Liberal Democrats would not make progress in the Commons. It was therefore shelved.

Labour has since recognised that Lords reform is popular. A commission chaired by former PM Gordon Brown has drawn up a complex scheme for an elected upper House based upon the regions and nations of the UK. 

The Brown scheme addresses one flaw which the 2012 Bill did not, the London and home counties bias of the current chamber. It does place too much emphasis on party when one of the few benefits of the current Lords is the large number of cross-benchers. Peers who are not burdened by party allegiance can and do make valuable contributions because of their very independence. On balance, though, Brown represents progress.

The question is: could a Labour government be trusted to carry reform through? In 1998, a commission chaired by a former Labour grandee came forward with a proposal for Commons electoral reform. Then, as now, Labour was led by a man from the conservative wing of the party. Tony Blair, buoyed by an unexpectedly large majority from the 1997 election decided that reform was not in Labour's interests and did not proceed with the Jenkins proposals. 

Current public opinion ratings notwithstanding, it is unlikely that Labour will have an overwhelming majority at the next election.  They will  thus have to take third party opinion into account and we may at last have the Lords reform we need.