UK Senate to replace House of Lords?

[James G]

The early years of the Blair Government and during the Cameroon-Clegg coalition saw efforts made to reform the House of Lords.
Blair's initial aims were changed to limit them as they went on and the Coalition plan didn't get off the ground.

Using either, the 1999 or 2012 as a starting point, how could the House of Lords have been transformed - slowly or with haste - into a Senate like structure as we see in the US?
Due to the five year terms of MPs, I was thinking that Senators could have a ten year term or even longer, maybe a dozen years. The idea would be to keep the Commons where the power is but to see the Senate as something beyond what it is now and also show democracy in it with elections.

Does this seem entirely unreasonable? Have there been any other proposals along similar lines to create a semi-Senate / full Senate in Britain?

[lordroel]

Jul 27, 2018 13:58:27 GMT James G said:

The early years of the Blair Government and during the Cameroon-Clegg coalition saw efforts made to reform the House of Lords.
Blair's initial aims were changed to limit them as they went on and the Coalition plan didn't get off the ground.

Using either, the 1999 or 2012 as a starting point, how could the House of Lords have been transformed - slowly or with haste - into a Senate like structure as we see in the US?
Due to the five year terms of MPs, I was thinking that Senators could have a ten year term or even longer, maybe a dozen years. The idea would be to keep the Commons where the power is but to see the Senate as something beyond what it is now and also show democracy in it with elections.

Does this seem entirely unreasonable? Have there been any other proposals along similar lines to create a semi-Senate / full Senate in Britain?

Would that mean we have MPs and Senators in the United Kingdom and how many seat would the British senate have.

[stevep]

   I know there has been a lot of talk about having an elected - in part or whole - upper house but think the main opposition has come from the commons as such an elected house would be seen as a rival to the commons and might over time gain greater power to block/delay bills passed by the commons. Also they often gain levels of public support for opposing an elected upper house because it would mean another set of elections and also another level of 'costly' bureaucracy, although how much more that would be that what the current Lords cost us now I don't know.

   Whatever it was called such an elected upper house shouldn't be too difficult to arrange.  One thing I've seen mentioned fairly frequently is the suggestion this should be done by some method of PR so that the house has a different composition to the commons.  However that might be a barrier to independents standing, depending on how its arranged.

  I think a decade would be too long between elections.  You really need something shorter than that so people have a chance to challenge elected members who go too far off the rails, albeit that don't do that much with those in the commons.  Possibly say a 6 year cycle, which means it doesn't - except possibly rarely - coincide with elections for the commons.  Or possibly like in the US and in some local elections, where elections are staggered, say with 1/3 elected every 2 years.  [Which then might run into complaints from the public about too many elections.]

  Anyway initial thoughts.

[lordroel]

Jul 27, 2018 14:15:55 GMT stevep said:

   I know there has been a lot of talk about having an elected - in part or whole - upper house but think the main opposition has come from the commons as such an elected house would be seen as a rival to the commons and might over time gain greater power to block/delay bills passed by the commons. Also they often gain levels of public support for opposing an elected upper house because it would mean another set of elections and also another level of 'costly' bureaucracy, although how much more that would be that what the current Lords cost us now I don't know.

   Whatever it was called such an elected upper house shouldn't be too difficult to arrange.  One thing I've seen mentioned fairly frequently is the suggestion this should be done by some method of PR so that the house has a different composition to the commons.  However that might be a barrier to independents standing, depending on how its arranged.

  I think a decade would be too long between elections.  You really need something shorter than that so people have a chance to challenge elected members who go too far off the rails, albeit that don't do that much with those in the commons.  Possibly say a 6 year cycle, which means it doesn't - except possibly rarely - coincide with elections for the commons.  Or possibly like in the US and in some local elections, where elections are staggered, say with 1/3 elected every 2 years.  [Which then might run into complaints from the public about too many elections.]

  Anyway initial thoughts.

Could it not be like the Senate of Canada, they also House of Commons like the British.

[stevep]

Jul 28, 2018 7:26:00 GMT lordroel said:

Jul 27, 2018 14:15:55 GMT stevep said:

   I know there has been a lot of talk about having an elected - in part or whole - upper house but think the main opposition has come from the commons as such an elected house would be seen as a rival to the commons and might over time gain greater power to block/delay bills passed by the commons. Also they often gain levels of public support for opposing an elected upper house because it would mean another set of elections and also another level of 'costly' bureaucracy, although how much more that would be that what the current Lords cost us now I don't know.

   Whatever it was called such an elected upper house shouldn't be too difficult to arrange.  One thing I've seen mentioned fairly frequently is the suggestion this should be done by some method of PR so that the house has a different composition to the commons.  However that might be a barrier to independents standing, depending on how its arranged.

  I think a decade would be too long between elections.  You really need something shorter than that so people have a chance to challenge elected members who go too far off the rails, albeit that don't do that much with those in the commons.  Possibly say a 6 year cycle, which means it doesn't - except possibly rarely - coincide with elections for the commons.  Or possibly like in the US and in some local elections, where elections are staggered, say with 1/3 elected every 2 years.  [Which then might run into complaints from the public about too many elections.]

  Anyway initial thoughts.

Could it not be like the Senate of Canada, they also House of Commons like the British.

  I don't see a lot of difference between that and the current House of Lords, other than the forced retirement at 75 and the regional limits on where people come from.  Other than its a lot smaller and hence there is the danger of a single PM stacking the house in his parties favour if a lot of people die during his term.  Here the PM 'advises' on appointments but you get a broader range of people and also significant people from non-political roles, which I'm not sure if that's the case in Canada.

  Think if there was a reform then the pressure would be for an elected element as otherwise it wouldn't be seen as a significant change.  Possibly we could have a

[kyng]

Personally, I quite like the idea of 10-year term. It introduces stability into this 'UK Senate' by making it less susceptible to short-term fads, such as the UKIP surge of 2015. (Of course, it also means that any UKIP members who do get elected in 2015 would still be there until 2025)

We could just use the administrative counties as our 'constituencies', since these are generally well-understood and unlikely to be gerrymandered (it's possible, but any attempt would likely encounter strong resistance). Each county would have at least one senator, but could have more depending on the population. (If we had, say, 200 senators, then I'd expect each senator to represent roughly 300,000 people - so, Gloucestershire, which has a population of around 900,000, would get three senators). The smallest counties (say, under 200,000 people) would be grouped together with a neighbouring county so that they don't get heavily overrepresented.

These elections could be staggered so that 50 senators are up for re-election every 2.5 years. Perhaps do them in March and September every year: we can't expect high turnout in freezing cold weather!