Almost everyone agrees the government’s Rwanda bill is a bad idea. Its effects on deterring immigration will be trivial. It fails to show that Rwanda will be a humane recipient of migrants. It delivers appalling value for huge sums of public money, and is a mere sop to rightwing voters. All these are reasons why the House of Commons should not have voted in its favour. But it did so, repeatedly, at the request of the elected government of the day. That request was made in order to meet the pledge Rishi Sunak made to “stop the boats”, despite polling showing that support for the Rwanda bill was low.
It follows a reverse last year of that policy in the supreme court, where the bill was found to be unlawful, necessitating the present bill to overrule its predecessor. The government desperately wants its bill to allow some deportation to take place this summer, which is why it has resisted a flurry of amendments passed by the House of Lords.
Peers have gone far beyond their customary constitutional right to protest about a policy they do not like. They have three times slowed the passage of the Rwanda bill by amendment. They protest that their amendments are not intended to wreck the bill, but some peers clearly want to impede its passage until a new government arrives to withdraw it. One amendment to safeguard Afghan interpreters from deportation might be thought acceptable, except that ministers regard it as an exploitable loophole.
At this point other issues come into play. The right of a so-called second chamber to obstruct the work of the Commons must be rooted in some degree of democratic legitimacy. The basis of its composition should be one of election or selection on known criteria. It was not until 1999 that the Tony Blair government removed the right of membership by birth from 666 hereditary peers. Yet it bizarrely left 92 of them still with that right, along with 26 Anglican bishops. The House of Lords is one of the world’s only legislatures, democratic or otherwise, where membership can be by virtue of parentage or religious faith.
The Lords contains many excellent individuals whose wisdom is much valued by the public sector. But its total of 800 members include many who have been accused of buying seats from political parties with cash or other favours, an accusation that the House of Lords persistently denies. A further quarter of peers are ex-MPs for whom the Lords is an old people’s club and source of modest pension. A mere 182 peers are independents who do not accept the discipline of a “whip” from one or other of the Commons parties. It is no wonder the chamber has resisted all suggestions of reform over the course of the 21st century. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas.
Other things being equal, most parliaments are better with second chambers than without them. Democracy needs checks and balances. On that basis even the House of Lords is better than nothing. But its undemocratic composition deprives it of the legitimacy to impede rather than merely advise the government of the day. A prospective Labour government offers the hope of a mandate for reform. Keir Starmer has even promised to abolish and replace the House of Lords, but then so have most of his predecessors, with no specific plan.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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