YOU know we’re a democracy, which means having all our representatives being accountable? Well, how come 29 Government ministers are members of the House of Lords? That’s the unelected, unaccountable House of Lords. Isn’t that an astonishing number – 29?
If they had one or two government jobs we could still keep up a semblance of democracy. I can’t imagine any elected person, for example, who’d take the job of a Baroness-in-Waiting to Her Majesty’s Household.
Anyone apart from an aristocrat would turn it down flat. Let’s suppose one of your mates asked you what you were doing for a living these days. It would be embarrassing to have to admit you hang around the Queen. Unless, of course, you are Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton, in which case you probably think it’s a plum job.
Job? It isn’t a job. You can’t even use the argument that: “Somebody’s got to do it.” No they don’t. How distraught would you be if no one did it? How would it affect your life?
I would leave some posts for the unelected, like Lord Bassam of Brighton’s nice little earner as the rather saucy sounding Chief Whip, HM Household. But I’ve no idea why the unaccountable Lord Hunt of Kings Heath should be a minister of state in two separate departments dealing with energy and food. Or why the unelected Lord Taylor of Bolton merits being a parliamentary under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence or why Lord West of Spithead should occupy a similar position at the Home Office. Besides which, he sounds more like a geographical location than an unaccountable Government minister.
These are important political posts in Government departments that affect our lives. In a democracy, shouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that these positions are filled by people we elect?
The phrase that really cheeses me off is that we’re looking for a “team of all the talents”. Apart from the obvious gibes, well, no, we’re not. In a democracy, we’re looking for a government of people we’ve elected – and can un-elect.
Further, what’s so inadequate about elected MPs that, when there’s a job going, they are ignored in favour of the likes of Lord Davies of Abersoch, Lord Tunnicliffe or Lord Malloch-Brown? Did we search through every last one of our 352 elected Labour representatives and turn them all down as wastrels and incompetents? Was each one so dire a candidate that it was necessary to import an unaccountable minister?
I tell you, if I were a Labour MP, I’d be unhappy. How would you feel if you’d gone through the bother of getting known in the local community, sat through endless meetings of staggering tedium, smiled at the most hideous lunatics, stayed awake during discussions about drains, feigned an interest in insane traffic schemes, adapted your social life so that it peaked with a glass of tepid Aussie screw-top in a community centre, secured the nomination, turned out the vote and then been passed over for a ministerial post by your own party leader in favour of an aristocratic policy wonk?
Can it possibly be true that no elected person is capable of being the senior politician overseeing our railway system? Is there not a single Labour MP able to hold down this job? If there is, why is the unaccountable, unelected Lord Adonis the minister for rail?
Although, perversely, it is a good thing for the Government that he didn’t win elections, as he has only stood against Labour candidates as a Liberal.
I have absolutely nothing against Andrew Adonis.
He is a clever, serious and pleasant chap. But a peer shouldn’t be the rail minister in a democracy. And
even the “team of all the talents” nonsense doesn’t wash. Lord Adonis’ qualifications for rail minister don’t exist. He’s never worked for or had experience or contact with the rail industry. Yet he is judged superior to every elected MP.
And is it a fact that none of the
351 Labour MPs would be capable of dealing with the portfolio of the unelected, unaccountable Lord Young of Norwood Green? That not one of them has the ability or contacts to develop trade union learning programmes, or be a political spokesperson for skills, learning and education?
Aren’t these exactly the things that every Labour MP talks about all the time, whether you like it or not?
Regardless of Tony Young’s talents, I don’t think an unelected peer should be doing that job. It’s wrong. And it’s actually quite sinister.
It’s supposed to be the basis of a representative democracy that we are governed by people we have elected – and, even more importantly, people we can kick out. That’s pretty basic stuff to ignore.
There are still 92 remnants ghosting the corridors of the Upper House who are peers because they inherited the title.
There are people in our second chamber, numbered among our lawmakers, who are there simply because pater passed on a peerage. How accountable to the electorate does that make them?
And the argument that you need ministers to put the government’s case to the House of Lords doesn’t wash, either. You don’t need to hold a decision-making role in a Government to defend its decisions. If you’re not convinced by a particular measure, you can always find someone who is. It’s not as if there is a shortage of cranks in the Upper Chamber.
Members of the House of Commons who are ministers are accountable to the electorate: that is democratic. Members of the House of Lords in a similar position are accountable only to the party leader who appointed them. And that is autocratic.
I’ve saved my mega argument for last. If we stop peers taking ministerial jobs, we get shot of Lord Mandelson.
Game, set and match, I think.
