Reading Between the Lies

No, it's not a typo or the title of a song. Although anyone wishing to use that will now have to pay. Heavily. Price negotiable, details on request. 

Hello, everyone! It's been ages, how are you all? Isn't the weather funny? Are we all sick of the Olympics yet? Shame about Andy Murray yesterday, but there's time yet. Right, there, we're all caught up. The topics this week, bankers and peers. We should now be aware of the Libor scandal that broke last week and the current row over the House of Lords reform demanded by the Lib Dems in return for letting us have our way with the boundaries. Doubtless Little Nicky wants this because he didn't get his way on AV. What price, then, the boundary changes? And what happens if people don't vote the way he'd like tomorrow? We shall see. 

So, yes, that's the first thing. For those of you reading this from overseas or who wish a little clarification on the Upper House, I shall put that into a brief context. The House of Lords in the United Kingdom acts as a revising chamber to legislation brought before Parliament, with much of the leg-work being done by the House of Commons and the relevant committees. Their Lordships debate the bills and can hold up legislation for up to one year, when it then automatically goes through. They now, thanks to the 1911 Parliament Act, cannot block financial or provision legislation. They are also divided into categories; the main two being the Lords Temporal and Lords Spiritual. The Lords Temporal are those peers who are not bishops in the Church of England who are also privileged to have seats in the Lords (hence Lords Spiritual. There are 26 of them). 92 Lords Temporal are hereditary peers (those whose titles have been passed through the family) and the rest are life peers (those whose peerages expire on their death). All clear? Marvellous. 

The main feature about the Lords is that nobody is fully elected to it. The hereditary peers choose among themselves, the life peers usually are appointed because of some great service done (although most are retired politicians) and the bishops are there because they are among the more important ones. Another little interesting factoid is that there are more peers than there are MP's. Yes, you saw it here first, there are over 700 people entitled to sit in the House of Lords. There are only 650 MP's elected by the people. An anomaly in a democracy such as ours and I'm inclined to agree. In the US, the Senate is made up of two people from each state, so that's 100 people elected there every six years. The House of Representatives is over four times larger, with 425 people elected to it every two years. Most countries with a bicameral (two-chamber) legislature elect both chambers. There is a further anomaly in our constitution; that is if a person is desired to serve in a ministerial capacity without a seat in the Commons (it's part of the framework, each minister of the Crown must be answerable to Parliament), then they can have a life peerage and sit in the Lords. Unfortunately the Lords has been a little bit abused since 1911 in that because nobody needs to be elected to it, governments could pack it with their cronies and get laws through without a hitch. Hence why it has become so bloated and top-heavy. Unable to resist a little dig here; I noticed that Blair found this most useful, although many of the Labour peers created on his watch never bothered to attend the Lords very often, if at all. 

That, therefore, is where the contextual stuff ends. How, then, do we solve such a crisis? Easy, elect! Make them mostly or completely dependent on the will of the voters for their seats and then we'll have a more accountable Upper House. Great! Not. More bloody elections? God save us. I know that the Lib Dems want peers in an elected house to serve the length of three Commons terms, but that's too much. Why should they have the opportunity of virtually safe jobs when decent MP's could be kicked out through boundary changes every time? How is that democracy? In addition, we wouldn't be able to have an age qualification, something definitely needed in a revising chamber, where thought and due process are required. The EU would have a fit if we said that nobody in the UK below the age of 40 could stand as a national representative, it's age discrimination. It'd be a second Commons otherwise (not that the Commons isn't entertaining with the barracking, order-paper waving and boisterousness, but one is enough). Even setting something like that up would be a nightmare; how many should we shrink the Lords to? How do we decide on constituency sizes?Should it be fully or partially elected? 

As you've all come to expect, here's my opinion on what should happen. Yes, reform the Lords, but let's be sensible about it. First; enough with the cronyism. If you wish to show a dedicated party apparatchik how much you appreciate their efforts then either throw them on a quango or recommend them for a gong. That should not be what peerages are for. Second, on a similar theme, let's stop using the Lords as a political retirement home. A peerage in terms of retired politicians should be reserved for Cabinet-level ministers, Prime Ministers and Speakers (not Deputy Speakers either). For those in the Civil Service, nobody below the rank of Permanent Secretary. That way we can then open the Upper House up to individuals with more specialist experience; former senior service personnel, university vice chancellors, captains of industry (no bankers, please) etc.  Appoint people like that and we'd get a heady mix of professional people who would be able to provide more objectivity to legislation. Slash the numbers to 500 as well and arrange as appropriate using sets of ten (means dropping six bishops and two hereditaries but hey ho). That leaves 390, which is more than enough to find some of the best and brightest to serve. Bring them in alongside each new electoral intake every five years and it should all work out nicely. Create a separate monitoring committee made up of, say, five people from the previous House's membership, five MP's and an independent chair which would handle appointments and maintain discipline along with the general administration and I see no need why we should have to have an elected Lords. It would save people the bother of electing someone else, maintain the long-held tradition of dignity and debate for which it is known and ensure that we got the best out of our Parliament. 

That's the Lords, then. Speaking of people getting their just desserts, did anyone see the performance by Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England at today's Select Committee? It seems that it doesn't matter who one is in the City, some scandal somewhere will come and get you. Last week we had Bob Diamond, who gallantly fell on his sword for Barclay's (he deserved to go, though. There's only so much corruption one can deny. Pity he's not old, then he could employ the Murdoch defence). I can smell something definitely fishy on this one; I did wonder if Tucker did actually either lie or at least mislead the committee today. He might not have had word from Ed Balls directly on rate-fixing at Barclay's, but I'm willing to bet that someone from the Treasury was sent over without Mervyn King knowing to lay down the law. No wonder Brown was so eager to set the Bank of England up completely on its own, it meant that the pliable Governor would be easily led and swallow every line fed to him and he wouldn't ask about the goings-on between the Treasury and City bosses. Well that worked out, didn't it? 

I have to do something distasteful as well. I must come out and agree with Ed Miliband on something. He wants more competition in the banking sector and I frankly agree with him, although I think we can go further. As well as the high street becoming more heterogeneous in terms of bank branches, I believe that banking as a whole could diversify. Why do we not have dedicated banks which lend to and invests in industry and agriculture exclusively? While I'm not a specialist in economics and don't pretend to be, I do wonder nonetheless why we cannot be more like Germany, for example, in our approach. There are certain banks in Germany which don't even operate out-of-state branches and indeed act more like building societies. Why can we not do the same? More choice for customers, less risk for commercial and personal banking alike and if one bank goes completely under a la Northern Rock, then there wouldn't be any need for the government to rescue it if it didn't want to. The "too big to fail" idea, now completely defunct, would be laid to rest forever. Surely with a (just about) Tory-led government we can secure some kind of action on this? Ours is the party of business, so let's start as we mean to go on and create some (granted it's the business that got us into this mess, but most vaccines contain a little of the disease under inoculation). If Osborne has any sense he will go away and give this some thought over the summer. 

So that's it for this week. I do notice that my comment boxes seem a little empty. Do feel free to comment, particularly if you're from overseas. I like seeing that people from across the oceans have a particular interest in this. Gives me a warm fuzzy glow. Not that being too warm is particularly welcome in summer, but it'd still be nice.