What is the point of the House of Lords
Despite much of the bad press that the House of Lords receives, it is in fact a body which plays an important role in the Parliamentary system.
The primary role of the House of Lords is to scrutinise legislation. A large number of Lords are experts in their field. Take for example Lord Bird, the founder of the Big Issue newspaper, which aims to offer homeless people in the UK a legitimate source of income. Bird is therefore an expert in the field of homelessness in the UK. As a member of the House of Lords, Bird is able to cast his eye over legislation affecting homelessness and make recommendations for changes that might improve it.
Making amendments to government legislation is therefore the main job of the Lords. For this reason, the Lords is commonly called a revising chamber.
What makes the Lords doubly important is that it is often the only place where government legislation can be opposed. It is highly unlikely that the governmetn will ever be defeated on a piece of legislation in the House of Commons and amendments proposed by opposition MPs in Public Bill Committees will also almost always fail. It is only in the Lords, where the government does not have a majority and where the whip system is less impactful that government legislation can be properly scrutinised and amended.
Two simple statistics need to be remembered:
- In the Labour governments of Blair and Brown between 1997-2010, they only suffered 4 defeats in the House of Commons. In the Lords, they suffered 400 defeats.
- Moreover, on 40% of occasions, the government accepted the amendments being proposed by the Lords. This demonstrates why the Lords is so important in UK political life.
The Lords is also becoming more and more determined to properly scrutinise government legislation. The table demonstrates how much opposition the Lords has shown to government legislation in the last few years. The 128 defeats in the Lords between 2021-22 for the Johnson government is a record.
Despite this, the Lords is powerless to stop the government from getting its way. In 2023, the Lords proposed 20 amendments to the government’s Illegal Migration Bill. The government made some of the changes, but refused to accept 18 of the amendments.
After ping pong between the Commons and the Lords, the Lords withdrew their amendments. This was because the Lord acknowledges their lack of democratic legitimacy. One example saw the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, who has been a critic of the bill, drop his demand for the government to draw up a 10-year strategy for collaborating internationally on refugees and human trafficking to the UK, after it was again rejected by MPs.
So what was the impact of the Lords on this controversial piece of legislation? They were able to show their dissatisfaction with the bill, they were able to raise their concerns and widen the debate amongst the public and they were able to table amendments. Ultimately however, the government won and all of the amendments were rejected. This demonstrates that though the Lords was able to show opposition to the bill, perhaps more than that which was shown in the commons, the government will usually always get their way.
What is the point of the Lords? It is a revising chamber and a source of opposition to the government. However, if push comes to shove, the government will win every time.
