New peers – why the secrecy?

Rumours have circulated at Westminster for weeks now that David Cameron is about to appoint around 60 or 65 new peers.  And, the rumours suggest, the breakdown of these new appointments would be roughly 40 Conservatives, 15 Liberal Democrats, and 5-10 Labour and others. The rumours have largely been fuelled by Labour people.

David Cameron has already appointed 120 new lords in his less than two years in office, a faster rate than for any prime minister in history. However, the rumours of 60-65 new peers are roundly dismissed by Downing Street.  “You are way off beam,” is how one senior figure reacted when I put the 60-65 figure to him today.

A couple of weeks ago the Leader of the Lords, Tom Strathclyde, also dismissed the idea.  “There is no plan to pack the House with government supporters of at least sixty members,” he told the Lords.  “It would look absurd and it would be absurd.” But in the Commons yesterday, Nick Clegg was asked by Labour’s justice spokesman Sadiq Khan whether he would commit to no more appointments until reform of the Lords had been implemented.  Clegg came up with a rather different response.

“No.  I think clearly, we’ve been very open in the coalition agreement, that pending reform of the other places we will continue to make appointments to the House of Lords in the time-honoured fashion in proportion to the share of the vote won by the parties at the last general election.” The coalition agreement actually says “Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.

To create a House of Lords which did that perfectly would require a lot more than 60 new appointments.  A report called House Full, published by the Constitution Unit at University College London last year, calculated that it would require another 269 peers to achieve true proportionality, in line with the 2010 results.  That would mean well over 1,000 peers, at a time when many members of the Lords, and the Constitution Unit, has become so large as to be almost unmanageable.

There should be a moratorium on new appointments, the UCL team argued, with the backing of twenty prominent peers and other politicians. The impression I get, however, from recent statements is that the government IS planning another batch of peers, but probably nowhere near the 60-65 that Labour suggest, and fear. Twenty perhaps. That would certainly help the government in the upper house, but it still wouldn’t have been able to avoid some of its recent defeats – or those it is likely to suffer in coming weeks on NHS and legal aid legislation.

And even 20 new peers could be controversial. The newcomers would make the House even more difficult to run, and would enatil an extra cost of about a £1m  a year. This at a time when when the elected Commons is being cut back by 50 members.

Another important question is why the secrecy? Why cover all this up? Why be so cagey with questions from people like me, as if I was probing the inner workings of MI5? Is it right that in a democratic society, members of one of our chambers of parliament are appointed with so little transparency?

These are people with a right to vote and speak on government legislation, and overturn the wishes of MPs who were elected in a very open manner. But the first we may get to hear of a batch of new peers is when Downing Street issues a press reelase with their names. Why can’t Nick Clegg, Tom Strathclyde, David Cameron and their officials be more upfront and show more of the openness on this issue to which they are committed in general? Instead of phrases like “off beam” and “absurd”, why not be frank?

Why not instead respond to my queries, or those from MPs and peers, with an answer along the lines of: “Yes, we do plan to appoint another 20 or so peers shortly (say) and are aiming to make an announcement around the start of April (say).  These will be mostly Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, to redress that party balance in the Lords and to better reflect the votes at the 2010 election.  Beyond that we hope to appoint 20 new peers in 2013 (say), and 20 the year after that (say).”

Such a statement would be so much more open and honest, and much more genuinely in accord with the coalition’s commitment to transparency, especially in constitutional matters.