When Will Britain Become a Full Democracy?

Towards the end of 2008, an election took place that was in one sense almost absurdly trivial, and yet in another way hugely symbolic.  The tiny British dependency of Sark – an island off the coast of northern France – staged the first ever fully democratic election to its parliament, the Chief Pleas.  Given the approximate population of the island is just 600, this development perhaps wouldn’t have attracted much attention if it hadn’t been for the fact that – in the perception of most – Sark had until that point been the last nation or territory in western Europe not to allow its people to choose their own rulers.  By finally falling into line with its neighbours following pressure from the European Court of Human Rights, Sark had at last seemingly completed a full house of democracies across the whole of western Europe.

But there’s a problem with this perception.  Before the historic 2008 election, the Chief Pleas had been part-elected anyway.  It had previously been a hybrid body, with some directly elected members, and other members who held their seats due to the hereditary principle.  This self-evidently wasn’t enough to qualify as proper democracy.  Yet if such an arrangement sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a good reason – it’s startlingly similar to the position that has existed in the United Kingdom for the entire period the country has been generally considered a ‘democracy’, with parliament consisting of a directly-elected House of Commons and an entirely unelected (and partly hereditary) House of Lords.

Of course, some would protest, it’s the very fact that the different categories of members are split into two different chambers that means the comparison with Sark is not valid.  The elected House of Commons is accorded primacy in the British parliamentary system by a number of means – principally informal conventions.  Most notably, the non-binding but widely-observed Salisbury Convention states that the House of Lords must allow passage for any piece of legislation that was featured in the election manifesto of the incumbent government.  And if all else fails, the supremacy of the House of Commons can be legally enforced by means of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949.  Typically used only very sparingly, these acts allow a proposed new law to bypass the House of Lords altogether if the House of Commons has passed it three times over the space of a year.

So, the defenders of the Lords would have us believe the upper chamber in its current peculiar form gives us the best of both worlds – it is essentially powerless and thus does not detract from the democratic process, and yet it enables the huge expertise of its members to be utilised when legislation is being scrutinised.  This is disingenuous on two counts.  For not only do the current members of the Lords have ‘expertise’, they also collectively have another quality that is utterly unmistakable – they are very conservative with a small ‘c’, and far more so than the centre of gravity among the public as a whole could ever justify.  So when legislation is brought before the house, this conservative world view ends up being applied every bit as much as the fabled ‘expertise’.  None of this would matter much if the claim of powerlessness was true – but unfortunately history shows that conservative peers played a considerable role in the prolonged delay of key reforms such as the outlawing of fox hunting and the reduction of the age of consent for gay men. 

In a nutshell, the residual legal power of the House of Lords is to delay legislation for up to a year (unless the House of Commons itself backs down).  When put like that, it doesn’t sound much – but in fact it amounts to something huge.  For there will always be a premium on a government getting its legislation through quickly, in order to prevent the parliamentary timetable getting clogged up.  The House of Lords is therefore in a position to wring out substantial concessions in return for its co-operation.

The fact that in 2009 what is essentially a glorified interest group of highly privileged people should still have such a built-in, institutionalised advantage over the rest of us is nothing short of outrageous.  It’s also far from a normal situation internationally – among large western democracies, only Canada does not either directly or indirectly elect its upper chamber.  Therefore I would suggest it’s high time someone pointed out that the emperor has no clothes. Contrary to popular perception there is still one country in western Europe that has yet to become fully democratised – and it isn’t Sark.