Lord Northbrook (Con)

My Lords, I will focus on paragraph (3) of Amendment 11, suggesting what should be in the consultation paper on methods for introducing elected Members to the House. House of Lords reform has been unfinished business now for well over a century, as emphasised in the Parliament Act 1911. I believe the Bill provides an opportunity for looking at several different ways of reform for the House: elected or appointed, or a mixture of both. The Electoral Reform Society produced an interesting paper on an elected House in December 2023. I will first explore how other countries select members of their upper houses, to give comparison for an elected House of Lords here. The majority of second chambers choose their members by election, whether direct or indirect. The Inter-Parliamentary Union—the IPU—categorises 55 second chambers as predominantly chosen by either direct or indirect election, and only 22 as predominantly chosen by appointment. Many chambers do, however, combine a direct and/or indirect election with a small element of appointment. For instance, while the Italian Senate is nearly wholly directly elected, a handful of life seats are held by ex-officio members, formerly presidents, and up to five citizens are appointed by the President for outstanding service. In Ireland, of the 60 members of the Senate, 43 are elected by panels representing different vocations, six are chosen by graduates of the two major universities, and 11 are nominated by the Taoiseach, creating a mix of direct and indirect election for some appointments. In Spain, the Senate combines direct and indirect election based on different territories. The majority of senators are directly elected in multi-member constituencies based on the 50 provinces. Around a fifth are appointed by the legislatures of the autonomous communities, which are themselves elected by closed-list proportional representation—PR. Concerns are often raised about the potential conflict arising from having two directly elected chambers. Wholly directly elected second chambers can be found in Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland and the USA. Within this group are significant differences in the electoral system used, which in turn affects their composition. It is generally agreed that one party should not have a majority in both chambers. Because of this, few parliaments with direct elections for both chambers choose similar electoral systems for both chambers. Two notable exceptions are Italy and the United States. Italy employs a similar mixed system for both the upper and the lower house, with both chambers also electing on the same day. Because of this, while there may be some differences, the party balance tends to be the same in both chambers. The United States is the only country to use a majoritarian system for both chambers. While using the same system, the two USA chambers have different compositions because of the difference in size of their constituencies and the length of term. However, with party competition forcing a two-party shape due to the nature of the electoral system, the opportunity for gridlock is high. In both Italy and the USA, similar electoral systems are also matched by similar powers. The majority of parliaments with wholly directly elected upper chambers use different electoral systems in the lower chamber. Brazil, the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland have PR-elected primary chambers and use majoritarian systems for their second chambers. Australia has a majoritarian-elected lower house and a PR-elected upper house. Japan and Mexico use mixed systems for both chambers. Using different electoral systems for both chambers tends to produce different electoral outcomes, which are also supported by arrangements such as different term lengths and staggered elections. For a wholly or partly elected second chamber, the question remains as to which system of election to use. If direct election is chosen, there are many options for the type of electoral system that could be used. Previous suggestions for Lords reform have put forward different options, including versions of party lists and single transferable vote, STV. The STV option was recommended in the cross-party Breaking the Deadlock proposals in 2007 and the House of Lords reform draft Bill in 2011. As Liberal Democrats will know, STV is a proportional and preferential election system in which voters get to choose their choice of candidate. Constituencies are multimember, returning usually around three to five candidates per district, although constituencies can be larger, and voters can put a number to as many or as few candidates as they like. Candidates who reach the quota are elected, and any votes over and above what they need are redistributed to vote as second preferences, and so on until the places are filled. The 2011 draft Bill selected STV to ensure that those elected have “a personal mandate from the electorate, distinct from that of their party”. STV is a candidate-based system, which means that independents are placed on an equal footing with party-political candidates. In addition, because it is a candidate system, voters are able to choose between candidates of the same party, putting an emphasis on which party candidate they think will be most suitable. Candidates such as community leaders, who have a party leaning but would rather stand as independents, are able to do so without harming their party’s chances by splitting the votes. According to the Electoral Reform Society: “In the Scottish local elections of 2017, between a third and a fifth of voters gave their second preference to a candidate of a different party to their first choice. And, whilst many voters are loyal to their party, when no more candidates are available for their first choice party … the majority go on to give lower preferences to candidates of other parties. This opportunity for voters to make more nuanced choices would likely result in a chamber that has a different political character to the Commons. STV could also help elect a more diverse chamber. Because STV is a multi-member constituency system, it encourages parties to put forward candidates who differ from each other in order to maximise their vote. District magnitude, the number of people being elected in an electoral district, has an impact on the diversity of those elected, so larger STV districts are … more likely to create a more representative chamber without needing additional measures … STV would likely go furthest to fulfilling the goals of a more politically diverse and independently minded chamber where voters would be able to select candidates according to their expertise and experience, as well as ensuring representation from across the regions and nations of the UK”, which I believe the Labour Party wished for the Lords in its manifesto. Another form of rank ordering preference is the AV system. While STV is considered a form of proportional representation using multimember constituencies, AV would operate in single-member constituencies and is not. There are of course other forms of PR, namely list PR, which was recommended by the Wakeham commission and the subsequent White Paper in 2001. In 2010-11 the House of Lords reform draft Bill put forward semi-open regional lists. List PR systems can be open, closed or semi-open. With apologies to the Lib Dems, I will briefly go into the three main types of list. First, there is the closed list PR; secondly, the open list PR; and, thirdly, the semi-open list. There is a range of these types of list PR. Finally, we must not forget the first past the post system. The 2008 White Paper modelled the options for election to the House of Lords on the basis of an 80% and 100% elected Chamber of between 420 and 450 seats. Using the four different systems I have outlined, while the first past the post and AV options produced results close to those in the Commons, the list modelling showed a greater proportion of seats for other parties, with no single party gaining an overall majority, but highlighted the problem for independents to get a place under this system.