Reform the HoL Reform policy

Proposer
philipjohn
State

Accepted

Vote Score

2

Age

3324 days


@philipjohn edited manifesto/democracy.md - about 9 years ago

We believe that the UK should be a truly democratic country, where the state is properly accountable to its citizens. In the short term, this means improving the existing system in various ways, such as by improving the electoral system, changing how parties are funded, curbing the influence of the lobbying industry, and replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber. In the long term, we believe that the UK should be a secular republic rather than a monarchy, and that at some point in the future technology will allow us to make decisions using some form of direct democracy rather than needing to elect representatives.

Written Constitution

The British constitution should be collected into a single written document that defines and regulates the powers of the British government, and the rights and duties of its citizens[^1].

Allow for full and proper recall of MPs: any e-petition to recall their MP supported by 20% of all registered constituency electors should trigger a local referendum (yes/no majority vote required) as to whether to hold a fresh byelection.

Lords Reform

Replace the House of Lords with a second chamber made up of randomly-selected citizens tasked with reviewing and amending legislation created by the House of Commons.

Citizens are selected from the electoral roll and serve a single fixed-length term. A subset of the chamber is changed each year. Leave from work is legally protected, and help back to work included in the cost.

Party Funding

@philipjohn edited manifesto/house-of-lords.md - about 9 years ago

title: House of Lords Reform layout: policy

published: true

  • table of contents {:toc}

We believe in replacing the House of Lords with a more representative chamber. However, there are immediate reforms required and so while we will work to replace the House of Lords, we will apply incremental reform to the Lords before hand to improve our democracy in the meantime. These reforms are outline below, in the order in which we'll hope to implement them.

Cease all new appointments

Upon entering Government we will immediately end all new appointments to the House of Lords, swiftly ending the undemocratic proceedure.

Cut membership to 650

The "upper house" - as it is known - should not contain more Lords than MPs. We will place a cap on Lords of 650, and seek to remove those Lords with the lowest attendance in order to drop the current levels downt to match the House of Commons.

Ban on ministerial positions

No ministerial should be held by an unelected politician. We will ban the appointment of Lords to any positions within the Government.

House of Citizens

The House of Lords will be replaced with a chamber made up of randomly-selected citizens tasked with reviewing and amending legislation created by the House of Commons.

Citizens are selected from the electoral roll and serve a single fixed-length term. A subset of the chamber is changed each year. Leave from work is legally protected, and help back to work included in the cost.

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 9 years ago

Adds a commitment to imcremental reform of the House of Lords, given the citizen-panel based reform is quite a big ask and won't happen immediately. End goal copied straight from the previous page.

Also restructures to give HoL reform it's own page for neatness.

tmtmtmtm

@tmtmtmtm - about 9 years ago

No ministerial should be held by an unelected politician

Aside from the missing word, this is slightly ambiguous. I'm assuming this should simply say that Ministers can only be appointed from sitting Members of the House of Commons?

I'm curious, though, as to what this proposal would also mean for the Leader of the House of Lords.

@philipjohn edited manifesto/democracy.md - about 9 years ago

We believe that the UK should be a truly democratic country, where the state is properly accountable to its citizens. In the short term, this means improving the existing system in various ways, such as by improving the electoral system, changing how parties are funded, curbing the influence of the lobbying industry, and replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber. In the long term, we believe that the UK should be a secular republic rather than a monarchy, and that at some point in the future technology will allow us to make decisions using some form of direct democracy rather than needing to elect representatives.

Written Constitution

The British constitution should be collected into a single written document that defines and regulates the powers of the British government, and the rights and duties of its citizens[^1].

Allow for full and proper recall of MPs: any e-petition to recall their MP supported by 20% of all registered constituency electors should trigger a local referendum (yes/no majority vote required) as to whether to hold a fresh byelection.

Lords Reform

Replace the House of Lords with a second chamber made up of randomly-selected citizens tasked with reviewing and amending legislation created by the House of Commons.

Citizens are selected from the electoral roll and serve a single fixed-length term. A subset of the chamber is changed each year. Leave from work is legally protected, and help back to work included in the cost.

Party Funding

@philipjohn edited manifesto/house-of-lords.md - about 9 years ago

title: House of Lords Reform layout: policy

published: true

  • table of contents {:toc}

We believe in replacing the House of Lords with a more representative chamber. However, there are immediate reforms required and so while we will work to replace the House of Lords, we will apply incremental reform to the Lords before hand to improve our democracy in the meantime. These reforms are outline below, in the order in which we'll hope to implement them.

Cease all new appointments

Upon entering Government we will immediately end all new appointments to the House of Lords, swiftly ending the undemocratic proceedure.

Cut membership to 650

The "upper house" - as it is known - should not contain more Lords than MPs. We will place a cap on Lords of 650, and seek to remove those Lords with the lowest attendance in order to drop the current levels downt to match the House of Commons.

Ban on ministerial positions

No ministerial position should be held by an unelected politician. As such, only sitting members of the House of Commons will be permitted to take up Government posts.

House of Citizens

The House of Lords will be replaced with a chamber made up of randomly-selected citizens tasked with reviewing and amending legislation created by the House of Commons.

Citizens are selected from the electoral roll and serve a single fixed-length term. A subset of the chamber is changed each year. Leave from work is legally protected, and help back to work included in the cost.

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 9 years ago

Thanks for the feedback - I've clarified that sentence about ministerial appointments.

I'm curious, though, as to what this proposal would also mean for the Leader of the House of Lords.

I reckon we're okay on that one, as the policy only stops new appointments to the House of Lords (i.e. new Lords). Happy to make that clearer if you think it needs to be?

tmtmtmtm

@tmtmtmtm - about 9 years ago

I meant that the Leader of the House of Lords is currently a ministerial position, as the point of the role is to represent the government's interest in the House. Abolishing that connection seems like it could be problematic.

Floppy

@Floppy - about 9 years ago

@tmtmtmtm I think that implementation of the plan would work out a solution to that problem, so I'm not opposed on those grounds. 👍

I am a little concerned that this will give undue prominence to Lords reform in the site structure, but that's not a policy issue, so I'll upvote this, and merge when I have a minute to work on the structure after merge to make sure it still works.

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 9 years ago

@tmtmtmtm Any chance of a vote from you on this one?

Floppy

@Floppy - about 9 years ago

I'm in the process of merging it, but I'm going to split the democracy page in two a slightly different way, if thats OK. I'll take care of it during the merge though.

Floppy

@Floppy - about 9 years ago

OK, all done. We now have an "elections" page and a "democracy" page, which balances out the massive democracy page a bit.

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 9 years ago

Yeah that's cool