One accusation that the former Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government had to face from Labour was that it was somehow packing the House of Lords, with Labour coming up with concepts as "de facto majority" and "political peers".
If the number of peers is supposed to reflect the votes cast as the previous general election, then how many peers should there be?
The current list at the Parliament website gives:
- Conservative - 228
- Labour - 212
- Crossbench - 178
- Liberal Democrat - 102
- Bishops - 26
- Non-affiliated - 24
- Democratic Unionist Party - 4
- UK Independence Party - 3
- Plaid Cymru - 2
- Ulster Unionist Party - 2
- Green Party of England & Wales - 1
- Independent Labour - 1
- Independent Liberal Democrat - 1
- Independent Ulster Unionist - 1
- Independent Social Democrat - 1
Please note that I am using how peers self-identify, rather than how they vote. I am not getting into games that Lord X is Crossbench but votes with party Y z% of the time so is "really" one of party Y's peers.
This gives the Conservatives a little over 29% of the House of Lords.
We can look at the result of the May 2015 general election and compare the number of votes to the number of peers a party has:
| Party | Votes | Peers | Votes per peer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 11,334,576 | 228 | 49,713 |
| Labour | 9,347,304 | 212 | 44,091 |
| Liberal Democrat | 2,415,862 | 102 | 23,685 |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 184,260 | 4 | 46,065 |
| UK Independence Party | 3,881,099 | 3 | 1,293,700 |
| Plaid Cymru | 181,704 | 2 | 90,852 |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 114,935 | 2 | 57,468 |
| Green Party of England & Wales | 1,111,586 | 1 | 1,111,586 |
The party that gets the worst deal from this is the UK Independence Party, closely followed by the Green Party of England & Wales. The collapse of Liberal Democrat support means that they have the best votes-per-peer result.
If we were to treat all the parties to the same votes-per-peer result, then we would get:
| Party | Current peers | Entitlement | New peers needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 228 | 479 | 251 |
| Labour | 212 | 395 | 183 |
| UK Independence Party | 3 | 164 | 161 |
| Liberal Democrat | 102 | 102 | 0 |
| Scottish National Party | 0 | 61 | 61* |
| Green Party of England & Wales | 1 | 47 | 46 |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 4 | 8 | 4 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | 8 | 6 |
| Sinn Féin | 0 | 7 | 7** |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 2 | 5 | 3 |
| Total | 554 | 1,276 | 722 |
[* Unlikely to accept any peerages offered]
[** Very unlikely to accept any peerages offered]
Even when we ignore the Scottish National Party's and Sinn Féin's entitlements, that is still 654 new peers needed to keep the House of Lords proportional.
And it gets worse. The Crossbench peers and the Non-affiliated make up 202 of the membership of the House of Lords - which is 25.7%. To keep this ratio, there would need to be 428 - hence the creation of 226 new Crossbench peers.
So, a proportional House of Lords would need 880 new peers created - bringing it to an unmanageable and bloated membership of 1,666.
One way round this is to just accept that the Liberal Democrats will be over-represented. While the aim of a proportional House of Lords is laudable, there is no fixed end-term for membership - members, unless expelled or resigning, serve until death. So a party which has seen its support collapse will end up over-represented due to peers appointed during the good times remaining.
The Guardian reports that several defeated Liberal Democrat ministers (Danny Alexander, Vince Cable, Simon Hughes and David Laws) have turned down peerages - although it is silent on whether Ed Davey (who, along with Alexander and Cable, was one of 3 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats) has refused. Or indeed, whether he was even offered one.
In my opinion, there should be a small number of peerages granted to Liberal Democrats who retired (Annette Brooke, former deputy leader Malcolm Bruce and former leader Ming Campbell) and Ministers of State who were defeated (Lynne Featherstone, Steve Webb), former Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, and - along the lines of the peerages given to Clementine Churchill, Dora Gaitskell and Elizabeth Smith - a peerage for Carole MacDonald. And for the Liberal Democrats, that's that - maybe a few after the May 2020 general election, but nothing like the large numbers created since the late 1990s.
When we ignore the Liberal Democrats, the best votes-per-peer result is Labour's. If we give every party (except for the Liberal Democrats) the same ratio, then we get:
| Party | Current peers | Entitlement | New peers needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 228 | 257 | 29 |
| Labour | 212 | 212 | 0 |
| UK Independence Party | 3 | 88 | 85 |
| Scottish National Party | 0 | 33 | 33 |
| Green Party of England & Wales | 1 | 25 | 24 |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| Sinn Féin | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Total | 452 | 630 | 178 |
From this, it is clear that - until the House of Lords is reformed - there can only be very limited peerage creations.
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