If things had turned out differently, then that would not have been the only election to Parliament. Go back 3 years and - as I looked at then - there was the House of Lords Reform Bill (subsequently dropped) to bring in a part-elected element to the House of Lords.
May 2015 would have seen the first "transitional" House of Lords. We would have elected 120 peers on party lists, and the House of Lords Appointment Commission would have appointed 30 Crossbenchers. These 150 new peers would have been elected/appointed to serve until May 2030.
From the Church of England, the number of Lords Spiritual would have reduced from 26 to 21 - while the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester would have been entitled to remain as "Named Lords Spiritual", the number of "Ordinary Lords Spiritual" would fall from 21 to 16. The Bill was unclear how this would be done, leaving it up to the General Synod's Secretary-General to inform the Clerk of the Crown, with the Bill explicitly repealing the Bishoprics Act 1878, which introduced the seniority rule to determine who the Lords Spiritual would be.
If the Church decided to use the seniority rule to allocate, then under "last-in, first-out", Nicholas Baines (Bishop of Leeds), Christopher Chessun (Bishop of Southwark), Stephen Conway (Bishop of Ely), Nicholas Holtam (Bishop of Salisbury), and James Langstaff (Bishop of Rochester) would lose their seats.
In addition, there would be 510 "transitional" members, and my guesstimate was:
- Labour - 156
- Conservative - 147
- Crossbench & Others - 145
- Liberal Democrat - 62
I shall take a generous view, and assume that all the minor party peers were elected to be "transitional" members:
- Democratic Unionist Party - 4 (Wallace Browne, William Hay, Maurice Morrow, Eileen Paisley)
- UK Independence Party - 3 (Malcolm Pearson, David Stevens, Leopold Verney)
- Plaid Cymru - 2 (Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Dafydd Wigley)
- Ulster Unionist Party - 2 (Reg Empey, Dennis Rogan)
- Green Party of England & Wales - 1 (Jenny Jones)
- Independent Labour - 1 (David Stoddart)
- Independent Liberal Democrat - 1 (Jenny Tonge)
- Independent Ulster Unionist - 1 (Ken Maginnis)
- Independent Social Democrat - 1 (David Owen)
When it comes to the non-affiliated peers, and I shall assume that Tim Boswell (Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees), Lawrence Collins (former Supreme Court Justice), Frances D'Souza (Speaker of the House of Lords), John Sewel (Chairman of Committees) and Chris Smith (former Culture, Media & Sport Secretary) all remained.
So that gives the "transitional" members as being (roughly):
- Labour - 156
- Conservative - 147
- Crossbench - 124
- Liberal Democrat - 62
- Non-affiliated - 5
- 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
The Bill also set out the number of peers to be elected in each region. This would be the same for the May 2020 and May 2025 elections as well, although the Electoral Commission needs to produce a report by the end of April 2026 outlining what changes in allocation might be needed for the May 2030 (and May 2035 and May 2040) elections:
- South East England - 16
- London - 14
- North West England - 14
- Eastern England - 11
- South West England - 11
- West Midlands - 11
- Scotland - 10
- Yorkshire & Humberside - 10
- East Midlands - 9
- Wales - 6
- North East England - 5
- Northern Ireland - 3
The electoral systems would be identical to the European Parliament.
Assume that at the first House of Lords election, people cast their votes the same way as they did at the contemporaneous general election. This gives us:
| Region/Nation | C | Lab | UKIP | LD | SNP | GPEW | DUP | SF | UUP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South East England | 9 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| London | 5 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| North West England | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Eastern England | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| South West England | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| West Midlands | 5 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Scotland | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Yorkshire & Humberside | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| East Midlands | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Wales | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| North East England | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Northern Ireland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 48 | 41 | 15 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The Bill also allowed for up to 8 ministerial peers, who could serve for 3 terms. One feature of this was that no new ministerial peers could be appointed until a vacancy arose. While this might sound logical, if the Bill had come into force then David Cameron, the Prime Minister, could appoint 8 Conservatives to be ministerial peers - and they would be there until May 2030, unless death or resignation brought their terms to a premature end. They would still be there if there were a Labour Government in office. A future Labour Prime Minister would - prior to 2030 - be unable to appoint anyone to be a ministerial peer until a vacancy arose.
So, what would the reformed House of Lords look like? We are looking at a House with 510 transitional members, 150 elected/appointed for 15 years, 21 episcopal and 8 ministerial - a total of 689, with 345 peers needed for a majority:
| Party/Group | Lords Temporal | Lords Spiritual | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transitional | Elected/appointed in 2015 | Ministerial | |||
| Conservative | 147 | 48 | 8 | 0 | 203 |
| Labour | 156 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 197 |
| Crossbench | 124 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 154 |
| Liberal Democrat | 62 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 68 |
| Archbishops & Bishops | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 21 |
| UK Independence Party | 3 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| Scottish National Party | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Non-affiliated | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Green Party of England & Wales | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Sinn Féin | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Independent Labour | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Independent Liberal Democrat | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Independent Ulster Unionist | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Independent Social Democrat | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
With Sinn Féin not taking their seat, and D'Souza, Sewel and Boswell exercising the Speaker's neutrality, there would be 685 voting peers in such a House of Lords. To get the 343 peers needed for a majority, the Conservatives would need the support of 140 other peers - reaching out to the Liberal Democrats and the various Unionists would only provide 77 of them, hence there would be the need for a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government to obtain the support of 63 of the other peers.
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