IT IS possible to sympathise with the Deputy Prime Minister,
Nick Clegg, over his failure during this Parliament to win the
reform of the House of Lords, in which he had invested so much of
his reputation. It is impossible to be taken by surprise. The
various ships Lords Reform, launched from time to time
with talk about the scandal of the British constitution's including
such a conspicuous anachronism, have a tendency to founder. The
underlying reason for this failure is, we suggest, a lack of
popular interest in the subject. Even in the constitutional crisis
of a century ago, Lords reform was a secondary consequence, not the
goal of a popular revolt. In the current economic situation, the
Upper House hardly looks to most people like a social evil worthy
of the Government's prolonged attention. Indeed, the Lords' ability
to scrutinise legislation's social consequences has been notable -
even, for example, over the relaxation of Sunday-trading hours for
the Olympics Games.
Now that the hereditary peerage is reduced, the House of Lords
functions well enough in comparison with the Commons to make
changing it even more difficult. The main body of the Conservative
Party, by historical standards, has adopted radical ideas in recent
decades, but when it comes to the Crown, the Union, or the Second
Chamber (and the three are related), it tends always to be
conservative with a small "c". There is also a well-known intrinsic
difficulty once one accepts the advisability of a Second Chamber in
Parliament at all. If the Lords are too weak, they are useless; if
too strong, because of enjoying the mandate of popular election,
they become a rival to the fully elected Commons.
Over the matter of the Bench of Bishops, the Church of England
has come out of this as fairly conservative, too. The voices that
have prevailed have been those that sought to preserve the Bishops'
place in the legislature; and historical arguments were prominent,
besides those that claimed a more broadly representative character
for the episcopate, as understood in a distinctively British
Anglican way, in a multifaith society. Nevertheless, this case did
not go unchallenged, and the Bryant amendments seeking to remove
the Bishops, which have been warmly backed by secularist
campaigners, have found some support. Despite shrillness in certain
quarters, it seems unlikely that the place of the episcopate in the
Lords was at real risk of being unfairly decided by pique over
decisions about the draft women-bishops Measure made in the General
Synod's House of Bishops (a larger body, of course, than the
parliamentary Bench, even at its current strength). Questions about
marriage and discrimination remain ones, however, on which the
Bishops in the Lords will need to show the country that they are
listening to all sides of the argument, if hostility to their
historic constitutional rights is not to grow. But, for the time
being, the debate is set aside.