The cost of the House of Lords has ballooned

The argument

Those who argue for abolition point first to sheer size. In recent years appointments to the House of Lords have ballooned, making it one of the largest second chambers in the world; on this account the only countries with larger second chambers are the People's Republic of China, Kazakhstan and Burkina Faso, none of them liberal democracies. The comparison is offered as more than a curiosity. A chamber's size, proponents hold, ought to bear some relation to the work it does and to the scrutiny each member can meaningfully provide, and a second chamber that has outgrown every other in the democratic world is taken to show that its membership is being set by something other than need. That something, supporters argue, is unconstrained appointment. Since 2000 the size of the House of Lords has increased by 27%, and it has done so despite party leaders consistently promising to limit the number of peers they nominate. On this view the promises are themselves the evidence: where growth continues through repeated undertakings to restrain it, the restraint is voluntary and therefore unreliable, and nothing internal to the arrangement halts the trend. Projected forward at the current rate of growth, the chamber is expected to tally over 1,000 members by 2031. The cost argument follows from the arithmetic. Each new peer is said to cost the tax payer on average an additional quarter of a million pounds a year, so an addition to the membership is not a one-off expense but a permanent addition to a recurring bill, compounding with every fresh round of nominations. Proponents conclude that this is completely unsustainable, and that the remedy cannot be further appeals to self-restraint of the kind already shown to fail. A chamber that expands without limit, at rising public expense, and whose only larger counterparts are not democracies, should on this argument be abolished.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Rising cost and swelling numbers are arguments for reforming the House of Lords, not necessarily for abolishing it: the fiscal premise supports a cap on appointments, fixed terms, a retirement age or a smaller chamber just as readily as it supports having no second chamber at all, and none of those remedies requires losing the revising and scrutinising function the Lords performs. The headline comparison is misleading, too — ranking the Lords against China, Kazakhstan and Burkina Faso by nominal membership ignores that daily attendance and active participation are far below the total on the roll, and that those chambers differ so sharply in constitutional role that a raw headcount comparison carries little weight. The cost figure is likewise modest in national terms; roughly a quarter of a million pounds per active peer, set against the value of a functioning revising chamber, is an argument for restraint in nominations rather than for demolition. In short, the premises identify a problem of size and appointment discipline, which cap-and-reform proposals address directly, and they do not reach the further conclusion that the institution itself should be abolished.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Comparing the Lords to China or Kazakhstan by nominal headcount is misleading — active attendance is far below the roll and those chambers differ constitutionally — so raw size is a weak basis for abolition. [Rejecting P3] Ballooning cost and numbers argue for capping appointments, fixed terms or a smaller chamber as readily as for abolition; the fiscal premise targets the size of the House, not the existence of a revising second chamber.