Should the House of Lords be abolished?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should the House of Lords be abolished?
Position1 of 3›: The House of Lords should be abolished
Argument‹2 of 3›: The House of Lords is undemocratic

The way the House of Lords is selected is fundamentally undemocratic.

The argument

The House of Lords is the only chamber in a democratic country whose membership is through selective appointment. Peers hold their seats until they die and are not accountable to or removable by the electorate in any way — which means the two mechanisms by which a democracy ordinarily controls its legislators, election and removal, are both absent. A member of the Lords who ignores public opinion entirely faces no consequence for doing so, because there is no moment at which the public is ever consulted about them. This is an affront to the very idea that the UK is a democracy, and it is made worse by who ends up appointed. An increasing number of members are donors to political parties or former Members of Parliament, which tells against the usual defence of appointment — that it brings in expertise the electorate would not choose. A chamber filled substantially with party financiers and former politicians is not an alternative to political selection but a version of it with the voters removed. The remaining hereditary element makes the point sharper still. It is ironic that the only elections held for membership of the House of Lords are those to replace one of the ninety-two hereditary peers whose seat is still theirs by birth right. The single democratic procedure in the chamber exists to service its least democratic feature, and the electorate for it is the peers themselves. The consequences reach beyond the chamber. The lack of democratic accountability undermines the legitimacy of the Lords and the credibility of the UK as a whole, giving outsiders the impression that cronyism and nepotism remain a large part of British society — an impression that is difficult to rebut while seats are distributed by appointment and inheritance.

Premises

[P1]The House of Lords is the only chamber in a democratic country whose membership comes through selective appointment, with peers holding their seats for life and unaccountable to the electorate. [P2] With many members being party donors or former MPs and ninety-two seats still held by hereditary right, its lack of democratic accountability undermines its legitimacy and the UK's credibility. [C] Therefore, because it is undemocratic, the House of Lords should be abolished.

Counter-arguments

Steps have been taken to democratise the House of Lords and make it more accountable to the British public. This includes the reforms under Tony Blair in the late 1990s to remove all but ninety-two hereditary peers, reforms to allow peers to retire from the House of Lords, and new mechanisms to suspend peers who misbehave or are deemed to have acted inappropriately.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Steps have been taken to make the House of Lords more democratic.