Reforming the House of Lords: Navigating Representation, Democracy and Legitimacy at Westminster

Abstract

Several schemes for reforming the House of Lords have been proposed since 1997, and each have made various claims about how they will contribute to a chamber that is more representative, more democratic and more legitimate. There has, however, been little analysis of how different actors have understood these terms, and of the conceptual confusion that has peppered their various reports. This article seeks to address this gap, and to explore the nature of the conceptual problems that have characterised the reform debate in recent years. It explores various documents that have informed the discussion over House of Lords reform – the Labour Party manifestos, the Royal Commission report, the government white paper, the Public Administration Committee report, the Joint Committee report – all of which have continued relevance in the context of the resuscitation of these deliberations following the ‘loans for peerages’ controversy in spring 2006.