Why Does the Government get Defeated in the House of Lords?: The Lords, the Party System and British Politics

Abstract

Although the threat of defeat in the House of Commons attracts significant attention, we hear a lot less about defeats in the House of Lords. Yet in this chamber of parliament, government is defeated regularly — over 400 times since 1997. We analyse what contributes to these defeats, using voting data from six full parliamentary sessions since the (majority of) hereditary peers were removed from the chamber in 1999, supplemented by data from a survey of peers. There are various groups — Labour rebels, independent ‘Crossbenchers’, Bishops, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats — who may contribute to defeat. But the chamber also has a reputation for being independent and non-partisan. We find that this does not translate into voting patterns, and that cross-voting, and the votes of independents, tend not to be influential. In most cases, the pivotal groups in the House of Lords are the opposition parties, who vote cohesively, albeit with high levels of absenteeism. The 1999 reform created a chamber in which no party had overall control, and has thus increased the number of veto players in the British political system. In particular, the Liberal Democrats have gained a new importance in British politics that has not yet been widely appreciated.