We will respect MPs’ decision on Lords, says Straw

Jack Straw today vowed to respect the decision of MPs in creating a wholly or predominantly elected House of Lords.

The Commons leader rejected claims that last night’s historic vote in favour of a wholly elected upper chamber was compromised by opponents voting for it as a sabotage ploy.

I’ve more thoughts on Jack Straw’s white paper on House of Lords reform, which I will get to in due course, but in the meantime let me introduce you to Anil Bhanot, General Secretary of the Hindu Council UK and author of what is, thus far, the worst article on the current reforms I’ve had the misfortune to encounter.

[WARNING - Fisk coming up]

Why are the powers that be apparently obsessed with elections, when the general population seems to have lost interest in voting unless it is to evict people from reality TV shows?

Let me see… I think its called ‘Democracy’.

Jeebus, is that not the mother (or perhaps father) of all straw men - why should we elect the second chamber when people are more interested in voting in reality shows that voting for Parliamentarian.

But hey, Anil, you may have something there - lets make this whole democracy business a bit more entertaining.

We can start by having a general election and then every couple of weeks afterwards, we can have a public phone poll and vote out the most useless and irritating MP…

D’oh.

When it comes to House of Lords reform, we already have one legislative chamber based on a competitive model. Where is the extra value in having a second chamber if it simply mirrors the first?

But you see, Anil, its doesn’t actually follow, logically, that a second chamber will ‘mirror’ the first merely because some or all of its members are elected because one has to consider both form and function. The trick in avoiding ‘mirroring’ lies in nothing more than how you define and codify the functions of the two chambers. Give each a different function and your don’t have any problems with mirroring.

The second chamber should be based mainly on merit, not on the strength of feeling or political spin individuals can drum up to swing the ballot in their favour. People want good policies; they want honesty, security and reliability. Yes, it is right we have the kind of representative mandate delivered by the House of Commons, who legislate on our behalf, but it is equally right to make the Commons subject to a process of scrutiny by a second chamber comprised of experts and specialists.

So what you’re saying, here, is that democracy should be watched over and regulated by an elite technocracy? Mmm…

But if these experts and specialists are such a big deal, then why not just cut out the middle man and get rid of the whole messy business of elections full stop?

And who decides just which of these experts and specialists are going to the most useful? Just what kind of expertise are we looking for? Who’s going to write the job description and person specification?

You’ve just not thought this through have you?

For elections to be truly effective, voters must have full knowledge of what and whom they are voting for.

Well yes, that would seem reasonable in principle - doesn’t work out like that in practice but, hell, no system is ever 100% perfect.

Too often, the electoral process is fatally flawed in that votes are cast not for the individual and their ability to do their job effectively and with integrity, but for an ideology they may have little understanding of; an ideology subject to perhaps radical change over time.

Yes, Anil, that’s what we call - politics. Will somebody please buy Anil a dictionary, he seems to be having some considerable difficulty in comprehending very basic terms.
Look. First and foremost, if what you want is for people to vote for individuals on their personal qualities and not their espoused ideology, then the simple solution is to ban political parties. They are, after all, the main vehicle (in theory) by which ideology is expressed in our current political system.

The thing is, not only (in theory) do political parties have an ideological position that some people vote for, but, guess what, individuals hold ideological views as well - so who’s to say that some people won’t vote for a particular individual because they espouse a particular ideology.

Voters may be unwittingly manipulated into casting their vote; Rupert Murdoch is on record as claiming that he could change the outcome of a general election within 3 days, and he should know.

So let’s ban Rupert Murdoch - I can live with that.

Look, whatever claims Murdoch might make about being able to change the outcome of an election, those claims have never been verified or adequately put to the test.

If you look back, you’ll find that the Murdoch press rarely, if ever, make an open call on the outcome of an election more than a day or so before voters go to the polls and while, on paper, his newspapers do appear to have a solid record of picking the winner, what we can’t be sure of at all is whether that record is based on people actually changing their voting intention because of last minute editorial in The Sun, or whether The Sun is just very good at reading the polls and making the right call and them claiming, after the fact, that it ‘woz them who won it!’.

Murdoch’s apparent claims have never been tested. It could all be cleverly-crafted hype and, oddly enough, the only way we’ll ever know for sure one way or another is if the Murdoch papers ever make the wrong call - because that would show that they don’t have the degree of influence they claim.

In India, criminals have been elected occasionally. In some other parts of the world we have seen much worse. Sadly, we are not unfamiliar with the concept of a minority of our MPs engaging in criminal practices here in the UK. Our current electoral system is adequate when it comes to short term positions in the House of Commons but the House of Lords requires better procedures if it is to produce members of the calibre required to sit for a maximum or renewable term of 15 years, as current proposals suggest.

You what?

Right, as far as the criminal thing goes the situation as I recall it is that an MP convicted of criminal act and given a custodial sentence is disbarred - they cease to be an MP. They may well be eligible to stand for election again after a set period but they would do so in the knowledge that their past in a matter of public record, and will inevitably be brought up by their political opponents.

As far as the present House of Lord is concerned, two words - Jeffrey Archer.

Archer has served two years of four year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice, yet the law permitted him to retain his peerage and he could, as I recall, have re-entered the Lord on his release, despite the fact that having been convicted of an offence involving dishonesty and deception, he would be disbarred from serving as a Trustee of a registered charity for life under the Charities Act.

I think you have things rather backwards.

What you’re effectively saying is that its the democratic process itself, which requires MP to stand for re-election every four or five years, that creates a culture of deception and dishonesty amongst politicians. Sorry, no - I don’t buy that at all.

A viable House of Lords needs to be collaborative and cooperative, rather than competitive. It needs to be a uniting influence, a family environment at the heart of our nation, rather than a hotchpotch of ambitious, politicking, competitive individuals of the kind an election is more likely to secure.

And I guess it would serve Mom’s apple pie and jam roly-poly twice a day as well.

Again, one can exert considerable influence over the ‘environment’ of the second chamber simply be exercising care in defining its function and the social mores within which that function takes place.

Look, aside from peer pressure and convention, the one thing you could argue serves most to preserve the current gentile atmosphere in the House of Lords is the fact that its members are currently appointed for life and, therefore, have no need to rely on the patronage of political leaders for their position. But that still does not mean that politicking doesn’t go on - the House will still often divide down strict party lines, the parties have whips in the Lords, albeit those whips are somewhat less influential than in the Commons and there is still a modest amount of jockeying for position that goes on.

I am pleased at least that Jack Straw is not proposing the bishops should face a general election system before being allowed a seat in the House of Lords. bishops, like others in such high profile public positions, face stringent selection procedures from within their own ranks, judged by people who have the expertise and experience to assess their merit. It is this knowledge base behind their selection that makes the process meaningful and valid, not the mere size of their electorate.

So if its the knowledge base, expertise and experience that counts, why limit such appointments to judges and bishops?

Why should we not similarly privilege other groups who can bring much the same degree of expertise and experience in the same way?

Why not have guaranteed seats in the second chamber for the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the British Medical Association, The Royal College of Nursing, The Royal Society, the Institute of Chartered Accountant or a myriad of other professional bodies all of whom could provide the same expertise and experience.

In my view, the church is mostly a positive influence on society and government. The relationship between church and state also has a reforming effect on the church, ensuring it moves with the times as new legislation sometimes challenges archaic and prejudicial opinions.

Hang on, Anil.

Legislation is legislation, irrespective of whether there is or isn’t a formal relationship between the church and the state. It’s not the relationship between church and state that ensures that churches have to move with the times in line with new legislation but the legislation itself - in Britain, no one is above the (aside from the odd ‘wrinkle’ around the monarchy) not even churches and that principle applies whether there is a relationship between church and state or not.

Yes, the secular fundamentalists will argue the church should not be allowed a seat as a matter of right and continue their ill-conceived attempts to remove the essential metaphysical dimensions of our lives in favour of purely temporal ones.

There’s no such thing as a ’secular fundamentalist’.

Secularism advocates a constitutional separation between church and state - its that simple.

There is no such thing as ‘partial-secularism’, no one is ‘half-a-secularist’ and no one can be more ‘fundamental’ in their views than any other.

Secularism does not ‘remove the essential metaphysical dimensions of our lives in favour of purely temporal ones’, it merely ensure that no single set of those ‘metaphysical dimensions’ is afforded pre-eminent status over any other by treating all of the equally. A secular state does not ignore religious beliefs or fail to take it into account in its activities, but it doesn’t privilege those beliefs either.

It’s also entirely untrue to suggest that religion has a monopoly on metaphysics - just because atheists, for example, do not believe in the existence of a ‘god’ does not mean that they don’t ‘do’ metaphysics - that’s what we have philosophy for.

This is yet more specious propaganda - and not very good propaganda at that.

But to capitulate to their vociferous demands would mean we lose a vital something that could never be replaced through an environment of competition and elections. To lose the influence of our bishops would be a major loss to the well being of this nation.

Why should removing bishops from the second chamber result in a loss of influence?

They can still speak, can’t they? They can still write? The can still make their case, put forward arguments and express their point of view - and have that taken into consideration by members of the second chamber.

The could even stand for election or be appointed as cross-bench members by the same appointments process that other cross-benchers would have to go through under Straw’s plan - so whats the problem?

What should bishops, specifically, be afforded guaranteed seats in the legislature and not other ‘groups’ who are equal in their experience and expertise. Why not scientists, doctors, philosophers, ethicists, accountants or business ‘leaders’?

Judges, yes, there is an argument to be put forward both in terms of a reward for years of public service but more compellingly because their specific field of expertise - the law and its application - is especially relevant to work of a chamber whose primary function is to ensure that what is passed by parliament is good, well written and exacting legislation.

But where is the parallel argument for the inclusion of bishops? Come on, Anil. Tell me.

Countries that have purged faith from their borders are now seeing the error of their ways. Russia and China, two great persecutors of religion, recognise the benefits faith brings to society and are trying to bring it back into their countries.

Oh good, another straw man - lets make an invalid comparison with the former Soviet Union and China and ignore the very much more valid comparison with the United States of America, which was constituted as a secular state by its founding fathers and for that is has a clear separation of church and state is hardly short on religion or religious influences.

Actually, the reason why this comparison is not advanced is pretty simply - it doesn’t fit in with the propaganda line about ’secular fundamentalism’.

What’s really happening here, and the US is the perfect example of this, is not that religion is under attack from secularism, let alone from an absurd oxymoron ’secualr fundamentalism’ but rather that the long established secular authority of the state is under assault by religious, and specifically Christian fundamentalism.

The differences between the US and UK are matters of degree. In the US, what is being attacked is the secular character of the state and the constitutional separation between church and state and the attack is being led, in the main, by the Christian right who, at its most extreme, want to turn the US into what amounts to Christian theocratic state - oner that retains the outward semblance of being a democracy but only to the extent that one might recognise Iran’s claims to be a democracy.

In Britain, things are somewhat different in the sense that the fundamentalist elements remain largely at the fringes of the Britain’s religious polity and the issue is not so much about trying to turn Britain into a more religious state - give or take the ravings of Mad Mel and a few others - but rather about trying to preserve religion’s many state-sanctioned (and often funded) privileges, whether that’s by way of bishops in the legislature, ‘faith’ schools and the extensive funding they received or in numerous other ways.

We live in a pluralistic society that accommodates many different beliefs and, of course, non-belief and we also aspire to be an equal society. Where secularists, like myself, differ from Anil and other religious believers, especially those who aren’t Christians, or more specifically, member of the Anglican church, is in how we look at this question of equality.

Secularists see equality in terms of putting all faiths on an equal footing by separating religion and the state taking away the privileges of the Church of England.

Anil, and those like him, want to see the Church of England retain its privileges because they see equality as a lever for their own faiths to obtain the same, or similar privileges.

We (secularists) want everyone to be equal, Anil just wants his faith to be given parity with the Church of England in terms of its perks - that’s where we differ fundamentally in our views.

However, it would be equally wrong to bring faith into any future constitution. Since Bangladesh adopted an Islamic clause in their constitution, the minority of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists have suffered greatly. What we need is a small degree of faith influence on the state but not to the extent that it becomes constitutional. The House of Lords’ reservation of 26 seats for the clergy strikes that balance fairly well.

I wonder, do think Anil has ever taken one of those dumb citizenship tests?

Britain already has ‘faith’ in its constitution - we have an established state church, the Church of England and have had since… well Henry VIII started the ball rolling, but then there was Mary Tudor, so I supposed since Elizabeth I is about the right answer, give or take the odd bit of faffing around until the suppression of the Jacobites in 1745.

The most revealing element of that last paragraph is Anil’s support for the retention of a full complement of 26 bishops in the second chamber - even Jack Straw has proposed some (as yet unspecified) reduction in numbers.

The calculation is all too obvious - Straw’s white paper talks of making the House more ‘representative’ of British society by using the appointment system to ensure that it has more members from ethnic minorities and non-Christian ‘faith communities’. Anil’s just working the odds here - the most bishops there are in the house the bigger the likely contingent of representatives of other faiths will be and the better chance there is that one or more of them will be earmarked for a Hindu.

In fact the short version of this article - as I’ve posted at Comment Is Free is…

“Jack’s offering guaranteed seats in the second chamber to other faith groups.

I’d like one.”

The House of Lords must maintain its distinctiveness.

Well Jack’s hardly suggesting that it’s going to assimilated by the Borg.

By all means reform bad elements but keep the chamber based on a cooperative model.

But the ‘bad elements’ are that its undemocratic and elitist, and that what you want to keep.

Leave competition to the Commons; they can struggle to secure the votes of a paltry 40% of the population.

Let me translate. What Anil’s actually saying here is:

Bastards. How dare you move the goalposts before I get my peerage.

The upper chamber is too important to leave to what can often amount to the laws of chance.

Funny you should say that, you see there is this idea of selecting members by lottery that sounds quite interesting…

Jack’s arguments on House of Lords reform… Mmm… where to start.

Tell you what, lets get religion out of the way first and look at what Jack’s putting forward as arguments in favour of religious representation in the second chamber.

6.22 It is important that faith communities are represented in the House of Lords.

Ah, ‘faith communities’ eh? So right from the outset, we’re taking the line that religion and religious belief can be happily used to divide people up in nice, easily boxed, lumps of homogeneous interests; interests that require some form of ‘official’ representation that’s entirely separate and distinct from any representation that religious belief may get simply because individual members of the House espouse a particular personal faith.

So, what we’re about, then, is preserving the status quo.

The Church of England, as the established Church, enjoys a special status in social and political life in England and more widely around the United Kingdom. This has long been recognised even by people who are not themselves Anglicans.

Well yes, Jack. Quite.

Jack? Just exactly how are you using the word ‘recognised’ here?

Even as an atheist and a secularist I have to recognise that the Anglican Church enjoys as ’special status’ in the social and political life of the United Kingdom. It would be absurd not to recognise that because that it exactly how things are.

The Church of England occupies a massively privileged position is society, one that currently affords it, amongst other things, a guaranteed twenty-six seats in the House of Lords, massive amounts of state funding for Church of England Schools, mandatory religious education and ‘broadly Christian’ acts of worship even in non-faith state schools and even a guaranteed amount of religious broadcast on Britain’s terrestrial television stations.

It would be stupid not to recognise the existence of all that - but whether I agree with any or all of that and whether I recognise that as having any substantive value is another matter entirely.

I can’t but feel that recognise is being used here in a deeply disingenuous manner is order to imply widespread acceptance of the privileges and status of the Church of England without actually allowing the matter of whether that status, and especially the privileges that go with it, are accepted to the test.

Lords Spiritual have sat in the Lords since its inception.

And so have a number of hereditary peers, what of it?

They are the only category of member whose term is limited to the holding of their office.

And that’s because their position in the legislature is directly attached to their religious office. Again we have deliberately disingenuous point being advanced as some sort of mitigation for the privileged status afforded to Anglican Bishops.

The correct manner in to view this is not in terms of the individual but the office - Dr Rowan Williams will, one day, cease to be a member of the House of Lords when he vacates his office as Archbishop of Canterbury… but the Archbishop of Canterbury will always be a member of the House of Lords, no matter who the incumbent is at any given time.

There have in the past been arguments about the disestablishment of the Church of England. There is little steam behind such arguments today, and, in any event, any profound change in the status of the Church must be in the first instance for the Church itself. It is therefore right for there to continue to be special representation of the Church of England in the reformed Lords.

No. No. No. No. No…

Is there really ‘little steam’ behind arguments for disestablishment today, Jack? Have you even bothered to ask?

Of course not.

There has been no public debate on the subject of disestablishment whatsoever, so one cannot assert that there is ‘little steam’ behind such arguments as the question hasn’t been asked. Jack seems to be having a bit of Lord Nelson moment - ‘I see no debate’ - and yet, after his interjection, last year, on the subject of the niqab, he cannot be unaware that there is a considerable, wide-ranging and ongoing public debate about the status and privileges afforded to religion and religious belief by the state.

The main problem here is that ‘disestablishment’ is being used as a canard. In broad historical terms arguments for disestablishment have always arisen in concert with arguments from republicanism and have, therefore, had a very narrow focus on the dual role of the reigning monarch as both Head of State and Head of the Church of England. The counter-argument has, therefore, always been limited to the suggestion that the two roles undertaken by the monarch are somehow indivisible and that disestablishment of the Church of England would, in some generally unspecified form, unduly and negatively impact on the position and status of the monarch as Head of State.

This is simply not true.

Disestablishment of the Church of England would have no constitutional impact on the position of the monarch as Head of State, it would merely enforce a separation of the two roles. Technically, a disestablished Church of England would not have to seek the assent of Parliament in order to remove the reigning monarch as Head of the Church, but such a decision would be entirely in the hands of the Church itself - it would have a free choice in the matter - but disestablishment, itself, would not automatically alter the position and status of the reigning monarch within the Church.

The real debate around disestablishment rests not on the dual role of the monarch but on the privileges and status that the Church of England enjoys by virtue of being the official state church, i.e. its guaranteed seats in the legislature, access to state funding for Church schools, etc… all things that are very much open to debate and that are, increasing, being openly questioned in the course of the public discourse surrounding the role of religious belief in society in general.

These could, and should be debated openly, especially at a time when reform of the House of Lords, and therefore the future status of Anglican Bishops in the legislature is under discussion, and yet it seems clearly that we are, as citizens, to be denied the right to participate in any such debate.

If that were not bad enough, Jack goes on to assert that ‘any profound change in the status of the Church must be in the first instance for the Church itself’. That is complete and utter nonsense, not to mention deeply undemocratic. If that the best argument that Jack Straw can put forward then he should, frankly, be ashamed of himself.

What Jack is stating here is nothing more than the view that the position and status of the Church of England is not a matter to be decided by Britain’s citizens, unless the Church of England, itself, wishes to make such a decision, which amounts to never, or at least not until turkeys start voting for Christmas.

Think about that for a moment. Out of a total electorate well in excess of 40 million adults, a grand total of 574 people - the members of the Church of England’s General Synod* - are the only people who Jack thinks should have any say whatsoever in the matter of whether the Church of England should be afforded guaranteed seats in legislature of the United Kingdom, unless they decide that they want to give everyone else a say in the matter. But then, should that be any surprise to us. After all out of that same total electorate, less than 1500 people - the combined memberships of the Houses of Common and Lords - are to be given any say at all in the matter of reform of the House of Lords.

It should also be noted that the General Synod is also the only body in the UK to have law-making powers delegated to it by Parliament. The General Synod can pass what are called Measures on any matter to do with the Church of England, which then become part of English law - these Measures do have to be agreed by Parliament, but only in so far as Parliament can vote to accept or reject them before the receive Royal Assent, but these MEasures cannot be amended by Parliament.

6.23 Whilst recognising the quality of work Lords Spiritual bring to the House, there remains a strong case for a more flexible approach which would allow the Church to determine, from among the Bishops, those who they consider would be able to make the best contribution, rather than appointment on seniority. Assuming the overall size of the House reduces, it would be difficult to justify retaining the current number of 26 Lords Spiritual.

Well, yes. Obviously.

Although, again the wording here is very interesting inasmuch as Jack refers to the quality of their contributions, which is hardly surprising as of the twenty-six Bishops in the current House of Lords, a mere three have voted in more more that 4% of the votes taken in the House over the last year and the ‘top performer’ - the Bishop of Chester - managed to get along to the House for only 12% of all votes taken.

Jack does offer up some quantitative figures later on in the White Paper:

For example, of the Lords Spiritual between April 2005 and March 2006, 11 attended more than 25 times (out of a possible total of 134). 12 attended fewer than 20 times. 42% of the total number of attendances was accounted for by just 5 of the Bishops and the top 16 Bishops accounted for 89% of total attendances.

But that’s not data, that’s a GCSE maths problem set by a drunken surrealist. The statistics given, in a passage that deals with the issue of reducing the total number of Bishops in the House, are presented in such a deliberately confusing manner as to make it impossible to come to clear view on either existing levels of attendance and how this might shape further thinking on the exact number of Bishops to be included in the reformed House.

On its own, that would sufficient to raise suspicions that something a little ‘iffy’ is going on here, even without taking into account the comments immediately preceding this ‘data’.

The Government has always recognised that the nature of diocesan Bishops’ work means that it is very difficult for many of them to attend the House of Lords with regularity and therefore that their overall representation needs to be higher than would otherwise be appropriate. However, a smaller number than 26 would still deliver this. Much of the work in the House is already done by a smaller core team of Bishops.

In short, whatever number is finally arrived at, it will almost certainly be more than can be reasonably justified by any rational measurement.

The importance of this is that the proposed shape of the reformed House with eventually come down to a maximum of 540 members of whom 20% (108) will be non-political appointees, i.e. cross-benchers. And one would presume that as the remaining 80% of members will be political (either by way of election or appointment in Jack’s model), it would seem that whatever the exact number of seats allocated to Bishops turns out to be, those seats will come from the non-political 20% and, crucially, will account for something more than a number that could reasonably be considered to be the Church’s ‘fair share’.

To put that in context, if we define the actual ‘constituency’ represented by Anglican Bishops in terms of regular church attendance (i.e. once a month or greater) then on the Church’s own figures, their constituency amounts to a little over 800,000 people across the whole of England - remember, neither the Church in Wales or the Presbytarian Church in Scotland is afforded seats in the House by right.

What we can conclude from this is that:

a) Whatever the allocation afforded to the Church of England eventually turns out to be, the Church will be disproportionate over represented in the reformed House.

b) This will operate to the detriment of the independent cross-bench contingent in the reformed chamber, which will have a disproportionate number of seats taken up by members whose attendance at the House can be, at best, described as ‘poor’.

And.

c) That Jack, and others, are fully aware of this and have drafted the White Paper in such a way as to obscure this from the public, deliberately, so as to ensure that this issue received little or no effective scrutiny.

And we’re not finished yet, by any means:

6.24 It is equally important that a reformed House of Lords reflects the wider religious make-up of the United Kingdom, though the formal nominated representation of particular faith groups may not be possible. As the Wakeham Commission pointed out “It is clearly not possible to find a way in which all other faith communities could be formally represented on any kind of ex-officio basis. None of them has a suitable representative body.

Well that’s not strictly true, for starters - it all depends on what you mean by ‘other faiths’. If, by ‘other faith’ you specifically mean ‘not Christianity’ then, yes, it may be difficult to identify specifically religious organisations who could provide ‘official representatives’ akin to those supplied by the Anglican Church.

If, however, you mean ‘not the Anglican Church’ then that’s not true. The Roman Catholic Church, which on regular attendance is actually slightly larger than the Anglican Church, has a perfectly well-established official church hierarchy that could easily supply ‘representatives’ of this kind, as do a number of other sizeable Christian denominations. It also rather presupposes that those faiths that lack this kind of official hierarchy would be incapable of arriving at some sort officially sanctioned representative by other means.

What is there, for example, to prevent an organisation like the Muslim Council of Britain organising its own internal election, from amongst the Mosques affiliated to it, in order to arrive at a representative sanction, if not by all Muslims, then by a significant majority. One can apply that argument to most, if not all, of the main non-Christian faiths, and yet that’s a possibility that neither Jack, nor Lord Wakeham, seems to have recognised.

Overall, the impression given is one of offering ‘faith communities’ representation, but only on the preferred terms of the government. i.e. the government wishes to choose who represents those communities on their behalf and not allow them a free choice of who, nominally, speaks for.

None of that, however, addresses the more fundamental question of whether ‘faith communities’ really need or merit official representation of this kind.

Why should the legislature include individuals who are specifically there to ‘represent’ so-called ‘faith communities’?

Why does religious belief require such representation?

Why is not enough that the House include individuals who, by dint of the personal beliefs, could be thought to be representative of the views of followers of different religious beliefs, as opposed to directly representing the beliefs themselves or, at the very least, the temporal hierarchies that have grown up around those beliefs?

And even if there are occasions on which one needs to get the ‘official line’ from a ‘faith community’, why does that necessitate official representation - there are many other ways of consulting and engaging with ‘faith communities’ and ensure that their expressed views are taken into account, ways that are not wholly reliant on having a designated individual to speak of their behalf.

For all that, Jack leaves his worst argument to last.

The Government will look carefully at how the views of those of faith and those of none can be represented in a reformed House of Lords. This will of course only be realistically possible if there is a significant appointed element in a reformed House.

Again, the argument is ambiguous and, I suspect, deliberately disingenuous inasmuch as he fails to qualify his reference to the necessity of a ’significant appointed element’ in the reformed House.

Taken at face value, the statement is true - if one genuinely wishes to ensure that there is a broad spread of ‘religious’ opinion in the House then one must look to appointment to deliver that; such a thing cannot be guaranteed by the vagaries of the electoral system and the ‘good offices’ of political parties.

But which ’significant appointed element’ is Jack referring to here, exactly?

Only the 20% designated for ‘independent’ members or does he intend this reference to interpreted more broadly as a justification for the additional 30% of members that the White Paper proposes should continue to be appointed to the House by way of direct political patronage?

Jack statement, here, leaves that question wide-open, and again I suspect deliberately so in order to try an conflate the strong arguments in favour an appointed ‘independent’ contingent in the reformed House with those, much weaker, arguments for the retention of political patronage.

There is one final point to be made here.

But for passages dealing with retired ‘Law Lords’* - or Justices of the Supreme Court as they will shortly be known - and ‘former public servants’**, ‘faith communities’ (and Anglican Bishops) are the only non political ‘interest group’ specifically referenced in the White Paper.

* To clarify this, the White Paper proposes that all Justices of the Supreme Court (i.e. Law Lords) should be offered a seat in the reformed House on their retirement from the judiciary, which on the face of it seems fairly reasonable. However, Straw also note that, presently, there are 19 such individuals (former Law Lords) in the House, all of whom sit as cross-benchers, which means another substantial ‘chunk’ of the maximum 108 ‘independent’ members will be taken up before we even get to the question of the House’s need for other forms of expertise.

* ‘Former public servants’ are discussed under argument for retaining Prime Ministerial appointments, and so fall within the proposals for 30% of the House to be made up of political appointees.
Which fair demands that we ask the question “why should so-called ‘faith communities’ be singled out in this manner as opposed to other nominal ‘interest communities’?

Why should we privilege religious belief over and above other common interests and the ‘communities’ that form around them?

I haven’t checked but I suspect that if we apply the same criteria on ‘regular attendance’ used by the Church of England then we’ll find that more people attend professional football matches in Britain on regular basis than attend Anglican Churches on the same basis, in which case why should we not guarantee the Football Association seats in the reformed House?

And what of the many other ‘communities’ one might reasonable define by way of their members holding a ‘common interest’, ‘communities’ that have an official ‘representative body. Could we not argue, for example, that business people form a ‘community’ and thereby grant seats by automatic right to the Confederation of British Industry.

What of medical professionals? Is the British Medical Association or the Royal College of Nurses (steady, Dr Crippen) or any one of a number of equally august fellowships that represent the profession, not equally deserving of our ‘recognition’ and have they not as much to contribute to civil society and to the legislature?

How about scientists? There is the Royal Society of London, one the most respected, if not the most respected scientific institution in the world, an organisation whose past presidents include Sir Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys, Sir Issac Newton, Sir Humphrey Davy, T H Huxley, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Ernest Rutherford. Can one really argue that we should privilege religion over an body that has provided the nation with such a line-up of intellectual giants?

Where is the argument that justifies the status and privileges afforded to religion in the legislature and yet, equally, justifies the denial of those same privileges to these and so many other ‘interest communities’?

Nowhere to be seen.

If I must sum up Straw’s arguments in this section in but a single word, that word can only be ’slippery’ - the White Paper does nothing to advance any substantive or rational arguments in favour of either retaining Bishops in the reformed House or extending a similarly privileged position to other ‘faith communities’, rather it does all that it can to close off public debate on this issue even to the extent of invoking arguments that are clear, fundamentally and unacceptably undemocratic.

Sorry, Jack, but this a poor effort. A very poor effort, indeed.

No work today, due to the bad weather, so I need something to occupy my time… and that something will be Jack Straw’s White Paper on reform of the House of Lords.

I’m not intending to rake over the mechanics of the reforms, rather I’ve been looking through the White Paper to see not what Jack’s proposing - that’s already well known - but what arguments he’s putting up in support of the proposals…

And thus far, what I’ve seen suggests that things are going to get a little messy.

So sit back and relax. I’ve got a new category set up especially for Jack and in a little while I’ll have him safely strapped to the dissecting table, the scalpels will be nicely sharpened, and I will set about flaying him alive.

FIN