The passage of the Welfare Reform Bill has thrown up significant problems for those of us on the left. I’m not talking of the content, though of course that too has caused its fair share of consternation, but of the process of scrutiny, and the fact that this has been largely sub-contracted to the apolitical groupings in the House of Lords.

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, but the high profile rebellions in the Lords have shown the value of having independent expertise in the policy making process. Where the elected MPs and most of the party affiliated Lords voted along Party lines (with the exception of a few brave Lib Dems and even Conservatives) the Crossbenchers and the Peers provided the scrutiny so missing on this area of controversy.

This reminds me of the case of Professor David Nutt, the Labour Government’s drugs advisor who was sacked for giving advice on, um, drugs. Nutt, like the Lords wasn’t an elected politician, though it turned out his job was at the caprice of one. As such, he felt his job was to present evidence and hope that would be what policy would be based on.

But that isn’t how democracy actually works.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’d like to run for Parliament one day. But if I ever become an MP, I am under no illusions of the limitations of that role.

An MP, especially a backbencher, has a very limited amount of political capital. On most issues you will be a long way from being an expert and will have to listen to advice and  lobbying from your constituents and from pressure groups.

The most successful backbenchers fall into two categories generally: the trusted pair of hands and the campaigner.

The campaigner has a single cause that they dedicate the majority of their energy to. They expend the majority of their political capital on pursuing that issue doggedly and focusedly.

The safe pair of hands has a say in many policy areas, but rarely takes the lead.They understand the politics and the process and they help their Parties get things done. They are expeditors.

Neither is wrong, neither is doing politics wrong, both are essential to the functioning of our present system of democracy. One will play a role in many small decisions that are important to many, one will play a leading role on an issue that is essential to some.

But political capital, parliamentary time, resources and the patience of colleagues are all finite. If I were to dedicate my time to a controversial position, such as campaigning for a rationalist drugs policy, that’s time, capital and resources I wouldn’t have to dedicate to other priorities and issues.

Equally, if I were to campaign on a controversial issue, I would not necessarily be representing the views of a majority of my constituents. So my ability to develop that profile may be effected by many external democratic factors. There’s no point in campaigning on something for five years only to lose your seat and see all your advances reversed by your successor.

So decisions on what to vote on, what to campaign on and what to focus on as elected representatives rely on answers to so much greater questions than “what is right and what is wrong?” and it would be naive to think otherwise.

Crossbench Peers generally don’t have to consider these factors. The non-hereditary Peers are usually there because they are considered experts in their field, whether that field be business, charitable, scientific etc.

I’ve always been in favour of a fully elected House of Lords, and I’m not yet quite willing to give that up. I believe in democracy and I believe the will of the people should be sacrosanct. I was briefly involved in the democracy movement in the UK, and watched frustratedly as good people with good intentions failed to reach an agreement on what a predominantly elected House of Lords would look like. At the time I was so sure of the bad motives of the blockers.

To quote the second best North American songwriter of the last century “Good and bad I defined these terms, so clear, no doubt, somehow. But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”*.

Now I recognise that to move to a fully elected chamber would be a great gain for democracy, but would also entail a loss. A loss of dispassionate expertise, unhindered by the need to make that expertise palatable, popular or even pleasant.

Is there a circle to be squared between expertise and democrac?. I’m not convinced there is and I see the value of both. Which is why I suspect that once again, Lords reform may prove far more difficult to implement than expected and less sweet a victory than was once anticipated.

* Bob Dylan, My Back Pages. The number one being – of course – Canadian Leonard Cohen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 at 00:20 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.