Richard Askwith’s proposal for replacing the House of Lords is a beautiful one. Like all the best ideas it can be summarised in a few sentences and it seems so sensible, so perfect and so simple that it is surely deserving of support. I quote: “The current peers would be replaced by 400 People’s Peers, randomly conscripted and weighted to be a small, representative sample of the electorate as a whole. Service would be ‘compulsory, well-paid and prestigious’, perhaps even involving ermine and titles.”
And to quote HL Mencken: “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong”. In the case of the People’s Peers the solution is wrong, but not for the reasons Askwith presents himself. Askwith’s principal reason has been given to him by outraged peers and MPs, who point out the loss of expertise from such a scheme. As anyone who has ever spent any time in the Houses of Parliament can confirm, expertise is not the first impression one comes away with. I fully believe that a representative sample of the population would have as much expertise in a particular random subject as almost anyone in our Parliament.
The problem with the proposal is that it is brilliant theoretically, but disastrous practically. And to find the reason for this you only have to look at the one similar compulsory exercise that currently exists – long term jury service.
I spent 8 months on a jury before the trial collapsed. It was a life changing experience. I lost my job as a result of the length of time I was away. I then started a company with two others which we later sold and I became reasonably wealthy. But my main memory of the trial was just how resentful my fellow jurors were to be there.
During the jury selection process, I attempted to avoid the long trial by putting in a fairly detailed document describing my important role at work and what a vital part of the organisation I was. I was one of the first to be called forward by the judge and he read out my self-aggrandising report to the court. He then put the document down, peered over his glasses and asked: “How many people work at this company, Mr Smith”? “About 20,000,” I replied. “And they would all be unable to function in your absence?” he enquired, devastatingly. I was the first juror to be selected.
Other prospective jurors went to greater lengths to avoid the trial. One appeared with a letter from the Chief Executive of Unilever explaining his essential role in selling detergent. Another claimed he was unable to read, despite the fact that he could obviously write. A woman explained she was trying to get pregnant. “How long have you been trying,” asked the judge? “Three years,” came the somewhat sheepish reply.
As the unlucky few were chosen and trudged dejectedly to the jury box, it appeared that we were the ones who had been found guilty and sentenced to a long stretch. And then the trial began. The law prevents me from discussing it, but I believe I can say it was sporadically fascinating (visits from international experts in arcane ephemera one minute, followed by high-class escorts the next) but fundamentally tedious.
Of the 12 jurors, one managed to eject herself after three days by having a mental breakdown. After some debate, an unfortunate reserve juror was dragged in to replace her and the trial restarted. As the case progressed and we sat listening to arcane debates about the law, the resentfulness among the jurors increased. Jurors would arrive late, absence from sickness increased and, most worrying, there was an unwillingness to engage with the process and examine the evidence.
For various unusual reasons in the trial, I was elected foreman quite early. I became more depressed as the notebooks of other jurors filled up with doodles and shopping lists. The only juror who was pleased to be there and engaged with the trial meaningfully had already decided the defendants were guilty and kept passing notes to the judge pointing out their shiftless behaviour or suspicious facts he had found in our evidence pack that he believed the prosecution had missed.
When the trial collapsed with no warning and we were dismissed, we all sat there for a few seconds unable to believe what had happened. We then shuffled out, like the victims of an accident and went back to our lives. Or in my case to a job that had been handed to someone else and a redundancy notice.
All of these problems – an unwillingness to participate, resentfulness at being unable to withdraw from the process, disinterest in the relevant subjects would be magnified several times over in the People’s Chamber. And there would be many other issues: Would you compel someone to serve who has just given birth? What if someone developed a serious mental health issue during their tenure? Would someone who ran a small business be forced to shut it down and layoff their workers? Would someone who refused to participate be thrown in jail? Etc etc etc.
People would also seek to avoid selection in the same way they do for jury service, with the very real issue that the People’s Peers could become self-selecting. We could end up with a group of people very similar to those that carry out the job now. People with time and/or resources and/or partisan views– not the hard-working, honest, everyday folk that Askwith wants to represent us.
It is easy to look at our current systems of government with their endless indecision and inability to reach consensus and despair. But the answer is surely not to centralise matters further with a randomly selected group of disinterested people compelled to attend. Spread the love – get rid of the second chamber and devolve the majority of law review and rework to local chambers that can adapt them to suit their own local needs. A peerless solution, surely?
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