How to make Peers reflect the Public
Nigel Williams, 28 March 2013
The jury system may tell us something about the ideal make-up of the House of Lords, which remains a bone of contention between Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition partners. If we are content to entrust juries with matters as serious as the deprivation of liberty, there is a case for including people similarly selected in Parliament.
Juries are pretty random. Short of knowing one of the principals or witnesses in the trial or having a serious enough criminal record, almost everyone is eligible. 450,000 people do their civic duty in a typical year. It is a system so long-established as to be generally accepted though not without intermittent criticism.
The jury’s role is limited. They are allowed to decide matters of fact, but they need to be carefully steered. Barristers decide what facts need to be presented to them and judges sum up the facts the jury needs to decide. This limitation makes it unlikely that juries would ever be given a deciding role in legislation. But they have two valuable qualities: representativeness and acceptance.
A random sample is fair. The truth most often exploited in surveys is that the average responses of a genuinely random sample will tend towards the average responses of the population from which they were drawn. In that sense they are representative. If a decision-making body wishes to have in its number people that are representantive of the general population on a whole range of measures, then random sampling is the way to do it. The practical approach is to allocate only a portion of the seats, say between a tenth and a quarter, in the upper chamber, to sortition. That is, their places would be awarded by lot. After the initial set up, something like a monthly choice of someone to serve ten years would provide the required numbers. Each one would therefore speak for approximately half a million people.
In a sense, this is like giving over part of the legislature to a series of small opinion polls. That is a good reason why other reputable means are needed for deciding the rest of the seats.
One hundred and twenty random peers would not be in a position to dictate to the country. As their terms progressed, they would lose some contact with the experiences that qualified them for the role in the first place, while simultaneously gaining experience in the particular skills of scrutinising legislation. As well of the expenses for loss of earnings and access to Westminster they would need some provision to pay for research and advice. Where they would be ideally qualified is in appreciating how any parliamentary proposal would affect the half-million people most like them. They would have the opportunity to make that effect known to others in debate and they would take part in the final vote. If just under one million are unemployed for over twelve months, we might expect two people in the House of Lords to comprehend first-hand the consequences of that condition. If six million have caring responsibilities, 12 can be expected to get selected out of the random peers. (Obviously in the case of carers some alternative provision will be needed for those they care for.) It may be a few less or a few more and it will vary over time but generally if something affects even part of the country, people with experience of it will get randomly selected. They will represent that experience not as witnesses to a select committee or as respondents to a consultation but as members of the House, regularly meeting with all the others and with a vote in any division.
There is also the possibility of admitting people with extreme views or bad behaviour. The behaviour issue does not appear to have disqualified people hitherto from a political career. If Ofsted inspected the House of Commons, how long would it take them to impose special measures? As for extreme views, it is less of a risk than with most other forms of selection. A candidate election can suppress opinions until elected, and a small but vociferous group can make a case for the appointment of one of their number. Sortition, on the other hand, makes the selection of a particular viewpoint people’s selection less likely the fewer people hold it. For a review of contributions to the debate, look up the website of the ‘Kleroterians’, where the most recent contributor was Jeremy Clarkson.
As for selecting the rest of the House, that is likely to continue to cause arguments. Appointing peers is fine so long as you agree with the method of appointment and the people being selected. If you do not, you complain about patronage or bias. Longer-term elections, US-style, and qualification by holding an office also have pluses and minuses. Deciding a portion of the membership by sortition serves to mitigate the minuses. The big plus is that they know about the needs of the public because they are members of the public.