UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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Sortition for the HoL or it's a waste of time.
I love that idea actually. Basically a lottery where you can randomly become a Lord for a couple of years, draw the salary, then go back to your regular life.
It’s a great idea until you remember the English populace and their voting history.
I think keep the HoL (but maybe rename it), abolish peerages, have a fixed term, keep the appointment commission but have half of the members of that sortified.
And what happens to people that earn more than a MP? Lots of qualified people earn more than than a MP, so they would need to self exclude, develop political aspirations that would make up the loses (read consider corruption), or sacrifice their personal wellbeing to serve in parliament.
They could refuse, continue doing their job on the side, or just take the temporary pay cut to enjoy a close to do nothing job for a few years. I don't think that's anything to be concerned about. An MP gets over £90000 plus expenses, that's triple the median salary. If those that earn more want to self select themselves out of power, they can definitely do that. That's only about 4% of the population.
https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/surgeon/salaries
I don't think you realise how much £91000 + expenses actually is in the UK.
And currently the house of Lords is a bunch of old geezers that don't know anything about anything, so yeah, taxi drivers and farmers would be a welcome change. They actually talk to normal people once in a while.
And again, if they feel like serving the public when shaping policy about their profession is important enough, they should be happy to take a pay cut for a few years for the greater good.
Look, I'm not British and frankly do think the Lords is silly. But I can name three members of the House of Lords, and 2 of them at least demonstrably deserve to be there on political merit, whether or not you agree with how they vote. I have no idea what the ratio is across the whole of the Lords, but at least not all of them "don't know anything about anything".
Don't get me wrong, I prefer the Australian model where Senators are elected with a proportional system and serve for terms twice as long as lower house MPs. And the Canadian model of "lifetime" (subject to retirement age) appointments also has merit. It's just that not ever single Lord is completely undeserving.
The three Lords that I'm familiar with, fwiw, are David Cameron, David Willetts, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
IMO sortition with a minority of appointed cross-bench experts is the ideal solution. The cross benchers are generally excelent and worth keeping.