Lords and Leg Cos: Two Second Chamber Sagas

New Zealand's approach to second chambers is best described as mercy killing which works well in a smaller polity where the first chamber can take up the burdens a second chamber would have helped to carry. Now, 50 years later, New Zealand has discovered the added benefit that proportional representation produces many of the bonuses claimed for second chambers and adds more. In Britain's bigger, tradition encrusted polity we are making a mess of reform of the House of Lords. The House of Commons is not capable of taking on the extra work the abolition of the Lords would require. So the peers stagger on. Labour made easy promises of modernisation, democratisation and the abolition of the hereditary peers without thinking any of it through and is now grappling with the consequences. Accidentally we have ended up with a very effective second chamber but a temporary one. Having released the democratic beast from its cage we seem set to upset this balance to create a hybrid House which will be mainly elected. Unless there is a belated decision to leave well alone.