Explain Why The House Of Lords Should Be Abolished Essay

The House of Lords is the upper, unelected house of the Houses of Parliament, according to the Westminster model. It consists of Life Peers who are appointed; Hereditary peers who inherited their seats; and Lords Spiritual whoa re important members of the Church of England. They have roles in scrutiny and accountability and also legislation. This essay will discuss the functions of the House of Lords and evaluate whether it should be abolished or not. This will be achieved by addressing its role in scrutiny and accountability, and by considering the issue of it being unelected and therefore not representative, while also looking at options for reform.

The first reason why the House of Lords should be abolished is because it is fundamentally undemocratic. The fact that the peers are unelected and that 92 of them are there because of birthright and not merit makes the House anachronistic and antiquated. A large number of those appointed have also gotten their seat through

The House of Lords is a functioning body that does good work and therefore the issues that it does have should be improved, rather than lead to the whole thing being dissolved. The previous steps to reforming the house have been successful in both making it less powerful and more legitimate. The 1911 and 1949 Parliaments Acts limited the House of Lords’ power to block government legislation and this means that although the Lords are unelected they don’t have enough power to challenge the government that much, as we have a system of asymmetrical bicameralism, and this means that the choices of the people are usually carried out with occasional changes to make sure the government is doing its duty properly. There is also the 1999 House of Lords Act, which removed all but 92 of the hereditary peers, and this made the house more meritocratic and representative, which increased its