It's time to pick on the peers

Renewal means fulfilling the pledge now, Conor Gearty says. Then there will be scope for much more

It seems unlikely that reform of the House of Lords will figure in the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, while incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights has made a late and apparently successful bid for an appearance. If that proves to be the outcome, then the nation's constitutional priorities are the wrong way round. Of course, after 18 years of misrule, Labour is swamped by proposals for change to our form of government, and some ordering of initiatives is inevitable. But two principles should underpin this process in these vital opening months.

The first is that of democratic renewal. This is not the same as constitutional reform, a point neatly illustrated by Gordon Brown's transfer last week of the responsibility for setting interest rates to the unelected and, at present, largely unaccountable Bank of England. The proposal to incorporate the convention also fails to offer democratic renewal. Even its supporters admit that the change would transfer large areas of political power away from Westminster to the judges on The Strand, thereby disempowering further the politicians who received such an outstanding vote of confidence on 1 May.

On the Lords, Labour's manifesto unconditionally promised that "the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords [would be ended by statute]". This may not look like a democratic breakthrough. The prospect of shadowy political hacks in second-hand ermine voting as directed by the party leaders who "ennobled" them does not set the democratic pulse racing. But this is where we come to the second axiom needed in the party's first forays into constitutional change - the principle of political momentum.

On Lords reform, the party has also committed itself to the appointment of a "committee of both Houses ... to undertake a wide-ranging review" of possible further changes and to bring forward proposals for reform. A short Bill disenfranchising the hereditary peers would meet little opposition this summer, particularly if it allowed certain of these ancient nobles to become life peers for voting purposes. The Bill could be accompanied by establishment of the proposed committee, which could engage in the thinking and the public education necessary to make more radical democratic reform appear obvious and inevitable.

This principle of political momentum is not strengthened by incorporation of the European Convention, a move which will end the debate on human rights protection before it has properly begun. Much better would be an all-party select committee on how best our rights and liberties can be protected. Something similar has been promised on electoral reform, where an independent commission is to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system. Even Labour's extremely modest proposals on devolution contain a ticking time bomb for further radical reform, in the shape of Scottish and Welsh assemblies whose demands for greater power will not be resistible indefinitely.

The Government is thus releasing into the political firmament a number of strong and autonomous semi-official bodies whose determination to achieve more radical change will be difficult for it to resist in future.

Of course it can reasonably be asked why, backed by its huge popular vote, Labour should not set out immediately to reform the British constitution. This is to fail to see quite how much damage to the language of politics has been done in the Thatcher/Major period. To attempt to undo all of this in one broad sweep might prove a catastrophic failure, as was the case with Labour's grand initiatives in both the 1960s and 1970s, when the party failed on both reform of the Lords and devolution.

Public faith in the value of politics will not be restored overnight. Truly radical change will be possible when defenders of the hereditary principle, centralised government and the current system of voting find themselves perceived as "loony reactionaries" in the same way that many London Labour councils were made to appear to be "Loony left" in the 1980s. If a Life Preservation (Lord Cranbourne and his Chums) (Temporary Provisions) Act is the first step on this road, then it is a price well worth paying, and one that should be immediately enacted.

The writer is Professor of Law at King's College London.