Politics

Shipping the House of Lords north is a great idea. Let’s send the MPs as well | Simon Jenkins


Will we soon see ermine on the Ouse? The weekend’s report that the House of Lords might be moving, lock, stock and barrel, to York is radical, exciting and sensible. If this is the new Boris Johnson, all hail the chief. It is precisely the talisman needed of a government that has had enough of the southwards drift. Such ideas are often mooted but always crushed by a reactionary Westminster. The only doubt must be whether the Johnson-Cummings coalition has the guts and staying power to push it through.

Britain now regularly bottoms Europe’s league table in the disparity between its capital and its provinces, in everything from wealth and health to productivity and investment. The London magnet is awesome and relentless. Every infrastructure decision, from HS2 to Crossrail to research centres to museums, is aimed at London. This will not be reversed until those who take decisions view the nation from outside the capital. They have to get out of town.

Moving the House of Lords would be largely symbolic, since the house is itself largely symbolic. It should stop being a mix of worthy veterans and party hacks and a place where seats can be bought along with the right to collect £300 a day. Johnson’s reported idea of making it a chamber of the regions is excellent. That was how parliament functioned in the Middle Ages – and it worked. It staved off revolutions.

As for the Commons, reform is no less urgent. MPs must shortly face a decision to vacate the Palace of Westminster. Parliament is not going to matter much over the next five Johnsonian years and the institution is badly in need of a detox. The building is already a disgrace, despite the huge sums of money continually being spent on it. The place is so rotten Big Ben cannot even be made to ring for under half a million pounds.

Current proposals for the temporary evacuation of the palace read like something from a Ministry of Defence aircraft carrier spec. Every excuse has been dreamed up to increase cost – MPs’ health and safety, national security, respect for tradition, staff facilities, swimming pools and gyms. Members want the taxpayer to build an extravagant replica House of Commons by demolishing a starred listed building off Whitehall behind Richmond Terrace. No other organisation in the land would be allowed to do this.

In its place MPs want to erect a Disneyland Commons chamber with up to half a billion pounds of public money – all just for four years of use. This is chiefly because they have insisted on keeping replica division lobbies and not doing what every other country’s assembly does, which is vote electronically. They cannot bring themselves even to save money by experimenting with a semicircular chamber, for fear it might reduce the shouting idiocies of prime minister’s questions. All this is ruled by the speaker, the leader and a commission of mysterious MPs. This is how Britain, or at least Westminster, is run. It will make the MPs’ expenses spent on moats and duck islands look like small beer.

The answer has to be to get the hell out of the village, to escape the bubble, go on tour. Nothing would bring a more refreshing change of air to British politics after the past three years than for everyone to leave Westminster. There are debating chambers waiting the length and breadth of the land, from Manchester to Edinburgh, Cardiff to Winchester, Bristol to Newcastle.

Since the Commons chamber is rarely full beyond Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the inconvenience would hardly be great – less so for provincial members. MPs can keep their London offices. As for the media, another England – another Britain – would emerge from the shadows and come to life. Every issue would look different, every priority shift, every budget subtly adjust.

As for the lords, permanent residence in York would sort the wheat from the piffle and wind. If it is to be more than a distinguished old persons’ club, it will have to play a role that challenges the Commons. It must be a true champion of the provinces. It could argue for the rerouting of the benighted HS2 up the east coast. It could demand such vanity projects be concentrated in the north.

The mooted site for the new chamber, in a goods yard outside York station, is ideal. It is currently occupied by a museum crammed to bursting with exhausted steam engines.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist



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