LORD Steel's proposal to replace the House of Lords with a senate elected by parliamentarians, reported in The Herald on Friday, was swiftly dismissed by the SNP.
"Replacing one bloated, unelected chamber with another that would still not be directly elected misses the point entirely and is a far cry from democracy," said Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil, before anyone had much of a chance to digest the former Holyrood presiding officer's thoughts.
We shouldn't be at all surprised by Mr MacNeil's snap verdict. Asking the Nationalists to consider a post-No political landscape is, well, like asking the pro-UK parties to set out their plans for an independent Scotland. Or Jose Mourinho to start discussing Chelsea's Europa League campaign for next season.
As things stand, the unreformed House of Lords represents a ready-made argument for independence as far as the SNP are concerned. Add together all those in the Commons and active in the unelected Upper House, as Mr MacNeil did, and you'll find Scots choose a paltry 4% of Westminster parliamentarians. (On the same basis, England elects a fairly unimpressive 37%, in case you were wondering).
Scottish Labour, by contrast, were interested to hear more, certainly of Lord Steel's notion that a reformed House of Lords, or Senate as he would prefer, could take on new roles as devolution develops across the UK.
Lord Steel suggested his "Scots forty" - the 40 senators elected from Scotland under his plans for a 500-strong house - would become responsible for post-legislative scrutiny of Scottish Parliament Acts, a significant gap in the present Holyrood law-making process. But other ideas have also emerged. Last year the Labour First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, wondered aloud whether a new-look Lords should be made up of equal representation from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The move, he said, would make the upper chamber similar to the US Senate, where each state, regardless of size, has two senators, and would help balance out an England-heavy House of Commons.
Mr Jones's federal-flavoured plans were offered as a starting point for discussions and were far from fully worked through. But these are exactly the kind of ideas that a UK-wide constitutional convention, as championed by Douglas Alexander and now Lord Steel himself, would be able to devote time and energy to studying. Both Mr Alexander and Lord Steel, incidentally, have expressed the wish that the SNP participate in such a body. Whether that happened would probably depend on the referendum result, a comprehensive defeat making it more likely for the Nationalists to get on board than a narrow one. But for now, if the SNP cannot discuss post-No constitutional reform perhaps they should be considering post-Yes changes to Holyrood.
When SNP MSP Dave Thompson came up with a rather modest proposal to increase the number of MSPs by 70 in the event of a Yes vote it was immediately rejected by the party hierarchy. Quite why, apart from the cost, was unclear. After all, as Mr Thomson argued reasonably enough, Holyrood would have an awful lot more to do.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article