Only a couple of months ago there was a furore about the current prime minister Sir Keir Starmer receiving gifts from Lord Alli. He wasn’t the only one to benefit but it rather tainted the Labour Party’s victory in the election and made a mockery of promises to clean up politics.  Let’s not get too hung up about political parties though, there is plenty of previous evidence of other parties dabbling in, let’s call them, immoral practices that benefit the individual.  

I shouldn’t have been surprised then to hear about some research carried out by Tortoise  that suggested a quarter of the members of the House of Lords do two thirds of the work in the upper chamber.  They found that approximately 210 members of a total of 830 are actively involved in the business of the upper chamber and the rest well, your guess is as good as mine. So what you might ask, we have some rather lazy nobles, but they don’t get paid unless they turn up.  Well true, but then if you read some other research, it becomes apparent that there are vast sums of money being paid for doing nothing. Turning up is one thing, working is quite something else.

‘Over the course of the last parliament, £400,000 has been paid to 15 peers who have claimed attendance for at least 80 per cent of days in at least one month without any discernible activity in that time. Some have made repeated claims of this kind over the parliament’ (Tortoise, 2024).

Up till now I’ve always had a begrudging respect for the upper chamber, particularly when they have knocked back poor, ill thought out or inappropriate legislation conjured up by the government. That’s not to say I haven’t questioned the manner in which the chamber is constituted but I have felt a sense of relief when government have had a hard task railroading through some of their legislation. But it doesn’t seem to matter which chamber it is in parliament, there are a significant number of individuals in both houses whose actions can only be described as corrupt.  From the expenses scandal in 2009 to the latest failures to declare interests, it becomes clear that corruption is endemic.

It seems to me during an era of cuts in public services, the withholding of funds to the most vulnerable designed to help them keep warm, and job losses in sectors where past and present policies make organisations unsustainable, the disregard for proper financial management and constraint in government is immoral. I will leave the debate about whether we should have governance in its current format to others who probably know better than I do but there is clearly a need to abolish the policies and processes that allow for what can only be described as a corrupt noble gravy train.

The Nolan Principles setting out the standards that those involved in public life should adhere to are still in existence and expected to be complied with and yet I fail to see how so many members of our great institutions have even come close to adherence. In case you are unsure what those principles are, I have listed them below and I will leave you to judge whether the nobility stand up to scrutiny.

• Selflessness
• Integrity
• Objectivity
• Accountability
• Openness
• Honesty
• Leadership

References

BBC (2019) MPs’ expenses: The Legacy of a Scandal [online] Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48187096 Accessed: 22/11/2024.

BBC (2024) Keir Starmer received more clothes worth £16,000 [online] Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdd4z9vzdnno Accessed: 22/11/2024.

Information Commissioner’s Office (ND) MP’s expenses scandal [online] Available at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/ico-40/mp-expenses-scandal/ Accessed: 22/11/2024

Tortoise (2024a) Lording it: some peers claim £400,000 for little discernible work, [online] available at https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/11/20/lording-it-some-peers-claim-400000-for-little-discernible-work/, Accessed: 22/11/2024

Tortoise (2024b) The Lords’ work: Tortoise’s Peer Review [online] available at https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/11/20/the-lords-work-tortoises-peer-review/, Accessed: 22/11/2024.

UK Parliament (ND) Standards, [online] available at https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/standards/, Accessed: 22/11/2024.