The documents set out long-awaited options for a reformed House of Lords.

The Bill is grounded in a smaller, 80%-elected House, retaining (controversially) the Bishops. The White Paper indicates that a 100% elected upper House has not been ruled out.

One striking feature of the proposals is that they have nothing at all to say about the functions of Westminster’s upper house. In fact, the White Paper’s summary of the proposals states that “[t]he reformed House of Lords would have the same functions as the current House. It would continue to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account and conduct investigations.”

So the proposed changes would be in form, not in substance.

Now assuming that Parliament’s upper chamber has a role in equipping democracy to deliver sustainable development, is this enough to do the job?

Surely not.

A largely-elected upper house would better reflect a commitment to democracy. But in giving more thought to the composition of the House of Lords than what it might actually do, there’s a huge gap in the proposals.

One important role played by the second chamber is to act as a partial counter-weight to the short-termism that can be built into Commons decision-making as a result of electoral cycles.

Providing for 15-year maximum terms for elected peers (as the Bill and White Paper do) is a sort of half-way house that doesn’t go far enough to ensure that the House of Lords is fully equipped to bring long-term thinking to parliament.

Lords reform needs to focus on substance as much as process.

15-year terms are relatively better for long-termism than 4 or 5-year terms (and relatively better for accountability than unelected life or hereditary peers). But whether they go far enough to instil a culture of long-termism (a clumsy term I know; but it’s the opposite of short-termism) is at best a moot point.

Whilst Peers are often comfortable looking to the past for inspiration, they need to be equipped to look to the future: to think and act on long-term perspectives; and to help to ensure that a sense for the needs of future generations of people and voters, not just the present, permeates our system of parliamentary democracy.

Now funnily enough… this sentiment is quite close to the agreed objective of a new Alliance for Future Generations which FDSD is quite involved in.

Members of the Alliance are individuals and organisations who have aligned themselves with the objective of ensuring “that long-termism and the needs of future generations are brought into the heart of UK democracy and policy processes, in order to safeguard the earth and secure intergenerational justice “.

More on the Alliance in a later post, but you can read an introduction here. 

If House of Lords reform can help to counter the short-termism of representative democracy, it will make a lasting contribution not only to deepening UK democracy, but also to equipping it to deliver sustainable development.

There has already been a lot of work on community empowerment in relation to existing processes of local government (this is ‘inside-out’ thinking; mostly motivated by the need to reinvigorate existing processes of representative democracy).

‘Outside-in’ thinking would mean working with community groups that focus on sustainable development issues. It would mean a bottom-up process of thinking about how community organising could help democracy to work for sustainable development.

There are also wider questions about how community groups self-organise on issues related to sustainable development in the public sphere, and what happens when they choose not to engage with local government or to develop alternative approaches.

In the UK, the rapidly accelerating Transition Town movement is just one example of community self-organisation on sustainable development. Not only does it challenge economic growth models to which most democracies are committed, but it is rooted in community self-organisation: with the goal of fostering resilience in the face of climate change and peak oil.

The spread of the Transition Town movement offers insights into a potential seismic shift in the balance between civic self-organisation on key issues of public concern on the one hand and representative democracy that engages citizens on the other.

Elsewhere, the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 offers a potentially innovative pathway to community empowerment for sustainable development. And the establishment of a new ‘duty to involve’ local people which has been placed upon on local and regional authorities under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health (LGPIH) Act 2007 may work to promote greater accountability on the part of elected representatives and public officials and foster greater public engagement.

But if these new opportunities are implemented in ways that simply replicate existing decision-making structures in local government, they may fail to realise their potential.

In the UK, major changes to the spatial planning system have also been proposed. These include the establishment of an appointed (not elected) Infrastructure Planning Commission to decide on major infrastructure proposals of national significance, and potentially the proposed delegation of some planning roles to Regional Development Authorities tasked with promoting economic development.

Changes like these might or might not enable faster take-up of building and infrastructure development that favours sustainable development; but they also reduce the role of elected representatives and community-level participation in controversial planning matters.

There are many examples of innovation in democratic decision-making for sustainable development, but many community groups have frustrating experiences of engagement with local level representative democracy on issues related to sustainable development.

Common complaints include that consultation is largely a box-ticking exercise that takes place too late or fails to involve interested citizens or groups; unprofessional behaviour on the part of officials or lazy thinking on the part of councillors. When such perceptions dominate within community groups, elected officials can start to be viewed as obstacles to social and environmental progress, rather than allies.

We want to find ways to foster reflection within local groups working at community level on issues related to sustainable development. Our goal is to help local groups consciously to strategise sustainable development activity in terms of its contribution to democracy.

If you are involved in a community group and you are interested in this idea, please feel free to contact us to explore whether we could work together.

In this paper, Professor Tim O’Riordan responds to papers by Ian Christie and Sara Parkin. He considers the relevance of a variety of ‘tipping points’ to sustainability politics, suggesting that we could witness the emergence of a ‘democratic tipping point’.

Professor O’Riordan calls for what he terms a ‘mass mobilisation of virtue’ in both civic responsibility and political accountability and outlines essential features of a charter for democracy and sustainability. 

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