Labour leadership hopeful Yvette Cooper has called on David Cameron to freeze or cap new appointments to the House of Lords until a plan to reform the second chamber has been put in place.
The prime minister is expected to appoint a large number of Conservative supporting peers in the dissolution honours list, which is expected to be made public in the coming weeks, adding to the 791 peers who currently sit in the Lords.
Cooper said: “For generations the constitutional settlement in Britain has relied on political parties and prime ministers respecting democratic principles and not using constitutional change to pursue their own party purpose.
“Instead David Cameron and the Tories are vandalising democracy by pursuing their own narrow party political interest rather than seeking public consent or cross-party consensus for major changes to our democratic institutions.”
“The list of Tory party political attempted assaults on our uncodified and partly unwritten constitution is long,” she said, pointing to the government’s appointment of Conservative supporting peers, proposed boundary changes (expected to benefit the Conservative party) and changes to party funding (expected to damage Labour).
Cooper said that if she wins the Labour leadership race she would establish an extra-Parliamentary constitutional convention, “in the absence of action from the prime minister”, to draw up a new written constitution for Britain.
“Our current constitution is out of date,” she said. “But we can’t rely on this prime minister to modernise it in the wider interests of democracy rather than the narrow interest of the Tory party.”
According to UCL’s constitution unit, Cameron has made more party appointments to the Lords than previous prime ministers. Of the new appointments made to the upper house since 2010, 62% have been to the government benches, compared with 43% under Blair, 47% under John Major and 48% under Margaret Thatcher.
David Cameron made new appointments to the House of Lords at a faster rate than any other prime minister since life peerages began in 1958, with appointments averaging 40 per year.
The Conservative party currently has 228 members in the Lords, Labour has 212 and there are 178 crossbenchers.
It is the first time in modern political history that a Conservative government has not also dominated the second chamber, as the House of Lords Act 1999 removed the majority of hereditary peers, many of whom were Conservative supporters.
The Lords is therefore likely to be a key battleground for the government as Conservative peers are heavily reliant on the support of crossbenchers to outnumber the opposition. The government has already suffered a spate of defeats in the Lords over devolution, the EU referendum and English votes for English laws.
Speaking last week, David Cameron has said he intends to press ahead with plans to appoint more Tory peers despite growing calls for further reforms to the House of Lords in the wake of the resignation of Lord Sewel over allegations that he took drugs in the presence of sex workers.
Cameron said: “It is important the House of Lords in some way reflects the situation in the House of Commons. At the moment it is well away from that. I’m not proposing to get there in one go. [But] it is important to make sure the House of Lords more accurately reflects the situation in the House of Commons. That’s been the position with prime ministers for a very, very long time and for very good and fair reason.”
