Should the Prime Minister Sit in the House of Lords?

By long-standing convention, the prime minister sits in the House of Commons. This article adopts the perspective of a thought experiment in which the premier moves to the House of Lords instead, exploring the potential advantages and drawbacks of this scenario from multiple perspectives. This move would entail shifts in the prime minister ’ s roles and responsibilities, with knock-on implications for the day-to-day functioning of the upper house. While a red-bench premier would be less connected with the quotidian dynamics of electoral politics, they could also take a more strategic, long-term view of politics and engage more actively in deliberative debate in a revitalised second chamber. The shift would also prompt signi ﬁ cant debates surrounding non-elective aspects of the constitution, including the House of Lords, raising important questions about legitimacy and representation. While acknowledging the unlikelihood of such a change, the article argues nonetheless that — as with all thought experiments — taking the possibility seriously can stimulate deeper thinking and challenge conventional assumptions about constitutional arrangements.

for that matter from the remaining Liberals and the anti-Chamberlainites in his own party.A Halifax government, in those circumstances, was likely to be of short duration.Recognising all these factors, Chamberlain offered the premiership to Churchill instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nevertheless, that memorable month left behind an intriguing counterfactual-intriguing from a constitutional standpoint, that is, in addition to the drastically different course that events would undoubtedly have taken in terms of war with Germany.Britain had not had a premier sitting in the Lords since the far-off days of the Marquess of Salisbury, and much had changed constitutionally since then.Above all, perhaps, the 1911 Parliament Act had removed the Lords' veto on money bills, while also replacing its veto on other matters with delaying powers.After 1911, it was impossible to entertain any further doubts as to the primacy of the Commons, a position further cemented by the 1949 Parliament Act and its reduction of the Lords' power of delay from three sessions over two years to two sessions over one year.After 1911, the Commons became the natural home of prime ministers.In 1963, Alec Douglas-Home did assume the premiership while a member of the Lords, but then resigned his peerage and, following a successful by-election campaign, took up his place in the Commons instead.And ever since then, peers have failed to trouble the scorers in terms of the highest office at Westminster.But perhaps things would have been different if Halifax had taken the seal of office and stayed in the Lords, setting a new precedent for the rest of the century.
What would things be like now if that had transpired?What if the next inhabitant of Number Ten habitually turned right, and not left, when entering the Central Hall from St Stephen's?The British constitution is, after all, an essentially political constitution, being subject to alteration at the whim of Parliament.In common with numerous vitally important aspects of the constitution, the precise location of the prime minister's posterior is a matter of convention rather than statute.In this context, the Cabinet Manual, which was last revised under David Cameron, states that the premier will 'normally be the accepted leader of a political party that commands the majority of the House of Commons', adding that, 'by modern convention,' the PM 'always sits' in the House of Commons. 4 In a footnote, the Cabinet Manual acknowledges that PMs have in previous centuries sat in the House of Lords, and concedes that the role of prime minister is 'governed largely by convention.'In other words, there is nothing to prevent a premier sitting in the Lords instead, assuming that the House of Commons did not immediately pass a vote of no confidence-an unlikely proceeding, on balance, given that the choice of PM would still rest with the largest party in the Commons.Granted, a gap of 121 years currently obtains between the end of the Marquess of Salisbury's tenure and today, but the mere passage of time should be no barrier to a country whose parliamentary traditions reach back a thousand years.Constitutionally speaking, a baron or baroness at Number Ten is a live possibility.
Moreover, as this article argues, placing a prime minister in the Lords could offer several concrete advantages over current arrangements.
In brief, these can be summed up as follows.First, a premier without constituency could benefit from greater focus on national business, while also encountering the (supposedly) higher standards of deliberative debate and expertise in the upper chamber-standards that could serve as a kind of check against unrestrained executive power.Second, from the point of view of the chamber itself, the presence of the nation's premier could bring new energy to a partly moribund institution, revitalising the red benches and marking an ever-clearer divide between their active and inactive occupants, while also prompting much needed political and public debate over the composition and function of non-elective parts of the constitution.And lastly, a certain kind of political virtue attaches to contrarian moves-to moves, that is, that make governing more, rather than less, difficult.An ennobled PM would find it harder, not easier, to win parliamentary support for her or his government.Channelling Claude Lefort, we might say that difficulty is the very heart and soul of democracy-that internal contestation is precisely what makes democracy worth having. 5rima facie, then, there is a case to argue for a red bench prime minister.
There would be downsides, of course.An ennobled PM would be less directly accountable to the people's elected representatives in the Commons, for instance, and less able-assuming they spent much time in the chamber-to take the measure of the electorate's diverse interests as expressed by and through their representatives.(Churchill once lamented that Lord Rosebery's career had taken place in the upper chamber: 'Oh, that he had been in the House of Commons!There is the tragedy.Never to have come into contact with realities, never to have felt the pulse of things-that is what [was] wrong with Rosebery.') 6More fundamentally, placing the premier in the Lords would likely be interpreted as a message in support of political invulnerability-as framing democratic politics in such a way that its chief executive officer is seemingly placed beyond question, in an arena at one remove from the hurly-burly of electoral success and failure.

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the institution itself by no means faces a secure future, with Labour recently committing to abolition of the Lords on the advice of Gordon Brown. 7 Prime ministerial elevation to the upper chamber, in these circumstances, could look rather like elevation to the top deck of the Titanic.With these factors in mind, it seems clear that any politician advancing the case for a PM sitting in an unelected chamber would probably be committing career suicide, above all if they happened to be on the left.Convention, on this particular topic, has entered into an ironclad alliance with democratic optics, such that a peer for PM, politically speaking, is a non-starter.
'Is', however, does not imply 'ought'.That is, democratic politics should always be open to open-mindedness itself, rather than ruling some possibilities out of court from the start.Iain Maclean once improvidently declared that 'there can be no intellectually defensible argument' for an unelected upper chamber, but ironically this itself is not a defeasible position. 8There are few constitutional matters for which one cannot advance at least some arguments, albeit with varying degrees of persuasiveness.As such, what is desired is to weigh the respective merits of different arguments on a specific topic, rather than seeking the chimera of a single synoptic position that renders all others nugatory.A 2018 Lords report stated that 'it is unthinkable that the Prime Minister would sit anywhere other than the House of Commons,' but actually this is thinkable, and productively so-for it is precisely the capacity to consider new, possibly startling ideas that often leads to an injection of new vitality into tired debates. 9uch arguments, crucially, need not be taken literally to prompt useful deliberation on more moderate proposals-as witnessed by the stimulating debates prompted in recent years by David Runciman's suggestion that suffrage be extended to children.10Such arguments can be understood as utopian, referencing the long and distinguished tradition of utopian thought from Thomas More to H. G. Wells and Orwell, united by a tendency to invoke outlandish places to spur reflection upon the extant here and now.They can also be viewed as thought experiments, defined as 'devices of the imagination' that are 'employed for various purposes such an entertainment, education, conceptual analysis, exploration, [and] hypothesising.' 11 Thought experiments function by examining hypothetical scenarios-like a Lords-based PM-for the purpose of thinking through its potential consequences, benefits and downsides.Famous examples include Plato's allegory of the cave, elaborations of social contract theory from Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, to John Rawls' veil of ignorance, Wittgenstein's beetle in a box (the private language experiment) and many others, all united-like utopian thought-by a desire to derive value from reflections that, strictly speaking, extend beyond current reality.In the words of the American writer Chuck Palahniuk, they reflect the view that 'our real discoveries come … from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.' 12 In this context, that place is the House of Lords, once described by Herbert Samuel as 'the only institution in the world which is kept efficient by the permanent absenteeism of most of its members'. 13n what follows, I will consider the putative benefits (and disbenefits) arising from a Lords-located prime minister from the perspectives of (a) the prime minister and (b) the 7 K. Stavey, 'Labour defends plan to appoint dozens of peers to House of Lords', The Guardian, 21 June 2023; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/21/labour-defends-plan-to-appoint-dozens-ofpeers-to-house-of-lords#::text=Starmer%20has% 20promised%20to%20abolish,it%20hoped%20to%20 do%20so House of Lords, before proceeding to canvass wider questions arising from the place of non-elected politicians within electoral democracy.The article concludes with a discussion of the utility of such reflections in light of British politics more widely.While it may be impossible and in the end undesirable to install a prime minister mantled with 'the sepulchral integuments of an English peerage', the mere act of considering the possibility-I arguehelps to clarify what is both desirable and undesirable about our current constitutional arrangements. 14e prime minister and the Lords In 2015, the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee stated that there is 'no single authoritative source for what the role [of prime minister] involves and the powers the prime minister can exercise.' 15The powers associated with the office have developed alongside the office itself over more than three hundred years since Sir Robert Walpole's inaugural tenure.Nevertheless, there are numerous extant typologies of the roles and responsibilities of the British prime minister, ranging from the aforementioned Cabinet Manual to Lord Hennessey's exhaustive cataloguing in 2011 of forty-six specific functions under eight distinct categories (updated in Table 1 below). 16o consider each of these with regard to an ennobled premier is beyond the scope of this article, but in any case, many of them can be disregarded-for this particular purposefrom the outset.In fact, so few make direct reference to the Commons that the list can be read as highlighting the very limited degree to which the prime minister's daily duties do involve a direct relationship with the House of Commons.Only three functions listed by Hennessy would entail significant changes with a Lords-bound PM: 1) party political appointments to the House of Lords (Table 1; B.9); 2) answering questions for thirty minutes on Wednesdays when the House of Commons is sitting (C.7); and 3) using the royal prerogative to ratify or annul treaties, which can in some circumstances be blocked by the House of Commons (G.8).There is also a function not listed by Hennessy, that is, the need for PMs to engage with their constituencies, which is also considered below.Note two more tasks in Hennessey's list reference specific chambers: C.6, organising government time in both houses; and C.8, appearing three times a year to give evidence before the House of Commons Liaison Committee.Arguably, these do not require consideration here, since business would still require organising in both houses in any case (C.6), and since there seems to be no unavoidable reason, with reference to C.8, why a PM could not also appear before this committee despite sitting in the Lords.
Regarding the first function to be considered here (B.9), an ennobled prime minister would probably cease to make decisions on partypolitical appointments to the Lords, since continuing to do so would raise a clear conflict of interest: how could the PM legitimately appoint those who would be holding him or her to account in the chamber?Exceptions would need to be made for ministers created via direct appointment to the Lords, but in general the ending of prime ministerial approval of party-political appointments could represent a significant move towards separating membership of the upper chamber, on the one hand, from prime ministerial patronage, on the other-assuming, of course, that control of appointments was not simply handed down to a deputy or other party-political functionary.The move would also likely limit the number of new peers created, a number which has ballooned in recent years and above all with the revolving door of resigning prime ministers and accompanying resignation honours lists, despite calls to reduce the size of the Lords in, for example, the Lord Speaker's 2018 committee report. 17deally, this shift would be accompanied by a dramatic expansion in the powers of the Top public sector appointments and regulators (with some informal parliamentary oversight).7 Appointments to committees of inquiry and royal commissions.8 The award of party-political honours.9 Party-political appointments to the House of Lords (independent crossbench peers are selected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission and the PM conveys the recommendations to the monarch without interference).
(Continues) Overall efficiency of the secret agencies, their operations, budgets and oversight and the intelligence assessments process in the Cabinet Office.5 Preparation of the 'War Book'.6 Contingency planning to cope with threats to essential services and national health from whatever sources. (Continues) current Appointments Commission, which currently recommends non-party-political life peers for membership as well as vetting party-political nominees for propriety.In a revised set-up, the commission could receive nominations from all political parties in order to allot new peerages to replace departing members, while retaining independent decision making as to how best to balance competing demands such desire to reflect recent general election results in Lords composition, on the one hand, and the need to maintain manageable membership numbers and a high calibre of candidates with relevant interests and expertise, on the other.
Regarding the second task-Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs)-there would undoubtedly be a significant change in tone if these weekly events were to take place surrounded by red rather than green.Party-political peers are a significant majority in the Lords-currently outnumbering non-partisan crossbenchers by a ratio of 3.1 to 1-but there is nevertheless a different character to debates in the Lords as compared to the Commons.Lords debates, it is frequently claimed, are more deliberative, more reason-governed and less narrowly partisan than those in the 'other place', with several factors combining to create a notably different context for legislative discussion.As I argued in a previous article in this journal, these factors include 'the near-parity of political parties; the relative political freedom afforded by lifetime terms; a general lack of interest in advancement to ministerial office; the presence of experts in many fields; and (crucially) the presence of a large body of crossbenchers who are open to persuasion and who may lean to left or right as the occasion demands.'18With this in mind, it is at least possible that PMQs could assume It is also worth noting that some version of questions could still occur in the Commons-Deputy Prime Minister's Questions, for example.This would further institutionalise the position of deputy prime minister, which could help to decentralise power away from the PM's office while also helping to ensure that parties focus upon developing a large talent pool upon which to draw for leadership in both chambers.(It is less positively, running two processes in parallel would naturally raise the question of which takes precedence if-for example-differing opinions are expressed in the two chambers by the PM and his/her deputy.In such cases, the natural primacy of the Commons would place severe strain on the situation in the Lords.This specific tension could be lessened by allowing the PM to be questioned in the Commons as well as the Lords, but only by overturning centuries of parlimentary convention, and only at the cost of undermining whatever authority a deputy PM had managed to acquire in the PM's absence. Transferring PMQs to the Lords would also require the opposition to put a heavyweight politician in place as lead questioner, if not the leader of the opposition themselves.Consequently, the thought experiment of an ennobled PM also entails a concomitant thought experiment in which the opposition also places either a senior party member or the leader of their party on the red benches, with the aim not just of placing the premier and government under scrutiny, but also making the case for the capacity to replace the PM at the next general election.In other words, a shift towards a peer prime minister would require an (unlikely) scenario in which broad-based support could be garnered for a fairly dramatic piece of constitutional reform, with all that this would entail in terms of rejigging the structure of the opposition leadership as well as that of the government at a time when Ukraine, the climate and rampant inflation arguably present much more pressing challenges.(This is, however, also an argument against abolition of the Lords; see below.) With regard to Hennessey's category on treaty ratification (G.8), thirdly, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act of 2010 requires the government to lay before Parliament most treaties it wishes to ratify, together with an explanatory memorandum, thus giving statutory form to the preceding Ponsonby Rule convention.By this means, the House of Commons acquired a new power to delay indefinitely-in effect, to block-treaty ratification should the chamber so resolve, though with important exceptions, including exceptional cases, memorandums of understanding, and 'double taxation' agreements which require an Order in Council. 20The Lords can also resolve for and against ratification, but the veto power ultimately lies with the Commons rather than the Lords.In practice, this could convey significant disadvantages to a premier with the desire to ratify an important treaty without the option to address the chamber in which the ultimate decision to ratify or otherwise is made.On the other hand, there is no general requirement for parliamentary scrutiny or debates on treaties, and Parliament has rarely debated treaties in recent years.In practice, then, this apparent disadvantage is unlikely to raise significant difficulties for the day-to-day fulfilment of the prime minister's role.Moreover, such difficulties as did arise could likely be overcome by the appointment of a capable deputy, or indeed a capable deputy prime minister, to lead treaty debates in the Commons should the need arise.
Finally, a Lords-based PM would have no constituency to manage, as prime ministers currently do as sitting Members of Parliament.Recent premiers have struggled to allot much time to constituencies, as noted by Catherine Haddon in 2019: 'Prime ministers in recent history have rarely spent more than a day every other week in the constituency, depending on foreign travel and other commitments.For many it was a once-a-month activity.Thatcher had a monthly surgery in Finchley.For David Cameron it was one Friday a month, plus quite a lot at weekends.' 21Consequently, the ability to shed a constituency would only generate minimal-though by no means non-existent-time and energy savings for an ennobled PM.However, this shift could benefit those constituencies whose members might prefer a more present and active MP than a typically exhausted and distracted premier, being 'dragged from issue to issue'. 22And it is arguably a benefit to the country more widely that the PM has one fewer issue to be dragged to, freeing up at least a modicum of valuable time and energy for national and global concerns.

The Lords and the prime minister
Moving on to consider things from the perspective of the chamber itself, it is worth considering the core functions of the Lords-a rather shorter task than wading through the forty-plus responsibilities of prime ministers, since the upper chamber has essentially three functions that can be considered in concert: 1) to scrutinise legislation; 2) to hold the executive to account for policy and administration; and 3) to function as a national forum for deliberation and debate. 23In the chamber itself, the upper house spends around two-thirds of its time debating legislation and around a third on scrutiny of government action. 24ow would these tasks be affected by hosting the First Lord of the Treasury on the red benches?A common critique of contemporary premiers is that they neglect parliamentary duties in the Commons in favour of less arduous (and more glamorous) activities elsewhere, such as meeting with foreign leaders, leading on policy development, and appearing at events and photo opportunities.Perhaps the comparative tranquillity of the Lords would persuade a peer PM to spend more time in the chamber, in which case it might be reasonable to expect long-overdue shifts in patterns of attendance and engagement from other members.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, peers attended for an average of only 7.6 days per month, with significant variation between more active and (much) less active peers, and with a significant number of members failing to attend at all. 25 It is at least plausible that the increased presence of the PM at debates would encourage greater attendance on the basis of the chamber's enhanced prestige and relevance upon national affairs, therefore enlarging the pool of available expertise and experience to bring to bear upon the key tasks of legislative debate and scrutiny of government.Given the greater variety of available points of view and the tendency of the Lords to favour reason-governed rather than partisan debate, it might then be reasonable to expect further enhancements in terms of deliberative quality in the upper chamber-enhancements which could, in turn, further strengthen the contrast between the adversarial House of Commons and the generally (though not always) more thoughtful and reason-based House of Lords.
This shift could also be strengthened over time by the aforementioned disappearance of prime ministerial patronage over appointments to the Lords, a change which could-if carefully designed-lead to a decline in partisan appointments of fellow-travellers, a wider breadth of professional knowledge among an influx of new and younger members, and a deeper capacity for representation of varied interest groups and regions.Obtaining these benefits, as previously indicated, would require a significant expansion in the scope and activity of the Appointments Commission, which could be granted a remit to secure greater representation for neglected regions and floating, issue-based constituencies in line with notions of 'non-electoral legitimacy' and 'surrogate representation'-concepts that elaborate, as I have argued previously, the possibility and indeed necessity of active political agents beyond and outside the narrow bounds of elected representatives. 26On this view, the property of being elected ceases to be a precondition for the capacity to raise public interests, which can be represented in a 'surrogate' manner via authentic engagement, as opposed to the representative authority granted via elections. 27The commission could also oversee expulsion of inactive peers and voluntary retirement of older peers, thus helping to ensure that nonparticipants and 'ex-experts' (in Lord Tyler's memorable phrase) are kept to a minimum.These benefits could of course also feed into committee work as well as debate in the chamber.
With power comes responsibility, and an enhanced Appointments Commission would doubtless face fierce scrutiny with regard to its composition, governance, principles, decision-making criteria and, of course, its candidates for appointment.In practice, true independence from party politics would be difficult or impossible to achieve, since the commission would inherit the duty of ensuring that the Lords at least partially reflects the population's party preferences, and since some of its members would no doubt be party politicians themselves.Nevertheless, with careful design and aided by, for example, public-facing deliberative consultation regarding the potential contributions of a quasireformed Lords to public life, these and other challenges could be engaged with to at least some degree.Taken alongside the shift of PMQs to the Lords, these considerations point to the potential for a revitalised, trimmed down, and more effective upper chamber compared to current arrangements.
Such a shift would also build on trends that already point towards a more assertive House of Lords.Since the 1999 reforms introduced by Tony Blair's government, the Lords has become much more effective at challenging the government, with an average of 44.4 government defeats per session in the Lords post-1999 compared to an average of 17.5 per session for 1989-1999, and with 506 defeats between 1999 and 2012 compared to just seven in the House of Commons. 28In the 2021-2022 session, government defeats in the Lords reached the unprecedented level of 128 defeats. 29Moves to further enhance the upper chamber's effectiveness, in other words, would be working with, and not against, the grain of recent constitutional developments.

Non-electoral legitimacy and democratic politics
As mentioned in passing above, a Lords-based premier would not only bring about changes in constitutional function, but would also prompt wider reflection upon the role of nonelected stakeholders in politics more widelya large and amorphous body of varied agents ranging from interest groups to NGOs and IGOs, and from global celebrity activists to independent bodies such as the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee.Members of the House of Lords make up a prominent swathe of this group of political actors, with-as discussed above-significant lawmaking, revising, and scrutinising capacities.Second chambers are always controversial and the Lords is more controversial than most on account of its very large size and high variability in terms of member activity and expertise.Consequently, the insertion of the country's first minister into the Lords would undoubtedly reignite recurring debates regarding the nature of the institution itself and its sustainability (constitutionally speaking) in a twenty-first century democracy.
In practice, indeed, these debates would be so intense as to place the Lords at some risk of falling prey to an unusually strong resurgence of abolitionist sentiment-thus probably ensuring that some MPs, at least, would support the policy on those grounds alone.Assuming, however, that the chamber survived the outcry, there could be several more positive outcomes that are worth reflecting upon regardless of the unlikelihood of a red-bench PM.Building on notions of surrogate representation discussed above, for example, it could be said that enhanced scrutiny of the Lords in constitutional context could prompt a more thorough engagement-at once more reasoned and more exacting-with the role of non-elected bodies and agents within contemporary democracy.This would entail moving beyond the tempting, but ultimately misleading, view that legitimacy in public decision making flows solely from elections, and embracing instead the more rounded view that expertise, experience and engagement should also play a role in ensuring that all relevant viewpoints are well represented in public debate.Alexis de Tocqueville thought that, to survive in changing conditions, nineteenth century aristocracy had to imbibe the spirit of democracy.In the United Kingdom, one might say, it might well be the other way around-albeit with 'aristocracy' interpreted in a contemporary sense, with the upper chamber regarded as the home not of blood and titles but rather of accomplishment and capability.
A further consideration relates to PMs themselves.'People don't like their politicians to be comfortable', said Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, and what could be more uncomfortable than a padded red bench for an elected derriere?In the Commons, a PM with even a reasonable majority can act more or less as an elected dictator, as Lord Hailsham once remarked-but would the same be true in the Lords?Would an upper chamber premier feel as able to command events and personalities as they would in the lower chamber?Claude Lefort once described the democratic state as the 'theatre of contestation', viewing contestation itself as the essence of democracy-and what could be more contestable than a thousand-year-old institution housing a 2020s prime minister? 30In similar fashion to the Palace of Westminster itself, whose ornate (if crumbling) neo-Gothic architecture presents a standing challenge to those wishing to appear contemporary and relevant, the institution of the upper house places a degree of pressure upon its members to transcend their organisational locale, for example, by only adopting positions that enjoy broad-based public support. 31A PM encountering this pressure for themselves might-just mightfeel obliged to tailor their programme to the perceived response from a broad-based slew of public opinion, as opposed to the coalition of groups targeted by their own party for the next election.And if so, the move across the Central Lobby, replacing election with elevation, could also serve as a check and balance upon the more ideological indulgences to which premiers have been, sadly, all too prone.
A journey to nowhere?
The next PM is not going to sit in the House of Lords, nor the next one after that, or the next.Too much would have to change, and at the same time, for this to be a live possibility.Depending on one's point of view, it may not even be a desirable possibility, since the current constitutional arrangements favour the exercise of all-but-unencumbered power by premiers with majorities, practically ruling the option out of court for members of that majority, and for those in the opposition hoping to replace them following a general election.What value, then, can be derived from the exercise of exploring this possibility?
According to the philosopher Tamar Gendler, '[t]hinking about imaginary cases can help us learn new things about the world.' 32 Merely considering the option of a red-bench PM forces us to think deeply about the roles of both the premier and the UK's second chamber, question our assumptions about electoral legitimacy and 30 C. Lefort, The Political Forms, p. 258.representation, and expand our horizons towards a more expansive concept of democracy in which non-elected stakeholders can play a more active role in bringing expertise and experience to bear upon law-making and scrutiny.
Moreover, the discussed changes to the House of Lords Appointments Committee could, of course, be undertaken without making any alteration whatsoever to the PM's constitutional location, alongside other useful and relatively uncontroversial small-scale reforms, such as restrictions on overall chamber size, removal of members for non-attendance and criminality, removal of the remaining hereditary peers, and allowing for retirements on the grounds of age or medical reasons.These changes could all be accomplished within the ambit of present constitutional arrangements, obviating the need for 'big bang' reformalthough, as Lord Norton argued recently, the desire to be seen as carrying out big bang reform, or even abolition, is a prime and enduring motivator for proposals of that kind: 'One has to be wary of some Big Bang reform, grand reform, which often takes the form of displacement activity', he said.'The nation's got problems, [so] people [feel they] must come up with constitutional reform because it's a fairly simple, straightforward proposal, rather than actually getting down to the real issues.' 33Since large-scale Lords reform tends to be controversial, the risk is that proposed changeshowever well intentioned-tend to divert energy from other, arguably more pressing, tasks, as mentioned above, and as Lord Blunkett argued recently with regard to Labour's proposals for abolition. 34In the ongoing effort to reform the House of Lords, less really might be more.
31 H. Bochel and A. Defty, '"A more representative chamber": representation and the House of Lords', Journal of Legislative Studies, vol.18, no. 1, 2012, pp.82-97. 32T. S. Gendler, Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 1. S H O U L D T H E P R I M E M I N I S T E R S I T I N T H E H O U S E O F L O R D S ?11 More fundamentally still, 4 Cabinet Office, Cabinet Manual, 2010; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-manual 5 See, for example, C. Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society, trans.D. Macey, Cambridge, Polity, 1986.6 A. G. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests, and Kings, London, Alston Rivers, 1908, p. 280.

Table 1 :
Prime Minsterial responsibilities 5 Determining with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary of the Treasury the detailed contents of the Budget.By tradition, the full Cabinet is only apprised of the full contents the morning before the Budget statement is delivered.2 Interest rates are now set by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer possess an override under the Bank of England Act 1998 if the 'public interest' requires and 'by extreme economic circumstances' but this has never been used.

Table 1 .
Continued 4 Authorisation of the use of UK nuclear weapons including the preparation of four 'last resort' letters for installation in the inner safes of each Royal Navy Trident submarine and the appointment, on a personal basis rather than the Cabinet's order of precedence, of the 'nuclear deputies' lest the PM should be out of reach or indisposed during an emergency.