With the Scotland referendum coming up in the next few years there's one thing i'm surprised hasn't been mentioned; a second government house to serve a similar role to that of the House of Lords and the Senate, i.e vetting process on bills from the 1st house.

Now the way Scotland's parliament was set up, it was meant to be near to impossible to gain a majority but the the current SNP showed that this system was fallible. While not great, as Holyrood only has limited powers it's not too bad as really important things are still handled in Westminster. If Scotland does become independent Holyrood becomes responsible for a lot more important things and a 2nd house is essential.

There are two options that spring to mind:

1. A version of the UK House of Lords - unelected officials that hold the post for life. Really can't see that being popular and to be honest in a 21st century democracy it stinks.

2. A version of the US senate - elected officials that have the same party affiliations as members of the 1st house. A problem i see is the same problem with the current system in Scotland, if a party is really popular it could win a majority in both houses and basically do whatever the hell they want for a term.

There was a third option someone explained to be once. Basically a semi-technocratic house, it would be made up of scientists, lawyers, businessmen, etc. who are not elected in the traditional sense but are invited by a committee of members of the first house to serve for 1 term at a time. Their job is basically to pick apart any bill passed and decide if it's the best thing possible, hopefully without any of the usual political bias.

Obviously there are probably dozens more variations out there, feel free to mention them.

So anyway, if Scotland was to get a second house, or the House of Lords was scrapped in favour of something modern what form should it take? A pure, elected house with the same parties as the 1st house, a house of invited members or something different?

I think you've nailed the basic problem. If the second house is not democratic it's not fair, and if it is democratic it will just ditto the first house. The idea is really just cargo cult imitation of feudal systems which accomodated different power groups and never pretended to be fair toward the general population.

Well, here in the Netherlands the first chamber of parliament (which actually comes second in the order in which prospective laws are approved) is elected by representatives of the provinces, and in turn, the people choose the representatives to the provinces.

It's both a way to ensure populist parties need at least years while remaining stable before they can control both chambers to a significant degree, and at the same time there's a provincial influence as well. For instance some small minority in the Friesland province feels like an own people, and they've got some sort of nationalist party going on.

At the same time the structure ensures that such separatists can never gain a majority.

Mind you, we have an open party system with equal representation. No district voting like in the UK or winner takes all stuff like in the US. It's brought us the problem of extreme political division, with 8 serious political parties and two smalltimers/one-issue parties, and possibly another one on the way.

At the same time, it ensures we don't have a lot of what they call 'policy oscillations'. Basically that's when a party radically changes policies, and after the next election another party does it again in a different direction, and governmental reliability suffers as a result.

I never understood the need for two houses, the people have said what they want already. In a federal structure where they have to pretend to represent several countries it can seem anachronistic at best.

Karma168:
There are two options that spring to mind:

1. A version of the UK House of Lords - unelected officials that hold the post for life. Really can't see that being popular and to be honest in a 21st century democracy it stinks.

There was a third option someone explained to be once. Basically a semi-technocratic house, it would be made up of scientists, lawyers, businessmen, etc. who are not elected in the traditional sense but are invited by a committee of members of the first house to serve for 1 term at a time. Their job is basically to pick apart any bill passed and decide if it's the best thing possible, hopefully without any of the usual political bias.

There are 2 differences to The House of Lords and the 3rd Option.

Firstly The house of lords are appointed for life.
Secondly sadly no committee apointment.

Otherwise the lords consists of lawyers, scientists, businessment and the like who can speak with experianced authority about topics.

Frankly I'd stick with the house of lords system any day. Why? They can't be bought out!

No one bribes them as their veto is less powerful due to the fact the commons can over rule it if the bill passes several times.

However trhe lords go through every single line of the bill, line by line and debate each and every line, and often offer hundreds of amendments before the bill gets a debate in parliment.

One lord commented that the majority of bills are in a right state before they have been checked by the lords... America could do with one in my opinion.

Eh, in Australia we just vote them in, the idea of having an aristocracy never got off the ground.

The way they are voted in is different from the lower house, though.

Comando96:
Frankly I'd stick with the house of lords system any day. Why? They can't be bought out!

Why not? Bribing them works exactly the same as with others. They're probably even more susceptible to corruption as their position feels more secure. 26 of them are clerics of the state church for example.

There's only 15 people in the entire house of lords who have been granted their title of the basis of merit. Meaning that about a 98% majority of the house of lords doesn't have their seat because of political expertise, also counting the law lords because people who have regarded reality through a legal straw for all their lives aren't very fit to speak on diverse subjects either.

the house of lords needs reform its true. at the very least its appointments procedure should be completely outside the hands of government. the composition of the lords has been hugely abused by the last two governments (cameron for example has appointed 117 in less that a year in an unapologetic attempt to politicize the upper chamber which is actually an affront to the British political system but the real villain is blair who made all this possible with his half arsed "reform")

but the basic idea itself holds merit.

the lords job (which is voluntary and part time) is to basically assess and refine laws from the lower chamber taking into account their actual application and how they will interact with whatever already exists (in many cases in the minutiae) and effect British public life in general (including morals, ethics and law) using their expertise and accumulated life experience and with a somewhat conservative pragmatic approach befitting aged "wisdom".

this counterbalances the fact that the commons can (and does) institute sometimes sweepingly drastic idealogical driven changes to an extent that is actually massive compared to some of its contemporaries (compare the speed of the change of something...anything in the US for example)

you want a recent example of that in action have a look into the actual individual points the lords through back to the house from the welfare reform bill and their debate on them.

they should be picked from people who are at least semi retired (so they can attend debates in their fields) certain people should get a spot for having a lifetime at the very top of UK and international politics (i personally would at least include former PMs and Chancellors on that basis for example) but BY NO MEANS should the lords be filled with politicians.

kinda the whole point of the lords (as its ideally supposed to be) is that a great deal of the time elected politicians talk crap.