Every five years the Green Party chooses who to nominate to sit in the House of Lords (HL), where the party is currently represented by two peeresses. 2025 is one of those years and the nomination process has hardly come as a surprise. Having started the process last month, the party announced on 22 September that the ‘process has been paused’ while its Standing Orders Committee (SOC) ‘investigate and rule on some potential constitutional issues’. These come under clause 5(xxi) of the Constitution.
SOC is the party’s constitutional watchdog. Its ruling, which has been sent to all the nominated candidates and many others, states that:
the House of Lords selection process has been severely flawed and needs to be restarted
What is the HL selection process?
Selection is done by the Selection Committee and the Interviewing Panel. The first manages the process, which this year included a decision that there should be ten candidates from whom five would be on the final list of nominees.
The two jobs of the Interviewing Panel are to choose who the ten candidates should be and interview them and write reports to be circulated with the candidates’ own statements to members who then vote for their preferred five nominees.
How was the HL selection process flawed?
Here is a summary of the SOC ruling followed by the relevant paragraphs in full:
- The Selection Committee went beyond its remit by choosing who the ten candidates for the Interviewing Panel should be. It was only supposed to set the number and leave the sifting and interviewing to the Interviewing Panel.
- The Interviewing Panel went beyond its remit by proposing to exclude one or more candidates after the interview. Its sifting power is limited to excluding candidates before interview.
- Six candidates appeared to lack the required length of party membership for HL selection. (As SOC wryly commented, ‘our membership records are not as good as we would like’.)
- SOC could not obtain various records that should have been readily available, including:
- a minute of the HL selection scoring system
- confirmation that the Selection Committee had consulted properly
- a clear paper trail to fulfil the requirement for decision making in Constitution s.13(iii).
Lack of good governance
In short, SOC ruled that the people running the HL selection process had been so incompetent (or worse) that the process must be abandoned and restarted. In passing, it made the understatement that the membership system is inadequate and it drew attention to the lack of adequate record-keeping in other areas.
This is the kind of omnishambles that results from a lack of good governance. It is not helped by the fact that the party has over the last few years got rid of so many long-standing, talented and formerly highly-motivated members by way of suspension, expulsion or making them resign in protest or disgust.
The SOC ruling
The relevant paragraphs of the SOC ruling in full are as follows:
1. A major problem is that the paper sift was carried out by the Selection Committee and not by the Interviewing Panel, an explicit requirement. A list of just ten names was then prepared for the Interviewing Panel, which although the minimum required did not widen the selection, under the impression that the minimum number to be on the ballot was also the maximum.
The failure to have this decision made by the Interviewing Panel invalidates this part of the process. The list prepared by this body is not valid and must be discounted.
2. The interviewing panel were under the impression that candidates could be excluded from consideration after the interview; this is not supported by the bylaw. Any list composed of the minimum number of required candidates would preclude exclusion anyway, even if there were such a power. While a minor point, it should have been explicit that there was no power to exclude an interviewed candidate from the ballot.
3. The interviewing panel were under the impression that they could ‘recommend’ five candidates who would have all their details presented on the ballot, while those not recommended would be presented in less detail. There is no ground in the bylaw for producing a recommended list, nor for differentiating between candidates in the presentation of the required information on the ballot paper (i) One paragraph in the applicant pack confirmed this and suggested that candidates excluded from consideration would also be included on the ballot (ii).
4. Paragraph 1(iv) requires the selection rules to be agreed with the ERO, however these were published without any discussion with the ERO.
5. The period of membership required was set in the applicant pack: “Candidates for the House of Lords list shall have been a member of the Party for the three complete years preceding the close of nominations”. Since no period of membership is specified in the bylaw, the agreed regulations could set such a requirement. SOC have been informed that at a late stage in the process, the membership requirement was changed from three to two years. The original requirement for three years membership may have put off some potential candidates with two years membership from applying. This late change requires the entire nomination process must be restarted to allow any such members to apply.
SOC have also been made aware that two of those included on the candidate list had less than two years party membership, while a further four, including two who were on the short list prepared for the interview panel, had discontinuous membership with the latest period being less than two years. SOC are, however, conscious that our membership records are not as good as we would like.
6. The Applicant Pack includes a set of criteria that candidates would be expected to fulfil. These provide the basis for a scoring system for candidates in the paper sift, bringing transparency to the process. SOC asked for a minute of the panel making the original decision, together with the scoring system used, but this has not been provided. Similarly, we have not had confirmation that the selection panel consulted the appropriate bodies before deciding on the number of nominees. SOC are concerned about the lack of a clear paper trail for decisions made, that could easily be made available to us, and that would fulfil the requirement for decision making in Constitution s.13(iii).