Jenny Jones is right to argue for reform of the House of Lords (Peter Mandelson is fleeing the House of Lords: now let’s throw out all the other rogues and idlers, 4 February). But can I offer a word of caution?
There is talk of remaking the Lords as another elected chamber. I think that would be a mistake. It would generate a competing democratic mandate, which is the last thing we need (just look at the US if you need proof). What is required is a chamber devoted to scrutiny (of draft legislation and executive action), advice and accountability in public office.
Its members should be experts in their field, people of proven ability, untrammelled by party allegiance, nominated by the public but chosen by Commons free vote, and should hold office for a fixed term of five years. The chamber would not be able to defeat Commons legislation, but could delay it for the purpose of proper scrutiny.
The Commons, too, would need to accept change. To put the executive back in its place, they would have to abolish whipping, take back control of the timetable and undertake to give due consideration to what the hopefully re-named Lords (how about “Senate” instead?) advised, rather than acting as a rubber stamp for the executive. Who knows? In a few years we could actually achieve representative democracy.
Chris House
Hertford
• Jenny Jones is of course quite right to say that a better way must be found to select members of an essential second house, but even if you posited holding a general election as a selection process, someone would have to propose the names on the voting papers. A respected group is needed to make the proposals: it might eventually be the job of the privy council, but currently there is little reason for voters to trust any proposals that that group would make.
There is only one group of people who might have sufficient respect from the voters, and these are a few of the female members of the royal family – sorry to add to your workload, Anne, but you’re younger than me.
John Davenport
Kenley, London
• Jenny Jones’s thoughts on the House of Lords and its occupants remind me why it has long been my opinion that the only members of the House of Lords who should not be ejected are the hereditary and the episcopal peers still present. They alone are not there due to political patronage, or to their having made party political donations; they alone may be hoped to hold an objective and principled view of such legislation as comes their way. Eject every last life peer from the House of Lords; retain only the hereditary and episcopal peers.
Robert Dewar
Kinlochleven, Inverness-shire
• The Green peer Jenny Jones attests to her own conscientiousness and that of some others, but ends her piece by saying it’s way past time to abolish the House of Lords and “urgently replace it with something elected and modern”.
I hope that several of our political parties have their blueprints ready. The combined scandal of the Peter Mandelson revelations and the deliberate filibuster of the assisted dying bill means that the end of the House of Lords, in its present unelected form, must now be very close. When the latter bill falls, public outrage against the Lords will be unsurpassed.
Nick Watts
Kettering, Northamptonshire
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