Set up a Constitutional
Convention into the Governance of the UK and Reform the House of Lords
Over the summer the Prime
Minister said that he ’regrets'
not reforming the House of Lords in the last Parliament. Maybe today he regrets
it a lot more!
So a ‘review’ on the role of the Lords is to take place. This is
long, long overdue!
The review can’t simply
mean tinkering around the edges or packing the second chamber with yet more
donors and ex-politicians, at a cost of over £2.6 million per year in expenses and allowances – and
that’s before the extra office and staffing costs are taken into account.
It is clear that there is a crisis of democracy in the UK – a
government in power on just 37% of the vote, and Unelected Lords full of too
many former politicians, friends and cronies. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The two are democratically-dubious
chambers and it does not serve the people at all well in the modern world.
The Time has Come for
looking at both Houses of Parliament and to
deal with the democratic deficit in Britain – an unfair and out-of-date voting
system in the Commons, and an expensive and archaic set-up in the Lords.
Even the Chancellor George Osborne in a statement in the House of Commons today said: "My view is clear: we need
an elected House of Lords."
If the two of them care
for the future of the UK Union and wish that the people of the four nations
live in a modern and truly democratic Britain then the next steps are clear and
compelling.