Tuesday 27 October 2015

Will Cameron be brave and surprise us all

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has Come for looking at both Houses of Parliament and to deal with the democratic deficit in Britain – an unfair and out-of-date voting system in the Commons, and an expensive and archaic set-up in the Lords.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.