Why I’d vote myself out of Lords

As it happens, Gordon Prentice and I agree that the Lords should be elected.

It's just six years since I took my seat and joined their Lordships.

I said then that I would vote to remove not just the 92 hereditary peers who remained (and are still there) but all the appointed peers as well.

I stand by that pledge (even though I have no electors to call me to account!) But I am not sure that Gordon would agree with me that once elected the Lords ought to have more powers and not fewer.

General Elections in this country are a confused affair. On the one hand people are voting for the next government.

On the other hand they are voting to decide who will be their local MP.

Yet all the MPs together the House of Commons is supposed to be the main body that holds the government to account.

This is difficult when the government itself largely controls the actions of the majority party.

So an elected Lords by whatever name Lords, Senate, Upper House needs to reflect how people vote (it must be elected by proportional representation) and keep its independence from the government.

It can do the jobs which the Commons by its very nature finds difficult. To scrutinise new legislation and propose changes to improve it to hold the government firmly to account for what they do and to monitor how existing laws and public bodies are working.

And yes, it ought to be able to block new laws from time to time when they do not reflect the will of the country as expressed at the elections.

Sadly the Lords gave way on ID cards and the vast new national computer data base that will allow the state to know more about us than most of us may wish.

The Tories and the Independents who had opposed the government in four rounds of "ping pong" between the Lords and Commons agreed a "compromise" that in the view of us Liberal Democrats was an abject surrender.

An elected House might not have done so.