The Reader: UK needs an elected transparent senate

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Blocked: Lords in 2012, when the then government announced its plans to reform the House
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8 October 2018
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in their letters [October 4], David Wilson and William Ramsay correctly note the need for a scrutiny chamber to check the House of Commons. Yet the fact that the House of Lords avoids accountability means it is less effective in that role.

Our analysis shows that nearly one in 10 of the Lords eligible to vote throughout 2016/17 were inactive — failing to scrutinise the Government’s work on committees, in the chamber, or through written questions.

Indeed, 33 Lords who failed to speak at all in the chamber, table a written question or serve on a committee in the whole of 2016/17 claimed nearly half a million pounds in expenses. This scandal is only possible because voters can’t kick them out.

We need a fairly elected “senate of the nations and regions”, with a constitutional and legal remit to improve legislation. Only through transparency can we open up Westminster’s most exclusive private members’ club, and make scrutiny the basis of a second house. There is big public support for reform. The Government should get on with it.
Darren Hughes
CEO, Electoral Reform Society

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear Darren

Good luck with your efforts to reform the House of Lords. Mine failed. In 2012, the government I served in proposed, as a start, an indirectly elected minority of peers chosen from a party list in proportion to the result of the previous election. This would have increased legitimacy, replaced the similar but less transparent approach we have now where winning parties put their supporters in, and it would have maintained the primacy of the Commons.

This idea was defeated by an unholy alliance of peers, Conservative Party backbenchers and perfectionists — including, I note with amusement, those who now say the Lords has no right to question the current Government’s Brexit plans because it is “unelected”. I doubt any government will try again for a good while.

George Osborne, Editor

Pubs are a huge part of British life

THANKS to Henrietta Billings and Melanie McDonagh for highlighting the importance of protecting historic pubs [The Reader, October 3]. I recently walked the old Pilgrims’ Way from Southwark to Canterbury, and the loss of old pubs and inns was apparent along the entire route.

Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens all celebrated London taverns in their literature; even the genteel Jane Austen mentioned Bromley’s Bell Inn. Pubs are an important focus of community life and we are poorer for the loss of this huge part of British heritage.
Teresa Adams

Children must not learn to fear nature

THE decision by four east London schools to close is an unnecessary overreaction [“Invasion of false widow spiders closes four schools,” October 4]. If provoked, the nip of these spiders will sting but that’s it. Rather than teaching children and parents that wildlife should be feared and killed, we should expect schools to be promoting the need to understand and protect nature.

Curiosity about these spiders, at a close but respectful distance, would do much to open young eyes to the wonder of the wild world around us.
Mathew Frith
London Wildlife Trust

TfL services seem beset by severe delays

CROSSRAIL is not the only TfL rail project suffering severe delays. Passengers on London Overground’s Barking-Gospel Oak line are at the end of their tether — their long-promised four-car electric trains are still not in service months after they should have been introduced. Existing two-car diesel trains are increasingly prone to breakdowns and cancellations, resulting in intolerable overcrowding.
Graham Larkbey​
Barking-Gospel Oak Rail User Group

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