An elected second chamber would be as ignorant and partisan as the Commons, there’d be no point in keeping it going.

Every single move to reform the House of Lords has had the effect of diminishing its tory bias, and increasing the breadth of professional expertise present. In fact, I would move for abolishing the Parliament Acts, as they were passed in order to stop the Tories blocking everything using their hereditary Lords majority.

Now that we have a more accountable, less aristocratic selection process, we don’t need the Parliament act, and we can return to having a second chamber with real power to curtail the main parties’ unwavering loyalty to newspaper tycoons and wealthy donors.

Isaby is seriously suggesting Steen should get a peerage? Seriously?

Ye gods. I need to ring a few family members over the weekend, get them to go help Julian out down there. FFS, he was a useless MP for his entire career, he’d make an even more useless Lord.

Hi Unity

I’m not sure, but hasn’t he just listed all the retiring MPs other than Butterfill (who has been ruled out for his recent services to being a total arse). I don’t think that ConHome has actually endorsed anyone other than Howard and Widdicombe (may god preserve us).

I don’t think that stuffing the Lords is a good thing when any party does it – although there are plenty of problems with an elected chamber as well – but I think the main point of this post rather misses the target.

I should say that as a Tory of a distinctly non-ConHome hue, I find most of your posts utterly excellent though!

Illegal:

I doubt that Isaby is daft enough to endorse the worst expenses offenders.

True by told, the list is more a bit of window dressing to call attention to the more serious suggestion that stuffing the Lords is an option.

Would Cameron actually do it?

It would look desperately incongruous after pitch a cut in the number of MPs.

I do, however, think the expertise issue is one that need careful consideration and I, for one, would not be disappointed to see a 90-10 or 80-20 split in elected and appointed members provided that any appointees went in as cross-benchers under strict rules designed to prevent parties using the appointments system to put in their own ringers.

But David Cameron is committed to a “mostly elected second chamber”.

Don’t hold your breath though: he is reported to refer privately to it as a “third term issue”

The Guardian reported: “David Cameron has said he supports a largely elected second chamber, but he is not eager to challenge his own peers on the issue as they are heavily opposed to the end of an appointed, revising second chamber. In private Cameron has supposedly described Lords reform as “a third-term issue”, in other words a very low legislative priority.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/20/lords-reform-cameron

ConservativeHome said: ” it makes sense. David Cameron has plenty of other legislative priorities before reforming the Upper House and initiating a difficult battle with the mass of Tory life peers who oppose his instinct to democratise the Lords.
[Turkeys don't vote for Christmas] … David Cameron’s priority, should he become Prime Minister, will be to increase the number of Tory peers. He will be the first Tory leader to face a second chamber without an inbuilt Tory majority and many Conservative peers are elderly and Lord Strathclyde, Conservative Leader of the Lords, has warned David Cameron that he’ll need an influx of new talent to ensure the frontbench is strong enough”.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/07/in-private-cameron-has-supposedly-described-lords-reform-as-a-thirdterm-issue.html

I am sure we can all sympathise with the issue of fearing being “the first Tory leader to face a second chamber without an inbuilt Tory majority” – or, to put it another way, that he would bethe very first Tory premier to face what every non-Tory premier across our entire political history has always faced.

Illegal Immigrant is right – Isaby has merely listed all retiring Conservative MPs except Butterfill and asked for comments on which might be considered for sending to the second chamber (formerly the House of Lords) in order to balance the built-in Labour bias. [In case you hadn't noticed Derek Conway had the whip withdrawn more than a year ago and Hamilton got kicked out by his constituents in 1997]
There are 23 more Labour than Conservative Life Peers and the overall balance of the LibDem group tends to the left so in order to be able to get any legislation except for the most boring bi- (or tri-)partisan stuff passed into law some balance needs to be restored. As things stand Cameron would need to gain the support of two-thirds of the LibDems every time [in fact it is worse than that because a large number of the crossbenchers were selected by New Labour]: you presumably do think that is a good thing because it comes close to giving the LibDems a complete stranglehold on legislation proposed by a Conservative government but I can quite understand that Mr Isaby does not.
There is no need, in this particular instance, to be paranoid about ConHome.

Mandy’s position insultingly close to the above

The real problem is that each incoming government would use Cameron’s behaviour as a precedent. If the voters kick out the incumbent government at each of the next three elections – which is perfectly possible – we could have an Upper House of 2000+.

AIUI Labour doesn’t have a majority in the Lords at present, but this doesn’t seem to have produced any particular difficulties. The historical record is that the threat of mass creation of peers has obviated the need for it.

Sunder Katwala needs to learn a little history. The reason that we describe the year as 2010 is that history did not start 65 years ago and there have been times when Whigs outnumbered Tories.

True by told, the list is more a bit of window dressing to call attention to the more serious suggestion that stuffing the Lords is an option.

Would Cameron actually do it?

Why not? Wilson, Blair and Brown all did it.

Have you seen power2010′s campaign for no more lords? Co-sign their letter now! http://www.power2010.org.uk/nowchange

Hi, if you agree with Lords reform then co-sign Power2010′s letter for No More Lords now! http://www.power2010.org.uk/nowchange