Rock da House

House of Lords reform. People talk about this one a lot. Here are my thoughts - not checked if anyone has come to the same conclusion.

1. It's good having the House of Lords because it adds value. Bills amended by the Lords generally end up better than if they hadn't been.
2. An appointed Lords is undemocratic.
3. A directly elected Lords would be too like the Commons and therefore lose its value.
4. A mixture of the two would satisfy no-one, and the elected peers might consider themselves more legitimate than the appointed ones.

So what to do? Ensure that peers have been democratically elected at some point, but make the Lords arms-length and different enough to the Commons so that it continues to add value.

You could do this by giving MPs the opportunity to leave the Commons and sit in the Lords, subject to the following provisos:
1. An MP would need to have served at least six years.
2. A peer would serve one term of somewhere between ten and twenty years. (I'm not sure of the turnover of MPs - this would need to be worked out to ensure that the Lords wasn't too big or too small).
3. Anything that would disqualify you from being an MP would also disqualify you from being a peer (except being a peer).

Advantages:
1. Peers would have been democratically elected and re-elected.
2. Peers would have a degree of experience and seniority appropriate to the role.
3. Experienced MPs who still have a lot to give, but are less willing/able to deal with the demands of being an MP, would still be able to contribute. This would benefit both the MP and his/her constituents.
4. The Commons would have less dead wood.
5. Because it wouldn't be possible to seek re-election, peers would be far less tied to the party line and the value-add of the Lords should be preserved.

Disadvantages:
1. It still might be too like the Commons.
2. It would 100% consist of politicians, whereas some of the most useful current contributions are made by non-politicians.

Discuss...

IMR (not PT)