Letter: Reform required in House of Lords

IF PEOPLE would like to see fairer representation at Westminster (News, 2 May), they should consider achieving that through reform of the House of Lords rather than through the introduction of a conventional form of Proportional Representation just for the Commons.

It should be remembered that there are two Houses of Parliament, not one; so it is better to adopt a holistic approach and consider how to improve the two chambers in conjunction, rather than seeking to reform each in isolation.

The present First Past The Post system for the House of Commons suffers from the inherent defect that its "winner takes all" character leads to the under-representation of political minorities in Parliament. That defect could be removed by changing the system of election to the Commons, but equally its effects could be corrected by electing the members of a new Second Chamber in such a way that political minorities were always over-represented within their ranks.

The best way to achieve that compensatory over-representation in the Second Chamber would be to supplement the present First Past The Post for the Commons with Second Past The Post for the Second Chamber – a reform which while radical in its concept and consequences would necessitate no changes at all to current electoral practice beyond the returning officer adding words such as these to his usual declaration of the result: "... and I also declare that X has been duly elected as the Second Member of Parliament for this constituency", X being the candidate who had won the second highest number of votes.

The disproportionality in the Commons would then be countered by an opposite disproportionality in the Second Chamber, and the result would indeed be a "balanced" Parliament.

Dr D R Cooper, Maidenhead