Peer pressure

The recent report by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has further reinforced the need to scrap the House of Lords and 
replace it with a fully elected and accountable second chamber.

According to the ERS, in the 2010-15 parliament a shocking £360,000 was claimed by peers in years in which they failed to vote once.

In the last parliamentary 
session alone, more than £100,000 was claimed by peers who did not vote at all.

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And to show how imbalanced the make-up of the Lords is, 44 per cent list their main addresses in London and the South-East and over a third (34 per cent) previously worked in politics, with just 1 per cent coming from manual backgrounds.

At the same time the Prime Minister’s plans for an additional 50 peers to prop up his government will cost at least £1.3 million per year, at a time of supposed austerity and little public confidence in an institution which is a hopeless waste of public cash.

Instead of adding more Tory donors, cronies and defeated politicians to the public payroll, what needs to happen is the abolition of the House of Lords.

An unelected second chamber – which has already bloated to the second largest in the world – has absolutely no place in a supposed modern democracy.

Alex Orr

Leamington Terrace

Edinburgh