As she heads for the House of Lords, Ruth Davidson says wants to see an elected second chamber

Former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who is soon to take up a seat in the House of Lords, has said she believes in an elected second chamber.

She said she would be attending the Lords only a couple of days a week and ruled out accepting a ministerial role once she was a peer.

Ms Davidson, who is standing down as MSP for Edinburgh Central after ten years in the Scottish Parliament, defended her decision to accept a seat in the Lords and explained how she hoped it would fit with her spending more time with her partner Jen Wilson and son Finn, now two-and-a-half.

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She said: "What people don't really understand about the House of Lords is, if you look at the last five years the number of sitting days only averages about 100 and backbenchers aren't expected to go to all of them.

Ruth Davidson in the Holyrood chamber     Pic: Fraser Bremner/Scottish Daily Mail/PA WireRuth Davidson in the Holyrood chamber     Pic: Fraser Bremner/Scottish Daily Mail/PA Wire
Ruth Davidson in the Holyrood chamber Pic: Fraser Bremner/Scottish Daily Mail/PA Wire

"It will be a different way of working for me, so I will be away a couple of days a week and when I'm away I'll be away away – but when I'm at home I'll actually be present in Jen and Finn's lives and I won't be fielding lots of phone calls and I won't be up till 10 or 11pm doing all the admin.”

She said she thought there ought to be an elected second chamber and would vote for that.

"However, the system we have at the moment exists – and I don't think the chamber that exists should only be filled with people who live inside the M25 corridor because the legislation it's looking at applies to the whole country," she says.

Ms Davidson rejected suggestions she would become a UK minister.

“I'm not looking for, nor would I accept, a role that takes me away from my family when they're just young,” she says.

She said she and Jen had made no secret of their hope for another child.

“I made a promise to my partner when I stepped down from the leadership that I wouldn’t be taking on any other big roles before the children were at school, so for this period when Finn's so young and hopefully we're blessed with another, I really want my time at home to be concentrating on my home life,” she says.

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