Reform of the House of Lords

Originally posted on Paul Burgin's blog:

As time goes by, some changes are made to Britain's unwritten constitution that will be beneficial or unhelpful, but in both cases painful for a number of people.
Last night's vote on the House of Lords future was one of those times. For me it is a change I fully endorse, although that is not a view I held a number of years ago, for the simple reason that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". For me the Commons was what mattered, being the primary legislator, and given the uneven composition of the Lords, one could hardly call it a politically biased chamber (For those who have accused it of being piled full of Tories, remember it wasn't exactly a friend of Margaret Thatcher's and could be obstructive during the 1980s). But the first wave of reform and the "Cash for Peerages" allegations have changed all that! The exclusion of most of the heriditary peers has meant that most of them can apply not only for election to the House of Commons, but if a heriditary peer dies, election as one of the 100 or so left in the Lords. That is elitist and unfair.
Then we have the "Cash for Peerages" allegations. To become a member of any legislature in the world is open to abuse, but the Lords in this case has hardly any democratic accountability. Political institutions must not only be clean of sleaze and corruption, they must appear to be as well, and whilst that is difficult in itself, significant reform of the Lords may well help restore people's faith in the political process, depending of course on how it is handled from now on!