House of the T
HE House of Lords is an oversized, undemocratic, unrepresentative
and archaic institution urgently in need of reform, claims a new report.
In the first major piece of research on the House of Lords since the General Election the Electoral Reform Society has labelled the second chamber as a shockingly out of date institution full of unelected professional politicians.
The society’s ‘Fact vs Fiction’ report claims the House of Lords is growing out of control. It is already the second largest legislative chamber in the world aſter China.
There are currently 132 more unelected lawmakers than elected ones and that figure is expected to grow significantly following the government’s cuting of the size of the Commons to 600 MPs. Prime Minister David Cameron also plans to appoint a further 50 peers or so, at a cost of millions of pounds to the taxpayer.
Although Peers are unpaid they are able to claim a £300 a day tax-free allowance
72 September 2015 for atendance, plus expenses for limited travel costs.
In the 2010-2015 parliament, £360,000 was claimed by 62 Peers for years in which they did not vote once. In the last session of parliament alone over £100,000 was claimed by Peers who did not vote at all.
It’s calculated the net operating costs of the House of Lords in 2013-14 was £93.1m. That’s equivalent to around £118,000 per Peer at a time when the government is talking about reducing the cost of politics.
Close examination of the activities of individual Lords by the society’s researchers revealed they were far from being the independent experts supporters of the status quo would have the public believe.
Darren Hughes, Deputy Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said: “This research completely busts the myths peddled by supporters of an unreformed House of Lords.
Although Peers are unpaid they are able to claim a £300 a day tax-free allowance for attendance, plus expenses for limited travel costs.
“We have shown that far from being a bastion of independence, non-partisan Crossbench Peers turn up far less frequently than party-political Peers. And it’s those Peers who vote as a bloc, with Labour voting against the last coalition government, Conservative Peers voting against the last Labour government nearly 100 per cent of the time.
“On top of that, we have found that over a third of Lords
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