RISING Sum
previously worked in politics – compared to less than 1 per cent of the British public. This is not a chamber of experts – it’s a chamber of professional politicians. Our House of Lords looks nothing like the public whose decisions it impacts – almost half live in London or the South East, while there are just two Peers under the age of 40. This is a shockingly out of date and unrepresentative institution.”
Overall the report states that a quarter of appointments to the House of Lords between May 1997 and March 2015 were former MPs. Some 556 out of 782 Peers take a party whip while genuine crossbenchers account for just 23 per cent of the membership.
As a representative section of the public the House of Lords is a failure.
The biggest professional group appointed to the second chamber are professional politicians. A total of 27 per cent of Peers have politics as their primary or secondary profession – a further 7 per cent are former political staff, activists or held official positions in political parties.
The next highest is business and commerce (9 per cent) then legal professions (7 per cent) then banking and finance (6 per cent).
Manual and skilled trades, policing, and transport are represented by just 1 per cent or less of the chamber each.
“The House of Lords is a hopeless waste of taxpayers’ money and should be scrapped,” said Kirsty Blackman, MP for Aberdeen North.
“The revelation that £360,000 has been given to Peers who have not voted once just underlines the appalling waste of public money involved.
“At a time of austerity, coupled with the renewed public concern about the actions of members of the upper house, it is ridiculous for the Prime Minister to even consider creating dozens of new Peers to prop up his government. At a cost of £1.3 million every year, it would do nothing for public finances or public confidence.
“Te House of Lords is a hopeless waste of taxpayers’ money and should be scrapped,” said Kirsty Blackman, MP for Aberdeen North.
“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.”
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