House of Lords: ‘Don’t lay waste to the wisdom of the Lords’

Peter Hennessy, one of the wisest and most erudite minds around on British constitutional affairs, has an excellent article in today’s Telegraph arguing that the reforms that would best serve the upper chamber are staring us in the face and showing great skeptism about the current raft of changes being considered.

Well worth reading in its entirety: ‘Don’t lay waste to the wisdom of the Lords’

Prof Hennessy sums up the positions on Lords reform as follows: Lords reformers tend to fall into two distinct types. First, there are the physicians, who seek to improve the health of the House with organic changes, in tune with its existing physiology. Second, there are the engineers, who go for radical solutions. In effect, they are abolitionists, wishing to bolt on to Parliament a new construction – a prefab – in the hole where the Lords used to be, in the shape of a largely or wholly elected chamber.