Women can be mothers and MPs too

HARD on all the whinging about the levels of abuse MPs have to endure comes a proposal that the poor little souls should be allowed to appoint deputies to do the job they were elected to do if they have babies.

The essence of the relationship between a British MP and constituents is that the MP is accountable every four or five years through the mechanism of a general election.

That is not a duty which can be deputised away so that an unelected person votes instead. Anyway it should not be necessary. MPs have been having babies for decades and have coped perfectly well.

I had a maths teacher who had her baby at half term and who was expounding the intricacies of Pythagoras right up to and immediately after the break. A notable feminist once told Oxford students that she had all her babies in the long vacation.

To be sure MPs are occasionally seriously ill and then neighbouring MPs take over their “surgeries” and staff write the letters. Other MPs can raise matters on behalf of the sick member’s constituents. Similar arrangements apply in the gap between a death and the resulting by-election. The only thing that is lost is the MP’s vote.

I do not elect somebody to go to Parliament and then expect her to spend her time at home instead. If you think it will be impossible to combine motherhood with public office then wait until the kids are older before taking to the hustings.

How to prune House of Lords

THE proposals to reform the House of Lords with a length of service limit are lazy and counter-productive. They are counter-productive because they will exclude good, active peers and lazy because they dodge the real issue, which is activity. It is no great improvement to ennoble the idle for 15 years rather than for life.

The best way to purge their Lordships’ House is to introduce an activity qualification against a retrospective date and eject anybody without a specified voting and speaking record.

Meanwhile there should always be a few very special exceptions and it is a pity Andrew Lloyd Webber is standing down from the Lords. We need major voices on the arts, sciences, medicine, etc, and it is unreasonable to expect distinguished practitioners to act as politicians.

That was understood in the days before the Lords became a bloated party-political football, thanks to Blair and Cameron.