Readers, how do you pick the best team from the Lords squad?
All week, readers of The Daily Telegraph have been writing to the Letters page opposite, debating the need for reform of the House of Lords. Their letters have been prompted by the political imbalance between the Upper House and the Commons, which contributed in part to the defeats suffered by the Government over its Brexit Bill.
How to create a House of Lords more reflective of the public mood, these letters have asked? While most showed a deep affectionate for the institution, readers seemed to worry that if peers became totally disconnected, they would end by becoming irrelevant.
One reader wondered if it was time to promote members of the public, chosen by lottery, to the red benches. Only a minority asked, as Paul Vlcek did on Thursday, “why don’t we have a referendum on abolishing the Lords?”
Among the ideas that have reached me, as the Comment editor, some are detailed, others are more vague. One contributor, for example, has a suggestion which attempts directly to address the fact that the Lords is now too large, and has, as a result, become unwieldy, inefficient and unrepresentative. Yet while some reformers have advocated mandatory retirement to reduce numbers, the idea here is to draw upon the expertise and experience of all 800 or so peers, in the way that the managers of British football teams currently draw on squads of 25 players to field teams of 11 players for each match.
In this conception of the Upper House, a small number of peers, perhaps around 300, would be selected to sit for each election cycle.
This pool would be split along party lines to reflect the proportion of MPs elected to the Commons, adding in a set number of Crossbenchers. Each peer would apply individually to his or her own party to be selected, no doubt having to make a case for what issues they might propose and support and their commitment to attend. Those left unselected would have the opportunity to reapply at the following election.
Of course, Lords’ reform is a notoriously thorny subject, upon whose barbs many governments have pricked themselves. Some Telegraph readers have suggested that the Upper House is only suffering today because of the botched reform by Tony Blair’s Labour administration. The issue in general, and consideration of detailed proposals, is a sponge of parliamentary time, guaranteeing endless hours of debate which Westminster, with the press of business, can usually ill afford. All the better then to consider such ideas here.
No doubt some readers will want to take issue with the “squad and team” idea above, and offer suggestions or amendments to bring it to greater perfection. Others may discard it altogether, and lay out an entirely different concept. We encourage you to do so.
FOLLOW Harry de Quetteville on Twitter @harrydq; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion