Put the Lords in Leeds, MPs in Harrogate

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

I’M still musing on the comments by David Blunkett and Jayne Dowle (The Yorkshire Post, January 20) over relocating the House of Lords and Tory HQ respectively.

Harrogate Borough Council vacated their grand chambers in Crescent Gardens five years ago and they’re still empty. The seating is elegant, but not such as to encourage lounging and draping. Why not relocate MPs there? Should they all turn up, most would have to stand, giving them a day-to-day taste of our railways.

Their Lord and Ladyships could be housed in Leeds Town Hall. Their tax-free £300 per day allowance would buy them twice as much in Leeds Market as in Westminster, so we could cut back on the subsidised gin.

This would be only a temporary solution, but it would concentrate powerful minds, leading to shamefully overdue effective action. Of course I could be wrong!

From: Peter Rickaby, Selby.

I CANNOT think of any benefit to ordinary people of relocating the House of Lords to York.

But I can think of huge negatives: a vast waste of money on attendance fees and expenses, added bureaucracy, achieving nothing only satisfying a symbolic whim.

A better idea (David Blunkett,

The Yorkshire Post, January 20) would be to abolish the current membership, introduce an elected second chamber, reduced to 400 in total and then site it in York.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

THERE is much talk about moving the House of Lords to York and Parliament in a northerly direction. Carry on dreaming. It will never happen.