This House is a blot on the constitution

LET one thing be clear from the outset. Though the Mail believes it is both morally right and vital for Britain’s future to curb the £30billion a year cost of tax credits, this paper shares many of the reservations expressed by rebel Tories and the Opposition over where George Osborne’s planned cuts will fall.

The very essence of the Tories’ electionwinning message was that they would make work pay and reward those who do the right thing.

Yet under the proposals as they stand, many hard-working families will suffer heavily, with just cause to feel betrayed.

Before next month’s Autumn Statement, therefore, the Chancellor will surely be wise to adjust his measures and soften the blow to those least able to bear it.

But that said, it is nothing short of scandalous that Opposition peers threaten to mobilise their majority in the Upper House to throw out Mr Osborne’s cuts – central to the Government’s election pledge to slash £12billion from welfare.

Yesterday, former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler summed it up when he said that the Lords is getting ‘too big for its non-elected boots’.

Indeed, whether or not peers carry out their threat, in defiance of the 100-yearold convention that tax matters are for the Commons to decide, the very fact that they have made it highlights the crying need for reform of the Upper House.

Put simply, the Lords has become a blot on the British constitution. For a start, it is far too big – a legislative assembly beaten only in size by the National People’s Congress of China.

Meanwhile, it is stuffed to the rafters with dodgy party donors, superannuated members of the political class, tawdry celebrities and cronies of past and present prime ministers.

Indeed, a glance at this year’s 45 recruits – i ncluding a bra designer and 11 vanquished Lib Dems – shows why the House has become a laughing stock.

True, there is no simple formula for Lords reform, as successive governments can testify. But in his four remaining years at No 10, David Cameron should make it his mission to succeed where so many of his predecessors have failed. What we need is a slimmed- down chamber, drawing on the best brains in science, business, the professions and the arts. If Mr Cameron can deliver this, his legacy will be assured.