Lord Sewel's scandal leads to calls to reform UK's 'bloated' House of Lords

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London: The cocaine-and-prostitutes scandal that led to the resignation on Tuesday of Lord John Sewel from the House of Lords has stirred up new calls for reform of the UK's upper house.

Left-wing tabloid The Mirror called for the Lords to be scrapped entirely and replaced with an elected upper house, while the establishment's The Times focused on the "bloated" size of the chamber.

Baroness Hayman, former Lord Speaker, told Sky News "a great deal" needed to be done to change the House of Lords.

"I would like to modernise it properly," she said. "I'd like to see a break between the honours system and membership of the Second Chamber. I'd like to see terms of office, so that people had to retire. I'd like to see a retirement age. I think the House is much too big."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/lord-sewels-scandal-leads-to-calls-to-reform-uks-bloated-house-of-lords-20150728-gimjlf.html

[Glorfindel]

1. "...the Lords to be scrapped entirely and replaced with an elected upper house." Like our Senate?

I think our British cousins would be better off sticking with the Lords. Our "upper house" is the most absurd and undemocratic deliberative body ever conceived. The 39 million people of California have two senators, as do the citizens of Wyoming, a state with only one-half million people. But I'm sure the Brits can come up with something better. I certainly hope so!

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2. I tend to favor unicameral, yeah.

I don't think our experiment with bicameral has been a success, democratically speaking.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. You need a second chamber with a 'winner-takes-all' system in the 'lower' house

Otherwise a party can win a minority of votes and have a majority of seats with nothing to block it (for instance, in the UK the Tories got 330 out of 650 seats, from 36.1% of the vote). Most larger countries have a bicameral system.

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5. I don't approve of Winner-take-all either. That sounds so much like our economy.

We are all supposed to be in it together, and that means NOBODY takes all, ever.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Yours is not the only upper house. Most large democracies have one

and I don't think any others organise theirs on the basis of a fixed number of seats for areas widely varying in population. The UK isn't federal in that sense (I don't think anyone would suggest an equal number of representatives from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) anyway.

Germany has delegates appointed by the Land governments. It varies the number of votes per Land between 3 and 6 - not completely proportional, but not as uneven as the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_of_Germany
France has local councillors elect its Senate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_%28France%29
India has states appoint the members in rough proportion to state population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajya_Sabha
Italy elects its Senate, with a proportional system organised by region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_the_Republic_%28Italy%29

And so on. List of countries with an upper house here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_house