Don't vote for us

Where next for the House of Lords? The debate has moved on a long way since that question raced up the agenda, after Labour’s landslide victory in 1997.

It was possible then for sensible people to regard the Lords as an archaic anomaly with no practical role and even less claim to legitimacy. There was, at that time, more than one reason for taking that view.

First, the fact that a clear majority of the House (the hereditaries, 750 out of 1,270) were there only because of an accident of birth – scant justification for political power in a modern democracy. Second, because one party, the Conservatives, had a large and permanent majority in the House (200 more than Lab and Lib combined). And finally, not least because of those two features, the Lords seldom found the confidence to challenge the Commons on any important issue. In short, the Lords was perceived as ineffective as well as illegitimate.