A committee set up in December last year by the Speaker of the Lords, Norman Fowler, recommended that in order to maintain the confidence in the chamber, it is crucial for it to be given a maximum size. With no more than 600 peers,it will be smaller than the House of Commons, although this would not materialise before 2027, finds report. Further, if the Bishops are excluded, the number may drop to 574. Ahead of the key reform report, two thirds of Britain believed the Lords should be elected after a recent series of unfortunate scandals have rocked the upper house. Darren Hughes, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, had said, “After years of scandals, voters want real reform of our second chamber – not tinkering around the edges. Slightly reducing the size of the Lords over a decade will do little to placate the public’s rightful anger. That support for an elected upper house has soared by a third in just two years shows the scale of public discontent. Britain is tired of couch potato peers taking our democracy for granted.”
Lord Bhikhu Parekh’s comment to Asian Voice read, "The House of Lords is too large and needs to reduce its size to about three hundred peers. It's entirely unelected and that is wrong. Some eminent citizens will not contest elections and should be appointed to the House of Lords. About twenty per-cent should fall within this category. The new report makes many valuable recommendations on the size and I hope that they will eventually get endorsed by the whole House and also the Commons."
Ahead of the final recommendation by the report, Lord Dholakia, in his quote to Asian Voice newspaper, said, “The Liberal Democrats are at the forefront of the House of Lords reforms. We Support a predominantly elected House with a small proportion of independent appointments. The reforms have been in discussions over the last seventy years. To date we have been tinkering with minor changes. We need a fundamental review of the powers of the Executive in Downing Street and the role of MPs and Lords in the legislative structure. Let us determine the functions first and determine the appropriate structure to implement this. In the meantime, retirements and fixed term appointments would help but we have to go much further than what is likely to be recommended when the report is published later today.”
House of Lords is right now the second-biggest legislative chamber in the world, behind China. Former prime minister David Cameron faced most flak for appointing peers at the fastest rate than anyone else in history. 295 new peerages have been created since 2010. Peers have been able to retire since 2014, however, when the House of Lords Reform Act was passed into law. Only 70 members have however, stood down since then.
