How Boris should pick his peers

It is no credit to British democracy that we have the second largest legislative chamber in the world. The only one larger than the 792-strong House of Lords is the 2,980-member Chinese National People’s Congress. In the coming days the House of Lords will grow even bigger as the Prime Minister announces another batch of peerages. We can expect a bad-tempered reaction if, as expected, a slew of Brexit campaigners such as Ian Botham are included while former speaker John Bercow is left out.

But no one should be too surprised. Prime ministers have always used their patronage to appoint likeminded peers, as have leaders of the opposition. Moreover, the House of Lords’ efforts to frustrate the government’s Brexit bills indicate that the Lords have become detached from the general public. A correction is in order.

What critics should be concentrating on is how the Lords can be made to function more effectively. Part of the answer is surely to trim its excessive size. The House of Lords unanimously agreed to do just this in 2016. That was followed a year later by the publication of a report by the Lord Speaker’s Committee, which recommended cutting the Lords to 600 members and capping it at that level. The report called for older peers to be encouraged to retire, making use of provisions in the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. For every two peers who retired, the committee suggested, just one should be appointed, until the Lords had been reduced to 600, whereupon a one-in, one-out rule should apply.

Yet progress on cutting the numbers of peers has been slow. While 92 have departed since 2017 through retirement or death, a rush of new appointments has meant that the number of peers has fallen by only 32 since the Speaker’s Committee report.