Harrogate's Lib Dem MP enters battle over future of the House of Lords

As the Government’s bill to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords gets set to return to the House of Commons, Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Tom Gordon said reforming Parliament’s unelected second chamber was not enough.

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, aims at removing the remaining 92 hereditary members to modernize the chamber for the 21st century.

But Lib Dem MP Tom Gordon believes the very existence of the House of Lords sits uneasily with a modern political system.

“For too long, peerages have been handed out as rewards for loyalty, donations and personal connections, undermining the very foundations of our democracy,” said the Harrogate MP.

“An unelected chamber built on patronage has no place in a modern political system.

"It’s time to abolish the House of Lords as we know it and replace it with a fully elected second chamber, one that is democratic, accountable, and fit to scrutinise legislation properly.

“If we are serious about building a true democracy, the patronage palace must go.”

The Hereditary Peers Bill passed its third reading in the House of Lords in July with amendments and now faces further parliamentary stages as the Commons considers the Lords' changes.

Once passed, the new legislation looks set to be the start, not the finish, of the Labour Government’s reforms of the second chamber.

Further changes in the pipeline include a mandatory retirement age, new participation rules, and replacing it with a more representative body at a later stage.

But Harrogate and Knaresborough’s Lib Dem MP is urging the Government to go faster and further on the issue.

Earlier this month Tom Gordon handed in a petition to Parliament calling for the Lords’ replacement with a new directly-elected body “grounded in democratic principles” and “accountable to the public”.

The Conservative Party has opposed the Hereditary Peers Bill from the beginning.

Last year, shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart claimed the Government was "seeking to remove established scrutineers in order to replace them with Labour appointees".