House of Lords Reform

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Alison Thewliss

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Martin John Docherty]

Democracy is never a low priority in the Scottish National party. That is why the people and community of Scotland returned my hon. Friends in such numbers.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is little democracy in the fact that those who have been rejected by the electorate can then find themselves along the corridor from us, making law?

[Martin John Docherty]

I could not disagree with my hon. Friend on that very important matter.

The upper Chamber and its shenanigans reflect more a debauched imperial Roman senate than a functioning democratic parliamentary Chamber, bowing and scraping in a place in which the modern world is seen as an inconvenience. Since my election to this House, I have visited the unelected, unaccountable Lords, where I took my place in the Members of the House of Commons’ balcony—a lofty vantage point across which to view the stoor and the oose of ages. It would seem that their lordships are followers of the Quentin Crisp school of housework. Like him, they firmly believe that after the first four years, the dirt doesnae get any worse. Four years of accumulating dust is nothing compared with the accumulation of centuries of privilege and unaccountability. It must end.

There are those who will see this as nothing other than Celtic hyperventilation against a conspiracy of anomalies, arrogance, absurdity, vanity and venality that poses as a pillar of the mother of Parliaments—and they may be right.