How about my idea for appointing members of the House of Lords?

As modernist architect Louis Sullivan said "Form follows function".  We should look at the functions of the House of Lords and work backwards from there to discover its optimum composition which itself will direct us to the means of filling it.

While the Lords can introduce bills, their main function is that of scrutinising and amending proposed legislation coming out of the Commons.  It is essential that there is not competing mandate between the the Commons and the Lords, the Commons set the legislative agenda and the Lords amend it.

MPs will always have a half eye on their future electoral prospects and therefore have a natural pressure to legislate for what is popular.  Good parliamentarians focus on doing what is right even if it is unpopular yet short-termism and badly thought through legislation still makes it on to the statute book, the Lords needs to be ready to stop this.

Increasingly MPs and their advisers are getting younger, there isn't anything wrong with this but youth and experience rarely come hand in hand.  If energy and innovation become things that the Commons have in abundance then focus, expertise and experience would be good balances for the House of Lords to provide.

By the nature of our electoral system MPs are party political politicians, again I don't believe there is anything inherently bad with being political but as Sir John Major once said "If the answer is more politicians, you are asking the wrong question".  If we are looking for the House of Lords to provide balance to the work of the Commons it might seem sensible for them to be less party political in their make up.

Let's not pretend for a moment that MPs reflect the society that they serve, there are proportionally too few women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds on the green benches.  These two groups seem less attracted to representative politics at the "sweet spot" point in their lives, often too busy with family and/or work to give up their 20s, 30s and 40s to getting elected.  The Lords could and should provide the diversity reality check at least until the make up of the Commons catches up.

So let's look at the factors that come from the Lord's functions (as I see it):

1. No competing mandate with the Commons.
2. Free of the pressure to be populist.
3. Experienced and expert in a range of fields.
4. Less party political than the Commons.
5. More representative of the society that it serves.

The Government's current plan is for an elected Upper House, as I see it none of the above would be addressed by having more elected people in the legislative process.  They would almost all need to be sponsored by political parties and as such I struggle to see how they would really differentiate themselves from MPs.

My idea (not complete I confess) would be for the Lords to be filled by people who have qualified by virtue of positions which they have held.  To a degree this already happens.

There are already 26 Bishops who sit in the House of Lords as Lords Spiritual, they are there because of their rank in the Church of England.  We used to have the Law Lords who were there by their rank in the judiciary and it is standard practice for top police officers, senior civil servants, Armed Service Chiefs, former Commons speakers etc, become Peers when they retire from those posts.

Rather than these appointees being the minority and being there by a mix of tradition, custom and legislation we should formalise the process and broaden the pool of institutions and bodies from which Peers are drawn.

Not being elected would free them from the worst of the populist pressure that MPs face.  Getting to the top of their profession, Trade Union, Constabulary, armed force, religious body, charitable body, business organisation etc. would ensure that the Lords is packed with people who have real world experience, know what they are talking about and hold the respect of the sectors from which they came.

While there would be some natural left/right leaning (unions, charities, clergy etc. tending to be left leaning and business people, military etc. tending to be right leaning) there would be no need for potential Lords to schmooze political parties to get on or a political party's grass roots to get in.

Finally if the right pool of bodies and organisations is created the future Lords would genuinely be reflective of the society that we live in.  And if they aren't no one will be able to blame the politicians for looking after their own.

What are your thoughts?

Cable theft arrests in Bexley

As part of the crackdown on metal theft in London, Bexley's police have landed a big haul.  A man working in a scrap metal dealers has been arrested after £16,000 worth of cable still carrying sheathing marked "Property of BT" and copper earthing straps stamped "Property of National Grid" were found.

We now have to hope that the courts back up our police and give the sentences that are deserved.

The least significant election result in history?

The result from the Feltham and Heston by-election came in overnight and was the least surprising result imaginable.

The Labour candidate won, which even though we had hoped and fought for a Conservative win was always the most likely result.  Labour will try to say that this was a crushing blow for the Government or some huge vindication of Ed Miliband, it is quite clearly neither.

The Conservatives cam a good second but with a swing against us.  Labour had a better candidate than last time and the Government is having to make some tough descisions so we were unlikely to get a bounce.  The Lib Dems came third by some margin with UKIP snapping at their heels.

The turnout was low because it was a by-election in the middle of December.

It may be possible to draw out some more significant insights from yesterday's result, but I doubt it.

Say goodbye to London's last bendy bus

In just over three hours time London's last bendy buses will leave service.  I won't miss them.

Boris promised to get rid of the red land-behemoths and replace them with clean, green (ecologically speaking, they will be painted red) British built, modern RouteMasters and he has delivered on that promise.

Cameron shows steel over Europe

Rather than focus on sorting out the Euro crisis the French and German governments sought to use the negotiations to consolidate their grip on the City of London.  The City has been looked upon with envious eyes for decades and proposals were being made which would damage London, the UK and Europe as a whole.

Clearly the negotiators believed that the stakes were too high for Cameron to "play games" over the fiscal union treaty and that he would just swallow the EU proposals.  The stakes may well have been high but Cameron called their bluff and used the UK's veto.  I am sure that some will blame DC for scuppering the treaty and risking the financial stability of Europe but, as Anthony Browne highlights here, they treaty was theirs for the taking.  All they needed to do was leave the City alone.

Shareholders should set pay, not the government

This story in the BBC about boadroom pay rather worries me.  While I have a great deal of sympathy with Nick Clegg's frustration at top managers getting big rewards for failure I'm not convinced it is something the government should intervene in directly.

The people who should decide who is on the board, and therefore the renumeration committees that set pay, are the shareholders.  Shareholders have a stake in the company's success or failure, if they feel the need to get a big salaried, high flyer to run the company is it right for the government to tell them they can't?  If government policy prevents a preferred candidate getting recruited can the company get some form of recourse if the second preference candidate turns out to be a flop?

The government should not dictate how the private sector reward their top talent.  How would Manchester United fans feel if the government prevented Sir Alex Ferguson from paying Wayne Rooney the money he felt he deserved?  

Labour want to legislate to force companies to have members of staff on the renumeration committee.  Many companies do this already and I can see lots of advantages in doing so, but once again I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of forcing all companies to do something just because I think it's a good idea.

Who's really screwing low paid women?

In the lead up to Wednesday's strike it was claimed that women were going to be hardest hit by the pension changes that the government has to make. Harriet Harman was particularly vocal in her condemnation of the effect on "low paid women" despite the protections put in place specifically focussed on the lowest paid.

One claim I overheard in a conversation was that the "Tories are screwing up (actually stronger words to that effect) the pensions of low paid women". Not only is that factually wrong but let's look at who was hit the hardest by the mass closure of schools yesterday.

Up and down the UK working mothers, who still bare the brunt of childcare responsibilities, had to either sort out late notice childcare or take a day off work. Many of those women are on daily or even hourly rates and won't have the option of working from home that day. The strike will have screwed them to the tune of a day's pay.

As I've said before, when strikes hit the pockets of wealthy factory, mill or mine owners I could understand why workers withdrew their labour. But these public sector strikes hurt the very people who are currently trying to make ends meet. They disproportionally hit part-time workers, working mothers and those who rely on public services.

Well paid union bosses are screwing low paid workers. How perverse is that?