Member

I would argue that the principle of heredity has more merits than these debates have allowed. It is well-rooted in human nature and, though undemocratic, is readily compatible with a mainly democratic system. You can see the same with monarchies. If you look at the Freedom House list of the freest countries in the world, you find that 10 of the top 20 have monarchies. Noble Lords will immediately and quite rightly object that none of them, apart from us, has hereditary peerage, and that is correct, but all those monarchies have second Chambers which are constituted and worked through and have been reformed. Under what is going on now, we will not have that and we have no proper proposals as such.