The draft House of Lords Reform Bill is now online but some key aspects that seem to have been left out of the news.
Neither the BBC's report nor the Guradian's mention that the 80/20 split between elected and appointed members is not quite true. There will be 12 ex-officio bishops in the Lords. The Telegraph mentions the bishops but all three ignore the 'ministerial members'.
The draft bill means that the government can appoint people from outside of parliament to be ministers and for them to take a seat in the house of lords for the length of their minsterialship. These people are better known as cronies.
Assuming that we have 8 ministers and 12 bishops, the number of appointed lords would be 80, not 60, and the proportion of elected lords would be 75% not 80%.
I wonder how many other aspects have been ignored? I'll keep reading.
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