by John Brian Shannon

The respected Brexiteer Jeff Taylor (see video above) is sceptical of the UK government and its 3.5-years of Brexit dithering (who isn’t?) but like the Prime Minister, I think there’s a case to be made for moving the UK House of Lords to York and believe there are many ways to improve on the present House of Lords model to the point that most Britons would again see the HoL as a very necessary asset to the country.

The government should postpone the House of Commons renovations and sink the money into the HS2-to-York high-speed rail link to speed its construction timeline AND the government should begin building a new House of Lords building to be designed by the Lords and Ladies of the House (eg: a purpose-built building near York) that should be ready for occupancy by the time HS2-to-York is complete.

Further, the government should decide to limit the number of Lords to the same number of seats as the House of Commons (but do it through attrition only) and each Lord and Lady should have responsibility for a specific region of the country, or specific segment of the economy, or a particular and important social issue (like the NHS, immigration, Trident, chlorinated chicken, or cyber-security, for only a few examples) that would fall in line with their career expertise, to advise HM’s government and Britons.

And I believe strongly that they should publish public reports on their findings (with secret information redacted from the public report, obviously) on a very accessible to the public House of Lords weekly (non-technical and plain-language) blog.

Finally, allowing the House of Commons politicians to name future Lords must be the worst way to appoint people to such high office — it reeks of cronyism and political patronage — it’s no wonder the House of Lords is unpopular with many Britons.

Future Lords should be appointed by the Crown, full stop. For example, Sir David Attenborough should sit in the House of Lords as a climate change expert, and (Sir!) Nigel Farage should sit in the House of Lords as an expert on the EU Parliament.

The fewer ex-MP’s appointed to the House of Lords… the better… to my mind.

Now that’s a House of Lords model that would work wonders for the UK!

Visit or subscribe to Jeff Taylor’s excellent Brexit YouTube channel here.