What are some of the key arguments in favour of reforming the House of Lords?

In terms of democracy, there is a compelling argument in favour of reforming the way in which peers come to serve in the House of Lords. At present, peers are nominated and appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, and/or by the Prime Minister. This means that members of the house do not face public election for their positions. In light of this, many would argue that it is an affront to democracy to have unelected peers influencing and amending bills which have been passed by an elected government. In addition to this, peers (unlike MPs) do not represent specific, geographical constituencies, meaning that they are essentially not responsible to anyone. Naturally, this has led many political parties in recent years to demand that the Lords should become a wholly elected chamber, with members having to face public election for their positions.

In terms of authority, there is yet another strong argument in favour of further limiting the power exercised by peers. There are a number of precedents which limit the power that peers can wield, however in recent years, many members have begun to test these limits. For example, it is a well established convention that peers should not vote down any bill that was proposed in the governing party's manifesto. Yet, since 2015, the government has faced 2 major defeats in the Lords. One of these came in October 2015, when peers voted to delay the governments controversial cuts to tax credits, (despite the fact that £12 billion pounds of welfare savings had been set out in the Conservative Party's recent manifesto). This led the then Prime Minister David Cameron to declare that the Lords had created a "constitutional crisis". Since then, the government has been defeated once again on the matter of membership of the EU customs union. Therefore, this has led many to argue that the Lords should be subjected to more stringent constraints on their power, to prevent them from undermining the elected government.