SIR, - I WAS surprised by the letter which extolled the virtue of hereditary peers who were described as owing allegiance only to the British people and being devoid of vested interest (Citizen, June 3).

This is far from true.

The House of Lords, as it is presently constituted, is an anachronism which gives unelected hereditary peers the power to obstruct and delay business of an elected government.

Often these same peers are there because of some deed of a long gone ancestor, which in a more enlightened age would not always be considered worthy or commendable.

The abolition of the House of Lords in its present form is overdue.

Sixty per cent of the hereditary peers are landowners, 45 per cent are Old Etonians and 42 per cent have had a career in the forces.

Less than three per cent are women and there are just two from ethnic minorities.

These peers used their large hereditary vote to push through controversial bills at the last Tory government's demand - Poll Tax and the unpopular rail privatisation bill being just two examples of the many.

They have used this in-built undemocratic majority to vote down 33 government bills in the last parliament alone.

A modern representative upper house would consider the interests of the country as a whole - and make parliament infinitely better.

A country with a society ignoring hereditary class distinctions and tolerating minority views is the true definition of a democracy.

Jack Croysdill,

Blackpool and North Labour Party.

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