Don't elect people to the House of Lords,
We have enough egomaniacs in the Commons,
Don't let the Government appoint new Lords,
They'll just sell to the highest bidders,
Don't keep the Hereditary Peers,
It's not fair on us proles.

Why not use a system that has worked fine for over 100 years. Appoint random individuals for a fixed number of years from the lists of those eligible for jury service. This would give use a second chamber filled with a healthy cross section of people rather than those selected by an accident of birth, selected by professional politicians or worse still filled with more professional politicians.

To those who say we should do away altogether with a second chamber, I would say that we need a revising chamber to watch MPs that will use the common sense the House of Commons lacks.

A Williams, Stockton-on-Tees,

"Such a chamber would require a written constitution to enshrine formal checks and balances between the chambers. " Not at all: the Parliament Acts already define an acceptable relationship between the two chambers - the second cannot hold up money Bills passed by the first, but on all other Bills the second can impose a delay - and that would work better with a second chamber specifically elected so that the governing party, aka "the elected dictatorship", would never have a majority in both chambers. And the simplest way to ensure that, while maintaining the essential geographical constituency link between the electors and their representatives, is to give a seat in the second chamber to the candidate who comes second in each constituency.

Denis Cooper, Maidenhead, England

Sooner or later the UK will be forced to complete the process of becoming a federation of its four nations, a process on which it has already irrevocably embarked with the grant of devolution in varying forms to all the nations but England. When that process is completed (incidentally providing the only possible answer to the West Lothian Question), various inevitable consequences will follow, chief among them a parliament for England separate from the federal parliament at Westminster: a written constitution in a single document defining the respective powers of the constituent parts of the federation and enshrining the principle of subsidiarity within the UK: and the conversion of the federal second chamber (currently and weirdly still called the House of Lords) into a Senate representing the four nations in such a way as to protect the three small nations from excessive dominance by the big one (England) -- cf. the US and Australian Senates. It's a pity that the current renewed attempt to 'reform' the House of Lords is taking place in a vacuum, without reference to the federal implications of the semi-federation that the UK has already become, in all but name.

Brian Barder, London, UK

"I would liken our unwritten constitution to an unwritten telephone directory."

I'm not sure that's a very good analogy. I would direct you to sites like bt.com and 192.com. Unwritten telephone directories both of them.

The fact it, with the possible exception of autocratic dictatorships, a state can't help but have a constitution - it might be written or unwritten, clear or ambiguous, but it still is one.

A bit like the contract you have with a shopkeeper. It's not written down, you're probably not sure what it involves, you might argue about your rights under it. But the whole thing wouldn't work without one.

Robert Kaye, London, UK

Could you, and your colleagues, stop using the phrase 'written constiution'. If a constitution is not written down, it does not exist, for its whole point is to provide a visible and immutable framework for political conduct.

The best example of such a constitution is that of the United States, but France and Germany also posess excellent documents. France's, with its secular model, is outstanding, although one worries that it might too easily be altered at the time of a regime change.

Another phrase you should therefore avoid is 'constitutional monarchy'. Countries like Holland or Sweden are constitutional monarchies, because the role of their monarchial institutions are exactly defined by their constutions. Since we don't have one, our monarchy has no such rules; it is an unconstitutional monarchy.

I would liken our unwritten constitution to an unwritten telephone directory. A limited coterie of people know the numbers, and can change them for their own advantage under the Privy Council oath and the Official Secrets Act. For the rest of us it doesn't exist and is merely what we are told it is. By the way, that analogy is original and my own, but you have ny permission to use it.

Ian R Brook, Esher, UK