THE proposed reform of the House of Lords is ill-advised says the city’s sitting member.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester said the Lords Reform Bill was “dreadful” and offered nothing to voters.

At the moment, Parliament is made up of two houses - the House of Commons, where MPs sit, and the House of Lords, where a mixture including life peers, hereditary peers, and Church of England Bishops sit.

In the last general election, all the main political parties included in their manifestos the desire to reform the Lords, which is the upper house of Parliament.

Now, the Coalition Government has tabled its Bill setting out changes to halve the number of Lords, make it an 80 per cent elected chamber, and limit sitting members to one 15-year term apiece.

The new rules would see the number of lords almost halved to 450.

Ninety of a new 450-member house would be non-party affiliated and selected by a panel.

Lord Faulkner however said the reforms were based on what he branded the ignorance many MPs showed about what the lords currently did, and the misunderstanding that they ‘make’ the law, as an unelected body.

“We do not make law, we debate law and suggest improvements to it, but bills go back to the commons after we have had them,” he said.

“We do that job properly, and that is where we get our legitimacy.”

He said the value of the lords was in its membership and its knowledge, saying a reformed elected membership would be “inferior” and driven by political parties.

Lord Faulkner said the new non-renewable single term each lord could sit for, would also make them unaccountable.

“If they only sit for one term anyway, when will they be held to account?” he said.

And he blasted the lack of provision for a referendum on the issue of overhauling the lords - critics of which suggest it would cost £100 million to run.

“This is a fundamental change to the British constitution, and the relationship between the two houses,” he said.

“So the omission of a referendum is regrettable.

“And my argument against the cost of a referendum would be, how much will it cost to run the elections of the new members? - That’s not cheap.”

He believes the commons could in fact be undermined by the creation of a second elected chamber, saying the reforms indicated the “lack of knowledge in the commons about what the lords actually do”.

Lord Faulkner - a Labour peer, did however say Worcestershire’s six Conservative MPs were not among those lacking knowledge instead saying they had “a good idea” what the lords did.

Under the changes Lord Faulkner’s seat would be replaced with an enlarged electoral district including Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, the West Midlands, Telford and Wrekin, and Warwickshire - into which 11 lords would be elected.

“If anyone thinks I am against this because I would be out of the job, there’s nothing stopping me standing for appointment, hypothetically speaking, if the changes did come about,” he said.