June will see the King’s Birthday honours (even though his birthday is in November) and new peers will be created. Unless Starmer breaks the depressing precedent, new peers will include major party donors, loyal backbenchers and party officials, and other people that party leaders like. A Guardian columnist will call for an elected second chamber, which would mean yet more politicians.

Some new peers will be good: respected former Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, think tank bosses or policy-oriented academics. But they’re the exceptions. Few of the new peers will be the best public policy experts we could have in our legislature. Even former MPs aren’t experts in government exactly. Instead, they’re good at politics: messaging, media coverage, alliance-building and elections.

And some peers are awful. Last year the Crown Prosecution Service froze the assets of Baroness Michelle Mone in relation to covid procurement. What exactly was it that Boris Johnson saw in Mone, that would make her a good legislator?

The problem isn’t appointment. The problem is appointment by politicians based on party loyalties, instead of the skills to scrutinise law and government.

What we need in the Lords are people with deep public policy expertise, whether in tax or foreign policy or education. They could fill in some of the gaps politicians leave, like value for money, and evidence on what works. They might help raise the woeful level of public debate.

Can we not recruit peers like normal jobs? Standard recruitment isn’t perfect, but employers at least try to work out what kind of person they want, via job descriptions, and systematically choose accordingly. It would not be hard to recruit some politically neutral appointers and select better people for the Lords.

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