The unreformed House of Lords is already the largest parliamentary chamber of any democracy

The appointment of 30 new peers to our unreformed House of Lords was announced this week. In the 2012 audit of UK democracy, Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Andrew Blick, and Stephen Crone discussed the composition and role of the upper chamber. They highlighted how the UK is almost unique among established democracies in possessing a parliamentary chamber that is mainly unelected, and set out particular concerns about the lack of accountability of government ministers sitting in the Lords.