Sir, Professor Lessof (letter, Aug 29) is right to applaud the House of Lords for its potential of offering diverse expertise. This was the case when there were hereditary peers but it must be diminishing with the increasing number of peers created as a result of political cronyism. One fears that a purely elected House of Lords deriving from the political classes would fare no better.
Why can we not preserve the expertise of the Lords but couple it with a more democratic system of election? We might consider fixed-term peerages where each individual is elected from within an acknowledged social group. Thus one might have a block of lawyers, clergy, doctors, plumbers, trade unionists, farmers etc.
Such a system would be undeniably democratic and would provide a wide range of expertise. Cronyism would, if it were to exist at all, at least be on a smaller scale.
Michael Glasby
Edinburgh
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Sir, When distributing the dissolution honours David Cameron seems to have overlooked the Downing Street cat. The Emperor Caligula wanted to make his horse a consul and King James I knighted a loin of beef, so the cat that kept the rodents at bay in SW1 was surely deserving of recognition, especially as he, unlike some, was untainted by the expenses scandal.
His Honour Anthony Thompson, QC
London EC4