Brook Whelan: A fully-appointed second chamber is not ideal, but it's the least worst option available in our parliamentary system

Brook Whelan is a Councillor in Bath and North East Somerset.

The debate over House of Lords reform has been going on for some years, and it has mainly focused on how to make the House of Lords more democratic and accountable to voters.

The idea of making the House of Lords fully-elected does sound a great idea at first. After all, who would really want to deny voters the chance to have their say in choosing who gets to take their seat in the House of Lords?

Many supporters of making the House of Lords elected base their enthusiasm on the way that the Senate works in the United States, and assume that such a model could work just as well here. That is a perfectly reasonable argument, but what they overlook, however, is that we have a Parliamentary system, and not a Presidential one.

A fully-elected second chamber would simply not work under our political system. I suspect that supporters of this change have not thought through the practicalities of it. Constitutional reform should never be done on the back of an envelope.

Brook Whelan: We need an effective state - not a big one, not a small one

Brook Whelan is a Councillor in Bath and North East Somerset.

There has been much political debate over recent decades over the size of the state and about the need to make government smaller and more responsive to local people.

During this time, the need for competent and effective government has been largely overlooked by both supporters and opponents of big government.

When the British people see the government is unable to buy in all the military capabilities it wants, they will see the state as being weak. At a local level, when people have complained about a development that has not been given planning approval, and they are told that there are not enough planning enforcement officers around for them to go and investigate, again they will view the state as being weak.

This failure to bring about a strong and effective state is a major factor in the increasing amount of apathy felt by voters today. When voters see such failure on the part of government, little wonder why they are reluctant to go and vote on election day.