Defenders of the House of Lords often point to the supposed expertise brought by some of the members. Maybe so, in some cases; but not in those many cases where cronies and donors have been rewarded by a prime minister with a seat in the opulent red-leather luncheon club.

If we want expertise - and we should - let's find it and appoint it.

If we want 300 or so members of an upper house, with a quality-control mission to reduce the risk of bad or overly-partisan legislation making it onto the books, then let's identify 300 deserving threads in the fabric of our society and ask each to appoint an expert to the house. "Threads"? Here are some ideas:

• each of the major charitable sectors

• each of the regulated professions

• each of the major trade unions (or groups of unions)

• (reluctantly) each of the major religions

• (also reluctantly) each of the main political parties

• each of the main sports

• national bodies such as English Heritage (and equivalents from the other nations)

• each sector of industry, commerce, finance, utilities

• (controversially) each department of the civil service (for here is an untapped source of vast expertise, bringing enormous influence to bear on the inner workings of government, but under a cloak of secrecy disguised as an insistence on apoliticality

• and so on

Each expert would serve a term of perhaps 10 years but recall, resignation, illness would all be catered for.

The role of the new house would be similar to the apparent mission of the current House of Lords - working online, of-course, in order to transform the level of efficiency in the process - to review, refine, and perhaps delay legislation proposed by the House of Commons.