Baron Sewel in the sewer: It’s time to turn the palace of patronage into a democratic chamber and scrap the House of Lords

Sleazy revelations about Baron John Sewel, whose name is aptly just one letter short or “sewer”, seem less like reality and more like a parody produced for a TV satire.

Not only was he allegedly filmed snorting cocaine with two prostitutes, but one comical picture showed him wearing an orange bra while in another he is lying in bed in his subsidised Westminster flat with a rolled-up £5 note stuffed up a nostril.

At the same time he was heard boasting about how he could take the two escorts for dinner in Parliament while writing a £200 cheque, saying fellow peers “do f*** all work” and describing Asian women as “whores”.

To top it all, Baron Sewel, who has now quit the House of Lords after resigning from his job as Deputy Speaker, had been responsible for enforcing standards in the chamber.

Only days before his deeds were revealed by The Sun (which in recent editions have gone to great lengths to expose murkiness amidst the democracy-defying and corrupt Establishment the newspaper is itself part of), the disgraced Labour peer had unveiled new powers to expel peers for bad behaviour.

You couldn’t make it up. Yet, as bizarre and comical as all this might all seem, it is no laughing matter and only further highlights how the unelected House of Lords makes a sham of our supposed democracy.

This corrupt, anachronistic palace of patronage should finally be scrapped after centuries of it being a potent seat of unaccountable power and a drag on progress.

Yet, despite the Lords already being the world’s second largest legislative chamber with 783 members – a toxic mixture of bankers, bishops, political donors, has-beens and aristocrats – David Cameron wants it to be even bigger.

The Conservative manifesto calls for the Upper House, which for the first time in history has a Tory minority thanks to 13 years of Labour prime ministers stuffing it with cronies, to be “rebalanced” to reflect the votes cast at the general election.

Since lords cannot be fired, this would require the creation of as any as 704 new peerages, costing the taxpayer £115,000 a year for each new member.

Blowing an extra £80million at a time of austerity would be grotesquely offensive and hypocritical, although I’m sure our ruling millionaires, who’ve turned telling us to tighten our belts into an artform, would find a way of justifying it and scaring enough people into thinking it was necessary.

Of course, the House does perform an essential legislative task by scrutinising bills.

But it could easily do the same job with fewer laggard lords turning up only so they can receive a £300 payment – on top of the other bloated expenses they charge us for.

And, if members were elected, or even appointed with fixed terms, and people were given the power to expel them, they might be compelled to work a little harder.

My suggestion would be to replace the House of Lords immediately with a senate of 300 newly selected members, representing the political parties according to the overall share of votes cast at the last general election.

That would mean the Conservatives would get 111 members with 36.9% of the UK vote, Labour 91 with 30.4%, Ukip 38 with 12.6%, LibDems 24 with 7.9%, SNP 14 with 4.7%, Greens 11 with 3.8% and Plaid Cymru two with 0.6%.

Northern Irish parties would get the remaining nine.

At the next election, a proportional representation system would be used, but – as with our members of the European Parliament – voted on a regional, rather than national, basis.

Parties drawing up lists of candidates would be forced to conduct open primaries beforehand to better reflect the choice of local people, rather than political leaders.

And, when general elections came, voters would get two votes for parliament – one for the House of Commons, which for the time being would retain constituency MPs and a first-past-the-post electoral system, and a second for the Senate.

This would mean someone could vote for a Tory MP and a Ukip senator or perhaps a Labour MP and a Green senator.

It’s just an idea and there may be a better way of having a democratic upper chamber in parliament. But we should be having this debate.

Yet, precisely because the House of Cronies represents the solidity of the status quo in the same manner as the monarchy, the ruling elite – desperate as they are to preserve their own privilege – will be reluctant to listen.