The SNP has renewed its call for the House of Lords to be abolished, branding the new 45 peers announced by Downing Street a “sorry list” of former politicians and “cronies and hangers-on with big cheque books”.
Aberdeen North MP Kirsty Blackman, the party’s spokeswoman on the Lords, said it was an “affront to democracy” that those who had been rejected by the electorate would be back in parliament.
She said: “The message from David Cameron is even if people reject your party at the ballot box you will be handed a seat in parliament for the rest of your life – because Mr Cameron ‘can’.
“It is an affront to democracy that politicians whose parties have been roundly rejected by the electorate can then re-appear in parliament a few weeks later and legislate for the rest of their lives without ever having to be accountable again. That is the scandal of the list.”
She singled out the Better Together campaign chairman Alistair Darling and also called on the former Liberal Democrat MPs to refuse their peerages.
“They should heed the words of their new leader who says the House of Lords system is ‘rotten to the core’,” she added.
“It is clear that the place is now beyond reform and should be reconstituted on firm democratic principles.
“Those who agree with the SNP now have a concrete opportunity to show that they are prepared to act on it and abolish this circus once and for all.”‘