Polly Toynbee says “Goodbye to the Bishops”

Polly Toynbee has a great column in today's Guardian discussing our Bishops campaign in response to the government's plans, leaked to the papers over the weekend, to replace the House of Lords with an elected "Senate".

She highlights the polling by Power2010 showing strong public opposition, amongst both Christians and non-Christians, to the Bishops' automatic places in Parliament:

Over the last few days the 26 bishops who sit in the House of Lords must have been astounded to receive over 50,000 letters telling them their time as legislators is up.

Today an ICM poll for POWER2010, who organised the write-in, shows that 74% of voters think unelected bishops should have no place in the legislature, and only 21% believe that they should.

Even more persuasive is that 70% of Christians want the bishops gone, and only 26% are in favour of keeping them.

We are the only western country with theocracy in its law-making. Join the letter-writers at www.power2010.org.uk/reformtthelords.

Failure to reform the Lords, despite the Commons voting for a 100% elected upper house, is just one of Labour's long list of missed opportunities.

But a revised plan will emerge shortly to join Labour's manifesto of regrets. Why didn't Labour do Lords reform? It would have taken a year of guerrilla warfare with the ermine, obliterating all other business.

What a mistake: all that fidgety "other business" is long forgotten but this would have stood as a monument, fulfilling at last what the Commons has tried to do since 1911.

Toynbee then discusses the role of organised religion in law-making from her perspective as president of the British Humanist Association:

Bishops in the Lords hold great sway over matters of life and death, most recently in organising to prevent right-to-die reform - against the will of 82% of voters.

They helped engineer an exemption in the equalities bill to allow religious employers to discriminate against gays and others, though they run a third of all schools and increasing numbers of state-financed services, from hospices to care homes and day centres.

Ed Balls, inexplicably, allowed religious schools to opt out of most sex education: children in religious environments probably need open discussion most.

The idea that faith offers some missing moral dimension to politics is offensive. All politics is about moral choices.

As individuals there are good, wise and clever people of all faiths and none. Let the religious stand for office alongside everyone else, with no reserved benches that honour their office and their dogma instead of their individual qualities.

If you haven't yet sent your letter to the Bishops, calling on them to back an elected chamber, you can do so now with our easy-to-use-tool.