AFTER every General Election there are complaints that our electoral system is unfair, and then there are calls for some form of proportional representation.

However there is also for us all that other perennial problem, the unelected House of Lords.

Most of its members are competent and hard-working, but the fact remains that none of us has ever voted for a lord to help frame the laws which we must obey.

In sharp contrast, in every parliamentary constituency on May 5 there was a candidate who won the votes of thousands of his fellow citizens, but having come second in the poll, rather than first, he is still allowed no say whatsoever on legislation after that.

Would it not be a step forward if we simply replaced these entirely unelected lords by these individuals, who were at least "nearly elected" last week?

And this also alleviates the first problem, rather neatly, by creating "bi-cameral proportional representation".

Taking both chambers together, the number of elected representatives would be broadly proportional to the number of votes cast for each party.

In general, more than 80 per cent of those who decided to vote would be rewarded by seeing their preferred candidate gain a seat, and a voice, in one parliamentary chamber or the other.

We could also be reassured that no governing party would ever again control both chambers.

The larger their majority in the House of Commons, the fewer members they would have in the second chamber.

It is only a matter of weeks since we were grateful to the unelected Lords for defending our civil liberties against the "elected dictatorship" in the Commons.

A second chamber with a greater degree of democratic legitimacy, and with a majority of its members always drawn from the opposition parties, would provide a far more effective check upon abuses of power in the first chamber.

Dr D R Cooper, Maidenhead