Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: The Lords shouldn't be a bolt-hole for failed MPs

The promotion of unworthy men and women must (and does) offend those who are a credit to the Lords

According to emerging reports, Lord Levy has allegedly implicated the Prime Minister in his evidence to the police investigating rich donors and their nominations for peerages. Levy is said to have claimed that his own vigorous pursuance of secret donations disguised as loans to the Labour Party was ordered by Tony Blair himself.

Money can buy you love and, of course, helps hugely when you think the time has come for your nation to honour you with a peerage. Lord Levy, a small man with an enormous bank balance, is accused of being granted his ermine not because he plays a good game of tennis or does good works for the needy but because he is a modem cabled to the super rich, a facility he placed at the disposal of Blair and the Labour Party. Happiness all round and for Levy an added bonus - he was for a long time our Middle East envoy.

The man who gave us Alvin Stardust was thought capable of navigating Middle East politics on our behalf. I believe Blair couldn't condemn the recent Israeli assault on the Lebanon partly because of the hold Levy has on him. And if the Lord is now preparing to abandon that special relationship to save his own reputation, we may finally get to value his contributions to society as the man who knew and revealed the shady business of political favouritism.

It has been going on for ever with all parties playing the game of bribery and patronage for present and future favours. John Lidstone, a tireless campaigner against the dishonourable practices now institutionalised and ingrained in public life writes: "Monarchs traditionally used the honours system to ennoble their offspring and pay off debts to retainers and court favourites ... Likewise, prime ministers have abused the system to line their own pockets and their parties' funds and ensure that errant MPs obey the party whip."

This last point has not received as much attention as it needs, so engrossed have we been in the cash-for-peerages scandal. I visited the Lords last week and realised just how many more mediocre time servers have leapt into the chamber. Some lost elections so had to be consoled, others were rewarded for proving inadequate as ministers, a number were rewarded for being supplicants to Blair's policies.

Then there are the folk who ensure their "communities" will keep faith with the party in exchange for the robes and kudos. The same detritus is found among Tory and Lib-Dem peers. I don't understand why there have been no objections raised about this free entry into the club. Why can't ex-politicians gracefully retire without getting a peerage? This isn't a retirement home.

The promotion of unworthy men and women must (and does) intensely offend those peers who are personally and professionally a credit to the Lords. Among the most effective are the Lords and Baronesses who have found courage to leave political tribalism for the greater good. They often moan to me about the pathetic performance and attendance records of individuals who love pomp and circumstance and do little to earn the respect they demand.

In 1999 the government pledged: "[we] will reform the way life peers are nominated. We believe no political party should have a majority in the Lords. We will make the process of appointment transparent and fair. There is no truth in the assertion that we wish to create a 'house of patronage' as an abuse of the appointments system".

Well, like so much else, this was bland muzak for our ears. There has been only one real structural change - the setting up of a cross-party Appointments Commission that vets nominations and invites applications from deserving individuals.

A tiny number of excellent peers have gone in through this channel. Rather than opting for a wholly elected second chamber, we should make all new appointments using this open and fair system. An elected House of Lords would replicate all the problems we have in the Commons where white males dominate and parties use the whip to rally the herds without proper democratic debate or dissent.

Many of us democrats who once despised the sleepy hollow that was the second chamber have come to value the vital part it plays checking the boundless ambitions of an elected oligarchy backed by a plutocracy - New Labour as it has become since the end of the first term. The Lords hold this government accountable on human rights violations, on the new anti-terrorism laws, the war on Iraq and other spectacularly authoritarian measures. There is a new sense of purpose in the chamber as it authoritatively opposes unwise policies. This must be why the Lords is increasingly being stuffed with old comrades who will undoubtedly ensure less awkward scrutiny. We need the Lords and must preserve and enhance it but only if it becomes an institution independent of party politics with an impeccable entry process. It must speak for the nation to balance the Commons, which today represents mainly the ruling party and its ambitions to hold on to power.

If the Levy saga creates a swell of public opinion against sleaze, as we witnessed during the last days of Thatcherism, we may just get through real reform in the second bastion of Parliament. If so, the august body will regain its name and reason. If not, the club will grow more disreputable and eventually unattractive to the people we need in public life and democracy will be the loser.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk