LETTER: Blair offers peers a mess of pottage

Tuesday 12 March 1996 00:02 GMT

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Sir: Tony Blair ("A lifetime of lunch without peer", 11 March) asks hereditary peers to give up their speaking rights in return for keeping lunching and dining rights at the House of Lords. He is literally asking us to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. This does no more than confirm me in my opinion that he is a smooth man.

Were he to ask me to sell my birthright for a House of Commons elected by a voting system that makes it truly representative of the people he might get a different answer. After all, that is my birthright too.

Earl Russell

House of Lords

London SW1

The writer is Liberal Democrat spokesman on Social Security

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LETTER: Blair offers peers a mess of pottage

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