Letter in today's Guardian

Your article (Comment, October 23) misrepresents the House of Lords. Of the 72 new peers appointed since the beginning of this parliament, only 23 take the Labour whip and the rest are Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or crossbenchers. Twenty of them are women, adding to the previous total of 116 women members, including the Lords speaker and the leader of the house.

The ideal member is not one who can pop in from time to time, as he or she might to the board of a cultural institution. The member needs to be able to attend regularly, to deal with legislation in their area of interest and to extract information from the government at question time. We don't want anybody who is looking for "the perfect eventide home".