Dig beneath the ermine and you find the whiff of sleaze.

Byline: GEORGE TYNDALE

DAY after day they have emerged from the House of Lords.

Misty-eyed with nostalgia, the old codgers have told us how the Upper House was once a bastion of integrity where the incorruptible worked selflessly for the public good.

We are told it was a chamber of integrity where the honourable set standards of decency on which a nation was built.

I don't believe a word of it.

I simply don't accept that over the past 600 years there hasn't been the odd earl who erred on the side of self-interest.

Or a broke baron who took a few quid in a parchment envelope for applying a discreet touch of influence.

But the simple fact is that it didn't much matter.

For decades all the old buffers were expected to do was shuffle across their deep pile carpeting, tick a few boxes, fill in their expense forms and let the House of Commons get on with running the country.

Not any more.

Since 1997 New Labour has pumped out well over 3,500 new laws, almost one for every day it has been in office.

This blizzard of legislation has swept through the Commons with the breeze of a massive Labour majority behind it, and with a whistle of contempt from Downing Street which has demonstrated mounting scorn for the opinions of the elected.

So the importance of the Lords as a means of filtering and examining what has daily been shovelled into Westminster has grown immensely.

Undercover

Yet at the same time that its significance has been ballooning, its stature has been diminished, its traditions plundered and its integrity undermined. For all its marbled elegance and erminetrimmed grandeur, the Lords has become a tip mired in sleaze and self-interest.

And that was before a complaint to the police and two official inquiries into the Lords For Hire scandal.

This came after four of its members told undercover reporters that they were willing to accept cash for working behind the scenes to shape legislation.

The Lords' descent began with the socalled reforms of Tony Blair.

Having sacked the majority of the hereditary members, he set about replacing them with New Labour placemen.

He created a total of 357 peers - almost half the present total. Some were given a title after paying vast sums into Labour Party funds; others were cronies; some were simply parked there out of convenience.

So if it is distasteful to discover that 145 of these well-remunerated "public servants" are also picking up vast sums as consultants from companies and interest groups, it is hardly surprising.

Of course, it is shocking that the ennobled should be recorded talking blatantly of bending the rules and six-figure pay cheques.

Of course, it is breathtaking to discover that they protest they have broken no rules - because there are no rules to break. And, of course, it all has to change.

But that job comes down to you and me. Because the only way to ensure that the Lords is salvaged is to make it an elected chamber.

Now I know that, as voters, we are so disillusioned with politics that we can hardly be bothered to vote for MPs.

But maybe the idea of voting for an Upper House that could bring some decency and dignity back to the political process might actually succeed in rejuvenating our interest.

In any case, there's no alternative. The current House of Lords that is the sleazy, nasty creation of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has to go.

And the sooner, the better.

It must be replaced by an upper chamber that will become our defence against people like Blair and Brown.