When they’re not in Parliament, all ministers of whatever rank need to be in their departments, in direct contact with their colleagues, their civil servants and with a whole range of other stakeholders. Indeed, they may well be back-and-forth between Westminster and Whitehall several times a day. Moving the parliamentary side of their job 200 miles away, but not the other side, just isn’t practical.

Lords ministers are not mere adornments, but integral members of their team. They’re often ennobled for the specific purpose of recruiting them into government, where they help make up for the less-than-bottomless pool of talent in the Commons.

I guess that the relevant parts of each ministry could be moved along with the Lords. But the specific responsibilities of the Lords ministers aren’t fixed — they change at each reshuffle (and sometimes between reshuffles).

Also if we’re going to start shifting thousands of civil servants northwards then we might as well do it properly and call it an English national government — presiding over devolved matters as the Scottish government already does. As for democratic oversight of this new administration, forget the House of Lords and set up an English Parliament.

In York, of course.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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