IT is 100 years since the Parliament Act of 1911 first curbed the power of the House of Lords.

Further reform has appeared on every Liberal manifesto ever since. After the disaster of the AV referendum, one might assume Nick Clegg would have cooled on the issue of constitutional reform. Instead, the Deputy Prime Minister appears more anxious than ever to press ahead with reconstruction of what MPs like to call “the other place”.

Yesterday Mr Clegg announced sweeping changes that would see the present upper chamber replaced by a far smaller body consisting of 80% elected and 20% appointed members. They would sit for a 15-year term, with a third elected every five years. A joint committee of both houses will now scrutinise the draft bill for a year but the intention is to hold the first elections in 2015.

It was clear from the barracking behind him yesterday that Mr Clegg’s passion for this legislation is not shared by many Tory backbenchers. It is also opposed by many Labour members, who favour a 100% elected chamber. It is unlikely to be popular in the House of Lords either. This is not just a question of ermine-clad turkeys unwilling to vote for Christmas. Some peers, including Labour’s Baroness Boothroyd, the former Commons speaker, and former Liberal leader Lord Steel, argue that reform risks robbing parliament of a “vast reservoir of talent and expertise”.

It seems unlikely that many voters lie awake at night worrying about this subject and many could argue that the Coalition Government has better things to be doing. Nevertheless, this is an important issue. It is difficult to present what goes on in the Houses of Parliament as any sort of model for democracy in the 21st century when the second chamber is entirely appointed. There are even a few hereditary peers still pottering around.

The Herald favours a hybrid second house, provided it remains essentially a revising chamber, as is the intention in this bill. This would facilitate the retention of those wise heads from the worlds of science, the law and the arts, and a scattering of churchmen and women and the creation of a democratically-elected body that more closely resembles the outside world. A part-appointed body is also less likely to challenge the primacy of the Commons.

In the current House of Lords there are too much patronage and there are too many party placemen. It is also too big. Following the creation of 117 new peers last year, more than 800 are now entitled to take their seats (or crowd in at the back), many of whom are happy to pocket the daily allowance. By contrast, the US manages with a Senate of just 100 members.

Given the level of opposition on both sides of the House and in both chambers, can this bill reach the statute book, even if David Cameron is prepared to use the Parliament Act, as he claims? The risk for Mr Clegg is that his measure will be eclipsed by Tories who think it goes too far and Labour members who believe it does not go far enough. After the AV fiasco, that would be politically fatal for the LibDem leader. Nevertheless, he is right to try. If House of Lords reform was easy, it would probably have happened long ago.