LORDS SPIRITUAL MAKE GOVERNMENT TOE THE MORAL LINE

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Lords Spiritual make Government toe the moral line

Jobee asks for the Lords Spiritual to be disbanded as they are not politicians ("Never nothing", Mailbox, April 20). Politics is the science of government to get party policies into law.

The Church has always been engaged in humanitarian work so it would be difficult to divorce social service work from social action.

During the last war, one of my heroes was Bomber Harris. My attitude was to give the Germans a taste of what they had done to us.

The day after the carpet bombing of Dresden in February 1945, Bishop George Bell, of Chichester, stood up in the House of Lords to condemn the raid.

Many thought it treacherous, if not treasonable, but the speech was, and still is, the function of the bishops in the Lords.

They make the Government toe the moral line. I would agree to a reduction in the number of Lords Spiritual, with them being a mix of all the faiths in the country.

Patrick Trigg, Oadby