In the past the question of parliamentary reform was about extending the franchise and representation. Labour dodged the need to reform fully the Lords. I still have a vivid memory of flying back from a Franco-British summit with Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Charles Clarke. (It was in January 2003 and at it senior French officials promised the British ministers that France would not leave Britain alone in the event of a move into Iraq. But that’s another story.)

We had to leave early to vote on Robin Cook’s menu of reforms of the Lords. With hindsight Cook made a mistake with his democratic voting experiment by allowing votes on different degrees of an elected chamber. Charles Clarke and I made clear we would vote for the maximum elected percentage. Blair and Straw almost ordered the pilot to bank the plane and tip us into the Channel as they were utterly indifferent to Cook’s efforts at Lords reform.

That effort eight years ago was the last at parliamentary reform. Now we have the curious sight of the unelected Lords trying to defend the right of people to be represented by the current number of MPs. The size of the Commons does matter. England has no intermediary levels of government between the citizen and the state and its agencies. America has four times the number of elected officials per head of population as Britain. France has 38,000 elected mayors. We have fewer than 10. Germany will go to the polls in seven regional government elections this year and German democracy is based on bringing government closer to the people.

In Britain it is 650 MPs for 62 million people. For many reducing the Commons by 50 or 500 may be welcome. MPs are as popular as rabid rats at the moment. But that will pass. If the reduction of representation is voted through however, the citizens will be more exposed to the state and those acting in its name.

As it is, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have quietly increased the size of the executive at the expense of backbench MPs. Cameron has 95 members of his government team, 14 more than Margaret Thatcher. Forty per cent of Lib Dem MPs are on the executive payroll. In addition there are 30 plus select committee chairs who are paid salaries. By removing 50 MPs, the balance in favour of the executive and against the Commons’ power to hold to account their fellow MPs who are on the payroll will be further reduced.

The idea of evening out constituencies is fair. It is ridiculous that just 63,000 voters can send the Putney Conservative, Justine Greening, to Parliament but it needs 90,000 voters to elect East Ham’s Stephen Timms. But you cannot simply take, say, 13,000 East Ham voters and add them to Putney’s electorate. To equalise Putney and East Ham means altering the size and shape of every London constituency in between.

That should be a matter of consultation. But Cameron is proposing that Boundary Commissioners should ride out and ride roughshod over local people to draw up constituency boundaries with all the finesse of 19th century imperial mapmakers deciding the frontiers of British colonies in Africa.

No other democracy allows electoral district boundaries to be changed without consultation. No other democracy in recent time has removed from its people so many elected representatives in one go.

The fusion of the AV bill and the MP reduction bill into one act is bad for democracy. Campaigners on AV will react bitterly to the mixing up of two quite distinct reform measures. The Guardian is right to say that the AV referendum should happen as soon as possible. The arguments are known and there is no point in delay.

But AV should be kept distinct from Cameron’s desire to weaken parliament and strengthen the executive by reducing the number of MPs. And the new boundaries need consultation and agreement not executive fiat.

It is a shame that the current debate has turned into a simulacrum of the worst of Commons all-night sitting antics. But the Lords, for the first time in their history, are seeking to defend the right of voters to elect representatives and to ensure that the elected house in parliament is not further subsumed into the executive.