Yet the Commons will always be pre-eminent so long as it houses the executive and remains the prime minister's base. Also, it is the function of the second chamber which will define its juniority: it will simply have fewer powers than the other place. In any case, to ensure balance by making one chamber less legitimate than the other is hardly good reasoning: surely we want both houses to be equally legitimate, even if one eventually has to bow to the other.
The second concern relates to a fear of redundancy: won't an elected second house simply be a clone of the first, an identical layer of government offering much the same as the Commons? That misses our earlier point about functions: the Commons and the Lords would have different jobs, one containing the executive, the other acting as check and scrutineer. Other steps can also be taken. The second chamber could be elected on a different timetable, and possibly under a different system, from the first. An obvious solution would be to elect members of the new house - perhaps to be called senators - from different districts, probably larger, regional ones, and under proportional representation.
That applies whether or not the electoral system for the Commons is reformed. At the moment, government enthusiasm for that project seems to be fading: even the cautious shift towards PR advocated by Lord Jenkins may be considered too dangerous. One option would therefore be to have a Commons chosen by first-past-the-post working alongside an upper chamber chosen by PR. That would fit the pattern of a chamber with a dominant executive and another free from it. Electing the Senate at a different time from the Commons - at mid-term in the life of a government, for example - should produce a contrast in political complexion between the two houses. The experience of genuinely bicameral democracies is that few parties ever control both bodies: instead they have to work together, reaching accommodation across the chambers. Sceptics will call this a recipe for gridlock; but those countries whose systems require co-operation tell a different story - one where the worst excesses of partisan government have been avoided. The memory of the poll tax suggests Britain's system of unfettered executive rule has afforded no such protection from immoderation.
A third anxiety, and one we take very seriously, relates to the loss of independence which could result from full election rather than nomination. Surely, it's said, elected senators will be no different from our current crop of MPs, obedient creatures of the party machine? There are several reassurances to be offered here. First, PR with open lists should do its bit to loosen the party uniformity now on display in the Commons. The success of independent candidates in this month's Scottish PR-based elections provides some hope of that. Second, party ties are likely to weaken once elected members are freed from the burden of sustaining a government in office. Indeed, if senators are ruled ineligible for government jobs, then the whole currency of promotions and preferment, now so ruthlessly deployed by the party managers, could be rendered invalid. Whips would exercise no hold.
And in any case: what better basis for independence can there be than the moral legitimacy that comes with election? Under the system of a blended house - part-nominated, part-elected - which the government seems to favour, appointees who came in boasting of their independence would soon be condemned as the opposite: cronies who owed their place in the chamber not to the voters but to the powers that be. For that reason, a blended two-tier house of this kind would fast become unsustainable. The pressure for reform would grow to replace it, either by a wholly nominated body - a House of Patronage - or a fully-elected one. It's clear which of these options claims legitimacy.
Another valid concern is the potential loss of the Lords' much-vaunted wealth of expertise likely under an elective system. This can be summarised as the Melvyn Bragg problem. Clearly Lord Bragg brings great experience to the Lords' deliberations on, say, broadcasting, of a kind we'd be lucky ever to get from the normal run of elected politicians. People like him - there are plenty of other examples in all parts of the house - would never submit themselves to the rough and tumble of an election. The upper house would lose the deep reservoir of experience and expertise that gives it distinction now.
We would want to retain, within an upper chamber based on election, the influence and authority which comes from having real experts there. Yet experts aren't always polymaths. Bragg may be a world authority on broadcasting - but he is not, as he would be the first to admit, a great expert on embryo research or the rights of gay men. Most 'expert' peers are expert in one area only. In the light of that, one way to continue to draw on unelectable expertise might be to give the committees of a democratically elected house the right to co-opt up to one-third of their number as expert committee members for the duration of a specific bill. The right measure of democratic accountability would be ensured by keeping co-option in the hands of elected members, not those of an unelectable appointments commission.
Of course, there will be other objections; no system will ever be perfect. There may be alternative ways of doing what needs to be done: preserving the expertise without surrendering the principle of democratic election. But the flaws in this proposition could turn out to be fewer and more minor than those inherent in any system of nomination, even one blended with a nod to election.
Besides, in a democracy the burden of proof is on those who would grant places in our legislature by means other than the ballot box. That can't be right, not at the brink of a new century. We have gone a long way in making Britain a democracy: now it is time to finish the job.