Just because No 10 wants a little expert help is no reason to grant outsiders a lifetime in ermine

It is hail and farewell time around Whitehall. Hail to Baron Sugar of Clapton, but farewell to Baron Darzi of Denham, not to mention Baron Carter of Barnes. Let the great big world keep turning without you, Baron Malloch-Brown of St Leonard’s Forest. And cheerio Baron Jones of Brum (though you’ve been gone quite a while already).

The last four were the leaders of Gordon Brown’s new pack, trailblazers for his government of all the talents. But now it’s the government of all the exits. Digby Jones vanished in under a year, talking about his “dehumanising, depersonalising” time as a junior functionary. Mark Malloch-Brown and Ara Darzi did rather better, notching two years apiece – until this month. Stephen Carter, Lord Broadband, wins the palm for a headlong transition. Appointed to a ministerial post in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, October 2008: announced resignation, June 2009.

More comings and goings than Manchester City in the transfer window. More drama than an absurd BBC Trust meeting trying to decide whether Lord Hired of Fired can play apprentice finder in an election season. More dilemmas of a wholly ridiculous kind: first, why do talented outsiders wither and die in ministerial smog? But second, why do we have to give these chaps a job for life – attendance money, expenses, office costs, title – to sign them up for a few bare months of public service? What have they done to deserve decades of squirming in ermine?

Now, of course, it’s not quite possible yet to guess where the new, independent fees office will finally pitch their lordships’ expenses, beyond daily subsistence of £82.50 a day. Perhaps the four barons just departed won’t attend, won’t claim, won’t want to play the game at all. But it’s still a great game, eternal membership of a club that leaves the Garrick standing.

But why, pray, is it necessary to offer such enduring beneficence in order to get a little specific on board? There’s no reason for Downing Street not to add a noted surgeon or distinguished UN official to the team: reinforcements both sensible and necessary. A Commons full of professional members – no second jobs, no experience of life outside Central Office or some trades union HQ – isn’t likely to throw up much in the way of ministerial talent.

And this is a bind that will grow worse if David Cameron gets his way and reduces the number of MPs. Do we trust the people we elect to govern us? No: and we’re not exactly awed by them either. The wellsprings are running dry – and the true need for constitutional change has never been clearer.

Why go through the flummery of titles and bounteous cash flowing the wrong way in order to import expert ministers to do expert jobs? Why pavilion them with phoney baronies if they can just turn up in the Commons, make statements, answer questions and do the normal thing? Why pension them off to the Lords, where expense streams always run and nothing is truly proactive (or particularly democratic)? Let Mr Carter arrive, appear at the Commons dispatch box as requested, do his stuff – and then go back to being plain Steve again.

That’s the submerged logic of the new constitutional reform bill as tabled. What No 10 gives, life peers can henceforth shuck off. What heredity bestows no longer matters. But, why then deem that any of it matters? Choose a pragmatic version of the American cabinet system, fit for modern purpose. Spare Lord Mandelson months thinking up his title. Leave Lord Adonis in the right traffic lane. Impose no legacy for groaning generations to come. Here’s a very modest proposal that abolishes mindless contortions and futile cost. Watch Mark MB junk that upper house hyphen. Call My Lord Darzi just Dr once more. Lord Suralan, you’re terminated. That’s what you might call real reform.