The House of Lords has had ‘little or no positive impact’ on the well-being of the average Briton, an influential committee of migrants and refugees has said today.

The committee’s damning report attacked government claims that the lack of elections to Britain’s upper house saves the country GBP6 billion a year’. The report also warned that Labour’s new proposals for a reformed ‘Australian-style’ House of Lords, complete with barbeques, crocodiles and silly hats, would be insufficient to stop the harm that peers were causing to the nation’s well-being.

The committee concluded that the government should impose a cap on the number of peers currently allowed to live within the UK, although it transpires that a large number of them spend the winters abroad anyway. ‘These people are living off the state at our expense’ said one Polish builder. ‘When they do actually bother to turn up to work they just sit around chatting before falling asleep for the afternoon.’

But at Eton School in Berkshire, a charity that works tirelessly for children of members of the House of Lords, a volunteer defended this persecuted and vilified section of society. ‘Many of these people they have grown up on vast sprawling estates and struggle to interact with ordinary people.’

Meanwhile one section of the Upper Classes claim they have been working hard to bring these two disparate groups closer together. ‘We’ve had several Croation and Slovakian nannies’ said one elderly Lord ‘and I think I can say that they all went home with a little bit of English aristocracy inside them.’