The UK has been framing the House of Lords as a council of experts for a while now. I don't know how well it actually works as one though. It's basically pot l

The UK has been framing the House of Lords as a council of experts for a while now. I don't know how well it actually works as one though. It's basically pot luck, unfortunately. Sometimes the Lords have quite enlightened debates, where several contributors clearly do have expert knowledge in a field and others do respect that and politely defer to those with more relevant experience. Consequently, sometimes they really do send proposed laws back to the Commons with helpful amendments suggested. However, sometimes they have no idea what they're talking about at all. It's not unusual to see a committee of Lords hearing evidence from high-ranking civil servants on some issue where the entire session looks like one old, rich, out-of-touch person after another declaring an interest due to their own business activities and all of them collectively missing the point for several hours. It's not a universal truth, but I'm afraid discussions around science and technology subjects tend to fall into the latter category, other than perhaps on medical matters, where there does seem to be enough knowledge and expertise within the Lords to allow constructive and intelligent debate.