Does Britain suffer from a democratic deficit?

Britain suffers from a democratic deficit resulting in a fall in political participation, undemocratic institutions and the insufficient increased centralization of power. 

Britain suffers from a democratic deficit, through the House of Lords because they are unelected. The Lords are either hereditary, where they inherit their position, or are life peers where they are chosen in regards to their expertise in certain areas. This makes the country a democratic deficit, because these Lords are not elected by the British public, which is what they can do with MPs. This is unfair to the people, as the Lords are able to scrutinise new Bills, and as they are 'not toed to a party', the Lords can express their own opinion. This shows that the Lords only represent themselves or their expertise, not a constituency; British citizens do not have a say. The democratic renewal, is to get rid of the hereditary peers completely, because, although the 1958 and 1999 Acts saw some laws that stopped Lords inherit their position in the House, there are still  92 hereditary peers in the House of Lords. Also to improve this democratic deficit, the life peers needs to be elected by the people which will be more fair and representative. 

The current voting system, the First Past the Post system (FPTP), also suffers from a democratic deficit because it has caused a decrease in political participation. This voting system is not very democratic because it produces a disproportional result; not only do MPs get elected on small support, but the party that gets the most percentage of votes, wins the election. For example, in the 2015 General Election, the Conservatives won a majority vote of 36.9%, but 63.1% voted for other parties. This means that more electorates did not want the Conservatives to run Britain, but because of the FPTP system, they are running the country; how is this fair? The FPTP voting system also causes partisan dealignment and political apathy which leads to a decline in voter turnout and in party membership, but an increase in pressure groups and membership of smaller political parties. The democratic renewal would be to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote to produce a more fair and proportional result in general elections. To also improve the voter turnout, Britain could make voting compulsory, or even lower the voting age to also lead to an increase in political participation. 

Even though Parliament is a form of true democracy, it is ineffective because the second chamber (House of Lords) is unelected and the scrutiny, of Bills that takes place in Government, by their selected standing committee, weakens the representative role of Parliament, as the people do not get a direct say in what happens to a Bill. Also the government pf the day usually has a majority control over the House of Commons, so a Bill introduced by them, will get a majority vote and will win. This is not fair to other parties who will represent different people in society because their opinions are not being heard in  Parliament.