Tag Archives: paul tyler

LibLink: Paul Tyler – The Lords are listening, but not to rent-a-mob email campaigns

By Nick Thornsby | Published 26th October 2011 - 12:58 pm

Over on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Lib Dem peer Lord (Paul) Tyler has a piece on the (not particularly successful) campaign by 38-Degrees to lobby members of the House of Lords over health reform.

Here’s a sample:

As a peer who received many 38 Degrees-inspired communications in the runup to the debate over the NHS bill, I can say with some confidence that their lack of influence was strongly linked to the unduly polarising approach they took to this issue. They picked the wrong battle, and the wrong argument.

Their battle was essentially on whether to

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged 38 degrees, NHS, nhs reform | 12 Comments

Opinion: “I don’t like them, you don’t like them… We have to have them”

By Dinti Batstone | Published 14th September 2011 - 9:25 am

This Saturday, Conference has the opportunity to show that Liberal Democrats are genuinely committed to achieving gender balance in our own distinctively liberal and democratic way.

Conference will debate an amendment which Jo Shaw and I have put forward to Mark Pack and Paul Tyler’s Lords reform motion. Our amendment builds on the approach taken by our party in the late 1990s, when one-off zipping was used to deliver a gender-balanced cohort of Lib Dem MEPs in the first PR elections to the European Parliament.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t need these kinds of measures. But with just 12% women …

Posted in Conference, Op-eds | Also tagged campaign for gender balance, claire tyler, constitutional reform, equalities, gender balance, house of lords, jo shaw, lords reform, lynne featherstone, mark pack | 14 Comments

LibLink: Lord Tyler – Restore teeth to the Lords

By Nick Thornsby | Published 5th July 2011 - 5:21 pm

Lib Dem peer Lord (Paul) Tyler recently took to the Guardian’s Comment Is Free along with Labour’s Lord (Andrew) Adonis with a joint piece arguing that their fellow members of the House of Lords should back proposals to reform the second chamber.

Here’s a sample:

Any objection that reform is taking place with undue haste will not stand up to scrutiny. It is now 100 years since the passage of the Parliament Act, which states the intention to substitute the Lords with “a second chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation”.

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged andrew adonis, constitutional reform, house of lords, lords reform | Leave a comment

LibLink | Paul Tyler: Lords’ Question Time is a “farcical free-for-all”

By Helen Duffett | Published 7th June 2011 - 12:42 pm

Lord Tyler writes over at e-Politix today about the way Question Time is conducted in the Lords:

As the House’s membership has increased in recent months, Question Time has become an ever more farcical free-for-all. There are a large number of Members who wish to contribute at any one time. Newcomers are rightly mystified by the absurd way in which one has to jockey for the opportunity to speak. You have to pop up and start bellowing, ‘My Lords’, in the hope that your bellow will be more thundersome than those of competing Members, or that some Lordly recognition

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Posted in LibLink, Parliament | Also tagged epolitix, house of lords, parliamentary reform | Leave a comment

Lords reform: the Liberal Democrat trio announced

By Mark Pack | Published 6th June 2011 - 7:23 am

Over the weekend Mark Valladares blogged about the three Liberal Democrats being appointed to the Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament carrying out pre-legislative scrutiny committee on Lords reform:

From the Lords, representing the constitutional wonk tendency (in a good way), Lord Tyler is the first of the two nominees. Paul has been leading calls for a complete overhaul of the Second Chamber for a very long time and is one of the Party’s foremost constitutional experts…

From the Commons, that rather unusual beast, a former member of the House of Lords, John Thurso. As he has already been abolished once,

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Posted in News | Also tagged constitutional reform, david steel, house of lords, john thurso, lords reform, mark valladares, paddy ashdown, paul walter, ros scott | 12 Comments

Liberal Democrat peers: oh dear

By Mark Pack | Published 31st May 2011 - 8:58 pm

No point beating about the bush, if you want to find several handful of Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians who I think are wrong just look to the Liberal Democrat benches in the House of Lords where, as today’s news showed, there is a very large minority opposed to introducing elections for the upper house.

Despite Lords reform having been a long-standing Liberal Democrat (and before that both SDP and Liberal Party) policy, despite the party being in a coalition committed to Lords reform (a pretty remarkable opportunity when you consider the Conservative Party’s traditional view), despite Liberal Democrat party leaders having …

Posted in News | Also tagged constitutional reform, house of lords, lord mcnally, lords reform | 21 Comments

LibLink: Tyler versus Steel on Lords reform

By Mark Pack | Published 22nd May 2011 - 2:03 pm

During the week The Guardian ran an exchange between Liberal Democrats Lord Steel and Tyler – the former Liberal Party leader urging the Lib Dems to drop the party’s long-standing policy (and the Liberal Party’s before that) to introduce elections for the Lords, and Tyler responding.

Here’s a sample:

Steel: I am old enough to recall the defeat of Lords reform proposals through getting bogged down in the Commons in a war of attrition led by Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, and I fear the same may happen to these. There is no public clamour for the changes…

Tyler: Westminster is such an

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged constitutional reform, david steel, house of lords, lords reform | 5 Comments

Meet the Lib Dem bloggers: Paul Tyler

By Mark Pack | Published 1st April 2011 - 12:27 pm

Welcome to the latest in our series giving the human face behind some of the blogs you can find on the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator.

Today it is Liberal Democrat peer (and former MP) Paul Tyler who blogs at www.lordsoftheblog.net.

1. What’s your formative political memory?
Suez, October 29th 1956. Israel with British collusion bombed the Suez Canal on my 15th birthday!

2. When did you start blogging?
About three years ago.

3. Why did you start blogging?
I was invited to do so by the Hansard Society, who set up LordsoftheBlog to try to engage people outside Westminster in the work of the House of …

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged blogging, lib dem bloggers | Leave a comment

Crossbenchers increasingly hostile to Labour as government makes boundary changes

By Mark Pack | Published 26th January 2011 - 10:45 pm

Increasing anger from crossbench peers at Labour’s filibustering in the Lords looks to be preparing the way for either Labour backing down or (for the Lords) highly unusual procedural decisions to end the filibustering. As I put it earlier in the week, if Labour loses the support of the crossbenchers, it will not only lose the struggle over this bill but weaken its ability to successfully oppose other legislation in the future.

At the same time, the government has been showing its willingness to listen to scrutiny rather than filibustering by agreeing to two changes to the ways in which …

Posted in Election law, News | Also tagged av referendum, chris rennard, david cameron, parliamentary boundary review, Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill | 13 Comments

Parliamentary pillow fight as peers face all-night sittings

By Helen Duffett | Published 17th January 2011 - 11:49 pm

Members of the House of Lords are bedding down for the first ermine sleepover in recent Parliamentary history as peers debate the government’s plans to hold a referendum on electoral reform. [Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill]

After eight days of the Bill at Committee Stage, there are still 165 amendments of the original 275 remaining for consideration.

From the Financial Times:

Labour peers are braced for the prospect of all-night sittings in the coming days in what the government has condemned as unprecedented “filibustering” by the opposition party.

Officials were setting out camp beds in several rooms in the House of

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Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged chris rennard, jane bonham-carter, Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill | 30 Comments

Chris Rennard writes… The battle for electoral reform in the Lords

By Chris Rennard | Published 18th November 2010 - 7:05 pm

Battle has been joined in the House of Lords over the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (generally referred to as the PVSC Bill). Having passed all stages in the Commons, it came to the Lords this week. It needs to get to Royal Assent by the end of January for the referendum on using the Alternative Vote for future Westminster elections to be held on May 5th next year.

Two controversial measures have been put together in one Bill as part of the coalition agreement. The Government won every vote in the Commons on this Bill with comfortable majorities. But Labour’s …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged av referendum, electoral reform, Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill | 12 Comments

“Appalled and embarrassed” – Paul Tyler on attitudes in the House of Lords

By Mark Pack | Published 9th November 2010 - 8:55 am

“Appalled and embarrassed” – that is how Liberal Democrat peer and Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson Paul Tyler described his reaction to the attitude and behaviour of some members of the House of Lords:

I have been appalled and embarrassed by the number of Peers, even including a few former Cabinet Ministers, who use the place as a convenient private club, with good parking and subsidised catering. They never speak or even ask a question, let alone contribute to a debate.

His comments were made when discussing the publication of the Consultation on Members Leaving the House, which looked as the views of peers as part …

Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged house of lords, nick clegg, parliamentary reform | 3 Comments

Strictly Guevara

By Alex Foster | Published 24th December 2008 - 11:29 am

We’ve covered the press in relation to Lib Dem peer Paul Tyler over the last week in two pieces – first where he was given the slightly unlikely epithet of Che Guevara and secondly when he took a little flak for asking the BBC to publish the full details of the Strictly Come Dancing final vote.

It’s worth remembering that Lord Tyler is part of the excellent Lords of the Blog effort, and last night, he took the opportunity to answer his critics.

It strikes me that politicians are constantly under fire for being ‘out of touch’, not residing in

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Posted in Humour | Also tagged che guevera, strictly come dancing | 2 Comments

Lib Dem peer demands Strictly recount

By Stephen Tall | Published 22nd December 2008 - 10:04 pm

The Daily Mail reports:

A LibDem peer has joined the debate following Tom Chambers’s controversial Strictly Come Dancing win, calling Saturday’s final a ‘fiasco’.

Former North Cornwall MP Lord Tyler was called on the BBC to release the voting figures for the three finalists following producers’ decision to allow Chambers to progress from the semi-final, despite coming bottom of the judges leaderboard.

Lord Tyler has written to BBC Director General Mark Thompson, requesting the Corporation makes the voting figures public.

The story should come as no surprise on two counts, both already trailed on LDV:

1. As Paul Tyler has emerged as Parliament’s …

Posted in News | Also tagged bbc, television | 4 Comments

Paul Tyler as Che Guevara

By The Voice | Published 21st December 2008 - 8:49 pm

The BBC has the story:

There’s an increasingly organised group of senior figures, ex-cabinet ministers and possible future Speakers of the Commons. They meet in distant committee rooms for dry sounding seminars about constitutional reform, and grumble about the wavering of Gordon Brown’s commitment to giving parliament more power.

In a hung parliament they might seize their moment….it’s certainly being discussed behind the scenes, and Lord Paul Tyler, a former Liberal Democrat Shadow Leader of the Commons, is one of the unlikely Che Guevaras in a sort of Parliamentary Liberation Army…its demands would include the a Commons vote to confirm any government

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Posted in Parliament | 3 Comments

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