Tag Archives: house of lords

Nick T

Justice and Security Bill: some recommended reading

By Nick T | Thu 11th October 2012 - 1:39 pm

As the distinction in much of the news media between straight reporting and comment becomes increasingly less clear, and in-depth analysis is replaced by instant comment, reliable, neutral and well-informed analysis of big policy issues becomes more difficult to lay one’s hands on. That is even more true when it comes to Parliamentary business.

Unbeknown to many outside the Parliamentary Estate (or at least to me until fairly recently!) are the documents produced by the Commons and Lords libraries. All the documents produced …

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How to keep up to date with the Liberal Democrat Lords

By Matt Withers | Wed 10th October 2012 - 3:25 pm

Here’s a question which tends to get lost amid the heat and noise generated around the issue of Lords reform – what do the members of the second chamber actually do?

Or at least, what are the Liberal Democrat peers doing on a daily basis? And this isn’t meant in a facetious way. Unless you’re in the gainful employment of the party’s peers, or a broken leg has left you with far too much time in front of BBC Parliament, chances are you might not know how the Lords are working to ensure that every piece of legislation which crosses their …

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Posted in Parliament | 3 Comments
Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes: Progress postponed

By Paul Tyler | Wed 10th October 2012 - 12:56 pm

There was no talk this year of banning champagne at the Conservative Party Conference. Perhaps there was no danger of exuberance among delegates. As recalcitrant Tories sought one-in-the-eye against Nick Clegg by erasing Lords Reform from the Coalition Agreement, their party’s treasured redrawing of the UK electoral map was duly jettisoned too. Without a stronger second chamber to challenge the executive, it would have been wrong to reduce the size of the House of Commons, thereby increasing the proportionate dominance of the government’s ‘payroll’ within it.

Clearly, the failure of the most comprehensive attempt to reform the composition of the Lords …

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Mark Pack

Lords reform: what the failure means for the Coalition, David Cameron and Nick Clegg

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th August 2012 - 8:06 am

First up, here’s Nick Robinson’s take on yesterday’s events followed by myself, via the BBC News Channel:

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Mark Pack

The House of Lords just got even more dangerous for Cameron

By Mark Pack | Mon 6th August 2012 - 8:52 pm

Imagine the situation.

You are a Liberal Democrat peer.

You have voted for several measures you did not like because they were in the Coalition Agreement.

You have now seen the Conservative Party walk away from a major part of the agreement.

You now know your place in Parliament is secure for a good few more years without the party’s whips being able to hold over you anything about your fate when reforms kick in, even if they should wish.

How do you think you are going to vote on future issue after issue that is in the Coalition Agreement but not the LibDem manifesto?

The …

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Posted in Op-eds | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Lords reform: what next?

By Mark Pack | Sat 4th August 2012 - 9:35 am

Four quick thoughts before I go off in search of chocolate, pizza and friends (in reverse order of priority, of course):

1. The last rites on Lords reform for this Parliament have not yet quite been uttered, though it’s striking how those in government I’ve spoken to are all now pretty much just talking about what the repercussions are rather than how it might yet go through. Will Ed Miliband be tempted to mix opportunism with principle and say, ‘No problem about those Tory backbenchers; we’ll support this measure?’.

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Caron Lindsay

Lord Rennard: “There’s no substitute for democracy”

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st August 2012 - 6:59 pm

Liberal Democrat peer and campaigning guru Chris Rennard went on Radio 4 yesterday to respond to the Earl of Glasgow saying that we should back down on Lords reform.

Lord Rennard said that there have been  plans for an elected Lords were not Nick Clegg’s alone and that there had been efforts to reform the upper House for 50 years before Nick Clegg was born.

He took a mild swipe at his Liberal Democrat colleague Lord Steel when asked about the latter’s plans to limit the reforms to allowing voluntary retirement and sacking those peers who don’t attend. Those things, said Rennard, …

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Mark Thompson

Opinion: Lib Dems should park Lords reform. For now.

By Mark Thompson | Mon 30th July 2012 - 10:23 am

I am an enthusiastic supporter of electoral and constitutional reform in this country. I have been arguing for years that the First Past the Post system for the Commons is hopelessly out of date and unfair and that there is no place in our constitution for an unelected second chamber. I was delighted when the coalition agreement included action on the latter and heartened by Nick Clegg’s various comments in the early days of this government that made it clear he was throwing his full weight as Deputy

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Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes: A victory for democracy?

By Paul Tyler | Wed 25th July 2012 - 6:58 pm

Doubtless some peers now believe that they can go off for the long summer recess, secure in the knowledge that the status quo in the House of Lords is preserved.  The thought of a shake-up is so uncomfortable for some inhabitants that they have resorted to calling the Coalition’s House of Lords Reform Bill ‘rushed’, despite its genesis in over a decade of cross-party discussion, and a hundred years of gestation.  Yet after subjecting the legislation to a painstaking Joint Committee, which met thirty times to take evidence from almost everyone who has ever thought about the subject, my bets …

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Stephen Tall

The graph which shows how many Tory, Labour and LibDem voters support House of Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Sat 21st July 2012 - 8:45 am

The London Evening Standard reported this week a new poll under the headline Even Lib-Dems say Lords reform is not a priority. Buried two-thirds of the way down, however, was this interesting data:

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Posted in News and Polls | Also tagged , and | 18 Comments
Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Lords reform – how Labour could learn from the Germans

By Stuart Bonar | Thu 19th July 2012 - 2:29 pm

Labour clears the way. So says the century-old Labour campaign poster depicting working men smashing down the door to the House of Lords. Oh dear. Given the opportunity earlier this month to live up to that proud boast they sided instead with rebel, anti-reform Conservatives and together succeeded in forcing the Government to abandon a vote on its proposed timetable for the bill.

Without the timetable, those who, for whatever bizarre reason, don’t believe that the governed should elect those who govern them could talk until the cows come home, ensuring the reform bill is killed off.

Labour could easily have sided with the Government. The …

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Mark Pack

The compromiser’s dilemma: House of Lords reform

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th July 2012 - 2:10 pm

House of Lords. Photo: Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of ParliamentYou propose something. Someone objects to it, giving many reasons. You offer to make some changes to meet some of the objections. A deal is made and progress is achieved.

A perfectly normal sequence of events, both inside and outside politics and whether the matter is as mundane as what to eat for dinner tomorrow or as public as the wording of Parliamentary legislation.

One big …

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Alex Smethurst

Opinion: The myth of the referendum convention

By Alex Smethurst | Tue 17th July 2012 - 12:41 pm

All three major parties committed to Lords Reform in their 2010 General Election manifestos, however Labour promised an elected Second Chamber via a referendum. This explains why Labour MPs dragged their heels during the Second Reading of the Lords Reform Bill, though a cynic may suggest that Labour did so not as its job as Opposition but because of a more insidious agenda to break up the Coalition. Nevertheless, Labour profess that their opposition stems from a belief that ‘constitutional convention’ requires that the Bill must include a …

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Greg Judge

Opinion: Presidents, mops and turkeys – The future of House of Lords Reform?

By Greg Judge | Mon 16th July 2012 - 3:53 pm

Whilst recalling the successes of the 1997 General Election, in which the Liberal Democrats earned a net gain of 28 seats, Paddy Ashdown brought his speech at a commemoratory reception hurtling into the present with talk of the now embattled Lords Reform Bill.

In a manner delivered only by a character such as Paddy, he proclaimed that the current proposals were of Lincolnian proportions in that they existed to

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Alex Smethurst

Opinion: Lords reform – the lies & lessons from the AV referendum

By Alex Smethurst | Mon 16th July 2012 - 10:23 am

I invite you to join me in a thought experiment. Let’s imagine Lords Reform has been passed as an Act. But let’s also imagine the Act includes a commitment to a referendum…

A Lords Reform referendum will be perceived as a Liberal Democrat ‘fix’, much like the AV referendum. This perceived fix, in the eyes of the electorate, is personified, regrettably, in Nick Clegg. According to UK Polling Report, Clegg’s

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Bill le Breton

Opinion: Why a referendum on second chamber reform would be good for the party

By Bill le Breton | Fri 13th July 2012 - 11:56 am

The Liberal Democrats built their electoral success on the three ‘Cs’: Concentrate, Communicate and Campaign. The campaigning zeal of the Party took us from a handful of councillors and a few MPs dotted around the Celtic fringe in the mid ‘Seventies to a truly national party, with over 3,500 councillors, 60MPs, power and influence in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, power and influence in over 150 councils, from Newcastle to Newquay, Liverpool to Islington.

Campaigning is the life blood of the movement we endeavour to create around the drive to seize and redistribute power. We do this by the simple means of helping people to take and use their power in their communities. Campaigning succeeds by involving people beyond the party in our campaigns. It energies and strengthens communities and nurtures the tolerance that comes from understanding others and identifying the common causes that link us. These common causes centre upon the injustice stemming from subjection to illegitimate power – be that banks that gamble with our money and provide shocking service, supermarkets that drive farmers to ruin and fix prices or bureaucrats who entangle citizens in red tape and restrict people’s opportunities.

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Paul Walter

PMQs: Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls!

By Paul Walter | Thu 12th July 2012 - 10:53 am

By golly by gosh, I think Ed Miliband has finally got in the swing of this Prime Minister’s Questions thing. While Cameron reeled from his Tuesday night beating by a right Jesse, the leader of the opposition appeared poised, relaxed and skilful. He’s learnt the knack of brevity and humour, as his first question demonstrated:

At this last Question Time before the recess, may I remind the

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

The best reason for House of Lords reform is one almost nobody mentions

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th July 2012 - 4:05 pm

My post from last year is rather relevant again, so here it is with some slight updates:

The voters have cast their verdict and an MP is out of office. What should happen to them next? Most people’s answers are somewhere on the spectrum from the polite (let them tidy up their affairs and see their staff properly treated as their contracts end) through to answers best not published before the watershed.

But our political system has a remarkable answer.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 28 Comments
Paul Walter

Baroness Betty Boothroyd blusters on the BBC

By Paul Walter | Mon 9th July 2012 - 8:23 am

Betty Bothroyd is furious. So furious that this morning, on Today, she could hardly speak coherently at one point. Spitting feathers, she was.

She is livid about the “reckless” plans to make the House of Lords mainly elected. She spoke of her outrage at the idea that “millions of people” will be able to vote for House of Lords members, giving them some sort of democratic authenticity. This will create “chaos” she said.

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Lord Tom McNally

Lord McNally writes… Conscience and reform

By Lord Tom McNally | Fri 6th July 2012 - 12:23 pm

Shirley Williams has recently been made Peer of the Year in one of the regular Parliamentary Awards. Eric Avebury was recently given a life time achievement award at a ceremony in the Speaker’s House. Matthew Oakeshott received praise for his persistence in pointing out that there is much in our banking system which is rotten and in need of reform. When issues affecting children are debated in the Lords it is often Joan Walmsley who holds the House with informed and practical opinion. Ditto when Margaret Sharp speaks on science, technology and higher education. Sally Hamwee and Martin …

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Mark Pack

Lords reform, Labour and the three key tests

By Mark Pack | Thu 28th June 2012 - 9:25 am

Ed Miliband’s decision to insist on Labour backing House of Lords reform at the Second Reading vote in the House of Commons is an important and welcome one. That it was opposed by senior Labour figures such as David Blunkett probably reinforces the views of many Liberal Democrats of Blunkett and co, but it should also remind us that Miliband’s decision and leadership on this is not trivial. It is something House of Lords reformers in all parties should welcome.

More cynical people may wonder if Labour support on the Second Reading will be a distraction tactic from them trying to sink Lords reform at a later date, whether with or without Miliband’s implicit backing. There are three main opportunities for that.

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Stephen Tall

Lords reform: did we really expect any better of either the Tories or Labour?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 26th June 2012 - 9:10 pm

All three main political parties fought the 2010 election promising the electorate that, if elected, they would reform the House of Lords. All three promised the same in 2005, too. And 2001. Yet in 2012 only one party is staying true to that promise: the Lib Dems. The Tories and Labour, in contrast, are happily indulging in party politics to block progress in advancing legislative democracy.

The Conservatives living up to their anti-reform name…

The Conservative Party has fought the last three elections promising to introduce a mainly/wholly elected second chamber to replace the current House of Patronage. They signed up …

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Mark Valladares

Coming up in the Lords: 25-29 June

By Mark Valladares | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 7:53 am

It’s all gone a bit quiet at the more civilised end of the Palace of Westminster, after the mayhem that came at the end of the last Parliamentary session. That isn’t to say that it’s dull, but there is rather more debate and scrutiny than voting.

The Crime and Courts Bill has reached its Committee stage, and Days 3 and 4 take place on Monday and Wednesday next week. I have to admit that I understand precious little of this, even after reading the various (astonishingly lengthy) amendments, …

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Paul Walter

Video: Lords Ashdown and Phillips clash over second chamber reform

By Paul Walter | Mon 11th June 2012 - 5:54 pm

This was already covered by Stephen Tall on Liberal Democrat Voice last month, but, in case you haven’t seen it, it is worth viewing this good-humoured but impassioned clash in the House of Lords between Paddy Ashdown and Andrew Phillips. Most entertaining.

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Stephen Tall

Lib-Lab cooperation: there’s one easy way to find out if Labour are serious

By Stephen Tall | Wed 6th June 2012 - 5:55 pm

Today’s Guardian big-ups a call by Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, Lord Bassam, to his Lib Dem opposite number Lord Newby as a sign that ‘elements of the party are preparing the ground for a possible Lib-Lab coalition after the next election.’

I have to say on first reading the tenor of Lord Bassam’s note strikes me more as told-you-so than conciliatory, but maybe I’m being over-sensitive — judge for yourselves from this excerpt:

“The last couple of years have been a bit bruising for your colleagues in this house, and no doubt they will be looking forward to

…

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Mark Valladares

From the Lords: Dick Newby steps out…

By Mark Valladares | Wed 30th May 2012 - 5:22 pm

As a keen observer of life in the House of Lords, I feel it my duty to explore some of the less well-known aspects of life there. And, as a photograph has come into my hands that deserves a wider audience…

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Stephen Tall

The Weekend Debate: What’s wrong with making membership of the second chamber a lottery?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 26th May 2012 - 8:55 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

The debate about what a reformed House of Lords should look like has been defeating legislators for well over a century — and here’s a novel proposal from Sandy Walkington, who stood for the Lib Dems in St Albans at the last election:

Greece is not exactly in fashion at the moment. But we could learn a thing or two from ancient Athens. They chose their office holders by lot from amongst the citizens, who then had to serve for a

…

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Stephen Tall

How referendums are the most effective way to maintain the status quo & what it means for Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th May 2012 - 1:55 pm

Warning: this post contains paradoxes and thinking in progress…

Paradox 1: When asked, most people in this country say the current system of British politics needs to change. Yet the public consistently votes for small-c conservative parties and causes.

Paradox 2: As both a liberal and a democrat, I want a more participative democracy. Yet I’m sceptical referendums are the best way to achieve this.

A brief history of referendums in this country

Let’s take a look at our three most recent experiences in this country of referendums:

  • Just three weeks ago, 11 cities in England voted on whether or not they

…

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Paul Walter

DPMQs: De facto but not de jure Fruit Ninja

By Paul Walter | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 11:53 am

MPs are always queuing up in droves to ask a question of the Deputy Prime Minister. He is what the Speaker describes as “box office”.

The subjects at this monthly session can, however, be a bit repetitive. House of Lords reform, electoral registration and lobbying all tend to pop up every time.

Helen Grant (Con) was anxious to get the Royal Sucession changes on the statute books pdq. But Nick Clegg reassured her that, should the Duchess of Cambridge undergo successful confinement resulting in a female happy event, …

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Mark Valladares

Coming up in the Lords: 21- 30 May

By Mark Valladares | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 12:52 pm

Welcome back to a suddenly rather quieter set of benches, as the avalanche of key votes has settled, and a new Parliamentary session glides effortlessly away from the Gracious Speech. We’re still catching up after the recess, so bear with us…

Having debated the Speech itself, and given the Government several pieces of its mind over Lords Reform, the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill has its Second Reading today. For more information, check out Norman Lamb’s piece, published in Liberal Democrat Voice last week.

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