“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 of a review to identify options for allowing people to leave the House of Lords other than through death or misconduct.
As Paul pointed out, with the use of block capitals, underlining and an exclamation mark, there are 79 peers who did not turn up (let alone speak or vote) even once in the 2009-2010 Parliamentary session. There are some very rare cases where long-term non-attendance in justifiable, and in the past some peers have spoken out over the lack of an option to retire if their health is no longer up to attending. Yet the overall picture, especially when you extend the figures to include peers who almost never turn up or who turn up but do not participate, is of large numbers who do not carry out the role of being a Parliamentarian in even the most minimally reasonable way.
There are also practical problems about the sheer size of the Lords, as Paul also commented,
The case for reducing the number of Peers is compelling: increasing costs, not enough room for all to get into the Chamber or have desks, excessive size compared with the Commons and (most persuasively) “damage to the credibility of the House occasioned by the large number of members who take no active part in proceedings.”
Lovely dining club – with a Parliament attached
So with Lords reform in the air and promised in the Coalition agreement, you might expect peers to be thinking sensibly about how to leave behind the idea that the upper house is a lovely dining club, great car park and a mark of social distinction – with a Parliament attached.
Alas, not everyone – for the suggestions made by some of Paul’s fellow peers show how out of touch many of them are with the idea that Parliament is a place to work on holding the government to account and governing the country:
In the circumstances I cannot take seriously some of the suggested remedies to this serial non-attendance. Giving retiring Peers “dining rights”, let alone offering the opportunity to speak but not vote, seems totally inappropriate. As for the idea that they should be awarded an honour “on the lines of the armed services’ Long Service, Good Conduct medal”, or that their “life peerage might be converted into a hereditary peerage”, I can only suppose that somebody was taking the mickey.
Yes really: there was the suggestion that the ‘reward’ for not turning up and doing a job in the Lords should be to be given a medal. The Order of the Free Car Park perhaps?
Paul’s pugnacious attitude towards the views of other members of the Lords is very welcome, especially as there is a very strong rearguard action being fought by many members of the Lords against having democracy in the Lords. Or if there really must be democracy having it in as weak and diluted a form as possible – and certainly not moving any time soon to the idea that all members of the Lords should have to do a job of work there.
The political debate within Parliament and within the coalition on this is finely balanced at the moment. It may yet tip either way, as the report last week in the The Times illustrated when it talked of how:
A 300-strong mini Senate would replace the House of Lords under plans being drawn up by Nick Clegg. However, the Deputy Prime Minister is facing setbacks as he tries to deliver constitutional reform. He is having to surrender the Liberal Democrat ambition of a wholly elected Upper House amid stiff resistance from peers in all parties and will struggle to ensure that a reformed second chamber will be mainly elected.
Superficially that sounds a bad news story (and contrasts with the tone of The Times in August – “Absent peers face sack … The least active and least effective peers could be ejected at the end of each Parliament”). However a much smaller house would also up the pressure to only have minimal ‘grandfathering’ – that is letting existing members of the Lords continue in place without having to face elections – as otherwise it’d be a house dominated by the unelected.
As on so many other issues in the Coalition, it is not a simple case of Lib Dems versus Conservatives, because Cameron has no great love of many of the ranks of the Tory peers. In this case it is more a case of MPs versus peers, with honourable exceptions on the peers front including many Lib Dems such as Paul Tyler.
People such as Paul deserve our full support in those debates.
One of the major achievements in the Coalition Agreement is the commitment of the Conservatives to support not merely a “wholly or mainly” elected Upper House but also one elected by proportional representation no less.
The timetable has started to slip, from the original agreement’s decision to “come forward with a draft motions by December 2010” to talk about draft legislation in January and then, slipped in near the end of Nick Clegg’s conference speech, the intention that the first elections will not be held until the latest possible moment while still keeping the commitment to act in this Parliament – …
Slipped in near the end of Nick Clegg’s keynote speech to Liberal Democrat conference was the news that the first democratic elections to the House of Lords are pencilled in for 2015.
Party sources have confirmed that the reference to Liberal Democrat candidates at the next general election fighting alongside candidates for a reformed Upper House means the draft Lords reform legislation due to be published early in 2011 is being planned on the basis of elections in 2015.
The coalition government is pledged to introducing a package of reforms to our electoral system, including extending it to cover the House of Lords. Quite what the impact of these changes will be is an issue addressed in the Litmus newspaper jointly produced by Lib Dem Voice, Left Foot Forward and Conservative Home. Here is my piece on the topic, and you can read the full newspaper, including the other pieces on this topic from Lord Norton and Will Straw, either via the hard copies in conference registration packs or online at www.litmustest.org.
The present House of Lords model gives a seat in Parliament for life without having to face any election. We need constitutional reform and an electoral system that reduces the number of safe seats, argues Dr Mark Pack.
By Simon Foster
| Thu 2nd September 2010 - 2:57 pm
The debate on whether to replace First Past the Post with AV for elections to the House of Commons certainly seems to be warming up. Both sides are seeking increasing media coverage, bloggers from both sides are debating on the internet, and public interest seems to be growing on the issue.
Yet there seems to me one thing missing – an appreciation of the role of the House of Lords, and how it might be reformed.
The reason for this is quite important – the House of Commons does not exist in a vacuum. The AS-level course I teach on …
I hope that readers of Liberal Democrat Voice have enjoyed today’s series of pieces on the House of Lords – I know that I’ve had a lot of fun writing, editing and commissioning the various postings. However, I’d like to finish with a few serious points.
Firstly, I am of the view that we need to value our Peers more and, whilst that may seem like special pleading, I’m convinced that, by doing so, everyone gets to benefit. For instance, there are parts of the country, my own county of Suffolk for example, where we don’t have an MP, but do …
In recent weeks, LDV has been bringing its readers copies of our new MPs’ first words in the House of Commons, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Today’s guest editor Mark Valladares feels that it was only right that the same honour should be offered to new Peers, and today we bring you the words of Baroness Parminter of Godalming.
Baroness Parminter: I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for initiating this debate today. As a new girl, …
The word ‘whip’, in parliamentary terms at least, is associated with accusations of the ‘dark arts’. But whips are people too, particularly in the Lords, so your intrepid guest editor retrieved his Parliamentary spouse pass and made an appointment…
Dominic Bryce Hubbard, the 6th Baron Addington, is one of five hereditary Peers sitting on the Liberal Democrat benches. He inherited his title in 1982, aged eighteen, but was only able to take up his seat in the House of Lords on reaching his twenty-first birthday. He has held a series of positions, as Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport, …
August 2011 is the centenary of the Parliament Act, the supposedly stop gap measure to regulate relations between the two houses of parliament until an elected House of Lords could be created. The fact that we are still fighting for a democratic second chamber means it is all too easy to lose sight of the debates about what we want the second chamber to actually do. Unlock Democracy wants a fully elected second chamber capable of scrutinising and revising legislation as well as delaying it where necessary. It should be a deliberative chamber that builds on the …
Much is made of our MPs and their use of social media. Steve Webb and Facebook, Jo Swinson and Duncan Hames announcing their engagement via Twitter (we only had Facebook in my day…), the increasingly sophisticated websites, all of these serve to connect Parliamentarians to the communities they serve. However, on the red benches, the need to reach out is heightened by the relative lack of coverage for their activities in the mainstream media, and there is increasing use of social media to achieve that.
Perhaps the best known source of commentary comes from Lords of the Blog, a collaborative …
I have supported the Liberal Party and its successors since the General Election of 1950, although I did not follow a political career. Instead, I was involved in the railway and bus industries before moving into academia at the Universities of Salford and Oxford.
My entry to the House of Lords was a complete surprise. It took place over a two year period, and the process began with an interview with John Harris and Bill Rodgers, the then Chief Whip and Leader in the House respectively. Having been sworn to secrecy, I was asked firstly whether, if appointed, I would promise …
The good news: the Liberal Democrat have secured a commitment to introduce elections by PR for the Upper House. The bad news: the Liberal Democrat record at fighting PR records is decidedly mixed. So what should we do?
There plenty of campaigning still to be done to ensure that an elected Upper House happens, but that needn’t stop thinking about the elections too.
As with the AV referendum, one of the most important acts of preparation is upping the number of local election candidates we stand because of the impact that has on the public’s perception of whether or not we are a party that can win things. As I wrote about the AV referendum, if people go to vote in a local election but find no Lib Dem on the ballot paper:
One of things that has bothered me for longer than I care to remember is the Party’s fixation on the green benches at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, almost to the total exclusion of anything, and everything, else. As a bureaucrat deep within the Party’s structures, I long for the day when more and better people come forward to be Local, Regional and State Party officers, candidate assessors, returning officers and trainers. But we bureaucrats are not alone in being overlooked in favour of the Commons…
Down the corridor, there are seventy-nine Liberal Democrat Peers (with Richard …
Simon Hughes was not the only Deputy Leader elected last night …
While Simon was elected deputy of the parliamentary party in the House of Commons (though in reality he’ll be known as the deputy leader of the party), Lord (Navnit) Dholakia was re-elected unopposed as deputy leader of the parliamentary party in the House of Lords.
Lord Dholakia, who will continue to support Lord (Tom) McNally in his role as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, commented:
There was an overwhelming turnout in support of the new structure for the Liberal Democrat Paliamentary
The political reform section of the coalition document is the second longest in the whole agreement, beaten for length only by the NHS section. By now the headlines from this section are very familiar:
Fixed-term Parliaments
A referendum on the alternative vote
The ability for voters to force an MP to face a special by-election if they have been found guilty of serious wrongdoing (“recall”)
A “wholly or mainly” elected House of Lords, using proportional representation
* Floella Benjamin OBE DL – actor, presenter and campaigner for children’s issues
* Mike German OBE AM – former Deputy First Minister (Wales)
* Meral Hussein Ece OBE – Local Government Councillor in Islington, advocate of equality issues
* Sir Kenneth (Ken) Macdonald QC – former Director of Public Prosecutions
* Kathryn (Kate) Jane Parminter – former Chief Executive of Campaign to Protect Rural England
* John Shipley
Over the Bank Holiday, I thought I’d check exactly what Labour’s manifesto says about getting a House of Lords where at least a majority of its members are elected. After 13 years in power with repeated commissions, studies and votes on the matter, not to mention senior Labour figures proclaiming their commitment to having at least some democracy in the Lords, you’ve have thought they’d be planning to get a move on.
But oh boy.
Under Labour’s manifesto it’ll take one Parliament (typically 4 years) to get to a one-third elected House of Lords.
Then it will take another full Parliament (typically another …
We’ve covered before how Power2010 is pushing for a set of political reforms and targeting specific MPs who have abused the system. Now it’s the House of Lords that is getting its specific attention, with a petition for a fully elected upper house.
You can find out more about the campaign and sign the petition over on the Power2010 site.
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 28th December 2009 - 2:40 pm
The Times today profiles Paul Marshall, founder of top hedge fund manager Marshall Wace, and a former SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate who has donated in excess of £162,000 to the Liberal Democrats as well re-founding the liberal think-tank Centre Forum. Here’s an excerpt:
Mr Marshall, who stepped back from his investment role in 2004, decided to take on a more active position at the hedge fund last year as the markets started sliding and the group’s profits were reportedly down 75 per cent. However, the hedge fund made an £88.8 million profit in the 18 months up to February
The report of the Senior Salaries Review Body was being debated in the House of Lords on Monday – and Lord (Tom) McNally was there to put forward the Lib Dem view that, whatever and however peers are paid, the second chamber becomes a place which is open to those of all backgrounds, income and geography.
The Lib Dems in the Lords submitted evidence to the SSRB which recommended replacing the attendance allowances and all office costs with a single taxable daily rate with a specific receipted overnight allowance. The SSRB recommended reforms to expenses which would see the introduction of a £200 daily allowance and £140 overnight receipted expense while the Lords is sitting.
Here’s Lord McNally’s speech to the Lords in full:
The need to reform the Electoral System was underlined by a number of us on the Liberal Democrat benches in the House of Lords.The possibility of it being included in the Queen’s Speech was always minimal but we dared to hope..
We are still living in an age with a system that goes back 200 years. We are trying to run a modern democracy on a dinosaur of a system. In 1832, the Great Reform Act just doubled the electorate from half a million to 1 million. In 1867, the electorate was increased to 2.5 million. In 1884, agricultural workers were added and the electoral total went up to 5 million.
In 1918, the great leap forward came when women aged over 30 were given the vote and the total electorate became 21 million. This was further increased to 28 million in 1928 when women and men aged 21 and over could vote. In 1960, 18 year-olds were added and today the total electorate is in the region of 45 million.
We are using a system devised for half a million people for an electorate that is now 45 million. The system goes back to the time when there were only two parties, Whigs and Tories, later Liberals and Conservatives. There were straight fights in every constituency apart from those with unopposed returns.
A FRONTBENCH Liberal Democrat peer is refusing to reveal the location of her main home, which she used to claim more than £70,000 in expenses from the House of Lords. Baroness Barker, 48, a spokeswoman on health, has lived in London for the past 20 years but four years ago began claiming allowances for peers living outside the capital.
While continuing to live and work in London, Barker claimed up to £19,000 a year by saying her main address was in the “southeast”. When approached by The Sunday Times, she volunteered the home was in Sussex but would
That’s the allegation from Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw:
Ben Bradshaw has said “a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”. Mr Bradshaw, one of three gay men currently in the cabinet, made the comments as a new poll suggested more gay people were turning to the Tories. Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: “If gays vote Tory they will rue the day very soon.”
For what it’s worth I suspect that equality for gay people is the one area where the Tories have genuinely changed over the years …
Peers last night voted to ban non-residents and so called “non-doms” from donating to political parties, in defiance of the Labour and Conservative frontbenches. A backbench Labour amendment, designed to force the Tory donor Lord Ashcroft to clarify his tax affairs, was passed by 107 votes to 85, a majority of 22.
Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. Of course everyone agrees that the political crisis requires big changes in the way we do things, so I welcome this deathbed conversion to political reform from the man who has blocked
A current Lords parliamentary inquiry is allowing YouTube submissions from members of the public. The inquiry is on the topic of how people engage with the work of the House of Lords and Parliament more generally.
One such member of the public who has shared her views is, erm, Jo Swinson, in an excellent short video that addresses many of their questions.
You can see the video for yourself here on the Parliamentary YouTube channel, along with many other interesting shorts, including information about the clock that chimes Big Ben.
Yesterday was a sad day for the Lib Dems. First, because we lost as chief executive a proven successful campaigner, Lord (Chris) Rennard, who helped save the post-merger Lib Dems from near extinction. And, secondly, because the way in which he was forced to announce his resignation resolved nothing, and was entirely lacking in dignity.
It has been clear to everyone since the News of the World alleged that Chris had claimed £41k in Lords’ allowances after designating his Eastbourne flat as his main residence (rather than his London house) that Chris and the party would need to make a …
The main responsibilities of the Ministry of Justice are the criminal justice system, including prisons and probation, and constitutional reform. Crime has not been seen as a political strength for us in the past, but I believe that it could be, because we have very distinctive things to say. Constitutional reform is one of our traditional strengths, but the task there is to make it relevant to current politics.
There is a crisis in the criminal justice system of staggering proportions. The prison population is at a record high, and is eating up £ billions in public expenditure. 70% of …
Tristan Ward "‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash".
It might wash if such spending can wash its face....
Tristan Ward @ Peter Wrigley
"Most of us could live very comfortably even if the government did take, say another 5%-10% of our incomes to repair the public realm"
I p...
Tristan Ward @ Peter Wrigley
"Somebody has to tell the truth: that we are not over-taxed, and that Inteligently directed taxation will not impede growth."
That is not ...
Peter Wrigley Thank you Sir Vince for a useful survey of the history of "austerity" and the political difficulty of implementing the simple solution to our present social an...
Nonconformistradical "Their overall bills may well be high because electric heating is expensive"
I live in an (almost) all-electric home. I do have a wood burner stove but I've ...
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Lib Dem Rutland plans cycle-path from Oakham to Rutland Water
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Tristan Ward 
Peter Wrigley 
Nonconformistradical 