Professor Lord Norton has very generously drawn attention to my exchanges with the Chairman of Committees this week. We haven’t previously had Secretary of State questions at all in the Lords because our sessions tend to be cross-departmental. Unlike the Commons, they each evoke a mini-debate with every party – and the Crossbenchers – making a contribution. However, now that Gordon Brown has exhausted the tired supply of Labour MPs in the Commons, he has started to promote Peers to the Cabinet.
Indeed, Mandelson is not just Secretary of State for the new super Department of Business, Innovation and Skills but also First Secretary of State. The title denotes precedence and has in recent times attached to the Deputy Prime Minister of the day. Heseltine and Prescott both rejoiced in the double title.
Since Mandelson is de-facto Deputy PM, it seems we will effectively have a sort of second-order PMQs in the Lords as of January. I wonder if Gordon Brown will worry that his deputy is likely to give a better performance!
Meanwhile, because Mr Speaker Bercow is apparently set to summon the two lordly Secretaries of State to answer questions from MPs one way or another, I also asked if we Peers would get reciprocal rights to interrogate Cabinet Ministers who sit in the Commons. That only seems fair. Watch this space.
I thought there was a dispute as to the power of the commons (not the speaker?) to summon a member of the other house?
Very true that we should ‘watch this space’, it looks like Parliament is getting some reforms through absent-mindedness.
I, too, have to wonder if Mandelson will prove to be a better speaker. And what effect questioning Cabinet Ministers in the Lords might have.
I wonder if Parliament would agree to an hour, hooded in a stress position before and the three questions put nicely by a team of the SAS ?
“Heseltine and Prescott both rejoiced in the double title.”
Ahhh British titles mean nothing nowadays, even wide boys from Hackney and kids from Seven Kings Comprehensive can get em. Tell Mandy he`ll have to go for a World title to be anything and for that he`ll have to have a passport (shouldn`t be too much trouble) and some rich influential friends.
Mandelson is more stylish; that is all.
As for being described as First secretary of state, I thought the First Lord of the Treasury
was/is the first. Get your hands on that!
All these traditional titles!
They would not have to be summoned in anything more than a technical sense, to agree to attend; and any way some times people are… and don’t.
Summoning other people?
A good idea.
The major justification for the Lords is their experience.
A bit like employing a surgeon full time, just in case you need one. Or having a landscape gardner full time, just in case you need to have a pot plant titivated up.
There is no need for specialist knowledge in the Lords. You just summon the specialists when you need them.
However the main area of specialism is that you were close to Tony Blair (or any other PM)
Nick
And who would be summoning these specialists when needed? The Government? Without a dedicated forum to expound their knowledge, their value as a check on government is more limited.
I’d much rather Thatcher’s or Callaghan’s ‘placemen’ being unsilencable than experts today who can be ignored by the government because they have no power.
Have you run this one up Harriet Harman’s flagpole yet ??