Despite the prevailing mood of Labour Peers that they are now in opposition, and that means they don’t have to take any responsibility for what went before, I detect some signs of consensus on important improvements to the way in which the House of Lords operates.
Last week’s debate on working practices produced a remarkable degree of unanimity that we needed to raise our game. The “Strengthening Parliament” exercise, stimulated by the Lord Speaker and a number of prominent backbenchers from all parts of the House, has concentrated minds. The two Toms – Strathclyde and McNally – were a great deal more forthcoming in welcoming the ideas that their Labour predecessors. It seems likely that we will now have a rapid assessment of ways in which we can improve our scrutiny of the government’s legislation and executive action to mirror the reforms taking place in the Commons, following the recommendations of the Wright report.
Labour friends tell me that the current state of mass ‘denial’ in their Party is likely to come to an end when their new Leader is elected. I certainly hope so; it’s time we all got down to serious discussion of the best way to implement the reforms the public are asking us to complete without the partisan sniping which we have suffered in both Houses in recent weeks.
What particularly grates with me is the refusal of those on the Labour side, who went to the country with a promise to move swiftly on fairer votes and reform of the House of Lords, to support the Coalition when it is actually seeking to do just that.
Perhaps some time in the real world during the Recess, away from the Westminster hothouse, will enable both Peers and MPs to see what the public think of these party games.
My Lord, whilst I welcome your call for more productive action from all in the House for reform, I cannot agree with your sentiment regards what you call fairer votes.
Not everyone agrees that AV or PR is the way to go, there are pitfalls and they may not make a fairer system. The system inside both Houses is neither AV or PR nor the system for electing leaders either. The main reason I can see for calling for AV is that it would benefit the Lib-Dems.
It`s quite clear, it`s a con. If you`re a Labour supporter you`ll hardly place Conservatives second on your ballot paper and vice versa. Worse case scenario maybe that lots of working class maybe tempted due to immigration issues to mark BNP as second.
The people, the electorate were quite clear in the last election when the Lib-Dems put much faith in their manifesto of changing the voting system.
The Lib-Dems lost seats there was no big swing to them because the system they were proposing was clearly fairer. The people said no and yet in the midst of possibly the worst cuts in decades the Lib-dems are forcing the Government to spend another (as quoted by Lord MacNally) £82 million on a referendum. Money we cannot afford on an ill concieved question :
“Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the ‘alternative vote’ system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?”
And I wonder just how much money will be spent educating the public, I know, of exactly what that means.
And what of the far right, how will they put it to the public ? I`ll tell you, they`ll inflate the numbers of Islamic voters and convince people we could see Sharia law. Half a million people voted BNP at the last election but how many may have put them as a second choice ?
Where else in society do we have this fairer system ? In the boardrooms ? In Parliament ? In Lib-Dem leadership battles ?
You, the Lib-Dems want this system because it favours you, let`s be honest, as good old Nick Clegg frequently states. Yes let`s be totally honest, this is an underhand move to gain power for selfish reasons, not for the people who only require one law for all.
And what when your system encroaches our Parliament, a fairer system….A system that would give you one law for Muslims, one for Catholics etc., after all that`s fairer isn`t it ? More representative ? Oh I see you don`t mean to go that far, it`ll still be first past the post, winner takes all, once you get power !
Lord Tyler;
No doubt your LibDem policy is in full support of the huge increase in Lower House appointments of Conservatives and LibDems up to the Upper House ?
You would already be assured of an effective Conservative majority in the Upper House, boosted by your LibDem ‘coalition’ support of them ?
You’ll sleep longer, now that’bums-rushed’ legislation is sure to go machine-gunning through the House of Lords ?
It’s suddenly going to be a push-over, isn’t it ?
You accept that since there will still be lttle full-scrutiny by the Commons that the Lords needn’t bother; your Cons-LibDems majorities will move things along quite lubricatedly enough ?
In the Coungtry of the Blind, the One Eyed Man is King.
We are not wet behind the ears; nor born yesterday; nor did we come down with the last ‘Shower’.
Labour is simply ‘biding its time’.
We the People have n o choice.
We can do nothing for the next 58 months; and then only make a pencil mark or two on a deaf, dumb and blind scrap of paper.
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(JSDM2227Th22July10).
I always compare political actions in parliament with the blue print for analysis of
government put forward by Ivan Ilich, the unfrocked Mexican Catholic priest,and radical, (liked by Maggie T) who wrote such works as “Medical Nemesis; the expropriation of death.” and others on governments departments in fist world countries.
It must be difficult for a party ousted from government who have had to make vast compromises to win government in the first place, with such deceitful ploys as the “Third Way”, to rationalize, after it has once again lost power.
I fear that the current crop of leading Labour campaigners, apart possibly, from Diane Abbott, do not have the wherewithal for
good leadership either, especially contrasted with Coalition government which has stood various tests so well in Germany.
Perhaps lord Tyler is satisfied by those remarks, but perhaps he will also guided to the radical analyses of government so effectively made by Ivan Ilich.
Like all political philosophies it is dated
by the death of the author but it does not take too much thought to bring it up to date from 2002, rip.