Blimey, I must have been a member of a different Joint Committee to that on which Lord Tyler served. A 26-member committee (in practice 25, as one member never attended) is too large a body for sustained scrutiny. It facilitates disparate questioning and may actually militate against a good attendance (once or twice we were inquorate because insufficient MPs were present) because members may assume others are likely to attend.
The committee was, in any event, hampered by having no clear criteria by which to assess the Draft Bill. The Government proffered none and we did not generate any, so there was no clear basis on which to assess the Bill. Despite the record number of meetings, we still only skimmed the surface of many issues.
It is perhaps not surprising that the Committee had difficulty reaching an agreed position, with fifteen divisions taking place. The one thing on which there was unanimity was that Clause 2 of the Bill was not sufficient to maintain the primacy of the House of Commons. Otherwise, the committee tended to be divided almost down the middle. We did agree that an elected House would be more assertive and ‘that a more assertive House would not enhance Parliament’s overall role in relation to the activities of the executive’. Beyond that, we were largely working in the dark as to what could happen: conventions would change and need to be re-defined (para 91), there was little point in agreeing a concordat to which elected members were not a party (para 94), and (according to Lords Goldsmith and Pannick) the Parliament Acts may be challenged in the event of an elected second chamber (given the preamble to the 1911 Act); they could be continued by statutory provision (para 368), but that statement of the obvious does not, in my view, get us much further forward: it does not deal with the normative question and does not address the extent to which the relationship between the two Houses would change. A majority agreed that Commons primacy would remain, but given that primacy is a moveable feast (compare pre and post the 1911 Act) that does not move us much further forward either. In Monday’s debate on the Joint Committee report, Lord Ashdown claimed that Commons primacy would be maintained while arguing that an elected second chamber would have the power to stop the nation going to war.
The media picked up on the fact that the report undermined the Government’s claims for an elected second chamber (as this summary reveals) as well as noting the divisions of opinion. Twelve members of the committee (of which I was one) produced an Alternative Report, arguing the need to look holistically at the place of the second chamber in our constitutional arrangements. If we are really going to look thoroughly at the role of the House of Lords, we might as well do it from the right end of the telescope.
@LOrd Norton:
Anythng that has the power to stop the country being driven into war by egocentric men lacking in reason, has to be the best gift you could give to the British people.
The population your Scrutiny-Committees serve numbers about 60 million democratic-subjects
each having not just a ‘right’ but a ‘duty’ to voice their Needs and to ask Questions concerning those Needs and the Hows by which they will be met
yet you say “25 experienced members” (of us 60million’s representatives on such democratic Scrutiny-committee) “is too many” because so many would only be “disparately” asking too many questions thus sabotaging the required Outcome
but the latter Outcome was in the first place “hampered by not having any clear criteria”
not even a clear statement of the process by which the “election”
(which could mean “internal-House, electorate-excluded, appointment of any ‘favourite’, regardless of that candidate’s immediate & longest-term life-knowledge, sustainworthy-lifestyling know-how, and general democratic fitness-for-purpose)
and if the election were to be “directly by The People” then how on Earth are 60 million people going to be able, and enabled, to scrutinise, shortlist-down each candidate’s qualifications and suitability for Our Longest-Term Purpose, and then select the right boxes on a piece of ballot-paper ?
———–
I think that a ten-year old has enough common-sense to see that even 100 strong membership on a select (scrutiny) committee must have enough forewarning to enable them to write their field and question(s)-aforethought and deliver them to the Table in time for the Chair or Facilitator to highlight any doubling-up, and question-mark any matter appearing to be “way off topic”;
and to see that the more members, the more holes-stopping will be the scrutineering.
——–
if not, why not ?
=====================
“Elect the Lords! It does infringe our Rights!”
Thus cry the Dunces, denied its dizzying HEIGHTS.
Well Lord Norton this is revealing, your mention of the Alternate Report at all is encouraging. What is truly shocking is Lord Steel of Aikwood revealing in debate that he has been reading Tory literature. On an elected chamber he said that if he had a choice of report it would be the Alternate Report. He let know that the Steel Bill will still go through and will be given serious consideration by the Commons.
I’m still catching up with BBC Parliament recordings of the debate and the Prerogation ceremony. As HM could not attend a Commission for the Prerogation was appointed consisting of five privy councillors three men and two women wearing red garments and tricorn hats. With a running commentary by the BBC there was hoped to be some agreement in the hat doffing, alas nobody could agree. It was mentioned that the outgoing Parliamentary session was the longest since 1688.
In the HoL Library link the section on the Origin of peers is worth reading.
Some questions? The British History volumes use the spelling ‘Prerogation’ whilst the house library and the BBC use the word ‘Prorogation’. Are both the house library and the BBC wrong in their spelling? The original Prerogation ceremony was spoken in Latin, when did this stop? Why is there no volume for the year 1688?
Blessed if I know!
Ref: University of London and History of Parliament Trust
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=39&page=1
HoL Library: Ceremonial in the House of Lords
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/LLN-2010-007.pdf
If a referendum is to be needed, then the answer will obviously be a resounding “NO!”
Referend-ums so frequently get a “NO!” vote that they are a complete waste of time, an excuse for govt incompetence, and buck passing.
In the review of the bill, a bishop criticizes the possibility of an elected peer doubling up on the “constituency” work of an MP. If he has as little understanding of the meaning of the word “Constituency” that he thinks a peer has none now, then he surely has semantic difficulties.
The Humanists have it.
Even “anything that stops The Country being driven into war by egocentric men lacking in reason…”
allows the huger loophole of “(and lacking in) life-experience and exemplary sustainworthy lifestyling” (Maude).
milesjsd should surely be seen as asking
“why are there no Democratic Peoples’ Scrutiny Bodies”, evenly established all over
Britain and online, voluntarily unpaid committed to performing parallel Scrutiny and feeding their findings up to that “minimalist (‘lacking-in-reason’, maude) Parliamentary Select Committee” ?
Scriblerus’s oeuvre intimates both logical-ignorance and emotional impairment on the part of The People; and should consider
“If only our Reps would Heed
Each one of our People’s real Need”.
Does Senex know how we The People could be enabled, and very urgently and thoroughly so, to successfully build the preliminary educational skills
without which the sources given for us to read will forever remain as but remotely irrelevant “gobbledygook” ?
Have either Twm or The Humanists whom he declares to “have it” (won-the-day ?) included in their constitutional-tenet
“one human being is entitled to one human living, no more and no less” ?
and that where pronouncements, rules and laws are put together by human-beings each and in-toto drawing or being-given more than one human living from the Common Purse, such utterances are out of order, corrupted, and compromised ?
Lord Norton himself surely does not need to be any further “blinded by God” than he possibly already is ?
———
Here again is an Instance of the need for utilising “Method III”*
for reaching agreement.
* a 5-step Guidelines page could be printed-out from either
http://www.lifefresh.co.uk or
http://www.minorityofone.net ;
gratis.
Is the Government’s handling of the proposals for a referendum on Scottish independence in line with its response to the Joint Committee’s recommendation for a referendum before a Bill is enacted?
Miles: “Does Senex know how we The People could be enabled”. Is this another way of saying how can the primacy of the Commons be maintained in an elected HoL?
The blogs prospectus for an indirectly elected house does not consider primacy because primacy is inherent in the indirect election process. If the house were indirectly elected we would have to consider Parliament as consisting of ‘Electoral Domains’.
Two domains that would NOT be represented are those of ‘All’ and ‘Other’. The Commons has the domain called ‘All’, it represents all of the people. The domain called ‘Other’ represents those establishments that are not included in the accepted 15 to 20 domains that would form the house’s constituencies. Another reason why the ‘Other’ domain would not be included is that the executive could fill it with cronies in the same way it does now in order to obtain a prospective majority. The ones left out are implicitly represented just as non voters are in the Commons.
Even if the HoL was entirely in agreement on an issue, it could never say that it represented “we The People” because of the missing domains.
I’ll duck the issue of enabling for the moment. So what are the Lords? Right now they are bureaucrats supporting the legislative process. However, long ago when we depended on an agrarian economy they were ‘Employers’ in a very big way. The house was a provider that had a say in how the nations wealth was to be used.
If you ask a Socialist “what do you need for a job” he might say you have to look good for the interview and have something to offer. If you ask a Tory what “what do you need for a job” he might say you need to have gone to the right school and be the right sort of person for the job. Forgive the stereotyping.
What neither would say is, you need an Employer.
The house represents as somebody said in debate ‘civic society’, but if you look closely, nearly everybody is or has been an employer at one time or another. This is the Tory hinterland and why they have dominated the house for such a long time. The Tories by inclination are providers whilst the Socialists by inclination are consumers. The Liberals by inclination are confused as to which of these two they belong to, and so are the electorate.
As to enabling, does a pebble on a beach feel enabled; we are all just another brick in the wall?
The new elected Lords Mayor of Bristol and Doncaster, when it happens will only have to present their card to the noble baroness speaker on the Doorman’s silver platter, to be invited to enter the chamber.
It is quite likely that in the past Lords Mayor have been similarly endowed with Mayoralty and Lords’ membership, but only on account of hereditayr peerage held prior to election as lord Mayor of their respective /respected city.
I may be mistaken, but the Mayor of Worcester may also have been the Earl(Bill) of Coventry at one time, and there are probably other examples.
Worcester has voted against elected Mayors in the referendum but I wonder whether they may have thought it a throwback rather progress on account of such ‘facts’.
The referend-ums have been presented as a Cameron idea, which is unfortunate, since the extensive policies of Reform came from the Labour party in 1997, and until the Iraq war, was an excellent reform government, eventually too well represented in parliament for its own, and in the opinion of the right, for the country’s good.
Senex, another one of your fascinating comments! Would you explain what you mean by,”…nearly everybody is or has been an employer at one time or another.”? More specifically, are you referring to everybody in the existing HoL or the wider public, and what do you mean by ’employer’?
No catches, I just don’t understand!
Ha! Now we see the propaganda machine telling us, the ‘people’ are not interested in ‘gay marriage’ or ‘Lords Reform’. This is the old trick of putting one truth with one exaggeration. So they can rid themselves of the plan they want rid of, in this case, Lords Reform. Yet that is badly needed as without it, there can never be true democracy in this country.
maude elwes: how are you defining democracy?
How about 1 person, 1 vote, on issues?
None of this, you only allowed to vote on who gets to dictate.
None of this, you can have a referendum on the EU. Oh, no you can’t, we’ve been elected so do as you are told. No oversight being shown by peers on that travesty of ‘democracy’
@Lord Norton:
How can I define democracy in a line here?
As Blagger adds, one man one vote.
However, Democracy also means having the ‘Electee’ be precise and open, in full, about what they are offering as their policies for their next term in office. And what they expect the results of those policies to be, and why they feel that these policies will be of benefit to the country.
And, if they lie or decieve, in any way, or, do not put those policies through for which they have obtained a vote, then their term of office should be brought to a swift end. Otherwise, a return to the country again to obtain a second mandate for the new policies they intend to use instead of those first promised.
Also, if a government veers in its pre-election intentions, then every policy they put forward from that time, should be put to a referendum.
Example: Labour did not reveal to the country they intended to introduce mass immigration with an open door policy during their term in office. Therefore, this should have ended their government, or, alternatively, have been put a referendum after a full explanation of their plans for us. No more back door legislation of any kind.
And as you see in Switzerland, with a certain number of applications, the public can seek a referendum on an issue they are wholly discontent with.
That is Democracy. The will of the people.
And war, likewise. No going to war unless agreed by the people. Except and only in the matter of defence from attack on the UK or Europe. A united European ‘defence’ policy would be good.
No more T. Blairs ever.
That’s a beginning.
Here is some food for thought.
http://www.coalitionforopendemocracy.org/
mauds elwes: You and Lord Blagger rather make my point. Democracy is a contested concept. Is it simply majoritarian rule? Referendums, for instance, have been employed as means of enshrining the prejudices of a majority;the history of their use in Switzerland is not necessarily a beacon for others. Their use in California also illustrates some of the problems. There is the issue, which you touch upon, of accountability in a representative democracy. Do you privilege the accountability of the individual representative over the collective accountability of government?
Referendums, for instance, have been employed as means of enshrining the prejudices of a majority;the history of their use in Switzerland is not necessarily a beacon for others
===============
Why not? You have to point out where its gone wrong, and balance that against where its gone right in Switzerland.
A typical Phillip Norton argument. Dismiss anything that you’re against, and not provide one iota of evidence to back up you case.
Still waiting for your numbers on how much we are paying a Lord, per day to attend. Not what you take out, but what it costs us. You’ve said I’m wrong, but rather tellingly after several years you still haven’t stumped up any numbers. The conclusion given the lack of evidence is that you haven’t worked out the numbers. Post a link if you think I’m wrong, with some references.
What’s missing is that the Lords isn’t democracy in any way. It’s dictatorship.
o you privilege the accountability of the individual representative over the collective accountability of government?
All for one, and one for all. Liable (what’s privilige got to do with it, apart from keeping it a secret what you’ve all been up to), collectively and individually is what it should be. However, you won’t expose yourselves to that.
For example, why hasn’t a bill been put forward to make Trustcott et al’s actions illegal? Buying changes to the law for cash. Offering to change the law for cash?
You’ve known about that for some time. You’re in a position to propose a change in the law. You haven’t. Why would that be the case? Why hasn’t a single law proposed making it illegal? It’s not as if the Lords can’t propose laws.
@Lord Norton:
I think I know where you are coming from on this matter of Democracy and majority rule. And majority rule is Democracy, like it or not.
However, what has happened here, as it has elsewhere and in the USA you cite, minority interests have taken over the country. And that is desecrating this same democracy by giving it the ability to do so, as it grants the wherewithall to move the voting process against itself.
The importance of democracy rule therefore has to be the absolute comprehension of it in the mind of the nation. When they don’t vote, this then, allows a minority to rule. The so called extremists of either side then run the show, as they are able to circumvent the system. Hence the march of the politically correct brigade and all that oozes from that repugnant edict. Until we find, as now, we end up with a country the majority do not want to live in because a ‘minority’ have made it unacceptable to do so. Which, in part, because of politcal chicanery and reluctance to reveal the truth to the nation, prior to election, has created.
What has to first be imbedded in our system is, majority rules, so we must live with it or leave. And that has to begin in the home and at school from a very young age. The importance of the vote and its meaning to us being paramount. ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it.’ In every sense, that line has to be explained and instilled in people, without apologies, as otherwise ‘they’ will be to blame for the march of the impossible on their lifestyle, should they do not adhere to this premis.
Tizzy, the word ‘Employer’ was a euphemism for ‘Master’ as defined in law to represent the difference between employee and employer. The HoL has never represented the plebeian and in this respect it has always been a house of masters. Both houses could be seen as ‘Provider’ and ‘Consumer’ with the Commons being the ‘Consumer’. This analogy even extends to the two political parties here and abroad.
For an indirectly elected house there are issues with the model of indirection used.
If it is based upon regional constituencies the house could say it represents the ‘All’ domain and the Parliament Acts would have to remain. If the model represented civic society as an incomplete subset of the ‘All’ domain the Parliament Acts would become redundant because primacy is guaranteed in the domain hierarchy. If the regional model was adopted people could see a legitimate HoL as harassing the Commons and a case could be made for getting rid of the nobility which would undermine Parliaments investment in the Monarchy.
The issue then moves on to how the executive is going to be held to account. In the civic society model the house cannot hold the executive to account because of the hierarchy. Yet, the executive must be held to account in a bicameral model. The way to do this is to rely upon the power of public opinion. The problem then becomes which of the two models has the greatest power to do this.
Take the Pentagon Papers, public opinion with some help from the newspapers and the Supreme Court held the executive to account because it offered pretences to the American people.
“Throughout 1970, Ellsberg covertly attempted to convince a few sympathetic senators, (among them J. William Fulbright, who refused to break the law), that he should release the Pentagon Papers on the Senate floor, because a Senator cannot be prosecuted for anything he says on record before the Senate. No senator was willing to do so.”
The same resignation might apply to peers under the regional model but not the civic society model because peers would be seen as representing their constituents and under the protection of Parliament. If the executive intimidated the media, peers could make a case for better protection of the media on the basis of freedom of speech.
The US constitution does not specifically address pretences by the executive but instead relies upon a first amendment freedom of the press. Ellsberg held back a number of volumes from publication because they contained expletive views of world leaders that would not have been helpful to US diplomacy.
Ref: Pentagon Papers: Federal Government, American Constitutional Crisis
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1871.html
Thank you, Senex, I now see where you’re coming from – I think.
Surely, no one individual in today’s HoL has real power? I rather enjoy seeing the pomposity being drained out of those who still cling to their childhood memories of their mummies calling them special.
ladytizzy: As the youngest of five sons, I don’t have such memories!
Present company excepted, of course!
Maude, what would you consider to be the lowest common denominator before true democracy is reached?
@Lady T:
Mmm…. Well that one would take a very long time to relay on this website.
So, simply put, to me and how I think, it would be the old story of one man one vote. Which means all voting on every question including the minute. – True equality.
However, that would be restrictive and would create a chaos worse than we presently have.
The way it is now, the public hardly get a look in, which is completely unsatisfactory..
This paper tells it at length.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:SeuqoLyR3RgJ:aei.pitt.edu/2881/1/120.pdf+the+lowest+common+denominator+before+democracy+is+reached+in+the+House+of+lords&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg4lZM_AP5NE13NfkjjKwFfJHB0GgiBa3aeDoBlgihx91EdCIHysL9WsqxT0Y0uE4LHvlZ7BWswd9uXbAD0C4HAkcDofJPVm67h6fmyjOZK5_qY9lKaYiJ7mJsGEMlK62wcss_R&sig=AHIEtbTLljJoEpKDUepBiO2UKpyj2FZP9g
So what is your take on this matter?
Maude, I realise the question was put rather clumsily but I was thinking more of how far down the line should posts be determined by electors rather than by appointment, who should be eligible to vote, and who decides the above. If I may put a few of the more obvious examples forward, I’m sure you will get the gist.
‘Citizens of the world’ have suggested that they should be able to participate in voting for governments whose manifestos would directly affect them as individuals, or as part of a recognised group, or as citizens of another nation. Here, we could look at what our vote would mean if we were able to participate in,say, who becomes President of the USA. At the other end, some believe that all public appointments ought to be validated by a public vote, exemplified by Americans voting for their local dog warden. Somewhere in between an argument that the public should vote for the CEO of a private enterprise such as a bank will no doubt be made in the local Starbucks but central to all the debates will be, “Your actions affect me, I want my say”, or similar.
Simultaneously, the composition of the electorate should be determined but by what and by whom? Should the UK government or the EU decide whether prisoners can vote? Should either enable 16 year-olds vote? [Of passing interest, I note that ‘coming of age’ or ‘age of entitlement’ has been replaced by ‘age restriction’, no doubt a reflection of…something.]
Me? I’m something of a despairing pragmatist ie I wish I had more trust in my fellow voter before furthering the cause of democracy.
@LadyT:
Never clumsy, always dextrous.
Here you have broadened the debate and cleverly widened our narrow thinking minds.
Yes, it seems obvious that any leader, in any part of the world, who has a terrifyingly enormous effect on our lives, as does the US President for example, should be at the mercy of us all, by being held to account through our ballot box.
However there, as here, we are within the power of concentrated wealth, which is not connected to the needs of our nation or nations as a whole. Cannot be as it goes against the grain of their objectives. And the figures are dizzying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSeusQGr5MY
As I see it, the difficulty lies in how those who run for office are chosen and by whom and with what intention?
We are left with the leavings of those secret back room alliances that fear to speak their name. Who chose Barrack Obama to run for office and what were the motives for such selection? They raise billions of dollars from those with vested interest and spend it on ensuring their man will end up a winner. As we have been made aware, often the voting mechanism is fixed, one way or the other.
Can the man in the street ever be in a place to push his interests in such a shark infested water? No, and therefore, the vote is meanngless because ‘his’ man is unable to compete in any way.
When you add the fudge and deceit the chosen one uses to delude us into a notion that he is on our side, by the time we’ve put our cross on the ballot sheet, and the real intentions he’s lined up becomes apparent, it is far too late to change our mind for we are stuck with him/her for four years and waiting.
The system in this country is cooked similarly but in world politics the stakes are higher and the corruption greater. So we can’t bring change by being involved in the broader sense you suggest, by using our vote.
We have to change what is taking place in our democratic system here from the ground up. And hope that as news of its difference spreads so the change created for us will spiral to parts of the planet we presently cannot reach.
The system is cosmetic in nature and changing the wrapping doesn’t deal with the content. It doesn’t matter who votes for what, as the politicians are nothing compared to the money men, banks and corporations that run them. We, for whatever reason, do not acknowledge the power of the international financial markets and the speed with how they can manipulate us all. And until that is stopped and they are curtailed in a way that will benfit the people as a whole, how much we vote or protest will be irrelevant.
Because, as Blair showed us so comprehensively, politicians are easily bought. Even those who claim they are above such chicanery when claiming piety.
This little clip will give you a good grounding in where I am coming from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MouUJNG8f2k
Tizzy: “Surely, no one individual in today’s HoL has real power?” True!
Consider you buy a bag of sand to do something. It never gets done and the bag dries out. You then find time to do whatever you were going to do and open the bag. What you are presented with is granular sand and granules that have formed lumps.
The lumps cannot say they represent the whole bag of sand even though they are comprised of granules. And so it would be with an indirectly elected house using the civic society model.
Its better to make the Parliament Acts redundant rather than see them dragged out by their roots. But there is another reason why these acts should fade away and it concerns the Labour party. Now 100 years on, they have not found the diverse funding that it was hoped they would find back in 1911.
Almost ‘totally owned’ by the trade unions what would happen in any eureka moment if it was felt that Osborne was correct and that the unions should be seen as politically neutral allowing members to join without an implied political association.
The Labour party would go back to 1909; it would ‘disappear’ leaving a Commons majority to the Conservatives along with the Parliament Acts as an elective dictatorship.
On the topic of real power, there is no reason why an indirectly elected house cannot represent real power and remain neutral. If executive found itself in a media war with constituents the house would act as broker within the political process.
On birthright privilege the question would be should the hereditary peers have a domain exclusively to themselves? What must be accepted is that the hereditary nobility are huge land owners very much involved with agrarian matters. But should this preclude life peers from standing in their domain after all hereditaries would be free to stand in any of the other domains.
On master status, the blogs prospectus has domains supported by incorporations managed by a holding company. Peers would be non exec directors. Peer equality both inside and outside of Parliament.
Ref: The Osborne Judgment 1909
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-96.html
“Surely, no one individual in today’s HoL has real power?”
Then we are paying hundreds of millions for nothing.
Senex, I admit I’m a bit lost with the examples that follow from your original comment but put it down to my general ignorance of your specifics. I definitely need a bit of time to inwardly digest the above.