The Lords tends to get little attention in coverage of reshuffles. Baroness Warsi attracted coverage, but the other changes have hardly touched the radar. The House is now in the position of having only one member as a Cabinet minister (Lord Strathclyde as Leader of the House), though Baroness Warsi is one of nine ministers who attend Cabinet. Three peers have left the government: long-serving Lord Howell of Guildford, Lord Henley, and Baroness Wilcox. There is one addition in the form of Baroness Randerson, who joins the Wales Office as an unpaid junior minister. Lord Sassoon will leave the Government in January, to be replaced by the (by then) Lord Deighton.
Govt should keep Lord Henley he is one of the better ministers in the lords.
Hunt, is the oddest of all choices here. And were we not advised that Cameron and Co are in the process of ‘drawing a separation’ between his cabinet and the Murdoch group? Not to mention the alleged expenses cheat, Laws, back in favour so quickly and of course no threat of criminal charges to him. Benefit cheats are, of course, tarred with a different brush, aren’t they? What they help themselves to is small fry in comparison.
Then if you go down the line and check out the rest and their backgrounds you will see what they hope to push through, and you will find this is indeed a dark change for us.
Clearly UK government is franchised and is tied up right, left and centre.
Lord Howell is 75 now, so having a desk at the FO is probably too much of a chore. He seems to have enjoyed the work though!
Every other weekend at the Chancellor’s residence can’t be too bad though.
When will we be provided by Parliament not only with faithful advocacy of our Needs, and affordable-hows thereto, from both Houses
but current lists, of which of our Needs & Hows any party or individual (commoner or peer) is standing up for ?
We have no truly democratic working advocacy contacts whatsoever.
Hundreds of “Peers of the Realm”,
be-seated for life,
none of them knowable,
none opf them transparently-monitorable,
nor workingly-contactable.
What “democracy” ?
The way you, Lord Norton, have ‘factually-anecdotaly’ given us a glimpse of this present state-of-The-Lords vis a vis the “Let The Weak Go To The Wall” Cameronian- egged on by whom-? re-shuffle,
and have done so briefly, nicely, and friendlily-lukewarmly velvety;
it nonetheless does tend to show up how much like a “House of Cards”,
et “al-of-us- in Wonderland”,
the Peerage,
and its Champion-Backer The British Establishment,
unsettlingly evidently are tottering towards becoming,
I do honestly think.
Dear Lord Norton,
It is high time, to ask for the appointment of more lords to join the team and hopefully that criterias in the selection process be less rigid allowing potential European candidates to join the House.
God bless the United Kingdom. God save the Queen and the Lords.
Nazma FOURRE
Exactly, why has Laws been put back? Especially after the expenses scandal. After all these cuts to welfare, NHS, police, we once again get slapped in the face by politicians and their greedy grabbing hands, in the news. It needs to be stopped because it’s well out of hand and a kick in the teeth to those of us who have to beg to the people put in place to stop our disability benefits.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9520959/MPs-expenses-claims-rise-by-a-quarter-in-a-year.html
Disgusting.
One that has been missed is Cheryl Gillan, MP for the high speed rail link opposition and Amersham. We recally that she threatened to resign as Minister for Wales if HS2 went ahead; she then sold her house over the deep tunnel planned for HS2 but made so much fuss that the Government moved the line and put it in an even longer tunnel, costing £600m more, to appease here. Then, before she could resign, she was sacked. As Lord Peter Snape said in a Lords debate, is the S of S for Wales worth £600m to the government?