So hello again…I’ve been rather lonely over there in Lords in Purdah with Lord Norton plowing his own furrow; I hope we didn’t lose you all. Goodness it was good telly last night wasn’t it? Gordon Brown looked more cheerful leaving No 10 than he ever did while in it and both he and David Cameron made remarkably warm and generous speeches. I felt jolly proud to be British (I’m teasing of course), such splendid statesman-like behaviour. Oh but I can see we’re going to have some fun in the Lords. I can’t wait to hear which bits of health policy will be in and which out, since there are major differences between the Tories and the Lib Dems about health care. I had a weekend guest who was a major Lib Dem supporter who was outright angry at the thought of this coalition, so we will no doubt all be surprised to see if the Lib Dems can engage their voters with the mainstream policies. It may well force the Lib Dems back from their left of Blair position on many issues.
Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Health
And I’m now waiting with some anxiety to see what of health policy will be in the Queen’s Speech. Before the election Andrew Lansley was talking about 2 new early health bills; I wonder if they will survive LibDem negotiations.
And a new House of Lords reform bill? I quite like that too…
Baroness Murphy,
Over here in the USA C-SPAN chose to pick up the BBC Newsnight program as its late night change of UK government television program. It was varied and entertaining at least. I do wish to congratulate you on your party’s position as part of government.
Does it make it feel more worth renting a robe?
Well, I for one think that what is happening is good news and at last we might have consensus politics, with a chance of getting reform legislation through.
The picture of David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the doorway of 10 Downing Street united and the subsequent press conference reinforced their unity.
Time for real change and a reality check for politicians that the first past the post system is doomed.
As for the Lords, I would hope that any reforms, will not exclude those Hereditary Peers who have contributed much to the Lords over the years – they are both an anarchic and historic element, which gives the Lords character and opinion, rather then a purely political perspective from former MP’s.
So, Here’s a question.
Why have the Lords taken a recess? They aren’t up for election. You could have spent the time reviewing acts of Parliament and getting it right.
Instead, you stop all your work, and nothing happens.
It’s taking the Micky
That one’s easy – once it’s an Act it’s too late to do much because it is already law. There are no outstanding Bills because they were dealt with in the stitch-up.
Don’t forget that Lords aren’t paid (apart from those holding ministerial posts), they only get an attendance allowance so not there, no money.
I’d say that all the LibDem supporters who are angry at the coalition should think through the implications of PR very carefully, because what is happening now could become the norm. Or they’re just subscribing to the view that the Tories are evil b******s and should be condemned to permanent opposition based on events of twenty years ago, ignoring all the good and bad things since then.
I think David Cameron has seen the light, even if some of his backbenchers haven’t, that if coalition politics is here to stay then his party needs to demonstrate that they’re capable of functioning in concert with another party lest they do indeed end up as the permanent opposition. He had a lucky break in that the numbers worked out such that there was only really one arrangement that was going to work, but it could all still have failed.
Nick Clegg has seized the chance – it may all go pear-shaped but by jumping he’s given the LibDems the chance to show that they are worthy of more seats for their share of the vote, whereas not agreeing the full coalition might well have seen them sink back into the mire for another generation.
I too await the text of various Bills with interest, and while Ed Balls is not on my Christmas card list, I guess it’s him I have to thank for the fact that I’ll be reading some of those Bills and making comments to my MP and the Bill committees and perhaps even members of the Lords, although that’s harder to do. Education Bills will attract particular scrutiny, although Michael Gove is aware of the dangers of poking the home education hornets’ nest so hopefully he’ll be very careful.
Why look forward to further Reform of the Lords?
I rather imagined that the Heath bills will be gutted as there is going to be cuts (note the change of language in the coalition from ‘real terms rises’ to ‘(cash) rises’) Which bills do you imagine are implementable in a cash neutral form?
“I do wish to congratulate you on your party’s position as part of government.”
Lady Murphy is an XB – Day to day it may make them the largest opposition party based on some poor Lab attendance figures.
Frank WS, I’m going to miss the parade this year, it’s come round a bit too quickly for me. Dave H I rather agree with your comments here. Zarove, I am increasingly convinced that an elected upper house is the way forward. While there are many advantages to an appointed house which doesn’t compete with the Commons, I feel the weight of history is moving us in the elected direction and there are too many disadvantages in the House as it is at the moment. I will blog in more detail about this. knowing many of my co-bloggers will disagree profoundly.
Lets see.
The Lords are good because they are independent.
Oh dear. That’s going out of the window. PR, which in this case means party lists. It just entrenches the party machine. Obviously that independence isn’t important.
Quite. It’s irrelevant anyway. If you want an expert, you call in an expert. You don’t permenantly employ a cancer specialist.
So what’s missing? Any say for the electorate on an issue. The reason is clear. You can’t bribe an electorate unless you use their money, and eventually they realise they have been lead up the garden path.
However, for those on the blag, it keeps things going a bit longer. Expenses, salary and a pension all round
Lord Blagger
Baroness Murphy, the great mind of C.S. Lewis once said that sometimes the only way to were you want to go is to g backwards.
I am very unconvinced that moving forward will lead us to a good place.
I just see this as catering to our modern Philosophical love affair with Democracy. Somehow Democracy has become a self evident good in and of itself, and it is to the point that Democracy must be served as a sort f god we bow to.
The only reason we need to Reform the Lords further is to serve that Ideological position, but some of us have begun to question if Democracy is really the self evident good we have been told.
I would rather simply allow the Hereditary Peers back in. I don’t see the benefit to an all elected Lords, for this lead sonly to more Politicians.
Hence my idea of getting rid of the lords completely, and allowing the electorate the final say.
Much more akin to the old Athenian style of democracy.
“Hence my idea of getting rid of the lords completely, and allowing the electorate the final say.
Much more akin to the old Athenian style of democracy.”
Allowing the electorate the final say on what? It is difficult to imagine many people being interested in giving detailed scrutiny to such legislation as might be required to sort out sewage systems in Sunderland, though proposals for legislation to reintroduce hanging might prove very popular.
And who would constitute the relevant electorate in on the question of Sunderland’s sewage system? The men and women of Tyne & Wear or everyone who was going to get to pay for it?
As for the “old Athenian style of democracy”, from the little I remember of Greek history, the ancient Athenian democracy suffered from apathy a-plenty, which was why people were sent out into the Agora with straps soaked in (purple?) dye, to strike and mark the clothing (for shame) of voters who preferred to spend their time in the market place than bother to turn up to the meetings to do their bit. [No doubt someone will correct the bits of this I’ve undoubtedly gotten wrong.]
And then of course there is the question of the very small and limited class of men who constituted the ‘people’ who wielded the ‘power’ in that democracy.
Jana,
I respond to “And then of course there is the question of the very small and limited class of men who constituted the ‘people’ who wielded the ‘power’ in that democracy.”
In terms of eligibility they were descendants of the ancient tribes who were constituted into the city and did not enter at some other time. They were men. They owned and could bear their own sword, shield and breastplate or had served admirably as free soldiers when young and fit. They lived near enough to vote and were natives of Athenian soil in some sense or other.
Politically, Athens rewrote the myths into different plays and such so that only Homer retains the old pro-royalist myths. They sought to stamp out the groups loyal to the tribal federations and tribal chiefs whose Boultheria and Plethae predated their own assembly. Also if you were too smart, brave beautiful or sexually attractive to women then you and your whole family could be kicked out as dangerous to democracy. These expulsions were written on bits of pottery shard called “ostraca” which is the origin of our word ostracize. They plagiarized ancient texts and wrote out tribal and royalist tenets of these texts. They were a rather typical high democracy really.
Croft, I suspect that a new Health Bill will not be about ‘health exactly so much as ‘NHS Reorganisation’. Two areas of Tory commitment which will probably be implemented are the creation of an NHS Board at arms length from the DH, funded by the reduction if not abolition of the Strategic Health Authorities and PCTs and the slashing of several health quangos (I’ve got a little list myself). Then there is also a commitment to create an ‘economic regulator’ (Offsick?) to put at arms length from the DH the setting of tariff, the overseeing of collaboration and competition decisions between hospitals and services, among other things. This has the merit of taking more and more decision making out of direct political control even if ultimately we will never exclude political control altogether from a publicly funded system. I am ambivalent about how an independent board would work; it has been tried before and the Chair found himself rapidly at odds with the ministry.
So far though they aren’t talking about the crucial issue of Social Care provision. The Labour party idea of creating a National Care Service seemed to me to risk recreating all the disadvantages of the NHS but an alternative system needs major societal consensus about funding and neither Lib Dems of Tories have any serious ideas so far.
I see Andrew Lansley has already pronounced that GPs will be asked to take back responsibility for out of hours services…..can’t wait to see how that will play out with BMA.
Lord Blagger, why does the Lords have a break when the commons does? Very simply it is Parliament that is prorogued not just the Commons, for an election. We are the part of parliament which scrutinises Bills which come from the Commons or creates bills which are then scrutinised by the Commons. We can’t function without the Commons. There are no Bills progressing through parliament when the Commons isn’t sending them on to us so there wouldn’t be much point carrying on working. I do take the point that we could do post legislative scrutiny of existing Bills but with no Government able to progress our recommendations that wouldn’t work well either. Who would respond to our recommendations?
On the other hand if your point is that both Houses of Parliament could work more normal hours and have less weeks of inactivity around an election I’m entirely in agreement. How abour confining campaigning to one week? Perhaps I could remind you that peers don’t get any remuneration when parliament doesn’t sit although the infrastructure costs are still incurred.
The problem is that you keep saying how wonderful you are at scrutinising bills.
However, we had bills forced through at the end of parliament without scrutiny, in the wash up.
You could have carried on working and performed your job. Instead, it was a case of lets get it out of the way without scrutiny.
Out of interest, name the quangos to go.
Well I’ve been involved in various re-organisations and they always cost money in the short term. The costs involved in changing logos/stationary soon add up let alone with some of the crazy compensation packages in the public sector. Now changes may or may not bring down costs in the long term but you still need the money in the short term and UK Plc is skint!
“Then there is also a commitment to create an ‘economic regulator’ (Offsick?)”
😀
“This has the merit of taking more and more decision making out of direct political control ”
I’m not very comfortable in yet another unelected quango appointed by a selection procedure run by a second unelected quango. Either the latter or the former (or both) ought to be subject to some sort of accountability. I’ve always been a fan of the negative resolution procedure for appointments.
Blagger, Athenian Democracy actually wasn’t that Great. it worke donly on a City-State Modle and woudl be impossible to Implement, even in the COmputer Age, over a wide Region such as Suxssex, much elss all England, or even be attmepoted for the eholw United Kingdom.
It also didn’t make sure women had equal rights, slaves were Freed, or temper aggression. The Greek City-States were very Warlike.
It should also be noticed they collapsed frequently due to internal struggles.
It is easy to implement. It’s called referenda by proxy.
Everyone nominates a proxy. They cast the vote in Parliament instead of the Lords for the final approval of a bill.
1. You can change your proxy without waiting for a general election.
Solves in part the corrupt representative.
Solves completely the unpopular goververnment. They lose proxies and can’t implement anything.
2. Equal voting power.
Everyone has an equal say. Lords, MPs, citizen. All get an equal vote. No biases to marginals determining results.
If you support labour in a tory seat, you get the same voting power as anyone else.
3. Vote on an issue.
It takes 1 MP to set up an online system where he will accept your vote and cast it accordingly.
The real argument for PR is that people think it will solve the problem about voting on issues. If they get a representative more akin to their views, they will get more of a say.
4. Lastly its cheaper.
The Lords cost 115 million a year and rising when we get the new lot arriving.
Voter registration costs 100 million a year.
Abolishing the Lords and adding the addition of an MP to the registration form would save about 100 million a year. Half a billion over the next 5 years. It’s a major saving and proper democracy.
Lord Blagger, maybe you need to reread my post. Athenian democracy was Warlike and Aggressive, and in the end resulted in societies divided within themselves. Most of them collapsed owing to internal struggles between rival factions.
As much as we are conditioned to Love Democracy, its a horrible system of Government that leads to tyranny, not Freedom.
No different than the current government is it?
How many times has Brown and Blair taken the UK to war?
Lets see, Iraq, Afghanistan, Siere Leon, Bosnia, …
The current system isn’t democratic. You aren’t as a pleb allowed a vote on an issue. You have to do what your elected dictatorship tell you.
So on the question of, should there be a public vote on sewage systems in Tyneside. Yes their should. The citizens affected by that, and in particular those who pay for it, should get to say yes and no. Does that include Thirsk? Nope. It’s not relevant for them.
For those that aren’t interested, the referenda by proxy solves that. They nominate their proxy, and their proxy makes the decision for them.
Lord Blagger