104 speakers listed and a generous time allocation of 9 minutes, I had been looking forward to the first day of the two day debate on the White Paper on House of Lords Reform. There were no new arguments but some of the old ones were elegantly put and some were wonderfully passionate. Read it…
It was a good day yesterday to observe the totally different styles of debate in the Commons and the Lords. At 3.53pm Andrew Lansley, Secretary of State for Health started giving his statement in the Commons about the government’s response to the NHS Futures Forum (That’s the ‘listening exercise’ to suggest ways of amending the…
When Lord Goodlad’s committee on working practices in the House suggested we should normally sit at 2.00pm rather than 2.30pm I had thought it rather non-contentious. Turns out not! Quite a lot of murmurings from the back-benches about rushing lunch guests through lunch, as if they couldn’t start their entertaining half an hour earlier. And…
Tomorrow the Localism Bill arrives in the Lords. The most controversial provisions appear to be the community right to challenge plans and buy local community assets like libraries, pubs and community centres and the provisions for social housing. The Opposition are worried that independent sector organizations like Serco and Capita could run local services under contract but…
Ken Clarke must have been astonished at the hoo-hah over his entirely accurate comments that all rape is not the same. No-one denies that rape is a serious crime, one which can have terrible long-term psychological sequelae for the victim but there are degrees of severity that the courts and the sentencing guidelines have always…
