The Lords Constitution Committee has spent over a year undertaking an inquiry into the impact of government surveillance and data collection and the effect it has on the privacy of individuals and their relationship with the state. The report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, is a substantial one, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It draws on extensive…
Both Houses have managed to sit this week, despite the dreadful weather conditions. On Monday, courts did not sit, buses in London did not run, and many schools closed, but Parliament met. My picture shows Victoria Tower Gardens early on Wednesday morning, when conditions were still pretty bad. A determination to sit is a feature…
I had a meeting earlier this evening with fellow bloggers to discuss how to the build on the success of Lords of the Blog. We have been impressed by the interest the blog has attracted and by the quality of the comments made by readers. We considered a number of ideas for adding to the appeal of…
Given the negative coverage that the Lords has received recently, it is nice to see that Rachel Sylvester has an article in The Times in which she argues “there is a danger of learning the wrong lessons from this incident and of losing sight of what is good about the Upper Chamber”. She makes the case…
In response to an earlier post, Croft asked if I would write about the choice of supporting peers for a peer’s introduction into the House of Lords. Newly created life peers, archbishops (on appointment or translation), and bishops (on first receiving a writ of summons or on translation to another see) are ceremonially introduced before…
