One advantage of the House of Lords is that it is possible for members to raise issues that may be delicate, and others may not wished to be raised, but which deserve consideration. Sometimes they are raised from somewhat unxpected sources. On Monday, Health Minister, Earl Howe, was answering a question from Lord Fowler on…
I recently did a post on my own blog about the extent to which people confuse Parliament and Government and how this is compounded by the new e-petition system, under which people can submit petitions to a Government website and, if one attracts 100,000 or more signatures, it can be considered for debate in the…
The House has members who span a significant age range. Among the older members are some who saw significant service in the Second World War. This quiz focuses on those peers who saw wartime service. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. 1. I was a prisoner-of-war…
The House of Lords Select Committee on HIV and AIDS in the United Kingdom published its report yesterday. The Committee, chaired by former Social Services Secretary, Lord Fowler, spent eight months taking evidence and has produced the first major analysis for some years. As the Committee notes in it summary: “This report examines what is…
In my Stevenson Lecture at the University of Glasgow in January, I addressed the claim that election of a second chamber necessarily constitutes the ‘democratic’ option. This is often advanced by proponents of an elected second chamber as if it were self-evidently correct. I argued that it is not necessarily the democratic option, a point to…
