Successive Prime Ministers have made the House of Lords their whipping boy whenever they reshuffled Ministers. Gordon Brown is no exception, and the consequences of his latest game of musical chairs looks bad both for the Government and for the House. We knew that Lord (Jeff) Rooker wanted to retire from the Front Bench, after…
Political students know how valuable the diaries of politicians can be, even if they have to be read with a large quantity of salt at the ready. If they are published shortly after the events described, when the players are still on the field, they are all the more intriguing … or possibly deceptive. In…
The Parliamentary Recess already seems to be ebbing away. We’re in the second half of August, autumnal weather is with us and it’s only four weeks until the party conferences. MPs, if they got away at all, are beginning to return from their holidays, which many – like everyone else – take while their children…
This morning the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Renewal Bill, of which both Lord Norton and I have been members, published its final report. The benefit of Select Committee reports is that they are often agreed unanimously, across the parties (and, in the case of a joint committee, between the Houses). No such unanimity this…
I’ve been meaning to respond to some of the comments on our mini-debate about the merits, in principle, of reforming the House of Lords. I’ve recently been caught up in the Joint Committee on Constitutional Renewal, doing some detailed work on the role of the Attorney General. That’s all still confidential at the moment but…
