When MPs are off for their Recess (working hard in their constituencies, of course), the media take more interest in the work of our House. This may explain why a number of journalists were so fascinated by our discussion yesterday of the Profumo affair, whose fiftieth anniversary is this year. Donald Macintyre hoped we were…
I have no way of knowing whether today’s report in the Independent – about English MPs’ role in the House of Commons – is accurate, since it is evidently a leak from those in the Conservative Party who are clearly seeking to demote those who represent Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland constituencies. What I do…
All Peers have just been alerted by the Clerk of the Parliaments that there will be a “Hereditary Peers’ By-election on 16 July: “The death of Lord Reay on 10 May 2013 has created a vacancy among the excepted hereditary peers who sit in the House of Lords.” Because he was a Deputy Speaker “under…
On 17th April, I and some colleagues in the other parties were due to host a cross-party seminar on a Draft Bill to reform party funding regulations. Then Baroness Thatcher died, and her funeral was scheduled to begin in Westminster Hall – right next to where the seminar was planned to take place – that…
Though I mean no disrespect to Her Majesty, I cannot bring myself to get cloaked up in ermine each year, to hear her tell us what “her” government will do. The scene of peers all huddled in their red dressing gowns is endlessly recycled in the media – whenever the Lords is mentioned – despite…
