According to the Government’s briefing, we are expecting a guillotine motion to be tabled tonight for voting tomorrow. This will determine whether or not the remaining debate on the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill will be brought to an end. This would be a massive step for the Lords. I may not have been…
Trouble in Egypt puts trouble in the Lords into perspective! At the time of writing the President is still clinging onto power. I rather fear this is going to have a violent end. The army either has to let people power take its course or they have to impose the Presidents will. So is the…
On Tuesday evening I joined many Americans watching President Obama deliver the State of the Union message. Surprisingly it reflected many events in our political life. The State Opening of Parliament, but in this case in the lower house. A party political broadcast complete with an instant response from the opposition – actually two. A…
Last nights debate underlines my concerns about the governments proposal to arbitrarily reduce the number of MP’s without cross Party support and without reducing the number of Ministers. The following link will take you to Lord Strathclyde’s speech saying the government are not prepared to commit to a reduction of Ministers – so the power…
I am keeping an eye on the late night debates, even though we crossbenchers feel a bit like referees watching from the sidelines as the 2, or is it 3 parties slug it out over the PVS&C Bill. I welcome Lord Low’s calm and holistic view. But I can’t help feeling that the behaviour of…
Talking to members on all sides I am clear that negotiation on this Bill could provide a solution. I could make a ‘blame list’ but it won’t get anyone any further so let me just talk about the type of movement that needs to take place. The important one for me is that we have…
Their Lordships are getting into a right old lather over the stand-off between the Government and the opposition in the House – “filibustering is not cricket – not the way we do things in this House”, “if things carry on like this we will see a guillotine introduced and that would be the end of…
I don’t often so strongly disagree with Baroness Murphy below but I do on this issue. The core is not the referendum on AV – that is the easy bit and if the Bill had been split into parts as it should have been then that could be back in the Commons now. The problem…
Peers often complain that MPs know very little about the Lords and rarely if ever bother to come along the corridor to observe what happens. However, in the past week, during our late-night discussions on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, it has been notable how many MPs have popped along to watch what…
