On Thursday, the House held a debate, initated by Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, on the constitutional and parliamentary effects of coalition government. It was a useful, and a notably timely, debate. It was what is known as a set-piece debate: that is, one for which there is a speaker’s list. If you wish to speak, you…
The Lords is an amending, revising chamber, not a “chuckerouterer” of Government Bills. What on earth are the Opposition doing filibustering over days and days to delay the passage of the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill? Tabling amendments, having a robust discussion and pressing it to a vote is one thing; behaving like a…
The House is again in committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. For the second time, the House took the unusual step of passing a closure motion to bring debate on one amendment to a close. The amendment was then defeated. The Opposition objected to the use of this exceptional procedure. However, the…
This Blog is not designed for party political battles although that inevitably influences some of the comments. Lord Tyler indicates in his post below that he feels very strongly that Labour was just being difficult for the sake of it. He was a very effective and vocal member in opposition both in the Commons and…
I did a few posts on my blog during the night as the marathon sitting on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill was under way. The House sat from 2.30 p.m. yesterday to 12.53 today (Tuesday) and at one point took the exceptional step of passing a closure motion to bring debate on one amendment…
The more nocturnal of our readers will doubtless have flicked through television channels in the early hours many times before. When the BBC’s rolling news becomes tiresome, perhaps because the day’s stories have long since turned from ‘rolling’ to plain old, you flick along two channels and have a look at what Sky’s saying. Then…
It is 1.50am. I am in my Lords office waiting to speak to my amendment to the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill which tries to link the decision on the number of MPs with the number of Lords. This is my own attempt to get some big picture coherence on constitutional reform. The signs are…
The successor to Michael Pownall as Clerk of the Parliaments has been announced. His successor will be the current Clerk Assistant, David Beamish. David Beamish is a great expert on the House of Lords. He also has the distinction of once having won the Mastermind contest.
I have just seen the film “The King’s Speech”, an excellent film which deserves to win lots of awards. It set me thinking about communication. The climax of the film is the successful delivery by King George VI of his speech on the outbreak of war in September 1939, rallying his people and calling on them to…
