I attended a Hansard Society lecture on Wednesday of last week given by the Speaker, John Bercow, on revitalising the chamber of the Commons. You can read the lecture here. He identified various ways in which more members could be attracted to the chamber to participate. In response to a question, he expressed support for select…
In a previous blog I banged on about Afghanistan – but noted that, as before, this is not a topic of great interest to the world of bloggers. It seems that what really turns you on are finer points of constitutional change, quizzes and (money)expenses. So I thought I would try and combine at least…
Like last week’s, this week’s quiz relates to the membership of the House. As usual the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. 1. Why will there shortly be the potential for sibling rivalry in the House of Lords? 2. The chairs of the departmental select committees in the House of…
At the end of May I blogged about the three working groups which emerged from a seminar given by the Lord Speaker last year on how we might strengthen the way we do business in this House; our procedures, processes of scrutiny and internal governance arrangements. The three groups, (all included volunteers from all sides…
Before the election I was looking for ways to widen the appeal and scope of Lords of the Blog. The meat of what we do on a daily basis remains the key because we want people outside Parliament to know more about us and our work. That however, is never the whole picture. For me…
I am constantly amused and amazed by the antipathy of some Peers and MPs to any form of improved voting systems for elections to Parliament, when they cheerfully adopt such fairer mechanisms for so many other purposes. For example, the election for the Deputy Speakers of the Commons, just completed, employed the admirable system of…
Lord Lucas had a question down yesterday on the committee that has been established to draft a Bill for an elected second chamber. The committee will comprise a mix of ministers and Opposition figures, though – unlike the committee created by Jack Straw – with no one from the cross benches. There was an interesting…
The first vote of the Parliament took place in the Lords yesterday and the Government lost it. It was on a procedural point as to whether the Local Government Bill was a hybrid Bill or not: that is, a public bill that affects private interests different from other interests in the same class. If it…
This post relates to Baroness Deech’s last post and the excellent comments it is attracting. I too mourn the loss from parliament of Evan Harris, not because he was a GP but because he had a clear thinking liberal mind and was willing to stand up for a number of unpopular causes with eloquence and…
