This may be a topic of excruciating boredom for most people – other than your lorships of course. But given that it is on the Government’s agenda it may be worth a brief re-visit? The Government has promised a White Paper (essentially a policy paper) by mid-July which is based on what someone described as…
In response to my earlier post on ‘Adding Value’, Bedd Gelert asked how he could find information on the various procedural rules of the House. I replied that our basic guide is the Companion – or the Companion to the Standing Orders and the Guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords to give it its…
All parties – an all too often members of the public – complain that new legislation is badly drafted and inadequately examined. To try to improve the way in which the Government’s proposals are given a reality check, Parliament has invented “pre-legislative scrutiny”. When the Prime Minister first came to power last year he announced…
I thought I would add to the debate on political engagement. It picks up on some of my previous comments. It is important that Parliament recognises that there are different types of ‘public’ with which it has to engage. One is what may be described as ‘attentive publics’, in essence organised interests (pressure groups, firms,…
What have the Rt Rev. John Charles, Bishop of Lincoln, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, got in common? Answer: They were both introduced into the House of Lords today. The Bishop joins the House by reason of seniority, replacing a retiring Bishop. Baroness Manningham-Buller is, as far as I am aware, the first former head…
I want to pick up on a theme Lord Norton has raised once or twice, about the perceived problem of political disengagement, especially amomg the young. You know, the poor voting record in elections, the small numbers who join political parties and so on. I would like to suggest that it is a symptom of…
Compulsory voting is advocated by some politicians as a means of addressing the problem of political disengagement. Young people tend to have a low turnout rate but this has worsened in recent decades. Many people retain an interest in politics but express that interest through pressure group activity rather than through traditional means of joining…
Appearing before the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill yesterday, Labour MP Graham Allen repeated a proposal he has variously advocated: that is, knocking through the chamber of the Commons into the division lobbies, thus creating space for each MP to have a desk and to be able to vote electronically. In my earlier…
We Crossbenchers talked today about the problem of debates where they are of a fixed length, say 2-3 hours but so popular perhaps 30 or more speakers has put their name down. With time taken off for introducers and front bench ‘winders-up’, it is quite possible to end up with a time of 3-4minutes for…
