Last Wednesday, as part of ‘Parliament Week’, the Hansard Society organised a panel on ‘Parliament and the public: what difference does the Lords make?’ The picture shows the participants (left to right) Lord Soley, Baroness Scott of Needham Market, Peter Riddell (in the chair), Mark D’Arcy of BBC Parliament, Baroness Young of Hornsey, and me. …
This evening, the Hansard Society organised a seminar on referendums. There was a panel comprising Professor Vernon Bogdanor, the journalist Steve Richards, and me – standing in for Peter Riddell, the Society’s chair, who was unable to attend. It was a well attended meeting. Vernon Bogdanor put the case for referendums, though seeing little merit in Thursday’s…
It is just coming up to 11.00 p.m. on Wednesday. The House is still on Report stage of the Academies Bill. We have just had a vote on one of the amendments. It is always possible that there may be more before Report stage is completed later this evening. Then again, given that the Opposition…
One of the other meetings I attended this past week was a Hansard Society seminar. It was the first in a series on ‘Making Better Law’. I gave a paper that examined some of the problems at the heart of the current law-making process. I identified various problems. One is the sheer volume of legislation. …
Lords of the Blog has been running since January 2008 and was launched in March 2008. An evaluation of the first six months of the pilot was carried out by the Hansard Society: everything about the blog – from the ways that authors respond to visitors, to the layout of the website – has been…
