The House of Lords has been the subject of much media attention over the past few days. You may think the reason for this is obvious. It isn’t. One peer engages in private conduct that attracts public opprobrium. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is no reason to link private behaviour with institutional reform. …
Over the weekend, a number of Conservative and Labour parliamentarians, from both ends of the building, were moaning and groaning about the arrival of 22 new Peers. Some were complaining that Conservative Party donors were included; some were querying whether Liberal Democrat activists were sufficiently august; some were griping that there were insufficient numbers of…
Everyone seems to think we are in for quite a light legislative session after Easter. We will not know for sure until after the Queen’s Speech in June, but what are blogs for if not to speculate! One big issue which will plainly pre-occupy quite a lot of MPs’ time is the labyrinthine ‘hybrid Bill’…
It is so rare that the words “consensus” and “Lords reform” appear in the same sentence that I must report immediately on a very informative discussion in a House committee room on Tuesday evening. Billed as “The Steel Bill and Beyond “ this featured first a dialogue between Dr Meg Russell (of the Constitution Unit…
I spoke this evening to the all-party parliamentary group on the constitution. My subject was parliamentary reform. My thesis was that we rarely discuss parliamentary reform, even though we think we do. We discuss changes to one or other House, sometimes at length, but rarely look at Parliament holistically and do not define what we mean by reform. …
