As a newly elected MP in 1979 it seemed obvious to me that we needed to elect the Lords. No question about it! Unelected legislators in the age of democracy – it must be wrong! So like most MPs I took it for granted that Labour’s election manifesto of 1910 must finally be honoured. I…
I’m taking a ‘sabbatical’ from the Lords for a little while, so this is my arrivederci blog. There’s no such thing as a sabbatical from the House of Lords of course but there doesn’t seem to be any other type of official leave that quite suits my circumstances. Leave of Absence seems reserved for the…
I was at a symposium this morning on the Parliament Act 1911. I spoke on the historical background to the Act. One of the points that I made, repeating what I said in my History of Parliament lecture, is that there was very little public interest in the issue of the second chamber as such during…
I had planned to do a post on last week’s two-day debate on the Government’s White Paper and draft Bill on the future of the House of Lords, but decided that as others had already covered it, your interest may already have been satisfied. I did speak in the debate – I had the good…
My first posting on “Lords of the blog” comes a day after an uninvited visitor was sighted in the red carpeted corridors of the Lords. A fox “broke in” to the House somewhere near the Speaker’s apartments and pest control had to be called in. This happens occasionally. I think that a fox was once…
