The past week has been a busy one for the House in considering constitutional issues. On Monday, there was a question for short debate (QSD) on the role of the House in the event of reform. Such debates are time-limited – in this case to ninety minutes – and there were so many speakers that…
Among the best speeches in yesterday’s debate on Lords reform were those made by Lord Cope of Berkeley on the Conservative benches, Lord Walton of Detchant on the cross-benches and Lord Rooker on the Labour benches. Lord Rooker drew on his experience in both Houses, including as a minister. One of his most telling observations was: “After…
Yesterday’s debate on a motion to take note of the case for reform of the House of Lords occupied almost nine hours with sixty-seven speakers. Many speakers, myself included, distinguished between reform and destruction. Getting rid of the House of Lords is not reform of the House. Most of us who spoke favour reform in order to strengthen the…
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…
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…
