In response to my previous post, a number of readers asked about the role of the law lords. Croft raised the question as to whether other peers could participate in judicial business. The judicial work of the House is conducted by an Appellate Committee, comprising Lords of Appeal: these comprise the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (the…
Some rather misleading figures have been bandied about in terms of the costs of the House of Lords, both in terms of the overall costs of the House and what allowances individual members may claim. I may do a separate post commenting on costs, but in the interim I thought I would post a statement…
There have been two unusual features of the House this morning. After Question Time, there was a Private Notice Question – in effect, an emergency question – on the Government’s decision to ban the Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the UK. The minister, Admiral Lord West, faced a series of critical questions, but did…
Given the negative coverage that the Lords has received recently, it is nice to see that Rachel Sylvester has an article in The Times in which she argues “there is a danger of learning the wrong lessons from this incident and of losing sight of what is good about the Upper Chamber”. She makes the case…
The House was originally scheduled to have a debate today on developments in Gaza (see my earlier post). However, given the number of peers who have signed up to speak, it has been re-scheduled and a Friday sitting (6 February) cleared for it. As I previously reported, some of those contributing are extremely well qualified to…
