The House of Lords has a long history, having íts origins in the kings’s court that preceded the summoning of knights of the shires to court. For this quiz, I thought I would pose some historical questions. Feel free to have a guess if not too sure. As usual, the first two readers to supply the…
I completely disagree with Lord Lucas! I declare an interest as someone doing some work for Apple but I nevertheless bought my own iPad and love using it wherever I go – including the chamber. As a small light device it is much easier than the Parliamentary laptop or bundles of papers. I download PDFs…
Yesterday was the sixth day in committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. The Bill has not made rapid progress and yesterday consideration of the Bill was limited by the fact that there were two ministerial statements, an urgent question allowed in the Commons repeated as a statement, and a one-hour Question for…
Speaking in the debate on working practices last night, Lord Lucas made a point that he had already covered in one of his posts on this blog. That is, the problem arising from having a coalition with enough votes in the Lords to command a clear majority. After 1999, no one party enjoyed a majority…
Lord Lucas had a question down yesterday on the committee that has been established to draft a Bill for an elected second chamber. The committee will comprise a mix of ministers and Opposition figures, though – unlike the committee created by Jack Straw – with no one from the cross benches. There was an interesting…
