The death of Lord Newton of Braintree, at the age of 74, has deprived Parliament of what one blog has described as one of the good guys in politics. Tony Newton served not only as a conscientious MP but also as Social Security Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. He entered the Lords in…
The Health and Social Care Bill committee stages started last week http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/111025-0002.htm and will continue this afternoon. We haven’t got past clause 1 yet. It was probably the most frustrating debate I’ve ever attended. It is all about whether the Secretary of State for Health should ‘provide’, or ‘promote’ and or ‘secure’ a comprehensive health…
It is variously claimed that the combination of Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in the House of Lords provides the coalition with an inbuilt majority. It has not proven so inbuilt as to protect the Government from defeat. In yesterday’s proceedings on Report stage of the Public Bodies Bill, there were three votes and the Government lost…
In response to an earlier post, Croft asked if I would write about the choice of supporting peers for a peer’s introduction into the House of Lords. Newly created life peers, archbishops (on appointment or translation), and bishops (on first receiving a writ of summons or on translation to another see) are ceremonially introduced before…
