The House of Lords has a strong commitment to outreach and engagement. This includes the ‘Peers in Schools’ programme as well as this blog, a unique collaboration of members drawn from different parts of the House. The House also publishes a range of literature to explain what it does and to provide data on its…
The recent spat over whether a Bill should be taken in Grand Committee or on the floor of the House rather masks the more important limitation of committee scrutiny. Whether a Bill is taken for committee stage in Grand Committee or on the floor is not a major issue. Grand Committee is not a committee in…
Mark D’Arcy of BBC Parliament blogs that he thinks that it has been a good year for Parliament. One can see his argument. The chairs and members of select committees in the Commons are now elected, the committees have continued to be productive, and two have recently gained a high public profile because of the ‘phone-hacking…
I would just add a few words to what Lord Tyler has written about the power to subpoena witnesses. I was asked yesterday by a journalist whether a select committee had the power to require someone who was not a UK citizen to appear before it. I pointed out that select committees in the Commons …
Back to work this week on my Select Committee, Merits of Statutory Instruments. Our job is to scrutinise weekly the delegated legislation made under the authority of an Act (that is, the detailed stuff that makes the Act work) and see if any of the statutory instruments fail to achieve their objectives, or should be…
