I am keeping an eye on the late night debates, even though we crossbenchers feel a bit like referees watching from the sidelines as the 2, or is it 3 parties slug it out over the PVS&C Bill. I welcome Lord Low’s calm and holistic view. But I can’t help feeling that the behaviour of the opposition is going to be destructive in the long term. The Lords, in brief, have really upset the government in the Commons. This might result in renewed determination to have an elected House. Yet it seems obvious to me that if the House were mainly elected, with the passion of legitimacy beating in every breast, there would be frequent filibusters and the government would find it even harder to get its legislation through. Filibuster it is, make no mistake. The opposition speakers appear to be behaving as if scripted. Many amendments are withdrawn after some hours have been spent debating them, therefore to no avail. There is reluctance to apply a guillotine, although there are ways of doing this, for fear of setting a precedent and of damaging the Lords’ vital contribution of proper scrutiny, and their self governance.
However, a precedent has been set in relation to the way the House behaves. Just wait until a House of Lords Reform Bill makes its appearance, and today’s filibuster will seem like a minor affair!
Elections are neither here nor there. AT PRESENT, many peers feel they have a licence to ramble on and on, frequently going way outside the scope of the amendment under consideration. The elected chamber does not do this. It is surely more than reasonable to expect all members to say what they want to say, within about 10 minutes at a time.
The trouble is this Government have been extremely clever in thier chess moves, but ultimately deceitful.
Tuition fees if one looked at the evidence now was a stab in the back to the Lib-Dems, with most University’s cited as charging the full amount. The aid to poorer students doesn’t look like it will happen either. It was a con but a cleverly perceived one.
The Lords were handed ammunition in the shape of a lot more peers and a gun in the shape of this bill. The expected result is that they kill themselves but ultimately the public haven`t cared, nor do they save a few of us. Parliamentarians run around shouting about disrepute but the public who care are divided and the rest completely ignorant of whats happening. It just isn’t news.
Anyone who knows the House knows this is nothing compared to the boot being on the other foot when it comes to Lords reform, I hope the Noble members shouting “disrepute” remember that.
Of course you can feel sorry for the cross benchers who`d rather be tending their olives, who are not really involved as they don’t have a party and have not declared a personal interest.
The chaos was I believe intended, but as I see people in the working classes stop spending, businesses quieter than normal and unemployment rising I fear worse is to come.
As Dave works away arrogantly on IDS’s ideaoolgy, and it is his scripted I might add unlike that which he accused Mr.Milliband of, I hope he realises before people suffer it is too much, too fast.
The idea to change the complete Parliamentary system which ultimately is what he is doing will backfire.
Is there any Chamber in the world as obsessed by its election / selection procedures as the House of Lords? Does every debate or disagreement have to come back to this issue?
As I understand it, the aim of the Opposition is to amend the Bill in three main areas outlined by Lord Soley and not bring down Parliamentary democracy as we know it. If the posts on this blog are anything to go by, the obsession of Peers with the process for their own selection / election and the fear that stems from this obsession now seems to be seriously hampering the willingness of some Lords to scrutinise or revise legislation regardless of the issue under discussion.
An elected house comes with a get out of jail free card; is monopoly your game?
Carl H, I guess the olive tending jibe was aimed at me so I’ll come in here. The notion that we are in the mess in the Lords because it was planned that way by the Government is I fear completely wrong; not a plot, much more likely a cock-up, as ever. You are right however that I find it difficult to get exercised about a reduction in number of MPs from 650- 600 with more or less equal numbers of constituents. I agree there is the disadvantage that we will end up with a higher proportion of ministers and we have far too many already but even those MPs who aren’t ministers are often hoping for future preferment and not willing to defy the whips so the number of ministers may make little difference to the Commons ability to scrutinise.
Teithiwr, Yes we are a little obsessed at present but that’s because we are waiting for the reform bill, it’s just a matter of timing and completely understandable; MPs and peers are the same as everyone else in being interested in their own person al futures (hence the high temperature over this Bill. I’ll guess we won’t have all night sittings over Pensions, Education or Health Bills, just a negotiated programme of business as usual.
In anticipation of the House Of Lords Reform Bill, especially with regard to it’s standing with a reformed Commons, I thought that followers of this site would be interested to look back on some of Walter Bagehot’s remarks, from the 19th Century …
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“We have to frame such tacit rules, to establish such ruling but unenacted customs, as will make the House of Lords yield to the Commons when and as often as our new Constitution requires that it should yield.
I shall be asked, How often is that, and what is the test by which you know it? I answer that the House of Lords must yield whenever the opinion of the Commons is also the opinion of the nation, and when it is clear that the nation has made up its mind.
Whether or not the nation has made up its mind is a question to be decided by all the circumstances of the case, and in the common way in which all practical questions are decided.
There are some people who lay down a sort of mechanical test; they say the House of Lords should be at liberty to reject a measure passed by the Commons once or more, and then if the Commons send it up again and again, infer that the nation is determined. But no important practical question in real life can be uniformly settled by a fixed and formal rule in this way.
Our House of Commons is, as all such chambers must be, subject to sudden turns and bursts of feeling, because the members who compose it change from time to time. The pernicious result is perpetual in our legislation; many Acts of Parliament are medleys of different motives, because the majority which passed one set of its clauses is different from that which passed another set.
The Lords are in several respects more independent than the Commons; their judgment may not be so good a judgment, but it is emphatically their own judgment. The House of Lords, as a body, is accessible to no social bribe.
. The House of Lords rejected the inestimable, the unprecedented opportunity of being tacitly reformed. Such a chance does not come twice. The life peers who would have been then introduced would have been among the first men in the country. Lord Macaulay was to have been among the first; Lord Wensleydale—the most learned and not the least logical of our lawyers—to be the very first. Thirty or forty such men, added judiciously and sparingly as years went on, would have given to the House of Lords the very element which, as a criticising chamber, it needs so much.
The House of Commons may, as was explained, assent in minor matters to the revision of the House of Lords, and submit in matters about which it cares little to the suspensive veto of the House of Lords; but when sure of the popular assent, and when freshly elected, it is absolute, it can rule as it likes and decide as it likes. And it can take the best security that it does not decide in vain. It can ensure that its decrees shall be executed, for it, and it alone, appoints the executive; it can inflict the most severe of all penalties on neglect, for it can remove the executive. It can choose, to effect its wishes, those who wish the same; and so its will is sure to be done. A stipulated majority of both Houses of the American Congress can overrule by stated enactment their executive; but the popular branch of our legislature can make and unmake ours.
The English Constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good; the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority.
The existence of a fancied check on the Premier is in truth an evil, because it prevents the enforcement of a real check. It would be easy to provide by law that an extraordinary number of peers—say more than ten annually—should not be created except on a vote of some large majority, suppose three-fourths of the Lower House. This would ensure that the Premier should not use the reserve force of the constitution as if it were an ordinary force; that he should not use it except when the whole nation fixedly wished it; that it should be kept for a revolution, not expended on administration; and it would ensure that he should then have it to use. “
Matthew!
provide by law that an extraordinary number of peers—say more than ten annually—should not be created except on a vote of some large majority
Indeed simply to prevent undue patronage by the First lord/Prime Minister, with cabinet posts.