Nine Lords a Blogging...

Nine members of the House of Lords have started a group blog valled LORDS OF THE BLOG. It's a six month experiment, arranged by the Hansard Society. Barry Griffiths, the man behind the project says...

Nine Peers have come together from across the House to make short regular entries providing an insight into the business of the House of Lords and to talk about their own activities in and around the Chamber. Members will write and upload material and moderate user comments themselves. Find out why Lord Tyler decries the myth of a golden age of political reporting; Baroness D’Souza’s definition of a crossbencher and what Lord Norton has to say about Iain Dale’s request for nominations for the most fanciable political journalists. For the next six months the Hansard Society will evaluate the pilot, capturing data about the audience of the blog in order to assess its reach and value.

The pilot is funded by the House of Lords and will run for six months initially. The blog has been running on a development site since January to help get the contributing members up to speed. All the posts published during this test period will be available to read. Contributing Members include:

• Lord Soley
• Lord Norton
• Lord Tyler
• Lord Lipsey
• Lord Dholakia
• Baroness DSouza
• Lord Teverson
• Baroness Young of Hornsey
• Baroness Murphy

Why Did 95 Labour MPs Vote No to 80% and Yes to 100%?

In last night's Commons votes on reforming the Lords most people thought that the 80% option would come out on top, if any of them did. As we all know, the 100% elected option triumphed. But if you study the division lists it has become clear that more than 90 Labour MPs voted 'no' to 80% and then trooped into the 'yes' lobby for 100%.

It could be, of course, that they did it on principle and only voted for the option they really wanted. I suspect, however, that most of them did it to bugger up the whole process, as they knew it would then produce a lengthy Mexican stand-off with the House of Lords.

The Morning After...

There were many glum faces among Labour Peers this morning as they trooped into the Lords to eat their CoCo Pops. Many of them had given up their Commons seats with the promise of a Peerage for life and all the acoutrements that accompany it. But more importantly they had given up enhanced pension rights by leaving the Commons a little earlier than they had planned. So they now plan to fight a rearguard action and ally themselves with the Tory diehards who want no reform whatsoever. Some strange alliances are about to be formed.

Last night's vote was ostensibly a free vote, so Labour MPs were alarmed to see the giant whip Tommy McAvoy standing at the entrance to the Aye Lobby, urging them to 'vote for democracy'. Could it be that the Labour whips were encouraging their flock to vote for the 100% option to bugger up the entire process. Judging the look of Jack Straw's face at the end of it, he looked as if he was sucking a lemon. He descibed it as an 'historic step forward'. Perhaps so, but not for his career. He then had to meekly explain that he wouldn't be able to attend Business Questions this morning due to a 'prior engagement'. Best not to go any further.

Fully Elected Lords Now on the Agenda

Wow. I must admit I did not expect the 100% elected option to be voted for. And if I'm right, it has a bigger majority than the 80% option. The government has said it would go with whichever option got the highest vote. The House of Lords will now no doubt use every delaying tactic at its disposal.

The challenge now is for those of us who believe in a fully elected chamber to come up with considered proposals which will keep its current character and maintain its role as a revising and scrutinising chamber.

MPs to Vote on Lords Reform

Today MPs are voting on House of Lords reform. I explained HERE my views on the subject. In short I believe that a newly reformed House of Lords should be predominantly elected. I'd go for 100% but would settle for 80%. The LibDems are being whipped to vote for the 80% option and I believe most Conservatives are being encouraged to vote that way too. See The Guardian today. Of course, the real fun will start when their Lordships have to vote. They ain't gonna like it. When I interviewed Gillian Shephard last November she made clear that the Association of Conservative Peers intended to resist any proposal which contained an overwhelmingly elected element. As you'll see from this clip, she was in feisty mood...

Straw Backs Down on Lords Reform Vote

Well done to Jack Straw for backing down on the preferential voting system on House of Lords reform. More HERE. His proposal would have set a dangerous constitutional precedent. As Theresa May says: "A preferential ballot would have taken us into murky constitutional waters. It is a fundamental right of Parliament to reject Government proposals should it wish to do so, and the preferential system of voting would have removed that right."

Lord Lipsey Gives Lords a Bad Name

I wrote BELOW about Lord Lipsey's toe curlingly smug performance on Newsnight last night, where he spoke out against elected Peers. It has prompted several emails and comments. I thought I'd share this one with you...

I remember when I was working for the electoral reform society and David Lipsey was the chair of the make votes count coalition. We always had problems cos he had so many different hats and when he appeared on the tv we never knew with what hat he would be speaking. Eventually he wrote a vehemently anti Lords reform article for the Times Thunderer column under the title “You couldn’t elect better lords than me”. I wrote a single line letter in reply “Trust me, we could”. It got me a right b*ll*cking from my boss and Lipsey. But it was worth it.

I defy anyone to listen to Lipsey for more than five minutes and still be in favour of an appointed House of Lords. He truly believes that as a so-called member of the 'intellectual elite' he knows better, and that 'the little people' are not to be trusted. He personifies all that is bad about the House of Lords.

PS I remember the first time I met Lipsey. I told him that his economics text book had got me through my A Level Economics (albeit with a Grade E). He have me a thunderous look and informed me that those books were written by "the other David Lipsey". Marvellous.

House of Lords Reform: The Dog's Breakfast Continues...

Jack Straw has submitted new proposals to reform the House of Lords. They will be no more acceptable than the last seven options, all of which were rejected on a free vote by MPs. The new proposals are...

* All 92 hereditaries to sit in the new chamber until they die off
* Current 605 life peers could choose to stay or leave with a generous redundancy package
* A smaller chamber of 540 Peers * 50% to be elected, 30% nominated by Party leaders and 20% by an independent commission
* Peers to be elected in batches of 90 over three elections every 5 years. Term limit of 15 years

I have seen no proposals about the electoral system under which these elections would take place. I find these proposals totally unacceptable as they reek of compromise.

My preferred option would look something like this:

* No hereditaries to sit in the new chamber (unless elected)
* A new House of Lords should consist of 450 Peers
* Four hundred of them would be elected and 50 appointed, but those appointed would only have speaking rights and not be allowed to vote
* All Peers (including hereditaries) to be eligible to stand for election
* No term limits

I can see no logical argument in the 21st century for the Chamber NOT to be fully elected. People raise the canard that the second chamber must not compete with the first. I have always found this a deeply flawed argument. If the duties of the second chamber are clearly laid out this could not happen. And if the House of Commons is so weak that it felt threatened it says more about the Members of the House of Commons or the government of the time than it does about the second chamber. Other dual cameral Parliaments do not experience this problem, so why should we?

I am a staunch defender of 'first past the post' for electing the House of Commons. The constituency link is vital for Members of Parliament. For Members of the House of Lords that link is not important - indeed it is arguable that it is important for Lords NOT to have direct constituency links. It is also important that the House of Lords should not reflect the make-up of the House of Commons so that a governing Party would have to continue to fight to get its legilsation through. It is in its role as a revising and scrutinising chamber that the House of Lords performs its most valuable function. All this points to some sort of proportional representation system for the second chamber. Not being an expert in the different variations I will leave it to others to suggest how it might work.

Frankly, all of this goes to show what a terrible thing it was for Labour to embark on Lords reform in the first place when they had no clue what the endgame was. I believe it is now almost impossible to gain a consensus on the way forward, which could spell deep trouble in the future. And for Straw to introduce an 'alternative vote' system for MPs to choose between different options goes against all the laws of parliamentary precedent. It shows what a weak position he is in.

My one plea is for the Conservative leadership to stick to its guns and maintain its support for a predominantly elected second chamber. It should ignore the pressure from Conservative Peers in the House of Lords who seem determined to maintain the status quo. The status quo is unsustainable.