To protect my mental health, I have limited the amount of news I consume.
And so it is from this piece that I discover that Toby Fucking Young, a one-man rebuke to his father's notion of meritocracy, is now involved in making my laws.
Should have been a trigger warning, Ian. You've ruined my day
Remember the 2005 Labour manifesto? It had a commitment to an in/out referendum on EU membership. Some of the usual Europhobe suspects launched a legal challenge against the Brown government to force them to hold that referendum. The Brown government contested it in court, and won, arguing that manifestos were not and could not be legally binding documents, and they won.
What surprised me most about the aftermath of that was that anyone in any party or media role ever gave any credence to anything in any manifesto. Yet Cameron, barely a decade later, justified the 2016 referendum on a 2015 manifesto commitment (then Tories pretended that a non-binding referendum on a marginal win of a low-ish turnout was The Will Of The People, etc)
But the surprise here is that there's any surprise that a government doesn't stand by its manifesto commitments unless it wants to.
Actually the 2005 Labour manifesto didn't have a commitment to an in/out referendum on EU membership. What it said was:
"The EU now has 25 members and will continue to expand.The new Constitutional Treaty ensures the new Europe can work effectively, and that Britain keeps control of key national interests like foreign policy, taxation, social security and defence.The Treaty sets out what the EU can do and what it cannot. It strengthens the voice of national parliaments and governments in EU affairs. It is a good treaty for Britain and for the new Europe. We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe."
(pp 83-84)
The referendum was supposed to be about the treaty, not about membership of the EU.
It was a Blair manifesto commitment in 1997 to get rid of the hereditary peers, and I remember being involved in the coverage at Sky News when a lot of them took their coats off their pegs for the last time. But the compromise had been that 92 of them were allowed to remain on a….ahem….temporary basis
A wholly logical, rational, sensible piece which is why of course it will be ignored! Reflecting what you wrote in your book on Westminster. It's worth following a few peers on TheyWorkForYou to see some of the excellent debates that go on there in marked contrast to the Commons. People with deep expertise who work hard to challenge and improve the legislation passed to them from the Commons, invariably in half baked form. Some useless contributions but by and large the political appointees have little to say and use the place as their club.
Ian, whilst acknowledging that you're not an 'activist' on issues of democracy and accountability, you are pretty close to a campaigning force. So it would be helpful if you could share some ideas of how people could act in support of the amendment. The process for lobbying MPs is ineffective but at least it exists. What alternative is there for members of the public to attempt to influence votes in the Lord's (I can't make it to London to stand with a placard outside Cromwell Green).
Thanks for reminding us of the parlous state of what is supposed to be the mother of all parliaments. Yet another manifesto commitment about to bite the dust. ‘Come the Revolution…
Tee hee, I remember Terry B from that day when the ex East End barrow boy currency traders had Norman Lamont over the kitchen table. With each hip-thrust stab of the "Sell!" button they made more money in 5 seconds than they would have made in a lifetime on the actual market stalls.
100% agreed that it should be a revision only chamber and that it should not be elected to keep the whips away.
However, I'd like to see it completely reconstituted into a myriad of small deliberative "juries" made up of citizens - kind of a Citizens' Assembly but broken down and devolved to local panels. One per Bill (for revision of primary legislation). One per ministry (to do the same for secondary legislation). One per constituency (to take over MP discipline, including powers to sack or suspend MPs for bad behaviour, call by elections to get them replaced, etc. But also, to sign off parliamentary expenses.)
As they'd be deliberative panels, unlike juries, they would be able to summon witnesses (including independent experts currently in the Lords, ministers, think tanks, etc.). They'd need constitutional support & guidance (could be a new branch of the law/civil service). Attempts to lobby, bribe or threaten panel members would be akin to jury tampering- only on-the-record witness statements would be admissible.
Lastly, a new Parliament Act to determine how the Commons & government would relate to the new body, mainly to remove the Crown prerogative and parliamentary seniority from the Commons/ government/ monarch and vest it in the new House.
What would change? Well, government by press release or ministerial fagpacket would have to end. Parliament marking its own homework? Gone. Over time, my guess is there would be pressure to "normalise" MPs as having a 52-week year (with 6 weeks paid holiday, core working hours, statutory rights and also responsibilities, with paid outside work needing written permission in advance from the constituency, lobbying increasingly frowned upon, etc)
If ministers need to make an urgent decision and can't persuade (say) 8 of 15 members of the public to agree, then they don't get their way (panel members would have to make themselves available, which likely means having to pay them). Many ministers are lawyers anyway so should be used to the idea of advocacy.
It also means that the long UK tradition of seeing government as something done TO us would have to change to being something done BY us.
That would be a pretty powerful electoral proposition and any party putting it forth as their policy would be almost impossible to argue with not least because juries (for all their flaws) have been the centre of our justice system for a millennium.
Only one "per ministry" would not work. Most Departments of HMG are composites. HM Treasury is composed of 5 bits doing 5 different things. DEFRA: Env; Farms; Rural. DCMS: Kulcha; Meeja; Sport. There are 22 Secs State and 100+ Ministers.
650 constituencies
Say 15 Bills per Sesh
About 782 juries of 15 folk
11 730 people
In session for how many days?
Volunteers? Or on the current HoL per diem of £350?
"One per ministry" is there to put a firewall between every minister with executive power and the power to enact legislation. "They" don't enact laws, we do, with powers of line item veto over anything they propose.
As to numbers, ok fine. Service, selection & remuneration would be on the same basis as jury service i.e. full time for the duration (some trials last many months). Maximum concurrent service 1 calendar year, with members feathered in and out so that the panel itself is permanent (for ministries & constituencies) or lasts as long as the bill's passage (for bills).
Total cost; what does the Lords cost now (including the maintenance of the crumbling building)? We're not moving from zero to just under £11m. Besides, this is a fundamental constitutional change that will make the country better governed. The costs of this change are dwarfed by the money frittered away on other boondoggles (HS2, Sizewell C, Hinckley Point C, COVID19 mis-spending) most of which would be nixed by any sane public panel as laughably frivolous ministerial vanities & outright fraud. So there's a big potential cost saving as well as a big potential cost.
Why so many amendments? Is guillotining a bill not allowed in the Lords?
The trouble with Labour Lords is that they love the cushy life there, rather than getting on with improving the governance of the country. They also forget what opposition is like. I hope Terry Burns succeeds.
That must be why it’s taking so long. Fierce resistance from the hereditary peerage. This country.
It would show good long term belief in good governance if the government accepted Lord Burns’s proposals, but I expect to be disappointed. Labour is as bad as the Tories when it comes to constitutional reform.
To protect my mental health, I have limited the amount of news I consume.
And so it is from this piece that I discover that Toby Fucking Young, a one-man rebuke to his father's notion of meritocracy, is now involved in making my laws.
Should have been a trigger warning, Ian. You've ruined my day
Does the Labour Party EVER abide by their manifesto promises? Does any party? No wonder people have lost faith in UK politics. 😠
The tragedy is that the manifesto was also supposed to be quite straightforwardly achievable and still they can’t manage it.
I am a lifelong supporter through various iterations, but the lack of a sales pitch or radical instinct is hugely deflating.
Remember the 2005 Labour manifesto? It had a commitment to an in/out referendum on EU membership. Some of the usual Europhobe suspects launched a legal challenge against the Brown government to force them to hold that referendum. The Brown government contested it in court, and won, arguing that manifestos were not and could not be legally binding documents, and they won.
What surprised me most about the aftermath of that was that anyone in any party or media role ever gave any credence to anything in any manifesto. Yet Cameron, barely a decade later, justified the 2016 referendum on a 2015 manifesto commitment (then Tories pretended that a non-binding referendum on a marginal win of a low-ish turnout was The Will Of The People, etc)
But the surprise here is that there's any surprise that a government doesn't stand by its manifesto commitments unless it wants to.
Tails they win heads we lose
Actually the 2005 Labour manifesto didn't have a commitment to an in/out referendum on EU membership. What it said was:
"The EU now has 25 members and will continue to expand.The new Constitutional Treaty ensures the new Europe can work effectively, and that Britain keeps control of key national interests like foreign policy, taxation, social security and defence.The Treaty sets out what the EU can do and what it cannot. It strengthens the voice of national parliaments and governments in EU affairs. It is a good treaty for Britain and for the new Europe. We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe."
(pp 83-84)
The referendum was supposed to be about the treaty, not about membership of the EU.
It was a Blair manifesto commitment in 1997 to get rid of the hereditary peers, and I remember being involved in the coverage at Sky News when a lot of them took their coats off their pegs for the last time. But the compromise had been that 92 of them were allowed to remain on a….ahem….temporary basis
A wholly logical, rational, sensible piece which is why of course it will be ignored! Reflecting what you wrote in your book on Westminster. It's worth following a few peers on TheyWorkForYou to see some of the excellent debates that go on there in marked contrast to the Commons. People with deep expertise who work hard to challenge and improve the legislation passed to them from the Commons, invariably in half baked form. Some useless contributions but by and large the political appointees have little to say and use the place as their club.
Withdrawn...
The details on the link to the amendment suggest it wasn't actually voted on today?
Ian, whilst acknowledging that you're not an 'activist' on issues of democracy and accountability, you are pretty close to a campaigning force. So it would be helpful if you could share some ideas of how people could act in support of the amendment. The process for lobbying MPs is ineffective but at least it exists. What alternative is there for members of the public to attempt to influence votes in the Lord's (I can't make it to London to stand with a placard outside Cromwell Green).
Thanks for reminding us of the parlous state of what is supposed to be the mother of all parliaments. Yet another manifesto commitment about to bite the dust. ‘Come the Revolution…
In terms of people who turn up and participate, the Lords is already smaller than the Commons. Always has been.
May I add Baron Botham/Sir Beefy to the list of inadequates?
Tee hee, I remember Terry B from that day when the ex East End barrow boy currency traders had Norman Lamont over the kitchen table. With each hip-thrust stab of the "Sell!" button they made more money in 5 seconds than they would have made in a lifetime on the actual market stalls.
100% agreed that it should be a revision only chamber and that it should not be elected to keep the whips away.
However, I'd like to see it completely reconstituted into a myriad of small deliberative "juries" made up of citizens - kind of a Citizens' Assembly but broken down and devolved to local panels. One per Bill (for revision of primary legislation). One per ministry (to do the same for secondary legislation). One per constituency (to take over MP discipline, including powers to sack or suspend MPs for bad behaviour, call by elections to get them replaced, etc. But also, to sign off parliamentary expenses.)
As they'd be deliberative panels, unlike juries, they would be able to summon witnesses (including independent experts currently in the Lords, ministers, think tanks, etc.). They'd need constitutional support & guidance (could be a new branch of the law/civil service). Attempts to lobby, bribe or threaten panel members would be akin to jury tampering- only on-the-record witness statements would be admissible.
Lastly, a new Parliament Act to determine how the Commons & government would relate to the new body, mainly to remove the Crown prerogative and parliamentary seniority from the Commons/ government/ monarch and vest it in the new House.
What would change? Well, government by press release or ministerial fagpacket would have to end. Parliament marking its own homework? Gone. Over time, my guess is there would be pressure to "normalise" MPs as having a 52-week year (with 6 weeks paid holiday, core working hours, statutory rights and also responsibilities, with paid outside work needing written permission in advance from the constituency, lobbying increasingly frowned upon, etc)
If ministers need to make an urgent decision and can't persuade (say) 8 of 15 members of the public to agree, then they don't get their way (panel members would have to make themselves available, which likely means having to pay them). Many ministers are lawyers anyway so should be used to the idea of advocacy.
It also means that the long UK tradition of seeing government as something done TO us would have to change to being something done BY us.
That would be a pretty powerful electoral proposition and any party putting it forth as their policy would be almost impossible to argue with not least because juries (for all their flaws) have been the centre of our justice system for a millennium.
Only one "per ministry" would not work. Most Departments of HMG are composites. HM Treasury is composed of 5 bits doing 5 different things. DEFRA: Env; Farms; Rural. DCMS: Kulcha; Meeja; Sport. There are 22 Secs State and 100+ Ministers.
650 constituencies
Say 15 Bills per Sesh
About 782 juries of 15 folk
11 730 people
In session for how many days?
Volunteers? Or on the current HoL per diem of £350?
£4.51M
Supported by ?44? Full Time Civil Servants
Estimated total cost £6.28M
But thanks for engaging with the idea on its own terms rather than just dismissing out of hand.
"One per ministry" is there to put a firewall between every minister with executive power and the power to enact legislation. "They" don't enact laws, we do, with powers of line item veto over anything they propose.
As to numbers, ok fine. Service, selection & remuneration would be on the same basis as jury service i.e. full time for the duration (some trials last many months). Maximum concurrent service 1 calendar year, with members feathered in and out so that the panel itself is permanent (for ministries & constituencies) or lasts as long as the bill's passage (for bills).
Total cost; what does the Lords cost now (including the maintenance of the crumbling building)? We're not moving from zero to just under £11m. Besides, this is a fundamental constitutional change that will make the country better governed. The costs of this change are dwarfed by the money frittered away on other boondoggles (HS2, Sizewell C, Hinckley Point C, COVID19 mis-spending) most of which would be nixed by any sane public panel as laughably frivolous ministerial vanities & outright fraud. So there's a big potential cost saving as well as a big potential cost.
Why so many amendments? Is guillotining a bill not allowed in the Lords?
The trouble with Labour Lords is that they love the cushy life there, rather than getting on with improving the governance of the country. They also forget what opposition is like. I hope Terry Burns succeeds.
No guillotine in HoL
That must be why it’s taking so long. Fierce resistance from the hereditary peerage. This country.
It would show good long term belief in good governance if the government accepted Lord Burns’s proposals, but I expect to be disappointed. Labour is as bad as the Tories when it comes to constitutional reform.