MPs to get free vote on Lords reform
Today's Guardian reports on talks between Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems on Lords reform. Interesting, Blair & Co now appear to be interested in Lords reform, only after the Lords dissented for a while on "glorification" of terrorism, are continuing to dissent on id cards, and, more recently, of cours, the loans for peerages sleaze affair:
Mr Hughes said yesterday he believed the government had accelerated its interest in Lords reform after the "loans for lordships" controversy. Two days after newspapers exposed the alleged link, Mr Hughes received a call offering bilateral talks with Lord Falconer on March 16. These talks led to last Thursday's three-way talks. Lord Falconer denied the offer of talks was a smokescreen to hide the government's embarrassment over the scandal. He is likely to offer MPs only a limited number of options on the proportion of the upper chamber that is elected. MPs were given seven options when they last voted on the issue, in 2003, and rejected all of them.See all recent "A Logical Voice" posts
posted by Truth Seeker @ 3/28/2006 02:24:00 PM
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3 Comments:
Personally I think the Lords did a pretty good job before Blair started messing with it.
The Lords are surprisingly liberal these days(and that's a compliment). Nonetheless, the Lords are an undemcratic chamber. So, the debate is not for or against the Lords, but for or against democracy.
I feel there is a balance to be struck here with the Lords, I think regular readers will know exactly how I feel about what a good job the Lords have been doing blocking the id cards scam.
There does seem to be a case for Lords reform though, that I will admit, however, the timing of this, as i've said in the post does seem to be rather opportunistic.
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