Sunday, May 16, 2010

The new politics: unconventionally lording it

Under the Salisbury Convention, the House of Lords does not block government bills that were included in the manifesto.

How’s that going to work now? Will they apply it to policies that were in either party’s manifesto, or only to ones that were (in one form or another) included in both? What about a policy that’s a compromise between two manifesto pledges?

However, if Phil Cowley (via John Rentoul) is right, then the Tories and Lib Dems should have enough peers to get their way most of the time anyway.

(On Lords reform, the Lib Dem manifesto promised “a fully-elected second chamber” and the Tories’ said they would “work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber”. Their coalition pact commits them to “establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation”.)

Update: Gosh.

1 comment:

CS Clark said...

Cowleys says, 'It may also be even harder for the coalition partners to deliver unity in the Lords, where the sanctions for those who defy the whip are practically non-existent' and I would suggest they would be even more non-existent (well, you know) when you are planning to abolish the people you are trying to whip.

But really the last two years seemed to see the power of the Lords to oppose government replaced by that of the judiciary. So it won't make much of a muchness as long as no-one tries to repeal the Human Rights Act.