House of lords

Waves of apathy, a tsunami of indifference, engulfed Ireland for today’s constitutional referendums. When I was over there last week, I was more interested in the thing than anyone I met; the turnout in some places was one in ten – miles lower than in high-octane votes, like the ones affecting the EU. The main issue is the government’s proposal to do away with the upper house, the Seanad, or Senate, which reached its zenith of interest and relevance when WB Yeats was a member (his views on contraception and divorce make notable reading) and has failed ever since to capture the remotest public affection. If you think the House

UKIP is up in arms about the new working peers (or at least it’s pretending to be). The Greens get a peer and the Lib Dems get many peers; but UKIP gets none, despite its healthy polling. There are very good reasons for this. The Greens and the Lib Dems are powers in certain parts of the land, while UKIP only has what Nigel Farage recently described as ‘clusters’ of councillors here and there. In other words, the Lib Dems and Greens wield some legislative power; UKIP doesn’t. The upper house ought to reflect that. But, these facts suit UKIP. The party’s shtick is that it is an insurgency of outsiders

The House of Lords’ committee rooms are not ordinarily the setting for a ruckus; but there was rumpus in the Moses Room on Tuesday night, when the greybeards were musing over the Energy Bill. A witness tells me that Baroness Worthington of Cambridge, also known as the environmental campaigner Bryony Worthington, who was elevated from relative obscurity to a Labour peerage in 2011, ‘exhibited appalling behaviour.’ Worthington was ‘screaming, gesticulating wildly, referring to the minister (Baroness Verma) as ‘you, you, you’, whilst pointing in her face,’ says my man in ermine. At the end of the outburst, it is claimed that Worthington’s ‘Labour colleagues were hanging their heads in shame

Today’s debates in Parliament about Baroness Thatcher were supposed to be a tribute to the first female Prime Minister. If you were looking for the most faithful rendition of this, you should have been sitting in the House of Lords, not the Commons this afternoon. In the Other Place, the debate is always rather more civilised and measured, though it has grown rather rowdier in recent years. But today the speeches painted a fascinating picture of Margaret Thatcher, not least because many of them came from those who worked with or in opposition to her when she was in power. Some were notable by their silence: Lord Howe arrived with

Bloggers of the United Kingdom rejoice – an exemption from the all-new press controls looks to be on the way. We are waiting today to see if any of the amendments tabled on Friday will pass but the Financial Times reports (£) that cross-party talks over the weekend will result in a successful amendment on blogging: ‘Tri-party talks took place over the weekend to agree a wording for an amendment to the crime and courts bill which will be discussed in the House of Lords on Monday.’ At some point, that is. The amendments are being considered in the Lords right now but there has been no sign of anything

The Lords’ terrace was transformed into a theatre yesterday evening to stage an adaptation of Blair Babe Oona King’s House Music diaries, which recount her career as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow between 1997 and 2005. Many of New Labour’s faded hopes, like Ruth Kelly, turned up to roll back the years and remember the good times; although those wanting to catch a glimpse of Gordon had to make to do with an actor, because, of the Great Man himself, there was no sign (again). Ed Stoppard and comedian David Schneider were treading the makeshift boards in this dramatisation. They nailed compelling impersonations of Brown, Blair and George Galloway (King’s

Strong words in the Lords today about the media and the government’s stance on Leveson, but what are the discussions like between the three parties behind the scenes? Though they started off with some similarly stern words, the cross-party talks on the response to the Leveson report have, all sides agree, been progressing well. Far from the communication breakdown that some envisaged, there has been a relatively pleasant atmosphere. The Lib Dems and Labour, though they disagree with the Conservative line, are both keen to praise Oliver Letwin in particular for the way he is conducting the discussions, and for going away and working on the details discussed in each

Lord Strathclyde was a skilful leader of the House of Lords. An immensely charming man, he was — generally — able to coax legislation through a chamber where the government has no majority. But he was becoming increasingly frustrated at the behaviour of some Liberal Democrat peers. Shortly before Christmas and as Liberal Democrat Lords rampaged against the Cameron-Clegg compromise on secret courts, he remarked to one colleague that the ‘coalition had already broken down’ in the House of Lords. The lack of a government majority in the Lords and the fact that Liberal Democrat peers tend to hail from the left of the party means that even with Lords

Think the Commons is in uproar at the moment over gay marriage? Just wait until the legislation makes its way into the House of Lords. The received wisdom is that equal marriage will go into the upper chamber, but never make it out alive after a savaging from socially conservative peers. But is that true? If it’s uproar you’re looking for, then you’re unlikely to be disappointed, but the chances of angry words in the chamber translating into embarrassing defeats for the government aren’t quite so high. Remember that after 13 years of Labour in power, the House has a large liberal-leaning majority. There are 224 Labour peers and 90

Nick Clegg and David Cameron still can’t agree over the future of the boundary review, and their continuing stalemate led to legislation on individual voter registration being shelved indefinitely in the House of Lords. An amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill tabled by Labour’s Lord Hart and backed by Lib Dem Lord Rennard would have delayed the changes until 2018 – in line with Nick Clegg’s pledge of revenge this summer that the review be delayed until after the 2015 election. The problem is that Cameron didn’t know about the amendment until his staff read about it on Paul Waugh’s blog, and he apparently lost his rag with

The government suffered an awkward defeat in the House of Lords this afternoon on its changes to council tax benefit. Rebels on an amendment to the Local Government Finance Bill calling for an independent review of the changes to be carried out within three years of their introduction included 16 Liberal Democrats. Labour has dubbed the changes, which will mean councils will have to design their own local schemes to help low-income households with council tax bills, the ‘poll tax mark two’ because two million families will have to contribute towards their council tax for the first time. Liberal Democrat Lord Shipley told the Chamber: ‘The problems for individuals could