MPs and peers are planning to launch a cross-party group aimed at “wholesale” reform of the Lords after The Observer raised the alarm about tactics being deployed by peers to thwart the assisted dying bill.
The Labour MP Simon Opher and his Conservative counterpart Kit Malthouse will become the co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Lords reform, inspired by the continuing fight over the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, as well as the scandal embroiling former Labour peer Peter Mandelson. Although Mandelson has resigned as a working peer, he can continue to use his title unless it is removed by an act of parliament.
Opher and Malthouse are joined by Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George, Green party MP Ellie Chowns and Plaid Cymru peer Carmen Smith.
The “immediate and pressing” issues the group will focus on include the process through which peers who bring parliament into disrepute can have their title stripped.
It will also look at how a minority of peers have been able to use filibustering to block a bill – not possible in the Commons – and how the upper chamber “can be made to do its job of scrutiny and revision without subverting parliamentary democracy”.
APPGs are informal cross-party groups that can hold inquiries and produce reports, but have no official power.
“Lords reform is no longer a niche issue that excites only a small number of political anoraks,” Malthouse said. “When arcane procedures can be used to defy the will not only of the elected chamber, but also the clearly expressed views of a large majority of the public, it is a crisis confronting our democracy that can’t be ignored.”
The APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax has also called for “other badly behaving lords to be ejected in the wake of the Mandelson affair”.
Related articles:
Phil Brickell, chair of the group and a backbench Labour MP, said: “Too often, parliament is left relying on voluntary resignation, as though public office were a private club.
“And let’s not forget that Mandelson can still go around calling himself a lord, with all the social and potentially commercial advantages that carries with it.”
Newsletters
Choose the newsletters you want to receive
View more
For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy
As well as calling for the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which scrutinises appointments to the upper chamber, to be put on a statutory footing, Brickell is demanding a full statutory register of lobbyists and transparency rules that include “informal contact, not just tidy diary entries”.
“Britain’s lobbying rules are so narrow, they verge on parody,” he added. “The Observer’s revelations last year that Mandelson had, inadvertently or otherwise, blurred the lines as a Global Counsel lobbyist encapsulate this perfectly… The government can’t afford another era where standards are optional and scrutiny is dismissed as an inconvenience.”
Photograph by Roger Harris/House of Lords