This is too important not to share, and is from the FT:
David Cameron has been secretly drawing up a plan to bypass an increasingly hostile anti-Tory majority in the House of Lords, which is threatening to wreak havoc with his legislative plans.
Lord Strathclyde is set to propose this month that the Lords should lose its veto over delegated or “secondary” legislation, such as the measure implementing tax-credit cuts.
Once that veto is removed, Mr Cameron is expected to step up his government's increasing use of delegated legislation – also known as statutory instruments – to ram contentious measures through the upper house.
This is, of course, a response to the government's loss on tax credits, and the consequence is profound.
It is already true that statutory instruments do not receive enough parliamentary scrutiny, and are where a lot of legislation originates. Make this change and this situation will get much worse: large parts of legislation will, be whipped through the Commons and then be beyond scrutiny at any point. I am no fan of unelected legislators but when we have nothing else they play a valuable role. Now it looks like we are to have rule by diktat instead.
All successful legislatures work on the basis of appropriate checks and balances: many of these look in danger of going under this plan. This is deeply worrying: governments of all hues have a history of producing bad law when not subject to proper scrutiny and that is what is planned here. I sincerely hope all parties fight back, as must the Lords themselves. And at the same time the case for proper reform of the Upper Chamber has to be back on the table.
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So, our “democracy-averse” Government is introducing yet more obstacles to deemoc5racy to add to:
a) IT’s redrawing of the constituencies, based on registered voters rather than census returns (thus privileging t5hose who already vote) to “re-balance our unbalanced constituencies – needed to be done, but on a FAIR not FIDDLED basis;
b) REDUCING – totally unwarrantedly – the NUM|BER of constituencies from 650 to 600, with the clear intent of disadvantaging those who are not Tory
c) “English votes for English Laws”, as a further slap in the face to anyone who disagrees with the Tories (as per the WHOLE of Scotland!!)
d) A Trade Union Bill, characterised by David Davis as more suitable for Franco’s Spain, which has the clear aim of reducing funding to noon-Tory Parties, especially Labour, while permitting the rampant and corrupt collection of trainloads of dosh from Tory-supporting corporations (who thereby buy into the legislative process!!)
e) The “gagging law”, which assists d) above
f) a “Snoopers charter”, to keep on eye on the unruly peasantry
g) Anything else I may have omitted.
It is certainly true that SI’s are a form of legislation that needs far strong supervision, preferably by a powerful Standing Committee, with the power to declare an SI unconstitutional even after it has been promulgated, which the current, rather feeble joint Lord/Commons Committee cannot do.
However, it is far from the most powerful form of “secondary legislation” available, that honour attaching to the Orders in Council, which are Orders issued by the Privy Council, which have the force of law. We should never forget that a great deal of the waging of the Napoleonic Wars was done by Orders in Council, without recourse to Parliament – Orders for, e.g., blockading French ports.
In our diseased and ramshackle Constitution there are many such latent powers, festering away, waiting for some opportunistic Government to make use of, rather as Charles l made use of Ship Money taxation to bypass Parliament.
Given that Orders in Council are able to bypass Parliament, and in theory to override legislation, you may be quite sure that our “democracy-averse” neo-feudal Government – intent, it would appear, on taking us to the status quo ante the Great Reform Act of 1832, and certainly back at least to 1915 and the Taff Vale era of labour relations (though that judgement was actually reversed by the 1906 Liberal Government) – will make use of t5he powers available to it in the form of Orders in Council to enact primary, binding legislation which Parliament will have no power to override, unless it forcers a dissolution under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, leading, on e would hope, to the defeat of this most pernicious Government in living memory.
Wow. This is amazing. You’re more paranoid than the most ardent conspiracy theorists. Don’t forget they’re not only out to get you! When you say “Anything else I may have omitted” I suspect your true list of unfounded gripes runs to several hundred pages. Anyway:
(a) It will be fair, don’t be naive (or a soncpiracy theorist) to think otherwise;
(b) Only the most fanatical communists would want more politicians. Why have 650 useless, self-serving people run this country when you need no more than 300 to get the job done;
(c) Totally fair given the situation in Scotland. Or would you mind telling Sturgeon that the Scottish Parliament should be scrapped and decisions for Scotland (only) re-centralised so that we get back to a level playing field;
(d) Can’t help you here, you’re getting too angry;
(e) Have some sympathy with you on anything to do with gagging, fair cop;
(f) We need to significantly increase the powers of our security services. And the majority of people want this and are indifferent to, and relaxed about, their so-called “hallowed”, “sacred” and “precious” rights to privacy being waived to deal with some of the problems we now have. Only a Clegg supporting liberal would see otherwise.
Anyway, try to calm down, all this anger can’t be good for your blood pressure.
Dear Graham
I note your aggression, all of it hopelessly misplaced. Please be aware that conduct of this sort marks you out as an unwarranted aggressor.
Your comments also mark you out as someone who talks about issues they do not comprehend. Let’s take the simple issue of the number of MPs. There are about 90 ministers and 45 PPSs now. That’s about 1/4 of the Commons
Now let’s reduce its size to 300
So an elected party with a bare majority would have every member in government
That is just not viable
Respectfully, you reveal a similar lack of straightforward thinking in most of the rest of what you say
If you want to engage in debate I’d suggest a little understanding is a prerequisite
Richard
In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary/terrorist/paranoid [delete whichever are inapplicable] act.
As it happens today is someone’s lucky day. I happen to have a rather sturdy bridge for sale, complete with under canopy living accommodation. Guaranteed absolutely no billy goats within 100 miles.
Special offer today, going free to the first person who cannot correctly spell the word “conspiracy”, properly space itemised paragraphs, and believes their own delusions that they speak for the vast majority of people in the country.
Also comes with a complementary tube of gorm for those clearly lacking in it.
“We need to significantly increase the powers of our security services”
Why?
What specific powers do they specifically lack to combat what specific threats, and what system would you suggest to prevent any potential abuse of these increased powers?
@Graham Hollister
You’ll just say this is the Mirror, so they would say that, wouldn’t they, but note they reference each of the 7 ways.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/7-ways-tories-rigging-system-6968806#ICID=sharebar_twitter
Always remember this is a Government Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%.
And when they come for you – as they will, if you’re not from the 1% – please don’t whinge, and say nobody warned me!
“First they came for the “skivers” and the allegedly “bogus sick and disabled”, but I wasn’t one of those, thank you very much!
“Then they came for those in social housing and living off in-work benefits, but I’ve got my own house, and a good job.
“Then they cane for those needing access to the law, making it increasingly difficult for the poor to get justice, but I’ve never done anything wrong, so why should I worry?
“Then they sought to destroy Unions and organisations where people band together to obtain justice, but I’m in a nice Staff Association, and have no need of Unions.
“But then I had an accident, lost my job, no real sick pay or redundancy, wanted to take my employer to a Tribunal, but couldn’t afford the £1,200 fees, couldn’t keep up the mortgage, so lost my house, and now I understand why “an injury to one, is an injury to all; there’s strength in unity.”
Wise up, Graham, and smell the coffee!
With apologies to the memory of Pastor Niemoller, whose famous pronouncement I have plagiarised, without citation, and had transformed without apology, until now.
Richard, didn’t you say before the election that, if Labour won, it should appoint 125 more Lords so it could get its legislation through? Presumably you now think the Tories should do the same?
Everyone knows no one could stop them
Hilary Benn has missed where the rise of fascism is actually taking place. We would do well to remember that Hitler came to power democratically and then removed the powers of opposition. This government is making attacking and undermining democracy in a myriad of ways – revised voter registration; redrawn boundaries; reduction in MPs; cuts to funding to opposition parties: restricting TU activities,right to strike, and reducing funding to Labour: restricting campaigning by NGOs etc etc, while allowing unrestricted lobbying and funding by corporations and the very rich: introduction of super surveillance powers etc etc.
Meantime the wonderful right wing of the Labour party bleat on about people protesting against going to war and ignore all the above.
The last point is a major concern
Voter registration issues are a major point of discussion in the US at present-parallels between uk/us abound.
“In a way, Barack Obama can be blamed for this. In 2008, his historic campaign inspired record turnout, drawing more people to the polls than the country had seen in 40 years. Almost all of the record increase came from black, Hispanic, and young voters, who tended to vote Democratic. Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures, not surprisingly, saw this as a problem. They responded by throwing up a host of new obstacles to voting that disproportionately affect black, Latino, and low-income voters.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/voting-rights-november-voter-suppression-states
I believe they are also trying to mess about with Freedom of Information, ie making it more difficult for the ordinary citizen to access.
A one party state in all but name, Richard. My word, the Chinese government must be looking on enviously. Not only have they captured our economy, been handed control of a swathe of strategic infrastructure and services, but now we are importing their form of government. More subtle of course, but actually the Conservative Party of England and the Communist Party of China have much more in common than that both begin with a C.
When there are, at most, maybe 10,000 of them, but 60,000,000 of us, then the game *has* to be rigged.
Dave’s Enabling Law 🙂
There is a sublime irony in seeing the ‘natural’ party of Government (the Tories) getting around the House of ‘high birth’ or status that can only tell us just how un-one nation this bunch really are and how far they have come from that idea.
‘Nudge’? This is this ‘shove’ I tell you.
We already have a form of Enabling Act, in the Civil Contingencies Act (passed in 2004 by the previous Labour government, of course; the Conservatives tried and failed to build in some more safeguards). All it takes to engage it is some form of emergency, with a very broad definition (a threat of serious damage to human welfare or the environment, or war or terrorism threatening serious damage to the security of the UK). And then ministers can rule by regulations made as Orders in Council.
The nature of an Order in Council depends on the power under which they are made. There is no supervision of some Orders in Council made under prerogative powers, but most are a form of statutory instrument subject (at least in principle) to Parliamentary scrutiny. 999 times out of 1000 they sail through Parliament with barely a whisper.
The fact is that in our system of Parliamentary sovereignty, a party with a majority in the House of Commons will get its policies through by one way or another, through the Parliament Acts, or appointing new Lords, or some other means. I suspect this latest suggestion is a combination of kite flying and a shot across the bows (if one can mix one’s metaphors in that way).
Sorry, Andrew, I very largely agree with your analysis in broad outline, but it is a serious error, not just of nomenclature, but of scope, to mix up Statutory Instruments and Orders in Council.
It is a common error to refer to both as “secondary legislation”, and that is certainly true of Statutory Instruments, which can only be promulgated with reference to primary legislation, and are intended to be used to implement e.g. the detailed regulations implied by the primary legislation. Such were the Regulations blocked by the Lords with reference to Tax Credits.
Orders in Council, by contrast, CAN be primary legislation, if deriving from powers under the Royal prerogative, but should usually also hang off primary legislation, but the exact scope of Orders in Council is very unclear.
In this account from Wikipediahttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_in_Council, the interment of aliens in the 1st World War MAY have hung off some piece of primary legislation, but there’s a strong chance that it fell within the Royal Prerogative of “preserving the King’s Peace”.
Orders in Council are enormously powerful (and pace Graham Hollister above, I hope he notes that this “paranoid conspiracy theorist”, as he we have me be, actually uses cited evidence and rational argument to make my case, rather than the condescending “patting on the head”, and “there, there, dear” name-calling which seems to constitute his modus operandi. But then, there’s none so daft and blind as those who will not see. He trusts this Government to be fair? Sheesh! Despite ALL the evidence to the contrary? Enough, already!), and COULD be used to bring in a really constrained society, with very little democratic input, or oversight, as you rightly note, Andrew, with reference to the Civil Contingencies Act, from the Blair Government (just a year after invading Iraq, I note. Expecting trouble I imagine, which the almost invariable narcoleptic (Simon’s adjective) British public of course failed to provide!
Let me just say that I would be wary of trusting Wikipedia for any legal knowledge. Here is what the Privy Council itself says at http://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/privy-council/orders/
“Statutory Orders are made under any of the numerous powers contained in Acts of Parliament which give Her Majesty a power to make Orders.
Prerogative Orders are made under the inherent power of the Crown to act on matters for which Parliament has not legislated.
Most statutory Orders in Council are Statutory Instruments.”
I think that is consistent with what I have said – some OiC are made under prerogative powers and are largely outside parliamentary control (in your terms, they are “primary legislation”); other are statutory instruments made under Acts (there is also a residual third category of OiC made under pre-1946 Acts, which are not technically statutory instruments).
Given the state of our mostly unwritten constitution, the real contraints on the government’s power are political and practical. Almost any state could descend by legal means into dictatorship. Setting it all down in a written constitution only helps to the extent that there are the means to enforce it in practice; and if those means exist then arguably you don’t need to write it all down anyway!
Andrew
Andrew Dickie is a barrister
Like most of your comments this one is gratuitously patronising
Richard
Well, my apologies if anyone feels patronised, gratuitously or otherwise. But I’d still counsel anyone (even my learned friend) to be wary of trusting anything from a user-generated online resource like Wikipedia without double-checking more reliable sources.
Interestingly there was a lot of concern about SIs and delegated legislation in the 1920s, which was the decade when this kind of legislation became truly common. (Lord Hewart and Carleton Kemp Allen wrote the two main books attacking this, they still bear reading). I agree that it’s very dangerous and one of the many flaws in our system of government that gives great powers which are unaccountable to administrations, should they chose to use them. Thing is this isn’t new, it’s a recurring temptation for politicians to use this kind of mechanism when they find they are losing the argument and not getting their own way as they feel they should. It isn’t a matter of one party either, if you look at the record neither complexion of government is immune to this. that shows it’s systemic which means you need institutional reform rather than changing the personnel.
I agree that “I sincerely hope all parties fight back, as must the Lords themselves. And at the same time the case for proper reform of the Upper Chamber has to be back on the table.”
I can only quote a friend of mine:
“People say the Lords should reflect their popularity, liberals say they should be elected. Wrong and wrong. A second chamber of political stooges would add no value. An elected second chamber would create a conflict of legislative authority. We need a senate made up of experts and respected individuals to monitor & advise, challenge & ensure informed open debate.”
The Conservatives use a very powerful tool called behavioural economics, which allows them to influence people’s behaviour in the aggregate. That’s why the polls failed to predict their election victory in May – people are not always aware of their own motivations, but were unconsciously influenced by the Tories’ propaganda.
http://www.theawsc.com/2015/05/12/how-behavioural-economics-won-the-conservatives-the-election/
Used in a positive fashion, behavioural economics is great. It can be used to encourage people to pay their taxes, for instance. But the temptation to use it to influence voting behaviour is high. Since the electorate is not totally rational at all times, it is virtually guaranteed to have an impact.
This could also explain why the Tories are not having much success in the House of Lords. A body of peers are less easy to influence by subtle conditioning and propaganda. I can understand Tory exasperation at having been elected with a majority government, yet being unable to pass their legislation because of an unelected body. But the additional control is imperative, it guards against any irrational behavioural policies being implemented and causing grief.
Reform of the House of Lords is long overdue, but we must ensure whatever replaces it is an improvement, not a regression. If David Cameron were to force the House of Lords to tow the line, that would be dangerously anti-democratic and must be opposed at all costs. I think it’s time they realised that if they want a strong government, they need a strong opposition too; it would make their own policies and mandate so much more credible.
Agreed