Prescott awaits Lords ‘sidelining’

By politics.co.uk staff Former deputy prime minister John Prescott has taken up his seat in the House of Lords. The man who for ten years after 1997 helped smooth over tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown swore an oath of allegiance to the Queen as he took the title Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull. His […]

Four non-dom peers quit Lords

By politics.co.uk staff Four peers prefer their non-dom status to their status as members of the House of Lords. Raj Bagri, a multimillionaire Conservative peer, followed the party’s former chairman Alistair McAlpine and fellow Tory Irvine Laidlaw to resign from the Lords so they could retain their non-domicile status for tax purposes. Under the Constitutional […]

Comment: Lords in a stew

Many of them are thoroughly odd, but the Lords still make for great entertainment. By Rebecca Burns The House of Lords is a funny old place. It has no final say in British legislation. Its leader sits on a giant sack of wool. The average age of a House of Lords peer is just shy […]

Sketch: Revolution in the Lords

This is definitely not what a revolution looks like. Nevertheless, as Barack Obama never said, change has come to the Lords. By Alex Stevenson Ever since the cash-for-amendments affair last year the Lords have been scandalised into action. The last 12 months has seen the introduction of a new code of conduct, the establishment of […]

New Lords expenses system revealed

By politics.co.uk staff A new system for Lords expenses, which would limit peers to £300 a day allowances, has been announced by Lord Strathclyde, leader of the Lords. The reform would scrap various types of Lords expenses claims, including the highly contentious ‘overnight subsistence’ allowance, and replace them with a flat £300 sum – or […]

Lords reform bill ‘by end of year’

By Alex Stevenson A cross-party committee will publish a draft bill on Lords reform by the end of the year, Nick Clegg has announced. The deputy prime minister used his debut at the despatch box to reveal his plans for the bill to be scrutinised by a rarely-used joint committee of both the Lords and […]

Lib-Cons ‘to create 100 peers’

By politics.co.uk staff The Lib Dem-Tory coalition intends to create over 100 new peers to smooth the flow of its legislation, according to media reports. David Cameron and Nick Clegg previously agreed to reshape the Lords so it reflects the outcome of the general election, in which the Lib Dems and Tories together secured 59% […]

Sketch: Maiden Sugar prefers punch to Judy

By Alex Stevenson Any sceptics that Alan Sugar was something of an interloper in the world of Westminster will have had their doubts blown away by his pugnacious maiden speech in the Lords. Every politician knows the folly of proclaiming their purity in the stark terms employed by Baron Sugar of Clapton today. “It is […]

Analysis: Britain’s besmirched Lords

For hundreds of years Britain’s noble lords were trusted to abide by the concept of “honour”. The expenses scandal means those days are now over. By Alex Stevenson It’s been a “difficult year” for parliament. That was the rather miserable assessment of Lord Eames, the man tasked with chairing the group which has redrafted the […]

Peers facing expenses cuts

By politics.co.uk staff Members of the House of Lords will face significant restrictions on their expenses, it has been reported. The Senior Salaries Review Board, which is responsible for reassessing what constitutes a reasonable expenses claim for peers, will make its final decisions after Sir Christopher Kelly publishes his review of MPs’ expenses on November […]