A new naked contempt for the Lords was shown this week in Lord Freud’s shameful behaviour on the welfare reform bill, in which he refused to answer anything any peer raised. By no stretch of the imagination is a decision on who votes “financial” – and if that is, so is just about everything else. But the government has had it declared a “financial” matter, claiming it costs £6m to register young voters. The government in the Commons this month overturned it, and it was due to “ping-pong” forwards and backwards between the houses. For example, the Lords voted to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote for the EU referendum. Worse still, the government plans to dress up much more of its legislation as “secondary”, which leaves the House of Commons very little chance of amending it either.īy convention, the Lords does not dispute financial bills, so now the government will dress up any contentious motions as falling under “financial privilege”. Strathclyde will recommend later this month that the Lords lose their veto over delegated or secondary legislation – statutory instruments for putting through regulations.
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