The House of Lords broke no constitutional conventions in referring back Osborne’s vindictive tax credit cuts. The Tories and their media supporters are talking utter garbage on the question. Taking Britain’s appalling “constitution” for what it is, the arcane rules of procedure were not breached.
Ever since David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith forced, by threat of massive creation of peerages, the 1911 Budget through and with it the start of National Insurance and the demise of the workhouse, there has been a convention that the Lords do not oppose or amend Finance Bills.
But the tax credit cuts were not in a Finance Bill. Osborne instead tried to sneak them through by statutory instrument. This is secondary legislation whereby a Minister signs off laws under powers delegated to him by primary legislation. Secondary legislation gets much less parliamentary time and committee scrutiny. If Osborne had put the tax credit proposals in a Finance Bill, as they certainly should have been – it is Osborne who was breaking parliamentary convention here – rather than sneak them under the table as secondary legislation, the Lords would indeed not have been able to stop them without breaching constitutional convention. Which just goes to show it doesn’t always pay to be a weasel.
Osborne is hoist by his own petard.
Aah, Tories say. But there is another convention that the Lords do not block secondary legislation.
They are making that one up. There is no such constitutional convention and there are plenty of examples of the Lords blocking secondary legislation. There is a huge quantity of secondary legislation, thousands and thousands of laws – ministers continually are signing off legal changes.
But the entire basis of the secondary legislation is that parliament has delegated to ministers, in Acts, powers to sign off uncontroversial matter. This can be, for example, the detail of regulations needed technically to enforce primary legislation, and the occasional updates needed. Only a very low percentage indeed of secondary legislation ever gets queried by the Lords, but that is not because of a constitutional convention. That is because most of it is dull stuff. But when the government abuses its authority and tries to smuggle vital changes through secondary legislation, the Lords not only has the constitutional right to challenge this abuse, it has the constitutional duty to do so.
I wish they would do it more often. For example, when the Labour Party used Westminster secondary legislation to cede 6,000 square miles of Scotland’s sea to England without parliamentary scrutiny.
Finally, there is a constitutional convention that the Lords do not oppose manifesto commitments on which a government has been elected. But the Tories rather carefully did not put tax credit cuts in their manifesto, and indeed in campaigning said they would not do it.
The British constitution is appallingly undemocratic. The fact that an undemocratic chamber has fended off a proposal from an undemocratic executive which gained the votes of only 37% of the voting electors, is not a blow struck for democracy. It is however a temporary victory for human decency in mitigating an attack on the poor.
It is also an achievement for Jeremy Corbyn. Nobody can truly believe that Labour peers would have been organised to do this under Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall.
UPDATE Wings Over Scotland has a very different take on the Labour Party performance. That the Labour Party was not radical enough to go for the “fatal” option I am afraid I find unsurprising. It remains a deeply conservative institution. But I had not previously encountered the argument that 90% would lose the money from universal credit anyway, and it is stunningly cynical. But on close consideration, I cannot work out what it means. Either there must be some additional cut to universal credit, or that those who lost tax credit could have regained it on universal credit anyway. If anybody could explain that one further, I should be grateful.
” large parts of which are clearly no longer British. Few countries on earth would be expected to put up with this level of immigration,”
Many sympathize with that sediment. Rednecks in the US are incredulous about the shrinking and almost extinct White majority.
The Grand Old Party is struggling with the Mexican and central American immigrants as a voting bloc. Soon they will die. Is the parallel not apparent?
MJ, agreed, Kirsty Blackman put forth an excellent question.
In answer, Cameron is a bit like a secondhand car salesman, and unfortunately many people fall for it. He banged on about the much vaunted minimum wage, but of course that doesn’t come into effect until 2020, if ever.
The nature of PMQs means that there’s never any proper debate, but at least now there’s a real opposition, in the shape of the SNP and the Corbynites.
The secondhand car salesman has now got to earn his money every Wednesday.
“Right so Westminster screws the Scottish Government and Police force over VAT, and that’s the SNP’s fault, according to Fred. Why can’t Westminster simply extend existing rules, and we are talking about rules which they make as they please, to exempt Police Scotland from VAT as with other Police forces.”
They can. One of the SNP MPs at Westminster can propose an amendment to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 making the Scottish police force exempt. That’s how academies became exempt, the government didn’t just decide to make them exempt it was debated in the House of Commons on the 17th December 2013. Governments can’t just decide to change laws or ignore laws because they want to, it has to go before Parliament.
Alcyone; Did you understand I don’t want you needlessly involving me in your diatribe?
Fred, the fact that the bunch of Del Boys, who presently rule us, tried to sneak through tax credit cuts as secondary legislation perhaps belies what you are saying.
In case you are mystified and confused…..https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/10/garters-in-a-twist/
You know nothing of Krishnamurti just as Christian hypocrites have no genuine understanding of the Nazarene.
It’s all about you.
“Fred, the fact that the bunch of Del Boys, who presently rule us, tried to sneak through tax credit cuts as secondary legislation perhaps belies what you are saying.”
The fact they failed proves what I am saying is true. If the government could have just made the changes bypassing Parliament don’t you think they would have? If they can’t do it for themselves what makes people think they can do it for the SNP?
The government in Westminster did decide not to exempt Police Scotland, they done so by, acting completely arbitrarily by not exempting them from VAT from the outset. In a vote in the Westminster Parliament Tories by the hundred and Labour will pile in to oppose it. There’s EVEL but no Scottish votes for Scottish laws. Can you see understand the difference between the schools case where the amendment was being made by the governing party commanding a majority and an amendment from the opposition bench parties?
Time to pop the media bubble.
http://internationaltimes.it/its-about-time-the-uber-bourgeois-media-bubble-was-popped/
I hope the Scottish Government and Police Scotland are backdating this and charging interest. And so too with the Liberal-Democrat Party outstanding large debt to Police Scotland, owed to the former Strathclyde Force.
“The government in Westminster did decide not to exempt Police Scotland, they done so by, acting completely arbitrarily by not exempting them from VAT from the outset. In a vote in the Westminster Parliament Tories by the hundred and Labour will pile in to oppose it. There’s EVEL but no Scottish votes for Scottish laws. Can you see understand the difference between the schools case where the amendment was being made by the governing party commanding a majority and an amendment from the opposition bench parties?”
But the police in Scotland were always section 33 exempt till the Scottish government changed their funding which meant they weren’t covered any more.
Should changes to legislation be proposed I would think it would be a formality. I’m not an expert on constitutional law but I don’t think it would even need to go to a vote provided there were more than twenty MPs present and none objected. I don’t think any MP would object but it may take time, parliament is a busy place and there are a lot of MPs from all over Britain wanting to make a lot of changes most of them more important than this.
Let’s face it, it really doesn’t matter too much to anyone without the nationalist mentality.
If its not war on countries it`s war on cannabis or both.
http://internationaltimes.it/why-the-war-on-cannabis/
Katie
23/10/2015 8:26am
You’re welcome, and thank you for your comments.
I am a little irritated at Greer, because she has spent so long doing sterling work on behalf of one oppressed societal group. One would have thought that she would have had some empathy for other groups that are themselves feeling oppressed. Doesn’t seem like it.
Kind regards,
John
Shigi toku
kuwa susugi
uneri kana
Far away the birds go
On the water are ripples
made washing a hoe
– Buson ( 1716-1784 )
Nice one. Did you know they’ve just discovered a previously unknown cache of Buson?
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201510150032
Let’s try some linked verse – see if you do arts as well as martial…
“Paper umbrella
With holes poking through allows
Moonlight to shine down.” (Buson, from above)
Moonlight after rain
Into the drying pavement
Soaks the silver light. (Me)
It just gets madder and madder; the human condition.
Vaughan Williams wrote parts of the score of ‘The Lark Ascending’ while sitting on the cliffs of Dover, watching ships taking troops across the English Channel to die in World War One battlefields. Williams himself was an ambulance driver during WW1 and was no stranger to the horrors.
Vaughan Williams, ‘The Lark Ascending’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR2JlDnT2l8
(Oh, and I should add that the promo on this piece of music is nothing to do with me. It juat happens to be one of the few versions of ‘The Lark Ascending’ that still exists on YouTube.)
Ba’al
Thank you kindly, i did not Know about that. will spend some time in that link…Great Haiku too well done
one of mine –
The Orchestral birds
melodiously singing
a welcome to dawn…
Rob
Great stuff… Reminds me of a poem a fellow artist gave me to study, just last year… ‘ The Windhover ‘ By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918) –
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
on topic
Mhairi Black slams IDS plans to turn food banks into “outposts” for the DWP
http://www.thenational.scot/news/mhairi-black-slams-ids-plans-to-turn-food-banks-into-outposts-for-the-dwp.9335?utm_medium=social&utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1446102166
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPPQMsLAOFc
IDS is just another enforcer without truth or moral essence.
Probably why the liar got the gig.
And since its Ot time…. Listeningwater And i Took Nevermind’s Wumin to this site
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9TpVq-LW40
Loving the science stuff BTL. Don’t understand much\any of it, but still, if you are going to be off topic, best to be clever. I genuinely wish I was good at Maths and Physics. But, I’m not.
I know nothing of Krishnamurti, but unless proven otherwise, my default position is that these people are quacks and bullshit artists, only in it for the cash and the shagging. Maybe there could be some sort of agreed upon limit on the follower-shagging: anyone who has sex with more than ten followers probably has ulterior motives, after all.
I hope people start shouting ‘For The Sixth Time’ at Call Me, every time he visits the masses.
On Medialens in a thread about the Chilcot delay.
‘Killer fact: “All 27 FO legal advisers said war was illegal” Oborne
October 29, 2015,
From Craig Murray’s archives:
Then the FCO Legal Advisers – unanimously – advised the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, that to invade Iraq was illegal. Jack Straw asked the Attorney General to dismiss the FCO chief Legal Adviser, Sir Michael Wood (Goldsmith refused). Blair sent Goldsmith to Washington where the Opinion was written for him to sign by George Bush’s lawyers. [I know this sounds incredible, but it is absolutely true]. Sir Michael Wood’s deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned in protest.
In consequence Blair and Straw decided that, again for the first time ever, the FCO’s chief legal adviser had to be appointed not from within the FCO legal advisers, who had all declared the war on Iraq to be illegal, but from outside. They had to find a distinguished public international lawyer who was prepared to argue that the war on Iraq had been legal. That was a very small field. Blair and Straw thus turned to Benjamin Netanyahu’s favourite lawyer, Daniel Bethlehem.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/exclusive-i-can-reveal-the-legal-advice-on-drone-strikes-and-how-the-establishment-works/
To paraphrase Marx G., when the Man of Straw doesn’t like the legal advice, don’t worry, he can always find other advice.’
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1446114078.html
We are very good at inquiries and investigations.
‘UK drone strike to be investigated by MPs
29 October 2015
MPs are to investigate the “intelligence basis” for a UK drone strike which killed two British Islamic State jihadists in Syria.
The Intelligence and Security Committee said it would not be assessing the legality of the strike, saying this was a matter for Parliament and Number 10.
The government has described the strike as “an act of self defence”.
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has announced a separate inquiry into “government drone strikes”.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34670042
No questioning the illegality then. Dominic Grieve is the chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
The JCHR has not yet been formed.
21 July 2015
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has formally appointed members from the House of Lords and is awaiting members from the House of Commons.
On 16 July the House of Lords appointed the following as members of the Committee:
Baroness Buscombe (Conservative)
Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat)
Lord Henley (Conservative)
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Labour)
Baroness Prosser (Labour)
Lord Woolf (Cross- bencher)
It is expected that the House of Commons will appoint six members to the Committee shortly after the return of the House on Monday 12 October. The newly reconstituted Committee will hold its first meeting as soon as practicable thereafter. Details will be announced on the website when known.’
The latest Con additions to the red benches took their oaths yesterday.
One was Lady Redfern, Tory chair of North Lincolnshire Council. No irony that Tata steel are mothballing the steel plate mills and coke ovens in their Scunthorpe works.
Tata Steel confirms 1,200 job losses as industry crisis deepens
Scotland and Scunthorpe bear brunt of job losses, leaving one in six workers facing axe in one month
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/20/tata-steel-expected-to-announce-1200-job-losses-in-uk
Jeremy Corbyn was visiting yesterday.
http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/Scunthorpe-steelworkers-whoop-cheer-Jeremy-Corbyn/story-28078936-detail/story.html
The other peer was Lord Lupton, accompanied by Lord Stuart Rose ex M&S so best mates presumably.
‘Multi-millionaire investment banker Mr Lupton is a joint treasurer of the Conservatives and was in charge of raising cash for the party’s election war chest.
With a personal fortune of £130 million, the former deputy chairman of merchant banking giant Baring Brothers International has donated £2.8million to the Tories since 2009.
That includes more than £250,000 in June, and almost £400,000 in the run-up to the Tories’ shock general election triumph.
He donated a £100,000 week-long luxury trip for 24 people to his £56million La Fortalexa estate on Majorca, at February’s lavish Black and White fundraising ball at the five-star Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair.
The auction brochure gushingly described the “breathtaking holiday destination” as “the ultimate private retreat” with a “five-bedroom 17th Century fortress with a further five more fully-equipped houses, each with its own kitchen, reception area and terraces”.’
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-gives-peerages-26-6330831
That peerage was bought and paid for then. The other was a reward for keeping the Tory flag flying in a soon to be depressed area of NE England.
Following a new Home Office nudge Police want to spy on internet histories: Forces lobby government to make providers keep details for a year and allow access for investigations here’s My web browsing history:
30/10/15: This morning I’ve mostly been reading this article on soft or hard journalism
http://we-make-money-not-art.com/the-influencers-former-mi5-spy-annie-machon-on-why-we-live-a-dystopia-that-even-orwell-couldnt-have-envisioned/?utm_source=GCHQ
Moon toad study
Moth on the keyboard
Flutter plops post to blog.
At last.
Shaker Aamer is on his way back to the UK.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shaker-aamer-leaves-guantanamo-bay-briton-returning-to-uk-after-13-years-in-us-detention-camp-a6714516.html
Many thanks to all who signed the petition so far to have trans woman Tara Hudson moved to a female prison to serve her sentence. The latest news is that the prison service are currently “considering” whether or not it’s appropriate to transfer her to a female prison. Meanwhile, it has unfortunately emerged that she is not 100 per cent segregated from the male inmates after all. Although no physical assaults have happened to her (yet) she has been on the receiving end of quite a considerable amount of verbal sexual harassment from some of the other inmates.
https://www.change.org/p/bath-magistrates-prison-govenor-of-hm-prison-bristol-british-judicial-system-stop-transgender-woman-tara-hudson-from-being-sent-to-an-all-male-prison-in-bristol/u/13972866
Hope the prison service and MoJ see sense soon otherwise the verbal sexual harassment could very easily escalate to turning physical at some stage. The longer they ‘consider’ where to place her the more likely it is that this could happen.
Excellent point about the continuing incarceration by the US government of Chelsea Manning, Mary. I have serious fears for her well-being as recent reports have revealed that the US military prison authorities are preventing her from transitioning by shaving her head and continuing to make her conform to what they call male grooming standards. She is also being punished for trivialities so insignificant as having out-of-date toothpaste. All seems very much like an ‘excuse’ to ill-treat her to me…
Somewhat bedraggled-
The sparrow, shaking droplets
From the still-wet hedge.