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.
Glenn
“I thought you chided me for trying to be “cute” a few posts back?”
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Very probably. Aren’t you cute? You are fine except when you try too hard to establish your credentials with the Mackys and RoSs’ of this blog…
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“But assuming you’re serious, presumably you have huge praise for Cuba….”
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If Cuba has good life expectancy and provides good medical services then I’m very happy to praise it and its govt.for that – why on earth shouldn’t I? Credit where credit’s due is one of my watchwords as you should surely know.
PS to Glenn
“Credit where credit’s due is one of my watchwords as you should surely know.”
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Which is, of course, why I am usually rather hard on the likes of Macky & Co.
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PS – I’m looking forward to about 15h00 British time for that is when our Transatlantic Fried usually clocks on and might be able to help us identify the Conspiraloon who suggested, six months ago, that it was likelier and likelier that Janner would “soon” meet with an “unfortunate accident”.
Thanks for highlighting the difficulties some Australian professor has with Transgender people, Katie and JSD.
When you say that ‘ It would be even better I think, if they invited the likes of Greer, Bindel and Burchill to engage in a debate with some really good trans activists and supporters. That would definitely be a debate worth turning up to.’
Most trans activists and trangender people are very well educated and it would take one heck of a chair to keep the guttersnipe comments of Burchill, for example, in context and decency.
For anybody who would like to find out more and educate themselves about the issues, please have a look at the conference organised by the late Barbara Ross here in Norfolk for some time. She has passed away this year after 35 years of working with transgender issues.
http://www.gender.org.uk/gendys/2009/48tg09.htm
The organisation has survived and it is going to carry on with Barbara’s work. For those who need help with these issues, there are the Beamont society and Trust in London as well as BRA in Norfolk.
There are other organisation around the country which offer help and advice.
http://www.transgender-advice.com/bra.html
Thanks for that link YKMN, this paragraph of the Mirror story really sticks out.
“Was the war legal?
All 27 lawyers at the Foreign Office at the time agreed that the war was illegal without a second resolution from the UN Security Council authorising the invasion.
Confidential documents released to Chilcot show that Sir Michael Wood, the most senior lawyer at the Foreign Office, warned Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his aides, on numerous occasions, that this was the case.
In an admirable act of principle, one Foreign Office lawyer, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned when her advice was ignored.
Later, it was revealed that she had said she could not agree with the decision to go to war ‘in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law’.
Carne Ross, a key British diplomat at the UN ahead of the war, also explained to us how Britain failed to get the required UN resolution, which would have made the war legal.
‘The UK attempted to introduce a resolution at the Security Council explicitly endorsing military action against Iraq and it failed to get that resolution… and in my book, if you try to get the Security Council to give you authority to do something and it doesn’t give you that authority, then you don’t have authority.
‘You can’t then claim that, in fact, all the resolutions from 12 years ago [relating to the previous Iraq War], give you that authority. That’s nonsense.’ ”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3294356/My-Blair-dossier-months-PETER-OBORNE-conducted-investigation-Blair-took-disastrous-Iraq-war-official-Chilcot-Report-scandalously-delayed-delivers-devastating-verdict.html#ixzz3pwt71VxB
Flashback to the honest Elizabeth Wilmshurst’s resignation letter, in which it states (though originally this bit was redacted)
My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UN security council resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March. (The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4377605.stm
Glenn_uk; “I disagree, and presumably so did the person making such comments, or they would not have made it.”
You shouldn’t presume to tar others with your irrationality; reffering to a shameless bare-face liar as the Liar, or a serial offensive semearer as the Smearer, are accurate labeling adjectives used as Nouns; that certain nouns may also have negative inferrences is due only to the inherent behaviour of the person being described.
Another Lord whom Cameron probably loathes…
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/15/david-cameron-tax-havens-cayman-islands-david-maclean-lord-blencathra
The prime minister added that people who fail to pay their taxes “damn well should” as he spoke of how the government has cracked down on tax avoidance measures.
Should have declared an interest. perhaps…
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/20/david-cameron-jersey-panama-geneva
https://www.facebook.com/BritishRevolutionOfficial/posts/479256922111052
So, is Blairmore Holdings (etc) still in existence, Dave? Do you get a cut? If it was folded, where’s your share? Hmmm?
Ongoing.
The US Empire of Chaos is selling off the family silver. An indication that all is not sweetness and light in the land of Exceptionalism.
To reach an agreement on their budget they will sell some of their Strategic oil reserve, which is stored in a large cavern in the Houston area.
To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway,when asked how he became bankrupt,he retorted,’ slowly at first, and then suddenly’.
The demise of the petrodollar and the drop by 60% of the oil price is drastically reduced the toll booth returns to W
“But why – pray – choose just that story, out of a whole world’s worth of news?”
Obviously because I consider it relevant to what I said earlier.
“Yes, things are getting quite toxic here in Scotland”
Which I said commenting on what Craig had written in his blog entry.
Could you now justify what you write in particular your constant bullying of other posters. What exactly makes you think you are better than everyone else?
For the second day running and right up into the night our boys in blue are looping above, training dog fights and attack runs.
I’m afraid that the new F35b is too heavy, too complicated and too dangerous for pilots as to have an chance against the SU30sm.
so ‘keep calm and trying’
“But why – pray – choose just that story, out of a whole world’s worth of news?”
Obviously because I consider it relevant to what I said earlier.
“Yes, things are getting quite toxic here in Scotland”
As opposed to instantly lethal in England. Last couple of months….
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/18/teenager-jailed-life-london-stabbing-alan-cartwright-15-cyclist
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/18/teenager-held-on-suspicion-of-after-man-is-stabbed
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/three-teenagers-locked-up-total-10348544
http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/tilehurst-teenager-jailed-17-years-10330585
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34565728
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/teenager-seriously-injured-stoke-heath-10225328
http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Derby-teenager-admits-stabbing-soldier-vicious/story-27848741-detail/story.html
PLENTY more where those came from, Fred. Now shut up and count your blessings.
Salford Lad:
“To reach an agreement on their budget they will sell some of their Strategic oil reserve, which is stored in a large cavern in the Houston area.”
I found this article by a Syrian-born commentator on US and European relations with oil sheikhs. The even larger cavern of dosh owned by Saudi and Qatar is drawing these debt-ridden Western countries further into the noose.
It’s a cavern inhabited by head-chopping, organ-harvesting, democrophobes. USUKIS have tipped off Daish about Russian bombing and they are now sheltering in Turkey and Europe. So just why do our politicians feel so relaxed about Saudi-sponsored Muslim Extremism in our midst?
Who needs rendition dictators who block the NWO hegemonised market-place, when you can achieve the same crippling results with Salafist thought -police?.
http://en.europenews.dk/The-dance-of-monsters-in-the-Middle-East-127442.html
Think it’s F-15’s, though I think I heard F-18’s the other night, Nevermind. We’ll need to sort out a PFI deal to pay for the F-35 programme…or even just the helmets:
http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/10/27/f-35-helmet-costs-400000-4-times-that-of-predecessor/74669570/
Or maybe we could ask the Chinese to finance the French to build them for us?
A piece in the Herald today talking to Professor Gary Pender, head of the Institute of Civil Engineers in Scotland, in which he says:
“The Scottish Government is playing to the gallery by banning or slurring forms of energy it doesn’t think SNP members like.
“But instead of pandering to the green lobby, ministers have a responsibility to keep the lights on and make sure energy prices are low.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13902679.Warning_Scotland_will_have_to_import_energy_from_England/?ref=twtrec
Think they’re using the hospital as a target, Nevermind…
“PLENTY more where those came from, Fred. Now shut up and count your blessings.”
Yes they blow each other up in Northern Ireland as well and I wouldn’t want that spreading here either.
Good to know Murray’s Blackshirts are trying to shut me up, means I’m doing something right.
“Macky”
“You shouldn’t presume to tar others with your irrationality; reffering to a shameless bare-face liar as the Liar,…etc, etc, etc…”
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I’m not surprised that all your now happily infrequent posts just consist of insults.
It’s because when, in the distant past, you attempted to engage in what you laughingly call “discussion” and “engagement”, your statements and assertions were simply laughed out of court. You were a buffoon even when attempting to be serious.
Some commenters (eg Dreoilin) were unkind enough to point out that unwelcome fact. Her characteristion of you as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” were far too mild for what you deserved.
So, after even our normally tolerant host told you where to get off you flounced off to infest Squonk for a while before returning here. Perhaps your “views” attracted too little attention there?
So, in view of the above, I wonder if you would agree with me that you are a busted flush and that it would be better for all concerned if you remained completely silent?
Have a nice day, Macky.
@Habby_Clown, you’re boring delusions are not worth addressing, but perhaps as a specialist in the practise of Ad Hominems, perhaps you can try to educate Glenn as he really doesn’t seem to be too sure as to what they are.
Good to know Murray’s Blackshirts are trying to shut me up, means I’m paranoid.
Fixed.
Macky
Thank you for that quick reply. I just knew you’d be crouched over your keyboard waiting for someone to mention you. 🙂
PS – why did you decide to return here after vowing we’d seen the last of you?
Macky: We saw this problem with you some while back, when you were confused about the meaning of ad hominem, poisoning the well, and other logical fallacies. I did try to explain (and you did try my patience) and I even referenced a tutorial for you, so I shan’t bother again.
*
Saint Fred: “What exactly makes you think you are better than everyone else?”
What exactly makes you think straw man arguments are logically valid? (You’d better run along to Giyane again, I’m sure he’ll have a new catchphrase for you.)
Nothing would surprise me Ba’al, hospitals are all the rage, even the Russians have discovered it, they bomb ed a few during the last two weeks.
When should we have our first Goth and black shirts convention then, what’ you reckon, were should we have it, in Aberdeen, or on Lord Strathclyde’s abode?
@Glenn_uk, ad hominems are indeed a logical fallacy used in the context of avoiding addressing a point being argued, NOT applicable to use when accurately referring to a troll as a troll when out of this context; hope that’s clear enough for you ?
More blah blah from “Macky”
“No more than we need the splutterings and expostulations on Scotch independence from someone who is neither Scotch nor lives in Scotland.”
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Poor old Habb, desperstely stabbing in the dark as usual, no wonder Rob-G, Lysais, and Mary treat you with contempt, it’s nothing more than you deserve.
@NeverMind: “Most trans activists and trangender people are very well educated and it would take one heck of a chair to keep the guttersnipe comments of Burchill, for example, in context and decency.”
Yes, it certainly would. I wouldn’t be surprised that if challenged out in the open to such a debate Burchill, Bindel, Greer and their mates would swiftly decline for fear of their blatant bigotry being exposed for all to see. You can then guess what they’d do next: they’d get some of their right-wing journalist mates in the mainstream media to rally round and propagate the myth that those oh so mean, nasty transactivists had no-platformed which would provoke numerous comment threads dominated by un-reconstructed transphobes bleating about ‘political correctness gawn mad’, Stalinist students and certain groups of women not being ‘real’ women because of such and such (whatever a real woman or real man is supposed to be anyway!)
To that end, one of the most intriguing comments that came out of this whole affair from Germaine Greer was the bit where she was quoted saying that transwomen didn’t look, talk or behave like real women. I’m intrigued to know how Germaine Greer feels a woman ought to look, talk or behave to qualify in her eyes as an authentic woman. After all, wasn’t it one of the main points of feminism to point out that a woman could be however, whomsoever and whatever she wants to be; to be considered a person in her own right equal to a man?
When should we have our first Goth and black shirts convention then, what’ you reckon, were should we have it, in Aberdeen, or on Lord Strathclyde’s abode?
Don’t rush me. I’m still designing the Führerbunker. But I think the event should be held on Langwell Estate, near Ullapool. This is owned by someone who, while not sympathetic to Scottish independence per se, could probably be talked round if the cheque were big enough, and who otherwise shares our objectives.
http://is-a-cunt.com/2015/03/paul-dacre-2/
Meanwhile the den of iniquity, aka Westminster had blocked a concerned Scottish minister from attending a summit, over the future of Scottish Steel.
Scotland’s Business Secretary, Fergus Ewing, has been blocked from EU summit talks over the future of Scottish steel.
The blow came yesterday as his UK counterpart, Sajid Javid, attended a series of crunch meetings in Brussels yesterday with Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Internal Market Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska and vice-president Jyrki Katainen, where he told them urgent action was needed across Europe to tackle the steel crisis.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/fergus-ewing-excluded-from-eu-talks-on-future-of-scottish-steel.9325
This isn’t the first time, the den of iniquity has blocked a Scottish minister on Scottish affairs, Richard Lochhead, cabinet secretary for Rural Affairs, was banned from speaking at the EU over Scottish fishing rights.
We really must break free from the ball and chain known as Westminster.
Camborne and Spittle are me. No intention of malicious sockpuppetry – jesting on another thread.
No wonder Police Scotland is in £24 million pounds of debt, it’s the only force in thd UK to pay VAT.
Gidiot Osborne is slowly sucking thd life out of it.
Just incase the likes of Fred jumps in and says “it’s their own fault they pay VAT because it’s a national force and not a local force.”
Well if that was truly the case then Northern Ireland’s PSNI should pay VAT.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Stormont have precisely the same structure as Police Scotland and Holyrood, yet PSNI pays zero VAT. The second flaw is a possible breach of EU VAT regulations.
So people might be interested to know that the millions of pounds George Osborne is sucking from Scottish emergency services may have to stop.
The argument that it is legally indefensible to let all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s police and fire services go VAT free, and penalise Scotland for being prudent, looks to be headed to the EU to to force the UK Government to play fair.