The granting of titles to life peers has a gender imbalance. When a man becomes a peer, his wife automatically becomes a Lady. But when a woman becomes a peer, her husband remains a Mr.
One mildly amusing outcome of this is the statement from various female peers that booking into a hotel added a “certain frisson” and “raised a few eyebrows” because of the different names – the assumption being that this was an affair.
I don’t understand why anyone other than a life peer is given a title. They are …

Just as the MP expenses saga re-ignites, former Speaker Michael Martin who was ousted from his role in the Commons due to his complete mismanagement of the expenses system, is sworn in as a peer.
Do the Parliamentary timetablers have a sense of humour?

Lord Jay, Chairman of the Lords Appointment Committee, is very much right to have written to all three party leaders and asked them to make sure that they don’t propose any expenses MPs to become members of the Upper House. A larger number of Labour MPs have already made their requests for peerages, and all should be denied.
No-one who there is even the slightest indication of an expenses scandal should be allowed to become a life peer after the next election. And that should have included Michael Martin.
Rather than just …

The former Speaker of the House of Commons was quietly confirmed as a life peer – taking the title Baron Martin of Springburn, of Port Dundas in the City of Glasgow.
This is despite the fact that he was the first Speaker to be forced out of office in 300 years – due to the expenses abuses he allowed and his general lack of ability. He brought the House of Commons into disrepute, and never earned the respect necessary to be Speaker – nor learned the impartiality essential to the role.
The …

Jack Straw’s new proposals for continuing to reform of the House of Lords (just a decade after starting it!) bear an extremely marked similarity to those I have made on this very blog – as far back as 2006!
The difference is that I am far more certain of what we actually need to do. We must rescue British democracy, and the best way to do that is to reform the Lords to make it democratic and effective – rather than neither, as it is now.
 
Elected Lords
We should, as Straw says, …

So we have the first Speaker to be forced out of his job in 300 years – a convention-breaking act – and now, with the excuse of “convention”, he is going to be elevated to the House of Lords.
Michael Martin does not deserve a seat in the upper House. His tenure has Speaker was a disaster and has brought the House of Commons into disrepute. He encouraged the expenses abuses by MPs – and made plenty of his inappropriate expense claims. And neither was he ever impartial whilst in the …

Rats always try and escape from a sinking ship, we all know that. Which is why this story isn’t really all that surprising:

Gordon Brown is facing an escalating crisis of confidence inside the parliamentary Labour party as record numbers of his MPs apply to sit in the House of Lords after the next general election.
In the clearest indication to date that increasing numbers of Labour figures believe the party is heading for a heavy defeat at the hands of David Cameron… at least 52 MPs have formally approached Downing Street …

Alan Watkins the “Commentators Bruce Forsyth” in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday

Peerages have recently and, indeed, always have been, granted for services rendered to the party in office or to its leader and his or her hangers-on.

The service can take a variety of forms: money; readiness to make way for someone else in the House of Commons; joining the Government, as with Lord Mandelson and several ministers in Mr Brown’s first administration of 2007; long service and obedient conduct; even, in rare cases, merit. With the exception of the last category, the whole process is essentially corrupt. “Grasp that, dear boy,” as the late Malcolm Muggeridge used to say to me in many connections, “and you grasp all.”

Quite.

Is that an argument for wholesale reform of the Lords?

No it isn’t, since it is obvious that the Lords have been far more effective in holding the Governent to account over the last 3 decades at least than the Official Opposition.

It is, instead, an argument for Lords with ethics who know what is acceptable – so I think that Jack Straw’s reforms are moving in the right direction.

The House of Lords has been getting a bit of a battering in the press recently, after the “cash for laws” scandal erupted, over four Labour life peers who appearing willing to take money in order to put forward amendments to Bills before the House. And since then, allegations have continued to come.
What’s the problem?
Corruption. Sleaze. Whatever you want to call it, it’s wrong – even if it could be argued to be within the rules. But as Garbo has said “if they were acting within the rules, then it …