Lords is a strange place

By any standards, the House of Lords is strange place. A minority of its members are hereditary, and have had family representatives in the place for centuries.

As one cheerfully explained to me, he was only in the Lords because one of his forbears “killed somebody for the king” – and that was 800 years ago.

We also have a number of Church of England bishops, whose representation in parliament in the Middle Ages reflected their material wealth as much as their spiritual influence. And none of us are elected.

So it is easy to understand why the SNP refuses to have any representation in the Lords and why, in a recent book, Mhairi Black and Chris Law described it as “holding back a modern Britain”.

I share their frustration about the place. This is why Lib Dems in the last Government introduced legislation to get the Lords elected, only to be defeated by an unholy alliance of Conservative and Labour MPs in the Commons.

I have been working for an elected House of Lords since I started in politics and will continue to do so.

There are however some things which, for all its faults, the Lords does well. One of them, is scrutinise the UK’s relationship with the European Union.

We have a broadly based EU Select Committee with sub committees covering, for example, environment, justice and finance.

The sub-committees produce regular reports, based on painstaking gathering of evidence from expert witnesses and a thoughtful sifting of the arguments.

The reports can be quite technical, but in some cases can help change practices in the UK and across the EU.

A recent report on food waste, for example, did exactly that. Other Lords Committees consider additional aspects of our relationship with the EU, from its constitutional implications to its effects on UK science and technology.

The committees are crossparty and nearly always reach unanimous conclusions.

As we move towards the start of the Brexit negotiations, the Lords committees are even more important. They can investigate how Brexit will impact on specific sectors – be it higher education, financial services or agriculture.

They can explain what the Government must do in its negotiations to reduce the negative impacts and they can hold ministers to account on how they are actually progressing the negotiations.

And the House as a whole may well have a vote on the triggering of Article 50 itself. It will certainly play a full part in debating and amending any Brexit legislation.

The one voice of course which will not be heard in all these Lords discussions is that of the SNP.

They will no doubt argue that, apart from being absent as an issue of principle, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway, because the Commons is the only place which, in the end, really matters.

But the reality is that this does matter. It matters that people are making the case for protecting the benefits we share as part of the EU at every opportunity. It matters that people are standing up for Scottish interests and that is exactly what Liberal Democrats in the Lords will do.

In many areas, the likelihood is that the scrutiny given to aspects of Brexit by the Lords and its committees will be greater than the Commons.

It is certainly the case that ministers in the Lords will be having to answer questions from the despatch box on progress in the Brexit negotiations on a daily basis.

Any vote on triggering Article 50 and any legislation implementing any Brexit deal will come to the Lords as well as the Commons.

And given that there are complicated, contentious and crucial aspects of Brexit which particularly relate to Scotland, it is clearly in Scotland’s interest to have the strongest range of Scottish voices influencing decisions in these areas.

When the time comes there will be nobody from the SNP standing up for the oil and gas sector. On market access for Scotch whisky.

Or on how the Scottish financial sector will fare unless it is part of the single market. My Scottish colleagues – including Malcolm Bruce, Ming Campbell, Archy Kirkwood, Jeremy Purvis, Nicol Stephen and Jim Wallace – will be actively involved in the debates, seeking to secure the best possible deal for Scotland.

The only iron law of oil prices is that what goes down also goes up

LEADER OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS