Important to keep the House of Lords

IN response to the question that you have raised regarding the House of Lords, there are in my view two main reasons why it is important to keep the Second Chamber open.

In the first instance, the Lords can act as a check on the viability of legislation proposed by a large majority party government in the House of Commons, such as Tony Blair’s Labour Landslide Government’s of 1997 and 2001, or Boris Johnson’s large majority of 80 seats in the Conservative Majority Government of 2019. The Lords can press the Commons to reconsider in a timely way whether the detail of any proposed legislation will be effective in practice.

In the second instance, the

Lords can use its delaying powers conferred on it by the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 to get the Government to re-consider whether any proposed legislation proposed is really lawful or Constitutional.

This point particularly applies to the current Government’s proposed Rwanda policy on illegal immigration. The Lords may well concur with the position of the International Court of Justice ruling that what the Government are proposing in this area is unlawful and unjust. This is not a sufficient justification for removing the powers of the Lords, as the Government can vote in the Commons to ignore the Court’s ruling, and try to vote through its Rwanda Bill. The delaying only means just that, delay, but the Government can get its way through the Commons and the

Lords eventually.

As the Lords since the 1911 Act cannot veto money bills, the Tory Government could attach the cost of the Rwanda operation through the use of a money bill procedure attached to Jeremy Hunt’s preelection Budget.

Jeremy Comerford Chippenham, Wiltshire