UK House of Lords Rejects Anti-Terror Bill

Richard5mith writes "It looks like the UK House of Lord's still has some common sense left in them as the UK government scrambles to pass through anti-terrorism laws before Christmas in the wake of the Sep 11th tragedy. The BBC has the full story. They've already rejected seven parts of the new bill, including a part which would have allowed the state the right to commandeer private and personal information on the merest suspicion of a criminal offence unrelated to terrorism. The leader of the Conservative Lords said, 'Again the Lords has found a commonsense way forward - balancing the need for anti-terrorist powers with respect for civil liberties.' Long may it continue."

Freedom loving lords

[Dashslot]

Of course, the irony is that the House of Lords isn't yet democratically elected. And once it is, there is far less chance of upsets like this happening.

Re:Freedom loving lords

[dafydd]

In principle, I am against a non-democratically-elected House of Lords, because it isn't democratically elected.

On the other hand, the House of Lords provides a vital function: to scrutinise any legislation which the House of Commons produces. Of course, if the House of Commons is determined to get legislation past the house of lords, it can use the Parliament Act to bypass it, though this is not often used. If the HoL didn't exist, the HoC could pass any legislation it wanted. "What's the problem with that? The HoC is democratically elected after all, so it must be doing the will of the people."

Just because our MPs were elected doesn't stop them from producing badly thought-out legislation. Even if Labour MPs are unsatisfied with Labour-produced legislation, they might not speak out. I gather this is worse than it used to be. The HoL ensures that no single body is responsible for producing legislation in the UK.

So we shouldn't scrap the HoL, but we should look for an alternative way for members of the House of Lords to be elected to ensure that they better reflect the view of the people.

It used to be that Lords either inherited their peership or were granted it by the Prime Minister. There have been reforms recently (and there will be more in future), so some or all inherited peers were removed. This leaves population of the HoL solely up to the HoC, which isn't ideal because HoC have influence over who is in the HoL and therefore what the HoL says.

Re:Freedom loving lords

[scaryjohn]

But... if turnover is relatively low, and Lords are appointed for life (kinda like the U.S. supreme court) there's less chance of this being a problem than one would think.

Theoretically the Congress could inflate the Supreme Court (or any U.S. federal bench) as much as they wanted and hand the nominations to the President to throw around, but it hasn't happened except for twice. The "Midnight Justices" of the early 19th century, who were tossed out of office by the courts, and F.D.R.'s attempt to stack the bench with people who would support the New Deal, which was generally approved.

Wait until Blair's out of office and the Lords he would appoint wouldn't be as sensitive to the Commons, and you always would have the Thatcher & Major appointees to boot... and once they've gotten to working together, they start to listen to each other more than the Government (in the Parliamentary sense)... it won't be that bad.

Re:Freedom loving lords

[dafydd]

It's true: the HoL turnover is relatively slow; I heard an estimate only yesterday in Lord-deaths a year, I'm not sure what the number was, on Radio 4's programme "Today in Parliament" or somesuch. They were discussing it in the HoL for some reason... I think there's a few hundred Lords, but they have a propensity for long life.

Anyhow, the point is that any one government probably won't have very much influence on who goes into the HoL.

The problem is that it probably shouldn't be the government that selects lords in the first place; they should be selected in a way that ensures that they are the best people to do their job.

What is their job? To look over bills and acts before they become law. So a good lord is one that can do this in a way that will benefit the people of the country best. Knowledge of law and politics and skill in debate are also useful. The problem is to devise a way to get these people into the HoL! I can't think of one off the top of my head...

Re:Freedom loving lords

[alfredw]

Well, you can look at how the Canadian Senate is supposed to work:

In Theory: Senators are appointed by the Queen (or her representative, the Governor-General) until the age of 75. They're supposed to pick outstanding Canadians to fill these spots and watch over the House of Commons' shoulder.

In Practice: The Prime Minister makes "recommendations" to the Queen that the Governor-General signs. These people, old party hacks, become Senators.

Methinks that in order to preserve democracy, both in Canada and the UK, we'd be better served by the Queen exercising her monarchial powers...

That's so weird...

Sanity

[Pogue Mahone]

This is exactly why reform of the House of Lords would be a Bad Thing

They are the only sane people in the UK Government (at least, the ones who bother to turn up & vote).

The modern democracy is broken...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a bitter irony that the concept of elected leadership too frequently just seems to be an open invitation for scoundrels who otherwise would have been 'out of the loop' to make power-grabs. And now it is the remenants of a feudal system that is defending our rights? I'm so confused....

anti-DPA

[Marcus Brody]

I'm not to knowledgeable about the ins-and outs of these acts. However, this bill would seem to go against the idea - if not the law - of the Data Protection Act (perhaps one of the most-foward thinking, intelligent pieces of legislation in a long time).

This new bill will require ISPs, telco's, etc to keep detailed information on individual's for long periods of time, even though it is entirely unrelated to billing etc. I thought the DPA made this sort of thing difficult? Are the government now breaking their own rules?

Re:anti-DPA

[julesh]

The DPA is sprinkled with caveats about it not being applicable where information is required to be kept/processed/disclosed in order to conform with any other law, so the two seem at least to my untrained eyes to be compatible, at least semantically speaking, if not in terms of their obviously opposing goals.

It should be noted however, that the current incarnation of the DPA was mandated into existence by European Parliament resolutions on data privacy, which may have force to overrule any new laws requiring such information to be kept & disclosed. Sometimes, those folks over the channel there do some things sensible. Even if they do make silly rules about straight bananas.

Re:anti-DPA

[Marcus Brody]

Nice reply. Thanks.
Sorry to be dull, but you wouldnt know of any good resources/links for this? I dont exactly want to read the acts/bills themselves, but if you know of any good summaries, I would be very interested.

--MB

Re:anti-DPA

[riotous]

A good place to start is http://www.fipr.org there's loads of stuff on privacy and data protection. Riotous

lords

[angrysocialist]

Yes, but you've got to remember the Lords are the same people who rejected Fox hunting ban and lowering age of consent for homosexuals.

Personally I think a HOL completely created by an independent comission would be a good idea. But who listens to me?

Blair's inability to stack the deck

[twilight30]

... will mean in the face of this defeat that he will work very hard to do so before his next term of office runs out. Of couse, it could be argued that ending the hereditary peerages a few years ago was a first step towards this anyway.

Look to the Canadian experience: under Mulroney, the Tory government of the time ended being under threat of having either free trade or the GST held up by the Canadian Senate (can't remember which offhand). So Lyin' Brian appointed a half-dozen new Senators, and he got his way...

I never thought I'd be thankful for those old duffers in the Lords, but here I am. (Shakes head ruefully)

Blunkett

[julesh]

From the BBC article: A spokesman for Home Secretary David Blunkett said after the defeats: "We feel that the unelected Tory peers are disembowelling vital parts of the bill and completely undermining our fight against terrorism."

He said the distinction peers tried to make between terrorism and crime was "false".

Doesn't that sound so typical?!

Religious "hate speech" provision

[Charles Dodgeson]

One thing that the BBC site didn't mention was that one provision (point 5) was to extend the current laws banning speech intended to incite racial hatred to include religious hatred as well. Ahteists feared that that provision could be used against people arguing against religion.

There is a long (and often contentless) thread about this on (cross-posted elsewhere as well) news:uk.philosophy.atheism [news]. Included in that discussion recently has been a long debate about the UK constitution and the role of the Lords, and particularly the legitimacy of their action.

Tyrrany of the Majority

[Wontsombodypleasehel]

This is why I'm generally opposed to democracy. I'm sorry I don't trust you people to elect the people who make the rules. Unfortunatley there are far to many of you to hold responsible for what the idiots in [insert name of national, state or local center of government here] do.

Democracy is better

[Visoblast]

I can't trust people like Wontsombodypleasehel to run governments; I prefer democray. Sure, it has its problems, but it makes an excellent attempt at keeping people from gaining too much power and creating a true tyrrany / dictatorship.

Democray is the best attempt in all of human history to move away from conquest and move toward harmony and freedom. Let us not foolishly destory democracy on the basis of a few mistakes. Let us instead work with our governments by making ourselves heard by our elected representatives (and others) in government.

Re:Tyrrany of the Majority

[attobyte]

That is why the Loads are not elected but the commons are. Our system was that way a long time ago (if I remember history right). I believe State legislators elected the Senate and the people elected the House. A bill has to go through both so the morons get a vote (elected) then the Tyrranical morons gets a vote. It balances the scale. Checks and balances is what it is about.