20 Most Recent Press Articles
'Want to be a Labour peer? £1m should swing it'
Written by George Jones and published in Telegraph on Fri 21st Jul 2006
A peerage costs an average of £1 million in donations or loans to the Labour Party, but a contribution of just £50,000 brings a 50-50 chance of receiving an honour, according to a study published today.
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Read "'Want to be a Labour peer? £1m should swing it'" in full (58 words).
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Straw sets route to Lords reform
Written by Miranda Green and published in Financial Times on Wed 14th Jun 2006
Reform of the House of Lords will depend on cross-party agreement on limiting its powers, Jack Straw, leader of the Commons, indicated yesterday. Mr Straw, who has been put in charge of the long-delayed completion of Lords reform, said he wanted a limit on the time for which the second chamber could hold up legislation while it debated amendments - possibly as little as 60 days.
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Read "Straw sets route to Lords reform" in full (118 words).
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Straw wants Lords reform sorted
Written by Press Association and published in The Guardian on Fri 9th Jun 2006
Reform of the House of Lords needs to be tackled "once and for all" or risk being forgotten for five or 10 years, Commons Leader Jack Straw has said.
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Read "Straw wants Lords reform sorted" in full (64 words).
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Blair turns to Cunningham in drive to curb Lords powers
Written by David Hencke and published in The Guardian on Tue 23rd May 2006
Tony Blair will on Monday move to curb the powers of the House of Lords to wreck his government's legislation programme after a series of bitter clashes between the Commons and the unelected house over terrorism laws, ID cards and hunting.
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Read "Blair turns to Cunningham in drive to curb Lords powers " in full (69 words).
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Why we still love all those lords aleaping
Written by Cristina Odone and published in The Observer on Mon 24th Apr 2006
There is the one who used to gallivant about town with a parakeet on his shoulder; the one who, instead of flowers as her dinner-table centrepiece, had a live sow and piglets in a glass case; the one who keeps wild animals on his estate; and the one who keeps a clutch of 'wifelets' on his. When you see what Britain's aristocrats get up to, you wonder why big businessmen who should know better would wish to pay outrageous sums to get a title.
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Read "Why we still love all those lords aleaping " (84 words).
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Blair nears deal on elected Lords
Written by David Cracknell and published in Sunday Times on Mon 24th Apr 2006
TONY BLAIR is poised to do a deal on reform of the House of Lords as part of a legislative programme next year intended to form his legacy and to give a further sign of his determination not to make an early exit from Downing Street.
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Read "Blair nears deal on elected Lords" in full (111 words).
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Leader: Lords in danger
Published in The Telegraph on Tue 11th Apr 2006
But following his established pattern of reaching for legislation without thinking through the consequences, he has now decided that an elected Lords might be a good idea after all.
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Read "Leader: Lords in danger" in full (123 words).
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Blair drops donors in pared-down list of working peers
Written by Rosemary Bennett and Andrew Pierce and published in The Times on Tue 11th Apr 2006
TONY BLAIR has published a pared-down list of working peers that contains none of the multimillionaires who made secret loans to Labour. Instead of 28 new peers there will now be only 23.
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Read "Blair drops donors in pared-down list of working peers" in full (90 words).
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A deal on the Lords that rival parties could hardly reject
Written by Peter Riddell and published in The Times on Mon 10th Apr 2006
Any compromise could involve codifying some of the current conventions (as proposed by a working group of Labour peers in 2004) on the handling of most legislation. This would apply to manifesto Bills, hard though it is to define them, as the row over the Identity Cards Act showed. But, as a balance, the Lords should be given "the power to delay, for the lifetime of a Parliament, changes to designated legislation reducing individual or constitutional rights". These are the words of the 1992 Labour manifesto, before the party became cautious on the Lords. That could be the basis of a deal that would be hard for the Tories and Lib Dems to refuse.
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Read "A deal on the Lords that rival parties could hardly reject" (114 words).
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We're teetering on the brink of an elective dictatorship
Written by Simon Heffer and published in The Telegraph on Wed 5th Apr 2006
In 1968, when the last serious attempt was made to reform the Lords, Labour and Tory backbenchers united to stop proposals that would have put the Lords under the control of the Commons' whips. Parliament must think very carefully and urgently about mounting a similar mission to prevent Britain from sliding to dictatorship. So far, Labour backbenchers have been quiet about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. They must ask themselves: do they really want to hand to Mr Blair and his friends the power to make laws that have the status of despotic fiats? Would they be happy for a Conservative administration, if we ever have one again, to legislate in this way?
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Read "We're teetering on the brink of an elective dictatorship" in full (171 words).
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Lords reform remains doomed to fail
Written by Peter Riddell and published in The Times on Fri 31st Mar 2006
DO NOT expect an early agreement on Lords reform. Lord Falconer of Thoroton's attempt to end the stalemate seems as doomed to failure as the many previous searches for a consensus since 1910.
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Read "Lords reform remains doomed to fail" in full (92 words).
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![Jack Straw [© Crown Copyright 2005]](/images/sites/217.160.173.25-3e54d75166df56.63810547/thumbs/205.jpeg "Jack Straw [© Crown Copyright 2005]")