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UK House of Lords Rejects Anti-Terror Bill

Posted by timothy on from the fear-itself dept.

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."

2 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Freedom loving lords by Dashslot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Freedom loving lords by dafydd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.