Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Time to reinstate elections for the Lib Dem interim peers panel

Last month (with some help from Michael Crick and Mark Pack) I blogged about the decision not to hold elections for the Lib Dem interim peers panel this year. It turned out to be one taken by the party's Federal Executive because we were in the process of reforming the House of Lords.

Well, we are not any more.

And the same correspondent who alerted me to the the cancellation of elections for the panel now asks if the Federal Executive will reverse its decision because of this.

Over to you, FE.

1 comment:

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!) said...

Personally, I think you should just have a policy to not appoint anyone else to the Lords and make the Tories look bad by pressing ahead with appointees themselves. You can't claim it is illegitimate whilst giving new peers the party stamp of approval.

In any case, the interim peers panel is a mess which gives the leader an almost completely free hand in any case. This is partly due to resources: the party can't afford the time and expense of holding a full approval process and meaningful elections; it as also been watered down at every turn at the insistence of the leadership and House of Lords parliamentary party.

It's a dreadful system and not really democratic at all. The system is fundamentally broken; why maintain the pretence?