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House of Lords reform
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Phoenix: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Lee: [qb] Essentially. Except the Ministers are all MPs, and are chosen by the Prime Minister. Plus, not all Ministers are in the Cabinet, and there are several ministers who are actually from the House of Lords. I'm not sure how or why, but I assume it's so that when a Bill reaches the stage when it comes before the Lords, there's a Government representative to read it to the Lords and debate in its favour. [/qb][/QUOTE]Ministers traditionally have to be "members of Parliament" in the literal sense - i.e. members of one of the two Houses. (This isn't a legal requirement, though, and it would be entirely legally (if not politically) possible to have a Minister who was neither a Lord nor an MP.) In fact, the second most important member of the Cabinet, the Lord Chancellor, is always a Lord. It's always useful for the Government to have Ministers in both Houses, because a Bill has to be passed by both of them, and it's always good to have important people arguing for you at both stages of the debate. For the record, I'm in favour of the House of Lords being how it was before 1999 - roughly half hereditary peers and half life peers. I think a wholly appointed House is an absolutely awful idea, and a wholly elected one would remove the whole point of the House of Lords - to be a more permanent check on the House of Commons, not subject to the yearly shifts in national political opinion. If it were elected, the Lords would be constantly worrying about the next election, just like the Commons, and would make the decisions they thought would be popular rather than those they thought were right. There's also the political issue - if they are elected, they'll be elected as members of a political party, and will feel obliged to tow the party line on every issue, regardless of their own opinions, which can't be a good thing. To be honest, I'm not surprised Tony Blair wants to change the House of Lords - before 1999 it was an independent body that judged prospective legislation on its merits rather than political considerations, and now it's going to end up either wholly appointed by him with the people he knows will support him or elected with members who will be open to the same kind of political blackmail as MPs. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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