Pages tagged with "House of Lords"

Who do you want to represent Scotland internationally - unelected peers or democratic representatives? 

Who has the right to represent Scotland’s interests abroad? Is it elected representatives such as Angus Robertson - or unelected Conservative donors such as ‘lord’ Malcolm Offord? Many will ask - what possible right does Malcolm Offord have to represent Scotland internationally? And yet he does. 

The UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said that all meetings between Scottish Government ministers and overseas governments must be organised through the UK Government and attended by its own officials. The latest move represents a step up from reports that UK officials had been asked to hold follow-up meetings with any foreign dignitaries who meet with Scottish ministers.

According to polling analysed by Professor John Curtice on “What Scotland Thinks” - more Scots say they want Holyrood to have power and responsibility over foreign policy than say Westminster (where many more members are now unelected than are elected). 

A new attempt to undermine devolution

This is new. It is an attempt to delegitimize and undermine Scottish Government efforts to promote Scotland abroad. In the past, Scotland’s elected representatives have worked along with the UK’s network of embassies and consulates to promote Scottish businesses, tourism, education and so on. Before the Parliament came along, Scottish business and trade organisations did the same - because the UK has never promoted Scotland effectively internationally. This is a clear role of the devolved Parliament - which has not been questioned before.

But the UK Government is stepping in to constrain and curtail elected representatives’ work. Recently, Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee heard how at an event in Paris, the Scotland Office intervened at the last moment to disrupt the Scottish Government’s event to promote Scotland’s food and drink sector, causing embarrassment to both the Government and businesses. 

Scotland has its own identity and needs its own representation internationally

Scotland has its own identity and needs separate representation on the world stage - it isn’t helpful to subsume it in UK-wide promotions. That should be done by the people Scotland elects at the ballot box. External Affairs Minister Angus Robertson, who has been undermined in his efforts to do this, is an elected MSP. 

In contrast, Malcolm Offord was rejected at the ballot box when he stood for election to Holyrood in 2021. Offord believes that Scotland is too poor and its people are too incapable to survive and thrive as an independent country - hardly a positive message to send internationally. 

But whatever Offord says and does when he is abroad is up to him and his Conservative cronies - he can never, ever be voted out at the ballot box. He is not democratically accountable in Scotland. 

An unelected Conservative crony now represents Scotland on important trade missions

At the end of 2022, Offord represented Scotland and the UK on a trip to the Arctic Circle where he met many leading Icelandic business figures and politicians and may have taken the opportunity to brief against Scotland. 

In 2021, Offord travelled to India with Liz Truss to represent Scotland at events again involving politicians, business people and leaders of civic society, where again he is likely to have briefed that Scotland is an insignificant region of the UK that could not survive as an independent country. 

Offord’s propagandist past

‘Lord’ Malcolm Offord has a history as an anti-independence propagandist. He is not accountable to any voter. 

Offord was the director of Acanchi, a PR firm, that set up what purported to be a “grassroots” No campaign group in 2014, called “Vote No Borders”. They made a glossy propaganda video that was shown extensively on the BBC in the run up to the 2014 referendum as a news item. Acanchi also made scare videos for the cinema using the name “Vote No Borders” - which did not exist as a real group. Grassroots campaigning groups for a “Yes” vote - such as Business for Scotland - did not get their campaigning material shown without comment on BBC News channels. 

Offord also donated £147,000 to the Conservative Party and he donated to fund Michael Gove’s personal election expenses. He was then awarded a permanent seat at Westminster by scandal-hit PM Boris Johnson. 

Only independence can give Scotland control of its international profile

Under devolution, Scotland should have the right to work with the UK’s embassies and consulates to promote Scottish interests. Scotland has a separate identity and its own brands. 

But the UK Government is moving in to aggressively undermine that. 

The Scottish electorate has no say over what “peers” like Malcolm Offord choose to do or say when abroad. He can never, ever lose his seat in the UK Parliament as long as he lives. It has been awarded to him permanently - against the direct wishes of the Scottish electorate as expressed at the ballot box. 

And yet Offord is regarded by the UK Government as having more right to represent Scotland abroad than democratic representatives. 

Only with independence can Scotland ensure democratic accountability for its representatives and the right to promote Scotland’s interests internationally. 

Further info

Watch a video about Offord’s ‘Vote No Borders” campaign

A proposal that Scotland’s Secretary of State Alister Jack should postpone taking up his controversial peerage until the next general election in order to avoid a by-election in his marginal seat of Dumfries and Galloway is being condemned as an attempt to play the system, in a new scandal for the UK’s unelected Upper House.

Disgraced former PM Boris Johnson is handing out 20 more places in the “Lords”, which will take the number of sitting members above 800 (830 total). The House of  so-called “Lords”, the second-largest legislative chamber in the world behind the Chinese National People's Congress, is so undemocratic that it could potentially bar the UK from rejoining the EU in the future.

Johnson used his “resignation honours” list to nominate the former cabinet ministers Nadine Dorries, Nigel Adams and Alok Sharma, and Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, to the “Lords” but arranged for them to defer taking their peerages until after the next election. The SNP.s Mhairi Black spoke for many Scots when she told Jack in a recent Commons debate “I won’t take lessons on democracy from a soon-to-be-unelected ‘Baron’.” A tweeted video of her comment went viral and was listed on Trendsmap as a top global tweet. 

Experts have warned that Jack and the other Ministers’ by-election avoidance plan could have wide-ranging constitutional implications. The Times reported that “Lord” Cormack, a Tory peer, said it showed a “cavalier disregard for the constitution”.

The new list includes former editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre, despite Dacre being blocked by the House of “Lords” Appointment Commission on a previous list, and David Ross, the multi-millionaire Carphone Warehouse founder who was forced to quit as a City Hall aide over a share-selling scandal.

Scotland diverges from House of so-called “Lords”

Scottish political life has diverged from the House of “Lords” in recent decades - not one single peer supports Scottish independence, for example. Scottish MPs from the SNP do not sit in the “Lords” - unlike those from the Unionist parties. There are 27 members of the Scottish Labour group in the unelected Upper House.

Members don’t get a salary but they claim an allowance of £323 plus expenses for each day they attend - about the same as Universal Credit pays per month for a single person. Last year the House of “Lords” cost almost £120 million - a population share of which is charged to Scotland’s accounts and fattens Scotland’s notional “deficit”.

“Lords” does not meet the “Copenhagen Criteria” for EU membership

In 2010, the then Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg described the House of “Lords” as a “democratic aberration” and said it could prevent the UK from joining the EU. Back then there were only 700 members.

Clegg said “It’s totally preposterous that we have a second chamber which is basically a plaything for political patronage – if that existed in other countries that were applying to the European Union, we would be saying ‘sorry you can’t have that because it doesn’t conform to European standards of democracy'”.

The criteria for countries joining the EU today are set out in the “Copenhagen criteria” and it is hard to see how a country ruled by the House of “Lords” could meet the bar. It states that:

“Functional democratic governance requires that all citizens of the country should be able to participate, on an equal basis, in the political decision making at every single governing level, from local municipalities up to the highest, national, level. This also requires free elections with a secret ballot.”

The half-reformed House of “Lords” put shadowy patronage in place of heredity

The House of so–called “Lords” has never been democratic but in recent years it has become more and more subject to the PM’s personal patronage, with little in the way of checks and balances. Since the 1999 Reform Act, when the Labour Party under Tony Blair abolished the rights of 600 hereditary peers to sit in the Upper House, new peers have been entirely appointed, largely by the head of the ruling party. (What was touted as a democratic reform was seen by some as a Labour power grab, as hereditary peers tended not to support Labour.) 

The advice of the appointments committee has been overruled by Boris Johnson more than once. He ennobled Evgeny Lebedev, who is bankrolled by his Russian oligarch father, Alexander; and Peter Cruddas who the “Lords” appointment committee said was not fit for office. Tory donor Malcolm Offord  was made a peer and appointed to the Scottish Office after failing to win an election in Scotland.  

The Labour Party’s plans to reform the House of so-called “Lords” are already facing push-back. Labour peer “Lord” Mandelson objected to them on the BBC’s flagship “the World this Weekend” and the current issue of Labour magazine Prospect carries an article by influential think-tank member Meg Russell arguing that tiny-footstep small-scale changes would be more realistic. 

An independent Scotland could get out from under the weight of the House of “Lords”

The Labour Party’s attempt to reform the House of “Lords” in 1999 actually left it worse than before - Boris Johnson has demonstrated how the leader of the ruling party can appoint peers without any democratic oversight. 

Members of the House of so-called “Lords” have the constitutional right to debate and amend laws affecting Scotland. The Scottish government does not. That is not fair, it is not democratic and it is also an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money. 

There will be no unelected second house in an independent Scotland. 

Q In which country can the leader be elected by party members, without a chance for the population to vote?

A The UK

Q Which governing body is packed with party donors, personal friends and even relatives appointed by the leader?

A The House of Lords

Q In which country can a disgraced leader, forced from office for lying, still appoint whoever he likes to Parliament?

A The UK

The United Kingdom defines itself as a democracy - and yet, under the current Government it has departed from many of the conventions of one person one vote. 

Only about 170,000 UK citizens - largely male and over 50 - will be eligible to vote for the next PM, out of an electorate of about 47.6 million adults. This sounds like a scenario we might associate with the Communist Party of China. And yet, we are supposed to accept this as democratic.  At the same time, the House of Lords has become increasingly unregulated, and there are concerns that Boris Johnson has plans to add even more peers - without scrutiny. 

Allowing a UK PM to be elected by party members is new 

The media is reporting what journalists call ‘every cough and spit’ of the leadership ‘election’ for the UK’s next Prime Minister. But, with rare exceptions, it does not question the extraordinary and undemocratic nature of the contest. The media presents this as a traditional approach. In fact, it is new. If it actually goes to a vote, this will be just the second time a PM has been elected by the party members, the first being Boris Johnson in 2019. 

In the past, the leader of the ruling party was selected by MPs. They themselves are elected and can thus claim some democratic legitimacy. They would select someone, often behind closed doors, and that person would formally offer to form a government. 

In 1998, William Hague changed the rules to include a vote by Conservative members. The Conservatives were out of power from 1997 to 2011. Since then, they have changed leader while in power twice. When Theresa May stood to be Prime Minister, her nearest rival Andrea Leadsom stood down so there was no actual members' vote. 

When the Labour Party changed leader from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown in 2007, Brown was endorsed by Labour MPs. The only time the Labour Party changed leaders in office with more than one candidate was when James Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson in 1976 - Callaghan was selected by a ballot of MPs.

Tone of the contest illustrated by Liz Truss’ promise to ignore Scotland

Liz Truss won cheers from Tory voters at a husting by vowing to ignore Scotland, showing that the continued undermining of the devolution settlement will continue and worsen.  Policies like further limiting the right to strike, are guaranteed to win Conservative party votes and to ensure Truss becomes the next Prime Minister of the UK. But they are far removed from the electoral priorities of Scotland. 

The current contest for the votes of a tiny minority is filling the airwaves with discussion of very right-wing policies. The "Overton Window’  is a concept familiar to broadcasters. It means the range of ideas that is regarded as mainstream and acceptable. What we are seeing is the Overton Window of UK public life being pushed further to the right.

Lord Lebedev of Siberia has a pet wolf named Boris

Meanwhile, disgraced PM Boris Johnson is still the UK”s Prime Minister. On coming to power, he found himself in possession of a half-reformed House of Lords and proceeded to hand out dozens of titles - it will be more than 100 by the time he leaves office. He has ennobled among others: his brother Jo; a Conservative donor called Peter Cruddas who the Lords committee said was not fit to hold public office; and Evgeny Lebedev, whose entry into London society was financed by his father, KGB officer Alexander Lebedev.  Lebedev, who named his pet wolf Boris, is now  Baron Lebedev, of Hampton and Siberia. The UK government while talking tough over Ukraine, has dragged its feet on sanctioning Russia. Lebedev has more right under the UK Consitution to debate and amend laws affecting Scotland than Nicola Sturgeon has. 

The House of Lords has never been democratic but in recent years it has been made subject to the PM’s personal patronage, with little in the way of checks and balances. With the 1999 Reform Act, the Labour Party under Tony Blair abolished the rights of 600 hereditary peers to sit in the Upper House, What was touted as a democratic reform was seen by some as a political move to enable Blair to create more Labour Peers. It left a baggy, over-sized Lords blowing in the political wind, with no effective regulation in place.  At around 800, the House of Lords is almost the largest governing body in the world, second only to the Chinese People’s Congress.

Boris Johnson may be poised to appoint dozens more peers

The Guardian reported recently on a draft plan by which Johnson will add 39 to 50 new Tory peers when he finally leaves office. Former PM Gordon Brown revealed he had seen an extraordinary document which includes a requirement that each new peer sign away their right to make their own judgment on legislation that comes before them. They have to give, the paper says, a written undertaking to attend and vote with the Government.

The draft plan recommends Johnson to appoint political nominees who will vote for the Tory government, especially its bill to disown the international treaty it has itself signed over Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

The UK prides itself on being democratic, with Westminster often described as the mother of all parliaments (despite The Althing of Iceland being by far the oldest). But it has turned out that there were few checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. The current contest for the UK”s highest elected office, accepted as normal by a supine and ineffective media, is absurd and undemocratic. 

Only with independence can Scotland escape the dangerous charade of the UK’s failing democracy. 

The House of Lords contains more peers that are than it does peers who support Scottish independence. It is an out-dated antidemocratic institution packed with cronies of the UK's ruling elite.

Some peers - led by Scottish Labour's Baron Foulkes - are now putting forward a new law which would make it illegal for the Scottish Government to hold an independence referendum - here we answer questions about what this move means and the possible consequences.

Q What has been proposed?

The proposal is for the UK Government to pass a law making it illegal for the Scottish Government to spend money on anything outside a tightly-defined remit. 

Q What other effects would it have?

The primary purpose would be to stop a new referendum. But this law would mean that Westminster would very much dictate what the Scottish Government is allowed to do, on a wide range of issues. 

The bill would make it illegal for civil servants to work on post-independence planning, or for Scottish Government representatives to travel abroad to meet their counterparts in other countries, It would no longer be permissible for anyone employed by the Scottish Government to spend time on issues like defence, the post-independence Constitution or mitigating the effects of Brexit in international trade. 

But the law could go further than this. Under the Internal Markets Act any measure which create a different trading environment north of the border are out of order. So even Scottish Government officials planning to put a 10p deposit on a bottle of Irn-Bru could be ruled illegal.

Q Who is behind this?

This proposal comes from members of the House of Lords. The main proposer is Labour Peer George Foulkes. Foulkes is drafting a Private Member’s Bill which he will put forward to the Conservative government after the Queen’s Speech on May 10, hoping that Boris Johnson will pick it up and decide to make it law. 

Foulkes has reportedly won the support of Conservative Scottish peers Michael Forsyth and Liam Fox. The Daily Express called them a “Dad’s Army” of veteran politicians, referring to the Second World War TV show. 

Q Do the rest of the Labour group in the Lords support this? 

The Scottish Labour group in the House of Lords has 27 members. It is not clear how many of the rest of the group support this plan, but so far none of them has disassociated themselves from it. 

There are 167 Labour Lords. Few of these understand much about Scotland - but they could be instructed to support this Bill if it passes to the next stages. 

Q How many Scottish members of the House of Lords are there? How many support independence? 

The current membership of the House of Lords is around 800. There are no geographical criteria for membership, unlike Canada which has an appointed upper house of just 105 members selected from each territory of the federation. 

Around 87 members of the current House of Lords could be regarded as Scottish Peers, according to research by MP Tommy Sheppard in 2020. They are largely privately-educated males over 65. A quarter of this number, 22, are hereditary peers. The rest include Tory donor Malcolm Offord who was ennobled and appointed to the Scottish Office after failing to win an election in Scotland. 

The bill for Scottish peers services has been calculated as around £3 million a year. Not one single Scottish peer is apparently in favour of Scottish independence. 

Q How many members of the House of Lords support Scottish independence?

There are more people in the House of Lords bankrolled by Russian oligarchs than there are supporters of Scottish independence. Evegeny Lebedev is funded by his father Alexander, a former KGB agent who acquired a large stake in Gazprom. There are no peers at all among the 800 strong membership of this exclusive club who have voiced support for Scottish independence. 

Q What could the Scottish Parliament do to prevent a Bill like this becoming law? 

Very little. The House of Lords has the power to debate and amend legislation which affects Scotland - but Holyrood does not.

Despite being fully elected, by the Scottish people under a fairer proportional representation system, the Scottish Parliament gets no say at all over controversial laws that affect Scotland. In the post-Brexit settlement, the UK Government decided to remove powers from Holyrood under the Internal Markets Act. Holyrood refused consent for this as it has for other draconian new laws such as the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Elections Bill, which may disenfranchise 100,000 Scots.

But Westminster repeatedly ignores the wishes of Scotland's elected Parliament. The UK Supreme Court recently ruled that “Westminster has merely lent powers to the three devolved territories, which can be reclaimed at any times.”

Critics of this position argue that because the devolved Parliaments - especially Scotland’s where 75% of voters said Yes in 1997 - were established by a referendum with strong popular support, they should be recognised as sharing sovereignty with Westminster. However, there is no suggestion that Westminster ever would share sovereignty with Scotland’s elected Parliament. 

Q Will this become law?

At the moment, there is no clear path for the proposed bill to become law. It may be that Foulkes has been persuaded to float the idea in order for the UK Government to test the strength of opposition to it. Or the UK Government may feel they can use existing powers to dictate to Holyrood. 

The House of Commons would also have to vote to pass this law.  But if it were to make it that far, there would be little Scots could do to stop it. The majority of MPs elected in Scotland since 2011 have supported independence - but they are regularly outvoted on matters that affect Scotland, such as the Internal Markets Act. 

Conclusion

This latest attack on the democratically elected Scottish Government is another sign that the House of Lords is out of touch with the country it seeks to govern. It is unacceptable that Labour peers like Lord Foulkes feel entitled to lay down the law when they can't claim to represent the people of Scotland in any way. 

Only in an independent Scotland would be free of the shadowy hand of this unelected body.

Evgeny Lebedev is a member of the British House of Lords

The latest scandal to hit the House of Lords is the news British security services warned that granting a peerage to Russian Evgeny Lebedev - bankrolled by his oligarch father Alexander - could be a risk to national security. The Sunday Times, which broke the story, reported that the warning was subsequently withdrawn after a personal intervention by the PM. The extraordinary story of Lebedev’s relationship with the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demonstrates the lack of checks and balances on the UK Parliament's undemocratic Upper House.

The latest twist in the Lebedev story came as the British Government lagged international efforts to sanction Putin’s moneymen.  Another Peer - Greg Barker who was energy minister under David Cameron - this week resigned his role working for a company founded by the sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska. 

And there are likely more stories of Russian links to come out - the Intelligence and Security Committee's Russia Report into interference in the Brexit vote concluded that “a number of Members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state.”  

And yet the House of Lords has the power to debate and amend legislation which affects Scotland - more power than Holyrood has. Despite being fully elected, by the Scottish people under a fairer proportional representation system, the Scottish Parliament gets no say at all over controversial laws such as the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Elections Bill and the Internal Markets Act.

The half-reformed House of Lords put shadowy patronage in place of heredity

The House of Lords has never been democratic but in recent years it has become more and more subject to the PM’s personal patronage, with little in the way of checks and balances. Since the 1999 Reform Act, when the Labour Party under Tony Blair abolished the rights of 600 hereditary peers to sit in the Upper House, it has been entirely appointed, largely by the head of the ruling party. (What was touted as a democratic reform was seen by some as a Lords' power grab, as hereditary peers tended not to support Labour. The old hereditaries were arguably more independent, owing no favours to the Government of the day.) 

There appear to be few checks on the PM’s power - Johnson appointed Peter Cruddas to the House of Lords despite the fact he was judged unsuitable by the House of Lords’ own selection committee. That appointment came after a donation to the Conservative Party of £500,00.  

Johnson has also ennobled Brexit ultras like Ian Botham, Kate Hoey and Claire Fox - he even ennobled his own brother Jo Johnson. Johnson has created close to 100 peers. The House of Lords is the largest governing body in the world of any democracy. It is the biggest overall, after the Chinese People’s Congress. 

The Lebedev story - the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

The story of how the Lebedev father and son entered the upper echelons of London society is told in a recent podcast by investigative journalist Paul Galizia on Tortoise Media. The initial launch party cost £2 million - more than it raised for charity. Johnson has attended many other Lebdev parties over the years -  including one in Italy when Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, dismissed his security detail and was spotted returning in a disheveled state. 

In a piece entitled “No one drooled over oligarchs like British toffs — I know, because I helped them“, Sunday Times columnist Camilla Long questioned how London society laid itself open to the money flowing from Russia’s kelptocracy, putting the PM front and centre of this.

Long wrote: “To say Lebedev is intertwined with Johnson is to seriously understate the amount of time the pair spend together. Johnson went to a party thrown by Lebedev the day after winning the general election. Lebedev is known for Instagramming his wolves — one of whom is called Boris. How can the prime minister remotely hope to clean up the mess Putin’s mercenaries have made in this country when he is up to his neck in it himself?”

The House of Lords has more sovereignty than Holyrood in the eyes of the British state

The courts have interpreted the devolution settlement as meaning that Holyrood has no sovereignty - unlike the Lords.

Despite the fact that the referendum on a Scottish Parliament was passed by an overwhelming majority in 1997; the Commons and the Lords hold all of the legitimate power to rule the UK. They can and do overrule Holyrood on any point. 

The House of Lords is the place where legislation that is imposed on Scotland is debated and amended. Many Acts have been explicitly rejected by the Scottish Parliament - the Internal Markets Act; the Immigration Bill. The Scottish Parliament has no power to amend this legislation. Its recommendations are ignored by the UK Government. 

The contrast between the democratically elected politicians in Holyrood and the spectacle of the House of Lords is becoming increasingly stark. But independence is the only way to ensure the democratically elected Government of Scotland has more say than the characters who currently sit in the House of ‘Lords’.