House of Lords could lose veto power

The House of Lords may lose its veto on secondary legislation, if recommendations made by Lord Strathclyde are acted upon.

In a review into the powers of the UK’s second chamber published yesterday, the peer recommended the UK Government introduce primary legislation to give the “final say” to the Commons but allow peers to vote against statutory instruments once.

The review was commissioned after the Lords blocked £3.4bn of cuts to tax credits in October.

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“I believe that my recommendations strike the right balance between preserving the vital role of the House of Lords in scrutinising legislation, and enabling the elected House of Commons to have a decisive role on statutory instruments,” the Conservative peer said.

However, Scottish Liberal Democrat peer Jim Wallace warned the proposals would give a party with an overall majority in the Commons “absolute power” with checks and balances on their proposals.

Writing for Holyrood’s sister site PoliticsHome, Lord Wallace said the Government had decided if they couldn’t win an argument on merit they were going to change the rules.

“Their actions speak loudly - playing around with the Human Rights Act; threats to leave the Strasbourg court; watering down Freedom of Information; making it harder for people to register to vote; creating a two-tier system of MPs; boundary reform; cutting funding for Opposition parties; and curbing the rights of trade unions,” he said.

The proposals will turn the Lords from a revising chamber into “an impotent debating society,” he added.

Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said the proposals were “piecemeal changes” rather than implementing reform.

“The problem with the House of Lords isn’t its blocking power – it’s that it has no legitimacy. We have the second largest upper House in the world (after China’s), and the only fully-unelected second chamber in Europe. But to have a truly effective revising chamber it needs to have a mandate, and that can only come through people being able to hold Peers to account,” she said.

David Cameron has said he will respond to the plan in the New Year.