Final acts

From: From the workplace

03/02/2012

After months of lobbying, debates and shock government defeats in the Lords it seems the Welfare Reform Bill will be pushed through amid controversy over use of parliamentary procedure.

The government’s decision to seek financial privilege to prevent Lords from insisting on their amendments has prompted howls of protest from the upper chamber. Lord Richard Best says there is no point in having a revising chamber if the Commons can simply use procedures to restrict it from having a say.

The ironic thing about this use of financial privilege, which is usually invoked for money bills involving major public expenditure, is that the government has been at pains to stress that saving money is not the sole motivation for the bill.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said in the Commons on Wednesday that the debate over the £26,000 total benefits cap ‘is not simply about the financial aspects’ but about fairness. The financial privilege move risks giving the impression that the hit on the public purse is the main aim of the policy and severely dents the coalition’s claims that combating unfairness is its primary objective.

While the coalition was overturning the Lords amendments and seeking to use privilege to railroad the bill through, Labour put forward its own last-ditch attempt to force changes to the way the benefits cap will be set. Labour called for an independent body to set different caps across the country according to local circumstances.

This idea has some merit, but lost credibility as Labour refused to say the level at which it thought the cap should be set, insisting it would be a decision for the new body.

It was also not able to say whether it would retain the overall level of savings from the cap (around £305 million) or seek to reduce them.

Labour was perhaps mindful of the fact that if a regionalised cap was introduced, but with the same overall savings level, benefit levels would be effectively reduced in low rental value areas, the party’s heartlands.

The bill therefore did not receive adequate opposition in the Commons, while opposition in the Lords has been effectively nullified by privilege.

Readers' comments (11)

F451 | 03/02/2012 4:01 pm
So much more civilised than, say for instance, Serbia or Croatia, or even Isreal, but really the end aim appears to be the same; but which regime is being dishonest with their approach?
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Joe Halewood | 03/02/2012 4:36 pm
Final Acts or Final Axe?
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james cunningham | 03/02/2012 6:40 pm
The bedroom tax is a regressive tax upon
council tenants to cause them hugh
uncertainty and financial difficulty.
Local councils allocate new tenancies based
on an assessment of needs and by using
a points system and a waiting list.So , if
many years later a family's circumstances
have changed, then its not their fault that
the property is a different size to their needs.
They may now find it difficult to spend
years on another waiting list trying to move ,
whilst all the cheaper / smaller homes nearby
have probably been taken up.
Parliament has previously suggested that
local councils should offer these people
670,000 1 bed homes........that obviously
they do not have available.
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mrkfm | 06/02/2012 12:39 pm
A major part of the problem is the fact that there isn't an opposition as Labour are broadly supportive having long ago moved to the Right politically whereas the only party with policies broadly supported by the public - the Green Party, believe it or not - are too small currently so ignored.

The Lords really need to get clarification as to what their purpose is as it is now clear that the Commons can ignore any procedures and override the Lords whenever they feel like it if they feel strongly about a policy which has made the Lords irrelevant and shows how little democracy we really have in this country.
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Rosa Hooses | 06/02/2012 1:03 pm
mrkfm: That's one way of looking at it. Another way to look at it is that the Green Party's policies are not 'broadly supported by the public' hence the Green Party's lack of success. And the reason Labour has moved to the right is because more people support policies which are slightly to the right - hence Labour's success once they moved in that direction.

Having said that, I kind of agree with you because I feel that none of the parties (Green included) properly represents my view of how things should be.
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John Locke | 06/02/2012 1:04 pm
Indeed, let's clarify the role of the Lords by abolishing this undemocratic institution. Quangos, charities and the Left depend on lobbying the Lords to achieve their ends because they have absolute contempt for the public and their own ability to make a case for their agenda within the wider of public debate. The Greens are the very worst in this regard preferring to lobby Europe rather than build popular support for their proposals.

Te Green Party would be a disaster for resolving the housing crisis as they treat all new housing and people as pollution. Caroline Lucas is presiding over a core strategy that will provide for far fewer homes in Brighton & Hove than are indicated as necessary by the hosuehold projections and the Council's own evidence of need. The Council's best option is only at the bottom of the forecast level of housing need (15,800 compared to a projected need of between 15.8k and 19.4k per year). They already have a waiting list of 11,000. Friends of the Earth in Bath were arguing that the housing target must be lower than its already appallingly low target in order to protect the environmnet of its already affluent reisents. I also recall a paper by the London Greens, issued prior to the examination of the Boris plan calling for a housing figure that was some 10k lower per year than what ended up in the plan.
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mrkfm | 06/02/2012 2:44 pm
An independent survey was carried out before the last election called Vote for Policies where people were asked to choose which policies they liked under every heading such as housing, the environment etc.

Hundreds of thoudsands of people took part and the Green Party came top (out of interest Labour were second, lib dems third and Tories fourth).

either that makes the British public a bunch of socialist/eco warriors or it means that the Green Party actually had sensible thought out policies that the public agreed with.

what it means is that the current parties do not reflect the views of many in this country and that most are interested in social justice as well as the environment its just the main parties don't realise this. The Green Party are ignored because of our voting system which turns people into pessimists.
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Rosa Hooses | 06/02/2012 4:11 pm
Or it means that the Green Party were able to promise the earth without any regard to the cost or competing priorities because they had no chance of actually being in power anyway.
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mrkfm | 06/02/2012 4:48 pm
Re: Rosa Hooses | 06/02/2012 4:11 pm

So what policies does this new party have to have for you to support them if not a party the voters like because they are too idealistic and not any of the mainstream parties because you don't agree with them either?!
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F451 | 06/02/2012 4:50 pm
I thought the whole point of the Green Party was to promise the Earth!
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Rosa Hooses | 06/02/2012 5:18 pm
Sorry mrkfm I don't have time to publish a details of my ideal manifesto. But it would be various policies that encourage personal responsibility along with the maximum possible personal liberty and freedom of expression, privacy, not bailing out banks, sorting out the education system, and free beer for everyone being provided on the NHS.
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