If Cameron wants to prolong this fight, it sounds like quite a few peers from all parties have an appetite for it. Here's Baronness Smith highlighting the Tories' hypocrisy:
So what about the accusations that our peers and others are overstepping the constitutional authority of the unelected, second chamber? Is it not right, given Mr Osborne's decision to sidestep the more usual detailed parliamentary scrutiny that we ask the government to reconsider? Conservative peers certainly thought so in 2008 when they voted en masse to limit the Labour government's ability to increase the National Insurance upper earnings limit without further primary legislation. A move formally backed in the division lobby by the current Government Chief Whip, Lord Taylor. So what has changed now that they - and he - are in power?
The last week has enlightened quite a few about the Cameron government's reluctance to accept challenge or proper scrutiny. The prime minister would rather provoke a phoney constitutional 'crisis' with peers than deal with the issues and problems with his and Osborne's tax credits policy. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour lost many dozens of votes in the Lords, on a range of key issues. We didn't like it either but accepted them and moved on. Now we have a government that prefers to issue thinly veiled threats to anyone who dares question its authority.
Personally, I have been appalled at the government's parliamentary bullying. Threats to 'suspend the House of Lords', pack it with 150 new Tory Peers, and 'clip their wings' do nothing to address the serious policy issues that have given rise to our concerns. There is a need for Lords reform and Labour Peers have suggested very real changes that could be implemented fairly quickly. But the threats we are now hearing have nothing to do with reform, and all to do with a government that hates challenge and will try any trick in the political playbook to get its way.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/baroness-smith/taxing-times_b_8382782.html
Even Fraser Nelson at
The Spectator is sounding alarm bells:
Going to war with the Lords over tax credits would retoxify the Conservatives
With a gossamer Tory majority in the Commons and no majority at all in the Lords, confrontation between the two chambers was always inevitable. Tonight’s defeat over tax credits will be the first of many. But it would be a great error for the Conservative government to choose this as the issue over which to go to war with the Lords.
For a start, their Lordships are right: taking tax credits away from low-paid workers, rather than phasing them out, is cruel and and unnecessary. Next, this was not in the Tory manifesto: the party said they would cut £12 billion but didn’t say how — and had hinted that they would not do it by tax credits.
But also, crucially, this battle threatens to retoxify the Conservatives. What does it say about Tory values? That the party will make a constitutional crisis out of its desire to tear away financial support from low-paid families who had thought that the Tories were on their side? The people who have done everything that Cameron’s government asks of them?
Jeremy Corbyn may well tempt the Tories into hubris, make George Osborne think that he can do anything, pass any law, ride through any media storm. But the Chancellor should be careful about seeing this as a Westminster power struggle — it’s about more. Not just the livelihoods of the millions affected but about the priorities and purpose of the Conservative Party.
Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit at University College London is highly skeptical about the credibility of Cameron's threats, including the ridiculous bluster about "suspending" the Lords, on which Russell says:
That government insiders believe that such things are possible shows a worrying lack of constitutional literacy; that journalists repeat such claims without questioning their credibility seems pretty worrying too. It is not in the government’s powers to suspend parliament. Even procedurally, the government cannot control what gets discussed in the Lords – this is subject to agreement between the ‘usual channels’ (i.e. primarily whips) in an environment where the government has no majority.
According to Russell, it doesn't look like any "review" such as Cameron's sounding off about today will be particularly rapid:
If the House of Lords used its veto power on a regular basis this could be very disruptive. In practice it has treated such matters with caution. If peers have concerns about a statutory instrument they will often table a ‘non-fatal’ motion, ‘regretting’ the government’s action, rather than seeking to block the instrument altogether. The alternative is to table a ‘fatal’ motion, refusing to pass it. The House of Lords Library have collated useful data on such motions. These show that in the period 1999-2012 the Lords voted on 27 fatal and 42 non-fatal motions, which resulted in 17 defeats – just three of them on fatal motions. The details of these defeats are in my book: two occurred in 2000 over arrangements for the London mayoral elections, and another in 2007 over the Manchester ‘supercasino’.
Prior to this there had been only one such fatal defeat of a statutory instrument, in 1968, leading to claims of a convention that the Lords should not vote on such matters. In 1999, following the reform whereby most hereditary peers were removed from the chamber, then Conservative Leader in the House of Lords Tom Strathclyde made a bold speech stating that ‘I declare this convention dead’. It was shortly after this that the London mayoral regulations were defeated. Subsequently matters settled down, and the Joint Committee on Conventions (which considered the relations between the two chambers in 2006) noted that ‘the House of Lords should not regularly reject Statutory Instruments’ (para 227) but ‘There are situations in which it is consistent both with the Lords’ role in Parliament as a revising chamber, and with Parliament’s role in relation to delegated legislation, for the Lords to threaten to defeat an SI’ (para 229). ...
It is hence not unprecedented for the Lords to use its veto power, but it is unusual. Two other political points are important. First, the threat of a Lords defeat on a statutory instrument can result in compromise. While they cannot be amended, the tabling of a motion, or even the threat to table a motion, occasionally results in an instrument being withdrawn by the government and replaced by an amended version. A vote, and possible defeat, only occurs when these informal processes fail. Second, it is a far greater threat to the government than it is to the Lords if the existing convention breaks down. If it became routine for statutory instruments to be rejected, a great deal of government business could grind to a halt. The maintenance of the system depends on some give and take on both sides.
Could the Lords’ powers instead be cut?
A slightly more realistic prospect, which has been suggested in some media outlets, is that the Lords’ power (perhaps specifically its power over delegated legislation) could be cut. It has long been recognised that the chamber’s veto power over statutory instruments is somewhat disproportionate, and there have been suggestions that this could perhaps be reduced to a delay power of three months. However any such change would require primary legislation, which would need to pass through both chambers. If resisted by the Lords such a bill would need to be passed under the Parliament Acts, meaning it could take two years to reach the statute book (assuming Commons approval). There are political dangers here for the government. First, attempts to make such a change could easily get bogged down in wider debates in the Commons over Lords reform. Second, retaliatory action by the Lords – in terms of voting down further statutory instruments until its powers were curtailed – could be very disruptive.
http://constitution-unit.com/2015/10/22/the-lords-and-tax-credits-fact-and-myth/That leaves Cameron the option of quickly packing the Lords with enough new appointees to overcome the Opposition majority. Even if he can find enough willing candidates, whether the public would be pleased to see a House of Lords with 1,000 or so members is anyone's guess.
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