Cameron refuses to let sleeping Lords lie

[LeftishBrit]

...Statutory what? Don’t go away. It’s important. As the PM got stuck into his strong mid-morning Belgian coffee, Chris Grayling, his expendable leader of the Commons, was formally unveiling the Cabinet’s revenge strategy – here’s Patrick Wintour’s pre-briefed account – for its well deserved defeat over tax credits by the House of Lords.

If you recall, there was widespread uproar over the chancellor’s July budget plans to trim the welfare budget (its rarely mentioned biggest component is pensions) at the unnecessary expense of poor working families whom he always says he’s trying to help.


In October a Labour-drafted amendment from Patricia Hollis, a serious expert in this field, asked George Osborne to think again. Low and behold, in his autumn statement, he did. Unkind colleagues and media called it a U-turn, which it was. It pushed back the Treasury’s plans to close the deficit....



The pair (Cameron and Osborne) said they would curb the power of the Lords to block what is known as secondary or delegated legislation, the power of Whitehall departments to amend a statute (ie a law) contained within that law without requiring another law to amend it....


(Much more at link):



http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/17/cameron-refuses-to-let-sleeping-lords-lie


If Labour were trying to curb the powers of the House of Lords, I wonder what Cameron would have to say about it!