Ex-cons Watson and Archer escape Lords ban on jailbird peers

Published on Monday 20 July 2009 22:03

PROPOSALS to clean up the House of Lords after a series of sleaze scandals have been proposed by the government.

The changes would mean that peers sentenced to jail terms of a year or more would be banned from the upper chamber.

However, former Glasgow Labour MP Lord Watson, sentenced to 16 months in 2005 for willful fire raising, will not lose his seat as the changes do not apply retrospectively.

Lord Archer, the novelist and former Conservative Party deputy chairman, would also escape censure despite being jailed for perjury in 2001.

The proposals also include the removal of the last 92 hereditary peers from the Lords. Currently, when an hereditary peer dies, they are replaced via a by-election, but this will no longer happen.

Hereditary and life peers will also be able to renounce their peerages, leading some observers to suspect that this paves the way for Lord Mandelson, the de facto deputy Prime Minister, to return to the Commons.

In the wake of the "cash for amendments" scandal exposed earlier this year, the House of Lords will be able to vote to disqualify peers. Two of the four peers exposed as having been willing to accept cash in return for attempting to change the law, Lords Truscott and Taylor, have been suspended until the autumn as the House currently has no power to force them to quit.

These proposals are separate to moves to create an 80 per cent or 100 per cent directly-elected second chamber, with members serving 15-year terms.

Other initiatives in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, published by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, include a one-year time limit on cases brought under the Human Rights Act; allowing the Commons to block treaties the government seeks to enter into, and making it easier to hold demonstrations in Parliament Square.

The independence of the civil service is being placed on a statutory footing, giving legal guarantees to proposals made as far back as 1854, and politically-partial special advisers are denied power over civil servants.

The aim was to build on a promise made by Gordon Brown just days after becoming Prime Minister to strengthen Parliament and "invigorate our democracy". But the bill was attacked as a "rag-tag" collection of proposals that would have little lasting impact.

Dominic Grieve, shadow justice secretary, said: "This government has more interest in paving the way for Peter Mandelson's comeback to the Commons … than proper constitutional reform."

And Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said: "Gordon Brown has ducked all the big issues: cleaning up party funding, a fair voting system and reforming the House of Lords."