We’ve just been speaking to crossbench peer and barrister Lord Alex Carlile about the prime minister’s news briefing this morning.
He explained it’s right for the House of Lords to make sure the Rwanda bill “complies with British standards of legislation”.
That means it “does not defy international law, that it is within our constitutional settlement, that it is fair and objective, and that it is not simply a sticking plaster over internal dissent within the Conservative Party”.
On the PM’s news briefing earlier, the crossbench peer said it “was banal, it was vacuous, and it was extraordinarily repetitive, but it didn’t say anything new”.
‘We are not there to thwart the government’
He said there have been “occasions” previously where PMs have expressed their “hope that the House of Lords would toe the House of Commons’ line”.
But he said the briefing showed the “prime minister doesn’t understand anything about how the House of Lords operates”.
“We are not there to thwart the government,” he added.
Lord Carlile said where there is a manifesto commitment on which a sitting government was elected, then “that bill will pass in due course because it has the clear support of the electorate”.
“But in this kind of situation, where the bill that’s proposed is exceptionally malign, then in my view it is right for the House of Lords to debate it fully, to propose amendments, and to send it back to the House of Commons – repeatedly if necessary.”
He said it is “extremely rare” for the Lords to block legislation passed by the Commons, but added: “In a situation like this, it is certainly legitimate for the House of Lords to put the legislation to the test, to amend it, and above all, to ensure it does not damage the reputation of our great UK jurisdictions around the world, which this bill will if it’s passed in its current form.”
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