Elected governments usually appoint to all the most powerful roles in government from amongst their elected MPs, recognising the need for them to be answerable to the House of Commons and for their words and deeds to have the legitimacy of an elected mandate. MPs can get even more angry if a senior Minister is in the Lords at a time when the policy is going wrong. A Minister in the Lords has to be represented by a Commons Minister for questions, statements and bill work in the Commons Chamber, but can be summonsed by MPs in Select Committee to explain themselves when needed. Most Lords Ministers in internal government and Ministerial discussions defer to their elected Commons colleagues, and are sensitive to the priority given to the views of those who have been elected.
It is also true that PMs do wish to bring some talent and special knowledge into Ministerial ranks, and do so by inviting people to become Ministers in the Lords. Margaret Thatcher for example appointed David Young as a Cabinet Minister and part of the economic team for his skills in business. In the present government the PM has chosen Lord Hermer, a lawyer friend, to be Attorney General and to attend Cabinet. He is one of the most powerful Ministers in the government using his access to the PM to influence policy generally and using his legal supervision to intervene in a very wide range of other issues and other Ministers’ activities. Baroness (Angela) Smith as Leader of the Lords is a Cabinet member, consulted on a wide range of issues relating to the passage of government business through the second chamber. She is also a senior Minister of State in the DWP giving that department effectively two cabinet seats. Baroness Chapman is Minister of State in the Foreign Office responsible for Overseas Aid which has in the past been a separate department and is an important command. Lord Vallance has been brought in as Minister for Science and in the Energy Department for his bureaucratic and scientific expertise and presumably is very influential in those crucial areas. At Education Baroness (Jacqui) Smith as a Minister of State brings previous experience as Home Secretary and will doubtless be consulted on a range of important issues beyond her immediate brief. She sometimes is asked to do general interviews for the government on difficult days. Lord Timpson as Minister of State for Prisons probably has wide ranging powers to reform and direct prisons policy and management given his past experience and views. Lord Hanson, a former senior MP, may get a fair hearing at the Home Department and will not lack opinions. Lord Hendy at Transport was brought in for his past experience in senior management roles in public transport, so he will wield considerable influence over rail policy. Lord Coaker is respected in defence fields where he is a Minister of State. Lady Levitt is recently appointed and a junior Minister, but as the former legal adviser to Keir Starmer when he was Head of the CPS may have access and influence on legal matters.
Where a senior Minister of State in the Lords effectively has delegated power from the Secretary of State to make policy and direct an important part of a department, Lords scrutiny becomes particularly important. It is in the Lords that the important Minister can be questioned and required to report more fully. Many Lords Ministers are junior Ministers and rely on departmental briefings when they have to report and defend the actions of Commons Ministers to the Lords. The exchanges in the Lords mainly rehearse arguments the Commons controls, and the junior Minister can only report back to the boss the Lords criticisms.
It may be that some other Lords Ministers do wield important influence behind the scenes, but so do civil servants, lobbyists and others. The accountable person is rightly the most powerful Minister who will usually be in the Commons. Lords Ministers have to be aware that their conduct will be subject to Lords scrutiny and discipline.
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February 24, 2026
If the second chamber is there to run checks and balances on the first, why have so many influential members with their feet in both camps? From the outside it looks at worst like a racket or at least, a rotten system.
I can understand the need for liaison between the two bodies, but it’s the embedding of Party politics and placemen/women through patronage that undermines the credibility of the second chamber. Even the independent Members you mentioned yesterday must ultimately be selected by a large swathe of non-independent Members.
I don’t have a magic solution. I do think a proportion of members should be selected by lot (any sane citizen with no unspent convictions could enter), and a proportion elected (not under a Party ticket and with any Party affiliation disclosed).
February 24, 2026
@Wanderer – we have to get real, this setup would never exist or a survive in a democracy. The reason these guys fought and are still fighting the nations desire to leave the EU is they mirror the EU, things are run for the convenience of a political elite, that fight the very concept of challenge. Accountability, responsibility and democracy is swept under the carpet for the benefit of the few
February 24, 2026
Good morning.
I can only repeat what I said before – Jobs for the boys and girls.
February 24, 2026
Members of the House of Lords can claim £361 a day attendance allowance. The allowance is not liable for income tax.
The allowance is good for London-based members. Attendance should be monitored to weed out members who only sign on to collect the allowance.
It would be a start in reducing the number of Lords to a more reasonable figure.
February 24, 2026
£361 a day (tax free) is equivalent to a salary of £120k before tax. This is assuming they do 8 hours work that day, if they only do one hour work it is equivalent to £960k PA. An NHS junior doctor even after the recent wage increase might get £100 a day after tax and about £50 of that might well go to repaying the interest and capital on 5 or 6 years of student debt!
So £361 a day tax free is rather good plus the cheap bars and restaurants – but you do have to mix with some very dodgy lefties like Blunket, Mandelson, Lord Cameron of Greensill, Baroness Theresa Net Zero May types… as penance!
Reply Lords can only claim for sitting days when they are present and taking part in debates, votes, questions etc. You are a Lord 365 days a year and may often be doing things as a Lord which are not remunerated.You cannot claim for your office work on non sitting days.You cannot claim for staff help.
February 25, 2026
reply to reply…so if it is a job not a privilege, or should be, their CVs ought to be lodged and available for public inspection to inform as to suitability.
February 24, 2026
@Mark B – always was. It is the reward for failure in all other avenues of life, for those that they want to keep quite and can’t get proper jobs. There to protect those that appointed them
February 24, 2026
You mention Lord Hermer. Never voted for and interfering in every aspect of government. Together with his close friend responsible for the Chagos fiasco. Also his close friend acting on behalf of the Mauritius government, all very cosy.
Jaqui Smith, another odd appointment especially afterthought expenses fiasco but hey ho, it’s only taxpayers money feathering their nests.
There is some truth in the saying Housecof Frauds.
February 24, 2026
@IAN WRAGG – the Taxpayer has no rights, they lent them the powers to get walked over without one single gram of responsibility and accountability being returned its not sustainable.
Yes a House of Frauds in place to support what is now the House of the Corrupt
Reply No one has been found guilty of corruption
February 24, 2026
@Reply – not individuals, but the collective system seen as a whole is corrupting as it fights democracy, not fighting for democracy.
February 24, 2026
Good Morning,
We can see today how ineffective, if not damaging, it is to limit the appointment of ministers to elected politicians. I would welcome the ability of the PM to appoint whomever he/she wishes to these positions, in an effort to find those with the appropriate knowledge, competence and probity to DO THE JOB, rather than working to replace the PM.
February 24, 2026
Yes Boris did that. He handed the well-being of the country over to experts.
They all but finished us off.
February 24, 2026
the most interesting current one is Timpson, who did great things with ex prisoners long before entering government. he did have some great ideas. he is undoubtedly being forced to keep quiet about how crap the wider government is. his many great ideas for improving the prison system have failed in contact with the crap public sector, and he has become too woke and forgotten that prisons are there to protect the rest of us from the most evil, so a lot of his early release have been mistakes. on the other hand people like alex belfield suffered way too long inside, way too secure conditions, and now way too restrictive early release conditions, just because the system doesn’t like his right wing views. it will be interesting what Timpson says when he eventually gets out of government, but I think he has been a sad failure.
February 24, 2026
There is no constitutional impediment to Ministers from outside the Commons answering at the Bar of the House or in committee or elsewhere.
Accountability for them rests with the PM, the King’s Minister, as it does for all Ministers. So long as he or she is in the Commons there is no democratic deficit.
We should be governed by the best people available. That they must also be elected members of a House nominated and populated by tiny unrepresentative cliques, which is what political parties have become, is too much to expect.
February 24, 2026
@Nick +1 – ‘is too much to expect.’ I guess you man a working democracy – for the people by the people. Something that the political elite hate the concept of with a passion
February 24, 2026
To be governed by the best people available IN THE COUNTRY, we need to select and elect them.
February 24, 2026
I do not have a problem with members of the House of Lords becoming Ministers IF they have genuine expertise in a particular area. If they had previously elected to the Commons and appointed as a Cabinet Minister, I think that could qualify as genuine expertise (much as I hate to admit it in the case of Jacqui Smith).
The quality of MPs needs to be raised by setting some basic standards relating to age and experience. With the PPE-SpAd-Safe Seat-Bag Carrier-Minister route …. all in the space of 5 years – firmly closed down.
Ministerial Lords can appear before Select Committees which are made up of MPs from the Commons. I therefore don’t think it would be outside the bounds of possibilities to change Parliamentary procedures so that they could appear in the Commons occasionally, if necessary, to answer questions regarding their Ministerial responsibility.
February 24, 2026
I have an issue with any role /position of a peer beyond that of revising proposed new law on the house of lords or committee ….mission creep, job creep, jolly creep, power creep
February 24, 2026
Maybe the reason we appear to have so many ‘bad’ laws, is because the lords don’t spend enough time doing the quality job of revising
February 25, 2026
Issues due to Lords voting with their Party leaning, will Lord Redwood tell us when he manages the ‘whip’ in the House? And resistance made?
Reply So far I have agreed with the whip and welcome the team approach to what we are doing. Yesterday we had a free vote on tobacco issues.It is always better to have numbers behind a proposition and to work within a party group to secure a good outcome. Whipping is lighter in the Lords than the Commons.
February 24, 2026
We see from the incompetence during Covid mad lockdowns and net harm vaccines, the net zero hoax/scam, the breathtaking incompetence on running the economy, defence procurement, the dire NHS structures, transport, education… that MPs and ministers are appalling at choosing which experts to appoint or to follow.
February 24, 2026
You can say that again.
February 24, 2026
By directly appointing the head of the Civil Service, and then firing him, and then appointing a new head more to his liking, and also directly appointing out Ambassador to USA Starmer has shown the way forward – senior Civil Service posts need to be political appointments and then we can get some good private sector bosses in to manage some of these failing departments and functions (such as procurement). It’s not as if the Civil Service isn’t already politicised, it’s just that there is currently no balance because they are mostly left-wing.
February 24, 2026
Seems to be a proliferation of procurement in the country.
February 24, 2026
Many see no need for a non-elected second chamber, particularly hereditary peers and the bishops. Politicians pack the Lords with sycophants and people who have made large donations to party funds. Even Russians
For those who see elevation to the peerage as recognition by the Establishment for services rendered and who will take an active part in proceedings, good luck.
The Lords are part of our unwritten constitution. We should remember that these people gave us centuries of serfdom after the Norman Conquest, dispossession of land rights in favour of sheep (“the Woolsack”) and enforced service in their petty wars
February 24, 2026
We have a Written Constitution. We don’t have a codified Constitution.
February 24, 2026
The large number of Ministers sitting in the Lords reflects the fact that this country is increasingly being governed by a New Aristocracy rather than democratically elected representatives of the people.
The Landed Aristocracy has been cast aside and the Left Leaning Professional, Media and Academia are the New Aristocrats.
It is the most appropriate classical definition of the present government. They (politicians, civil servants, MSM commentators) believe they are better skilled and more capable than the people the purport to represent.
Reply most Ministers and all the great officers of state are MPs
February 24, 2026
@Reply – ‘most’ surely that’s the point, a system devoid or fighting the challenged of democratic oversight. Yet by Law enforced on the rest of us, they can take our money rule. run our lives and we have no say – that can never be seen as democracy.
Isn’t @JayCee’s point those that those given powers reinforced by laws that cannot democratically be challenged- wrong. The UK is being run for the personal benefit of a few that term themselves as the political elite, that is the very thing that those that voted to leave the EU are against – but it is the very thing that sustains the UK Parliament is run as a fighting machine against the country and its people. It is also the very thing that stops the UK competing in the World and prospering. The EU bureaucrats hold Europe back, the UK Parliament holds the UK back, they have the same mentality of an easy comfortable life for a few at the expense of all else.
Its the bigger picture, the world, not about cosseting those lent authority in a funny undemocratic institution
February 24, 2026
Indeed and many places in the Lords have been bought or have been used as bribes to get MPs to do things they did not want to do.
Dan Hannah was on about the problems of governments being run by Human Rights Lawyers in my experience very few lawyers are good at running things after many years running businesses the law and lawyers usually cause and think of problems and reasons not to do things or not to do thing before spending a fortune on legal advice.
The idea of abolishing Juries to have just one judge who might have all sorts of prejudices is appalling. Thought Lucy Letby’s convictions )all 15) were clearly absurd and that was a jury albeit on hugely misled and with a very poor defence presented. So how many more years will the poor lass have to wait for her appeal? Given our fairly dire appeal court judges? Six such judges have refused it so far!
February 24, 2026
Agree – ‘ Left Leaning Professional, Media and Academia are the New Aristocrats’ = WOKE
February 24, 2026
The arrest of Mr Windsor has brought into focus the institution of the monarchy. The royals own vast estates in the west country, Lancashire, Scotland and elsewhere totalling ~1.9m acres. They have 7 palaces, 10 castles, at least 40 other residences, vast tracts of the seabed, a huge collection of fine art, a humungous philatelic stamp collection and much more. Collectively, they employ about 450 servants.
These days, the royals are a luxury we cannot afford. Particularly when allegations have been made that taxpayers may have been billed for Mr Windsor’s massages.
February 24, 2026
Can I assume that after abolishing the Monarchy SG, you would replace it with a President, like the USA and many EU countries.
How much money would this change save?
February 24, 2026
7 palaces, 10 castles, at least 40 other residences, plus the cars, private jets, helicopters good to see they are doing their bit to keep CO2 per head down!
February 25, 2026
and a Royal Train! – its contract expires in March 2027.
February 24, 2026
They own the Sandringham Estate and Balmoral.
All the rest is Crown Estate which is controlled by the Government.
February 24, 2026
Thank you Lynn, saved me typing it…
February 24, 2026
There are people in there we have long time forgotten about, we get the occasional glimpse of them in the background when the cameras are zoomed like seeing Lords Frost and Hannan and others that did such a great job with Brexit Wow! – that we could all could be rewarded the same for doing our daily work.
February 24, 2026
Why is it when the powers that be ‘appoint’, give someone authority over others it is always without responsibility and accountability, by the appointee and those appointed.
When I say accountability/responsibility, I am obviously meaning democratic accountability.
It is not sustainable to say we live in a democracy, then to have people that get awarded, have control of money taken from the others ‘by law’ without full and complete democratic oversight.
The UK is run as a convenience in the first instance of those that ‘think’ they are the political elite. Challenge is denied.
That is why the UK Government from the outside, regardless of all the well meaning platitudes looks like a 3rd World despot dictatorship. What it isn’t not even remotely near is a fully fledged democracy.
February 24, 2026
Off topic but a matter of high public interest which I hope Lord Redwood will give space to:
Most media outlets have closed down on comments about Lord Mandelson since his arrest, apparently on the grounds that reporting restrictions and sub judice rules apply on arrest.
This is false. The law is that reporting must be restricted when a suspect is charged, not when he or she is arrested.
In practice, editors restrict reporting when a charge is imminent, that is, when they get a tip to that effect from police contacts.
By misapplying the rule to the moment of arrest, editors collude with the authorities to shut down a story and stifle legitimate comment. In Mandelson’s case a charge may not be brought for weeks or months, or possibly not at all, but the story is still effectively killed.
The benefit to government is obvious. This is an assault on free speech and should not be allowed to pass without protest.
February 24, 2026
What sums up the House of Lords perfectly is the PM Sir Kier Starmer did pronounce he had ‘full confidence’ in Lard Mandelson.
Then to get himself oof the hook wants more scrutiny. The only scrutiny need for those in power should come from the ballot box.
Although in a democracy those with power should always be elected, that is of course not acceptable to this parliament that is looking for an easy quiet life for its 5 year term. A start could be made in that all Ministers, Peers are appointed by Parliament itself. Then each and every MP could ‘own’ and take responsibility.
February 24, 2026
“Lord Vallance has been brought in as Minister for Science and in the Energy Department for his bureaucratic and scientific expertise and presumably is very influential in those crucial areas.”
Lord Vallance, described by Wikipedia as a “clinical pharmacologist” studied medicine and then did research on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology. So I expect his knowledge of engineering and physics is limited and hence why he is the Minister in the Energy Department. Note that the current (interim) Permanent Secretary at DESNZ has a BA in geography and the previous occupant to this post had a BA in modern history and was a Master of Philosophy in economics and social history. The CEO of the Climate Change Committee has an arts degree, the CEO of NESO has a diploma in legal studies and is a Master of Business Administration… The Chief Scientific Adviser to The Treasury has a degree in foreign languages and literature…..The Energy Minster has a degree in history and politics and the SoS of DESNZ has a PPE degree….and so it goes on….is it any wonder we have the highest electricity prives in the world?
February 24, 2026
As stated yesterday, I think the HoL has been a benefit to the UK. If the best personm for the job is in the House of Lords, then they should be employed in government. But equally they should be subject to appearing in the House of Commons to answer questions and report on what they are doing.
I also think they should lose their vote in the HOL while serving as a Minister. No one should be trying to serve two masters.
However, the quality of the HOL has declined over the last 30-plus years. People like Mandelson, Jacqui Smith and the person who pushed the paedophiles in high places nonsense should never have been allowed to become a Lord. On the other hand the calibre of the HOL has gone up with its most recent member.
February 24, 2026
Your very long list my Lord reads like a jobs for the boys/girls exercise.
I am sure some of them are doing a good job……
February 24, 2026
Kemi trying to ban social media access for under 16’s is doomed to failure.
Just another attempt to restrict free speech.
As if there are not enough issues to scream about…