eurealist.co.uk

What an increasingly absurd, corrupt and dangerous system we have. Labour Party oligarchs devise a manifesto for elections to the first chamber. The people who they permit to stand as Labour candidates must accept everything in that manifesto.

Enough of those candidates are elected to give the party oligarchs a whipped majority in the first chamber, and therefore more or less absolute power, even though the Labour MPs between them only received maybe a quarter of the total votes cast.

The party oligarchs don’t consider that they are necessarily bound by everything in that election manifesto (circumstances can change, of course, and in any case most of the voters never read it).

Nevertheless they want the second chamber to be legally obliged to accept any parts of their manifesto which they do choose to implement, in whatever way they choose. Even though the manifesto was for elections to the first chamber, not the second, and most of the members of the second chamber are not in their party.

And they really expect us to pay for all this crap? Of course, the word “Labour” above could be replaced by “Conservative” or “Liberal Democrat”, and everything else would still apply.

House of Lords champions our liberties over ID cards

Sir: The Labour manifesto commitment on ID cards was: “We will introduce ID cards … backed up by a national database and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports”. The present Bill, however, would compel people to apply for an ID card when they renew their passport. In their attempts to link the Bill to the manifesto, the Government have come up with some shocking statements, such as “passports are voluntary documents”, “applying for a passport is matter of free will” and “this is not compulsion by stealth”.

Far from blocking the Government’s manifesto pledge, as ministers claim (report, 29 March), the Lords have consistently attempted to amend the Bill to make it consistent with the manifesto. It is the Government’s heavily-whipped majority in the Commons which is being obstinate and unreasonable here, in refusing to accept any amendment whatsoever to the Bill.

The Identity Cards Bill is an illiberal, arrogant, unnecessary piece of legislation. It grants enormous powers to the Home Secretary: but we are expected to believe the Government’s assurances that these powers will be used reasonably. The Government’s behaviour in attempting to railroad this Bill through shows what value we should place on these assurances.

SEB THIRLWAY

EDINBURGH

Sir: I am fascinated by Geoff Hoon’s idea that the Salisbury Convention should be enshrined in law, so that the House of

Lords would be forced to pass any government bill which purported to implement a manifesto pledge (”Peers threatened with ban on blocking manifesto pledges”, 29 March)

If election manifestos were given legal status in order to bind the Lords, should not the victorious party also be bound to keep the promises upon which it was elected? Would we then have disgruntled citizens seeking court orders, compelling the Government to meet its manifesto targets for carbon emissions, or educational standards, or hospital waiting lists?

And what if there was a coalition government? Would a judge have to decide which party’s pledge should prevail?

DR D R COOPER

MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE

From Dennis Cooper

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