Since I came into the House of Lords three years ago, I have been infuriated by one particular mantra: “We’re the unelected House, so we can’t stop the government doing X.”
That “X” might be some deliberately weak, half-baked or ill-thought-through action by the government – I can’t count the number of those measures. But it also could be, say, something that breaks international rules, or is so clearly abusive of human rights or the rule of law as to be indefensible.
This mantra is what I heard when I called a vote in January to throw out part 4 of the last Policing Bill, which deliberately targets gypsy, Roma and traveller people. (We lost, but credit to the Liberal Democrats who backed me wholesale, and the nine Labour rebels who broke the abstention whip.) It is what I heard this spring, when the Lords finally dropped their opposition to the government plan to ship asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
