[scott_w]

I think a good revising chamber is critical to good democracy, though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments).

I do think the USA goes too far, which has led to frustration among the public and contributed to Trump and the resulting behaviour. I’ve said before that I think the US House of Representatives should have a mechanism to override Senate speed bumps, though not without effort. The idea is to encourage the legislature to compromise but maintain the “primacy” of the House if the Senate is being obstinate. Something like the Parliament Act, is what I’d have in mind.

[hunterpayne]

The Senate in the US is the upper house and can override the House. There is no "primacy" of the House in the US system. The only place where anything like that exists is in impeachment (which is for any member of the executive or judicial branch, not just the president) where the House simply has more votes than the Senate (each member gets 1 vote). Those types of hearings are pretty rare (usually).

[scott_w]

> There is no "primacy" of the House in the US system.

I know, I'm saying this is not a good approach, for the reasons I gave above.

[hardlianotion]

Which manifesto commitments have been blocked in this parliament?

[scott_w]

> Which manifesto commitments have been blocked in this parliament?

To be clear, I didn't say they "blocked," I said:

> though the Lords recently have been playing silly buggers around the Employment Rights Act

This was a manifesto commitment which, while it eventually went through, it was touch and go for a little bit. Reporting at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f412kJChC6g

[hardlianotion]

Okay, though to be fair to me, you said just after

> and ignoring the Salisbury Convention (which is that they shouldn’t block manifesto commitments)

which is what attracted my question.

Thanks for the link. I haven’t watched it, but I will observe that a lot of the modern legislation that comes out of the commons should properly attract the attention of the Lords, as it doesn’t get nearly enough attention from the commons.

[scott_w]

I totally agree, the upper chamber can and should make amendments to legislation. In this case, they made a generally good amendment to the Employment Rights Bill (allowing "at-will" dismissal up to the first 6 months rather than the initially proposed total ban).

However after that amendment was accepted, Conservative Peers (who hold a majority) initially voted against the bill again: https://bectu.org.uk/news/prospect-slams-house-of-lords-for-...

It was eventually passed a week later when the Lords accepted the Commons amendments but that second block on 11th December shouldn't have happened.