J’accuse: the Labour Party, with the smoking bill, in the House of Commons.

The Salisbury Convention, initiated by Lord Salisbury, is the arrangement that dictates that the House of Lords will not vote down or wreck with amendments measures that appeared in the Government’s manifesto. It dates back to a time when the big Tory majority in the House of Lords – thanks to the hereditary peers – meant they could, theoretically, block the Government’s programme.

The convention has become increasingly disregarded, for good reason. While Labour insist the Lords should stick to it, they have themselves failed to follow through on their promises to make the second chamber more democratic. The Tories and LibDems in the upper house therefore argue that the chamber as it exists now is how the Labour party chose to leave it, with the in-built Tory majority of the past long gone. They also argue that, thanks to the continued use of first-past-the-post in general elections, the party make-up of the House of Lords actually better reflects the views of the public at large than the undeserved majority achieved by Labour in the House of Commons.

In today’s theguardian, Baroness Scotland is quote as insisting the Lords should leave the ID cards bill alone:

“We went to the electorate and said, we want identity cards and it will be a compulsory scheme in the long term.”

Lord Phillips, for the LibDems, points out the exact wording of the Labour manifesto:

We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.

His position is that this should mean that people renewing their passports could opt to join the voluntary scheme, not be forced into it, as the Government wishes. Semantics aside, the wording of Labour’s manifesto is redundant, and it is their own doing, because on page 66, it said:

We will legislate to ensure that all enclosed public places and workplaces other than licensed premises will be smoke-free. The legislation will ensure that all restaurants will be smoke-free; all pubs and bars preparing and serving food will be smoke-free; and other pubs and bars will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free. In membership clubs the members will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free. However, whatever the general status, to protect employees, smoking in the bar area will be prohibited everywhere.

Having made this promise, in the manifesto on which all Labour MPs were elected, the Government then allowed their MPs a free vote and the exemptions for bars and membership clubs were removed.

Why is it OK for Labour MPs to ignore one section of the manifesto, while peers (who were not elected on it) are expected to fall in line with another?

…and therefore the press don’t need his bio. Either that, or The Purge has begun:

On Saturday afternoon, I popped into the conference hall just in time to see Baroness Ludford MEP storm the stage (I exaggerate a little). From there, to a meeting in the bar, and then to an excellent LibDems Online fringe meeting. There were some great online campaigning tips discussed, and hopefully many of them will be used on the national party website for future elections. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to detail those tips here 🙂 It was a pleasure to see the party demonstrating how innovative it can be. It was also great to hear the panellists praising LibDem Blogs, for which we all remain very grateful to Ryan.

On Sunday, I was in the hall for Ming’s speech. His call for the party to be more professional was particularly appropriate, coming as it did after moments the microphone of the man introducing him failed. It was a solid, encouraging speech. My personal highlight was when Ming rightly complained about the over-centralisation of governance in Britain:

“It is absurd that if a hospital operation goes wrong the first democratically elected person in the chain of responsibility is the Secretary of State for Health.”

On the other side of the hall, I saw that David Howarth, who was gesticulating at Chris Huhne, had noticed the same thing as me: that this was lifted straight from the speeches Huhne gave throughout the leadership election. It remains an important point and it’s good to see Ming taking on board some of the issues that we raised in the contest.

(Ironically, of course, while it applied to Chris Huhne’s hospital in Eastleigh, it doesn’t apply to Ming’s in Edinburgh – thanks to devolution, the situation is marginally less centralised and the line of accounability leads to the Health Minister in the Scottish Executive.)

Much of the talk around conference was on Ming’s first reshuffle, which has now begun, with many delegates playing fantasy shadow cabinet (James has a tip for Michael Moore’s replacement at defence). Nothing particularly surprising in the appointments so far. One frontbencher who didn’t back Ming during the leadership election confided in me on Saturday night that, as you’d expect, they were waiting to see how Ming would reward the other candidates’ backers. The MP in question, who will remain nameless, had also decided to turn down their current role if offered it again.

All in all, despite some organisational issues and a pretty sparse agenda, conference was good fun. Caught up with friends, and met some new people, including various bloggers. Hopefully I’ll be able to afford (in both time and money) Brighton conference in the autumn.

According the press release, Huhne gets the Environment job. Clegg is Shadow Foreign Secretary, Cable stays as Shadow Chancellor and gains Julia Goldsworthy as Chief Sec, Webb stays at Health.