Biography information for Lord Grocott – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Biography information for Lord Grocott on 2015-12-22.
To ask the Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by the Leader of the House on 17 December that the convention on statutory instruments has now broken” (HL Deb
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Prior to October 2015, the House of Lords had rejected statutory instruments on four occasions since World War II. None of those occasions concerned a statutory instrument implementing a budget measure intended to deliver £4.4bn of savings that had already been approved by the House of Commons – thereby overruling the elected House on a matter of public spending – nor is it precedented for the House of Lords to decline to consider a statutory instrument until the Government has made specific changes to the policy underpinning it. The House’s decision to withhold agreement to the Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 therefore broke new ground, and may be regarded as a breach of the convention underpinning the House’s powers in regard to secondary legislation as well as the longer-standing convention regarding the financial primacy of the House of Commons.
