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A legislator-for-life, Barbara Scott, is one of the two leading candidates to chair the board of the BBC state broadcaster. Ms. Young was appointed as a legislator-for-life in 1997 and is a member of the Labour Party group in the unelected second chamber of the legislature.
The other leading contender for the post is Michael Grade who has worked both for the BBC and for Channel 4. Although Mr. Grade is a mere Commander of the British Empire, one of his uncles was also a legislator-for-life.
Gavyn Davies, former BBC chairperson, has told friends that "he expects to spend most of his time on the wealth management business" according to the Financial Times. He is talking to Goldman Sachs bankers about setting up a company to manage the investments of wealthy clients.
The state broadcaster formerly headed by Mr. Davies extorts its funds from TV viewers. Unemployed single mothers, who may be repeatedly taken to court for watching TV without permission, are the corporation's favourite targets.
Charles Falconer, the so-called Lord Chancellor, has announced that parliament will be asked to restrict the powers of the legislators-for-life who sit in the second chamber of parliament The exact nature of the proposed change was not revealed, only that the unelected legislators would have less ability to influence legislation.
The announcement was made as the government decided not to proceed for the time being with a bill to remove the remaining hereditary legislators from parliament in the face of opposition from conservative legislators-for-life.
There will be no more reform of the House of Lords in this session of parliament, the government has announced. This means that the remaining 93 hereditary legislators-for-life will keep their seats in the legislature for the time being.
The decision not to go ahead with a bill to remove the hereditary legislators was taken because it seemed likely that the majority of legislators-for-life who are not Labour Party supporters would overrule the wishes of the elected legislators in the House of Commons. The government also feared that its own legislators in the Commons might try to amend the bill to require that legislators be elected.
The government is going ahead with a bill to removed senior judges from the legislature, however, after an agreement with Tory legislators-for-life to limit the time for which the bill will be delayed in committee. This attempt to separate judicial and legislative functions is still expected to meet tough resistance from conservative legislators-for-life.
Religious groups are to receive a special tax break, Chancellor Gordon Brown has announced. They will not have to pay the value added tax paid by others when they repair their places of worship in the next two years. The state Anglican church, which already receives a bite from each tax payment, was among the first to welcome the new privilege.
The legislators in the unelected chamber of Britain's legislature have effectively blocked a bill that would separate the nation's highest appeal court from the legislature. At present the chief justices are also legislators.
The so-called Lords voted by 216 to 183 to delay the Bill for months of scrutiny. The government is now expected to withdraw the Bill from the House of Lords and reintroduce it in the democratic chamber under a procedure that will not allow the legislators-for-life to prevent its enactment.
Chief Justice Woolf who recently attacked the plan for a supreme court outside of parliament said that the House of Lords should pass the Bill.
The New South Wales parliament in Australia has passed the State Arms, Symbols and Emblems Bill 2003. Clause 4 of the Bill provides that the State arms or State symbols, rather than the royal arms of the United Kingdom, are to represent the authority of the State in a parliament building, a courthouse, an office or official residence of the Governor or a Government office, and in any other place or building, and on any seal or document, used for official purposes. The Bill is now waiting assent.
The degraded state of British democracy was highlighted today by a report in the conservative Daily Telegraph that the government had been forced to deny that it had a "republican agenda." A government minister was quoted as defending the dropping of "Crown" from the name of the Crown Prosecution Service as intended to reduce public confusion rather than assert that it was a body accountable to the people. According to the newspaper Conservatives are claiming that such name changes are part of a "touch-feely (sic) republican agenda." Prime Minister Tony Blair felt obliged to assure Parliament that despite the new name it would be the "Crown" that prosecuted offenders. Ministers denied that there was any plan to remove the feudal "royal" association from the name of any other public body.
Chief Justice Woolf, the most senior judge in Britain, has tried to redrail government plans for democratic reform of the judicial system. He told a Cambridge University audience that creating a final court of outside the legislature would result in a "second class supreme court." Woolf claimed that the separation of powers, widely regarded as essential in a liberal democracy, was undesirable. "Of course there have been times of tension" (between the executive and judiciary), he said, "but with good sense and good will on all sides they have been successfully managed. This was made easier not because of the separation of powers, but because of the absence of the separation of powers."
Calling for legislation to create a supreme court and abolish the post of Lord Chancellor to be postponed, Woolf claimed that strong links between the judiciary and legislative branches of government were to be valued, citing "the dual role of the Law Lords as judges and parliamentarians and the unique position of the Lord Chancellor as a member of the executive and head of the judiciary."
Woolf also stated that denying asylum seekers the right of appeal to the courts against an adverse appeal tribunal decision could be "the catalyst for a campaign for a written constitution." Seeming to pose such a campaign as a threat, he said that the British could "take genuine pride" in their lack of a written constitution. "So far we have coped successfully without a written constitution" he claimed. "That we entered the 21st century without there being more of a clamour for our constitutional arrangements to be reduced into writing is a situation in which we can take genuine pride."
Chief Justice Woolf is a legislator-for-life as well as the most senior judge. He uses the feudal title of "Lord."
Six of the so-called Law Lords who have expressed an opinion on the creation of a supreme court outside the legislature have opposed it. Four others, however, have described the reform as a "cardinal feature of a modern, liberal, democratic state governed by the rule of law."