In July 2015, Lord Sewel, Chairman of Committees and Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, resigned in disgrace when lurid aspects of his private life were exposed in the press. The strong feeling in the Lords, that its rules of conduct should be tightened, has been set aside, and the name of the disgraced peer has been incorporated in constitutional legislation. Alistair Lexden criticised these decisions in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph on March 8.
SIR-- Lord Sewel, who left the Lords in 2015, belonged to Labour, not the Conservatives (“Peers block misconduct rules”, report, March 3). It is astonishing that a Lords committee should plead that the lack of “consensus” should prevent the introduction of tough sanctions against future miscreants. The House as a whole should vote on the matter.
It is even more remarkable that a parliamentary convention bearing the Sewel name, established when he was a Scottish Office minister under Tony Blair, was enshrined in law in the Scotland Act 2016, passed months after his downfall. Under it, Parliament will not normally legislate on matters that have been devolved to subordinate assemblies. My protests were disregarded. The Sewel convention conferred constitutional immortality on a discredited man.
Lord Lexden
London SW1