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Labour Minister Alison McGovern has demanded an "apology" from Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho for "lecturing" the Government on their latest House of Lords appointments.Speaking to GB News, Ms Coutinho said Labour is "stuffing" the House of Lords in order to "push forward controversial legislation that was not in their manifesto".FULL STORY HERE.
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0:00
I mean, I'm fascinated by all of this because when the Tories were doing such a thing and stuffing the House of Lords with Tory members to make sure they could get their legislation through, the Labour Party said it was a carousel of cronyism
0:15
So what's different when you're in the hot seat? What's different is about the way that we have approached changing the House of Lords
0:24
So we have been trying to remove the hereditary peers. I think most people would find it really shocking that in 2025 we still have people who have inherited their right to legislate
0:37
We are changing that. We are also bringing forward proposals that will limit the length of time people can spend in the House of Lords
0:45
making sure that they retire at least at 80. So we are changing the House of Lords and we will go further
0:52
The issue is, after 14 years of Conservative government and the number of people that they put in the House of Lords
0:59
It is in no way balanced in the way that it ought to be constitutionally
1:03
We were elected on a manifesto. We should be able to get our manifesto commitments through the House of Lords
1:09
We're appointing new peers from various walks of life along with other parties
1:14
That is at the moment the only way that people can be put into the House of Lords
1:18
And that is how we're responding to the situation that we face
1:23
When we were speaking to Claire Coutinho from the Conservative Party earlier on in the programme
1:27
she was saying that the reason that you are packing the House of Lords full with Labour peers is to push through unmandated policies
1:35
very unpopular policies as well, net zero, full-time abortion, assisted dying and the like
1:43
Is it dishonest with the electorate if you don have the mandate for it I sorry I didn quite hear what you just said on abortion there but I simply do not recognise what you said there
1:57
I don't know if Claire Coutinho said that. But overall, my response to Claire Coutinho
2:01
if she's talking about this issue, would be that she has more front than Blackpool, quite frankly
2:06
given the way that the Conservative Party cycled through Prime Ministers, cycled through Chancellor of the Exchequers
2:13
They didn't change our country. they left us with an absolute crisis
2:17
with a million more children growing up in poverty, with rough sleeping and kids in B&B
2:23
totally inappropriate accommodation going through the roof. That is the problem that the Labour Party is having to fix
2:30
to clean up after 14 years of Tory misrule. So if I was Claire Coutinho, I would think about saying sorry
2:35
for some of those things before she started to lecture other people. Well, the point she was making was that with things like assisted dying
2:44
and decriminalising full-term abortions and things of that nature. It wasn't in the manifesto
2:51
and these are the issues that you're struggling to get through the House of Lords
2:57
You've mentioned two issues there that are issues of conscience that are dealt with by Parliament on a non-partisan basis
3:06
because we have a long-standing convention that those are issues of conscience
3:10
conscience on assisted dying that is a private members piece of legislation on abortion I think
3:18
it is wrong I don't recognize your characterization of the policy I think it is wrong that women ought
3:25
to be criminalized for their health care needs and I think the most important thing is that we
3:32
rebuild our health service so that it's able to take care of people in this country which is which
3:37
is what we have been doing with five million more appointments
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