Labour would welcome SNP in the House of Lords

Liberal Democrats have been described as “weird” by Labour’s new leader in the House of Lords, who has also hinted she thinks the SNP should take up seats in the upper chamber.

In her first interview since becoming Leader of the Opposition in the Lords, Baroness Smith warned that the Tories will meet plenty of opposition in getting legislation passed in the Lords.

She said: “There will be times we push things to a vote and take them to the wire, there will be other times we’ll negotiate.

“There are issues on which the government deserves to lose.”

Her warnings follow Lib Dem threats to disregard the rules that say the Lords cannot stand in the way of government manifesto pledges.

Key policies such as the £12bn of welfare cuts and the promise to sell off housing association homes at a discount in England will meet stiff resistance that could even prove fatal.

For the first time in history, the Conservatives are in power in the Commons but lack a majority in the Lords.

The so-called Salisbury Convention dictates that an opposition steps aside to allow manifesto pledges a clear passage through the Lords.

Baroness Smith, a former junior minister and aide to Gordon Brown, warned: “Where the government has made a promise, been elected on a manifesto commitment, it should quite rightly in a democratic society be entitled to fulfil their programme. That’s perfectly reasonable.

“Where they’ve not specified, where there is still detail to be worked out, we as a second chamber constitutionally must challenge and get that detail.

“On the £12bn of welfare cuts announced even ministers don’t know what they are yet, they’re still arguing about it.”

Labour inflicted more than 100 defeats on the Coalition government in the Lords by persuading cross-bench peers to back them. Now they can potentially team up with the Lib Dems, giving them greater heft.

However Baroness Smith said: “They are in difficulty having spent the last five years supporting the government. Now they are in a position they want to oppose it.”

There are more than 100 Lib Dem lords, their numbers swelled while in government.

But now the party only has eight MPs, Baroness Smith has questioned their legitimacy.

She said: “Nick Clegg’s view was that the proportion of peers should reflect the last election. On that basis, they owe seats back.”

Former MPs like Danny Alexander and Simon Hughes have apparently let it be known they’ve no interest in becoming peers.

Added Smith: “We’ve had some of them say they’re not going to take a seat in the House of Lords as a matter of principle. It’s a very weird principle to me that allows you to be a member of a government for five years but when you are against that government and given the opportunity to challenge it, you say you don’t want it.”

The group of peers Smith now leads includes former Scottish heavyweights including John Reid, George Robertson and Jack McConnell, who now sit in the Lords.

They’ll all contribute to debate on the Scotland Bill when it comes before the Lords in the next few weeks but there will be no nationalist voice despite the election result because the SNP do not nominate anyone to the unelected upper chamber.

Smith, who joined the House of Lords just weeks after losing her Commons seat in 2010, suggested the SNP should rethink.

She said: “I think having a broad base of opinion here is important. It is this thing about responsibility, saying you believe in something but not taking the opportunity to challenge the government over it.”

The SNP have reiterated their opposition to an unelected chamber.

Kirsty Blackman MP, SNP spokeswoman on the House of Lords, said: “In the SNP we think it is right that elected representatives should make the laws and be answerable to the electorate.

“Having a legislative chamber full of former MPs who lost their seats, cronies and people with big cheque books who have donated to political parties is an affront to democracy in the 21st Century.

“Rather than add to the over 800 ermine-clad peers who are answerable to no electors and cannot be got rid off it is time for it to go.”