TERRY DIGNAN:                     Down in the woods today 
young warriors prepare for combat. It's just harmless fun. If only the 
same could be said of relations between the Labour Government and the Lords.

Purged of most of its hereditary peers, Parliament's Upper Chamber - armed 
with its powers to change Government legislation - now feels even better 
equipped to do its job.
  
The Government now has to endure a form of guerrilla warfare in the Lords 
with Opposition peers justifying their tactics by quoting the Leader of 
Labour's forces in the Lords, Baroness Jay. She says the Lords now has 
more legitimacy and votes against the Government carry more weight. Conservatives 
call it the Jay Doctrine. It's said Tony Blair is so alarmed, he fears 
Labour's promise to carry out further reform to the Lords could make it 
even more powerful.

LORD RICHARD:                Whatever you did to the House 
of Lords, or do to the House of Lords, it will be more troublesome to the 
House of Commons, to the Government - no question about that, and indeed 
that's what's happening. 
           
LORD STRATHCLYDE:            I think they've got a whole lot 
of people in the, in the Cabinet - senior members of the Cabinet - who 
are saying, what is this monster that we've unleashed? This wasn't part 
of the project, this wasn't part the great plan.

DIGNAN:                    In deepest Surrey the combatants 
are dressed for battle and eager for action. Labour ministers feel many 
peers are behaving as if they, too, are on a mission to seek and destroy. 
Yet because most of the hereditary peers have gone, the Lords now operates 
under new rules of engagement. It's all thanks, say Opposition members, 
to their latest weapon, the Jay Doctrine.
    
LORD STRATHCLYDE:            What she said was that this House 
would have new authority, it would have new, new legitimacy because people 
were here on merit, no party had overall control and therefore the Government 
would listen more to decisions which this second chamber made. Since November 
last year I've been trying to test that by defeating the Government over 
a whole range of issues.

LORD ROGERS:                It is a more authoritative 
House perhaps to an extent which wasn't wholly appreciated, that it's got 
a degree of confidence that it, it didn't have before.
  
DIGNAN:                    Peers have voted against 
the Mode of Trial Bill, which ended trial by jury for some offences,  in 
favour of allowing candidates for London Mayor to have free postage, and 
against the Local Government Bill which compels councils to be run by mayors 
or cabinets.  Peers could also reject privatising air traffic control, 
contained in the Transport Bill.  The Freedom of Information Bill, too, 
may be changed against ministers' wishes. Plans to control party funding 
may be delayed if the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Bill 
is held up in a Parliamentary logjam, with legislation passed back and 
forth between Lords and Commons.  
   
LORD RICHARD:                I think that there will be 
more defeats for the Government, there will no doubt be ping-pong on one 
or two key issues, between the two Houses. I think it will be a, a difficult 
run up to the recess and it'll be a long over-spill.

LORD STRATHCLYDE:            They created this House against 
an enormous amount of opposition not just from the Conservative Party but 
from outside as, as well so they can hardly complain when the House continues 
to do its job as effectively as possible.

DIGNAN:                    In the past, it's argued, 
the House of Lords was wary of using its firepower against a Labour administration. 
That's because Labour could complain it was an affront to democracy that 
hundreds of hereditary peers, many them Conservative, could defeat an elected 
Government. But now that most hereditaries have gone, Labour may have to 
get used to the Lords behaving as many believe a Second Chamber ought to 
behave - as an effective check on Government. 

LORD STRATHCLYDE;            We often used to win the argument 
in the House of Lords but we failed to win the political argument because 
the Labour Party always said 'ah well these are the words of hereditary 
peers and therefore they have no legitimacy'.  Margaret Jay has sought 
to legitimise this House, the Labour Party have sought to legitimise this 
House so they can hardly complain when we use the existing powers in a 
more vigorous way than we did before.

LORD RICHARD;                I think it should act like 
a proper legislative chamber, which means that, that there are bound to 
be clashes between the two Houses. I mean it happens in other legislatures 
there are clashes between the two Houses.   It depends at the end of the 
day what you want your second chamber to be. I mean if you just want it 
to be sort of a, a rubber stamp in ermine for what the Government wants, 
well then you'd be very dissatisfied if it behaves like a proper legislative 
chamber. If you want a proper legislative chamber well then you shouldn't 
be surprised at the way it is behaving.

DIGNAN:                    In the make-believe world 
of paintball teams are equally matched. Tony Blair is calling up reinforcements 
in the real world and appointing more Labour peers to achieve a balance 
of forces with the Tories. Even then Labour would have to persuade a number 
of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, or non-party Crossbenchers.

LORD CRAIG:                That puts a lot of pressure 
on the Government of the day to ensure that their arguments are sound and 
carry weight. There is no question of getting legislation through here 
- or shouldn't be - purely on a, a whipped vote.

LORD ROGERS:                It must use, get used to working 
with third parties and there are some even in the Lords who find it very 
difficult to believe that they're beholden on the Liberal Democrats while 
Tony Blair in the Commons doesn't have to bother at all about Charles Kennedy's 
Members of Parliament.

DIGNAN:                    But resistance to the Government 
could be made futile by the Parliament Acts. Under these Acts, the Lords 
is forced to surrender its right to continually block legislation. Ministers 
can disarm the Lords and turn a Bill into law after a year's delay. Labour's 
real attitude to the upper chamber may be exposed, it's claimed, if peers' 
powers are decommissioned.
            
LORD STRATHCLYDE:            In the months ahead when a lot 
of the pieces of legislation the Government have been defeated on in the 
House of Lords come back, having been re-examined in the House of Commons, 
then I think we'll be able to see more clearly what it is the, the Government 
feel about this second chamber and its, and its legitimacy. I suspect what 
we will see is that the Government have no intention of listening to the 
second chamber, to the House of Lords and will reject and seek to trample 
over every decision that we have taken.

LORD RODGERS:                It's very difficult for Secretaries 
of State in the House of Commons who've, don't, really take any interest 
in the Lords, very difficult for them to say 'well the Lords has made an 
amendment - I will accept it'. It needs a degree of magnanimity, a degree 
of wisdom and I'm afraid that some ministers like Jack Straw for example, 
the Home Secretary, is, is too proud of his legislation and too unwilling 
to recognise that the Lords are only carrying out their constitutional 
obligation and he should accept the fact that they're sometimes right.

DIGNAN:                    Labour's recent treatment 
at the hands of bolder, more confident peers may well have affected its 
attitude to the next stage of reforming the House of Lords.  The Government's 
battles with the Lords have raised doubts about Labour's strategy to complete 
the reform of the Upper Chamber. Neutralising the threat from hereditary 
peers was meant to be Stage One. Stage Two is about making the Lords more 
democratic. Tony Blair's dilemma is how to proceed without making the Lords 
a more powerful force to be reckoned with.  A Royal Commission chaired 
by Tory Lord Wakeham said in January the House should have five-hundred-and-fifty 
Peers.  A minority should be elected.  The majority appointed by an independent 
Commission.  The Prime Minister should lose his power to appoint.  Party 
numbers in the Lords should be proportional to the votes cast at the previous 
General Election. So further reform of the House may not make life any 
easier for Labour.
    
LORD RICHARD:                  I think that you've got 
to produce a, a, a system, in which the second chamber has got the power 
to say to the executive, hey you know wait, hold it up, think, you know, 
we don't agree with you. Now it is going to make politics in a sense more 
uncertain, in the future than perhaps it has been in the past. But I'm 
not sure that's a, that that's necessarily a bad thing.

LORD RODGERS:                On the whole the prospect 
is that a, a reformed House, at the next stage of reform will make the 
House of Lords more independent and they don't want that.

DIGNAN:                    The Government pledges 
there'll be no let up in the pursuit of Stage Two. It's set up its own 
version of an  appointments commission. But it can only appoint a minority 
of peers, the Crossbenchers. The Government has yet to act on the rest 
of the Wakeham Report. That may not bode well for further reform.
  
LORD RICHARD:                I suspect that they won't 
be all that enthusiastic about it, so we may have to live with this for 
quite a long time.

LORD WAKEHAM:                I think the government would 
have trouble if they left things as they were. I mean it would look, look 
a sign of weakness from their point. They set the commission up, it's produced 
a report which met the criteria that they set in their terms of reference 
and I think it does produce a basis for a long-term reform.   

DIGNAN:                    In truth, the Government 
is proceeding with the utmost caution. Ministers say they want to avoid 
conflict over Stage Two and instead hold talks with their enemies about 
how to implement the Report. That may be naive because as in paintball, 
in politics the aim is to be victorious over your opponents not rescue 
them from their predicament.
       
LORD WAKEHAM:                In my view it's not very 
realistic to expect there to be an all party agreement on our report in 
the run up to an election. I believe that the Government has to decide 
whether it thinks that it's right or not and to set forth it's policy about 
implementation.

LORD STRATHCLYDE:            They've stopped thinking. I'm 
not sure that they ever did very much thinking about the long term. They're 
not sure which way to, to,  go next.
Do they want to have a stronger second chamber as part of a stronger Parliament? 
Do they want to preserve the independent nature of the second chamber? 
 Do they - are they going to demonstrate how the Government listens more 
to what the second chamber is doing as part of a, an integral Parliament? 
All these things we need to hear them say.
  
DIGNAN:                    Tomorrow hostilities resume 
when Parliament returns. In the Lords the Government faces further harassment, 
its legislation targeted in an often unfriendly environment. The hereditaries 
have gone, yet the Government 's reforms mean the Lords can now perform 
with even more deadly effect.