A truly meaningful stand-off between the upper and lower house

I am pleased to see that in the mother of parliaments disagreements between the two chambers take place on matters of great principle.

Champagne wars in the Lords as peers say no to a cheaper vintage | Politics | The Observer.

It has emerged that a proposal to save taxpayers some money by making peers and MPs share a catering department has been rejected “because the Lords feared that the quality of champagne would not be as good if they chose a joint service”.

The disclosure, made last week by Sir Malcolm Jack, clerk of the Commons between 2006 and 2011, as he gave evidence to a governance committee examining how the palace of Westminster should be run, was met with gasps and open laughter. The astonished chair of the committee, former home secretary Jack Straw, asked: “Did you make that up? Is that true?” Jack responded: “Yes, it is true.”

Were the Lords right to bee so sniffy, asked another committee member,mber, Demad Democratic Unionist

MP Ian Paisley? Jack, who had responment responsibility for catering procurement in the Commons, responded: “I don’ton’t think they were; we were very carefulul in our selection.”