“Not what the doctor ordered” – this was one idea for the title of the report which the Committee that I chair has just published. In the end, we decided on ‘Safety First’, not least because health professionals extend beyond doctors. The title encapsulates the issues that we uncovered in our inquiry, which took place…
There was a sad example of poor quality journalism in the London Evening Standard yesterday. Written by Craig Woodhouse the headline is ‘Skiving’ MPs want another holiday’. There are a lot of things you can say about MP’s! not least about the failure to have a proper expenses system and some appalling examples of abuse.…
When I was a member of the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Renewal Bill, we occasionally had problems maintaining a quorum. Under the rules for a quorum, three MPs had to be present; this in some meetings proved difficult to maintain. When there was just three in attendance and one rose to leave (it was…
A Government nowadays usually comprises over 120 ministers, with twenty to thirty drawn from the House of Lords. The figure includes whips, who in the House of Lords fufil additional functions to those carried out by whips in the House of Commons. In the Commons, whips are usually seen but not heard. In the Lords,…
Alastair Campbell had a general rule that if a Minister was still the centre of a media feeding frenzy for more than a week then inevitably they would go. So it has been for Liam Fox. I was not surprised. At first I thought he would get through but the constant drip feed of new angles on the…
