Reading today’s Times, I was struck by an interesting contrast. In the main section, there was an article and a sketch on page 13, covering the current controversy, plus a leader on page 2.
In the Daily Universal Register, on page 27, listing birthdays, it mentions that Lord Rix [Brian Rix] gave up comedy acting thirty years ago in order to devote himself to running the charity Mencap. It quotes him as saying: ‘I have now stopped being chairman and have been elevated to president, though I am still as busy as ever’.
Lord Rix has been an active and tireless campaigner in the Lords on mental health issues. He is 85 today (though you wouldn’t know it to look at him) and continues his work: I variously see him using the photocopier and rushing to meetings. It is good to see him getting a mention for his work, but it is a shame that what I believe to be not untypical of the work of members in the Lords gets completely overshadowed by a controversy that will, as the Times’ leader suggests, undermine the credibility of the House.
The Times2 section carries a spread on ‘Lording It’, focusing on a ‘glorious array of privileges’, though it also carries a very good article by Lord Lipsey explaining the reality. There is a fantastic amount of work carried out by very dedicated members. It is important that recognition of this is not lost in the current welter of critical coverage – though I am not overly optimistic.
Lord Norton,
I guess I have some sympathy, but it is rather like that guy who runs ‘chav-free’ holidays complaining that ‘only 11’ people out of a mailing to over 20, 000 complained. Well, yes, but those 11 people could each represent a thousand people who find this prejudice objectionable ?
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/jack_straws_cor.html#comments
Craig Murray’s comments may be a bit strong, but it has always been the way that bad news shouts far more loudly than good. There is a simple solution to this – make sure you have 50 times as much good news as bad. Then, with the assistance of this blog, that message may get out there.
If you allow even a small amount of bad publicity to exist, it is rather silly to claim, as companies used to do on Watchdog, that “90/95/99 or 99.9% of our customers are very happy”. It may be true but it does completely miss the point.
Focusing on the negative is a human trait and complaining about that is rather like complaining about the fact that it rains a lot in this country. It may be true, but it is unlikely to change..
In summary, it only takes one rotten apple in the barrel..
There is a systemic problem here – ‘If it can go wrong, it will go wrong..’ – Booting out people who misbehave is one thing, but if the structure of regulation is ineffective, the same problem will rear its head again after a very short time.
Bedd Gelert: I very much agree. We must have effective regulation. We must not only have clear – and effective – rules but be seen to have them and to apply them. I am not against doing that – that is what the Privileges Committee is investigating, independent of the inquiry being undertaken by the Sub-Committee on Members’ Interests.
This photocopier thing – what amount are we looking at here?
lafytizzy: depends whether it is working or not!
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/01/paul-truswell-what-goes-around.html
Who said there is no such thing as bad publicity ? Mind you, I think Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about…
Bedd Gelert: Your first post was diverted to the Spam folder, so I have only just seen it. I agree with the point about having 50 items of good news, but letting people know about those items is the challenge. We have the good news and we have an excellent information office: the challenge is finding a means, or rather more means, of ensuring, or rather enocuraging, people to access and read the news.
You could try and invite a television crew to make a documentary.
Easier and cheaper might be to get some students to do some filming of the kind of entries which appear on this blog as ‘pieces to camera’ filmed in the House and put on YouTube.
Much is being made in the press about the inability of the Lords to be able to expel/suspend members and this leading to public disquiet. I know the Cmt on Privileges can and has asked members to take a leave of absence as a punishment. Perhaps Lord Norton knows more about this. Particularly has any peer so asked refused and how often has the request been made?
Thinking about this further, surely the problem is more to do with the process by which people become Lords, rather than whether they can be booted out afterwards ? There is a good piece on discipline and the Lords in today’s Independent.
It is all very well to know that if a doctor is not competent or indeed dangerous that they can be struck off. But one suspects that the far preferable thing in cases like that of Harold Shipman is that they are prevented from being in that position of authority in the first place.
And if a lawyer is dishonest, he or she can be dealt with by the Bar Council [or the Bar Standards Board which I think deals with such things now]. But that is little help once someone has been cheated.
The problem in the Lords is less to do with the fact that Peerages cannot be taken away, except in extremis. It is more to do with the perceived fast-tracking of business people and party placemen into the Lords. The quality standard was no doubt dropped to make the place more ‘democratic’ after the culling of the Hereditaries.
If the Lords were able to be a lot more fussy [and let us not even get into discussions about Lord Levy and Tony Blair] about who was allowed to sit on the red benches, people might be a lot more likely to accept the fact that being appointed a Lord or Baroness or whatever is a ‘job for life’.
Or maybe we shouldn’t worry too much about honesty and competence ? If the age limit for entering the Lords was raised, say to 79, then however crooked the peer, then old father time would be likely to catch up with them in 20-25 yrs or so, and thus act as some form of ‘damage limitation’ ? It works in the Roman Catholic church…
Bed Gelert: Being in Lord Norton’s spam folder is cramped, been there done it, bought the reprieve I think?
Your link to Jack Straw is interesting. This man with four heads has only to have one of them brought anywhere near something smelly for it to diminish the offices of the other four. One of them is Lord Chancellor. He represents a good example of Commons sense.
His fourth head by the way is as a trustee of the Commons Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund. Maybe he is a Time Lord from the fourth dimension? When he looses his seat next time around he would make a great Dr Who. Somebody send him an equity card please.
The house should have more of the fearless Lord John Peyton (Deceased) who as an MP was deposed by Lord Ashdown in 1983.
Ref: Lord John Peyton (Obituary)
http://www.epolitix.com/Resources/epolitix/Forum%20Microsites/Association%20of%20Former%20Members%20of%20Parliament/Order%20Order%20spring2007.pdf
79? Mr Gelert, surely you jest. I am sure that there are many 79 year olds who are more than capable of functioning ably but I don’t think that’s any cause to say that we should wait until nearly all the bloom is off the rose before we stick it in the front room.* If you want a 20-25 year term limit, why not achieve it by, say, implementing a 20-25 year term limit?
(I personally think appointing Lords for 15-20 years rather than “for life”, with provision for a single reappointment after a review, would be an excellent idea. After all, this would still allow for Lords to serve for 30-40 years, which in many cases would be effectively “for life” anyway, but would also allow for greater turnover and a better chance to clear out the dead wood every so often.)
Lord Norton
It was ever thus, unfortunately. “Nobby bloke does good stuff for the underprivileged” is, while laudable, an ongoing story that never gets the news bulldogs straining at their leashes. Lord Rix will still be helping people via his charity and his photocopying next week, but this week we have SCANDAL and MONEY and DRAMA, and probably something new happened on Celebrity Big Brother and someone just happened** to catch sight of Lily Allen in a bikini again, so that’s much more important, and further it happened this minute so it’s exciting and relevant.
I don’t think that people are, as a rule, significantly more interested in Celebrity Big Brother than they would be in the occasional piece about what a given Lord is doing that’s good for the country, but that’s the media we’ve got. On the other hand, given the laziness of most journalists a more pro-active approach will almost certainly work on them, although care should be taken not to descend too far into gimmickry.
Having said that, I know a couple of documentary makers if any of the Lords here would be interested in a bit of fly-on-the-walling. Who knows, something like that might re-awaken the public into a new renaissance of political and legislative awareness. Especially if we could catch Baroness Murphy writing a letter to the BMJ.
*I have submitted this phrase to Strained Metaphors Monthly.
**It’s amazing what you can “just happen” to see after waiting in the bushes for six hours three miles away with a telephoto lens the size of your uncle George’s*** prize marrows.
***I don’t know if Lord Norton has an uncle George, or if he ever grew marrows. This should be considered a rhetorical device. The Royal Uncle George****, perhaps.
****But not the Queen’s dad, who was no doubt Uncle George to some. I do not recall that he ever won a prize for his marrows, but royal historians are welcome to correct me.
McDuff: You are quite right that stories about the solid good work done by individual members is not going to hit the headlines. I take the point that both you and Bedd Gelert make about a fly-on-the-wall documentary. There have been one or two documentaries in the past (one was especially good), but the last was almost a decade ago. I would certainly welcome such coverage if we could attract a film-maker to undertake it.
Bedd Gelert: I agree entirely with your point about the importance of the selection process. That in part is what the House of Lords Bill is designed to address. There has to be very high hurdles in place, members only being nominated on the basis of conspicuous merit. What you suggest and current discussions about sanctions are not mutually exclusive. We need to ensure that those selected are of the highest quality and that mechanisms are in place to deal with any members should they transgress the rules.