How on earth is the Committee I chair – the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee – connected in any way with the Tour de France? Turn the spotlight on Harrogate and you’ll see why. The finish of the first stage (the Grand Départ) happened to be adjacent to a large open area in Harrogate…
At long last the number of successful prosecutions for Blue Badge fraud is going up from 330 in 2010 to 686 last year. But, considering the huge amount of Blue Badge fraud, this is still a tiny number of prosecutions. The Act I piloted through the Lords early last year, although a modest measure, did…
The BBC is very good at radio drama which I often catch on car journeys. But one or two sentences in one the other day had me seeing red. This was the 15 minute serial at the end of Woman’s Hour, which is repeated at 7.45 in the evening. The serial was The Pursuits of…
Selective family memories I suppose we all do it. That is, choose which members of our family to highlight and which to ignore if we have a chance to talk about our backgrounds. But I was sad to see that in Lisa Nandy’s profile in the House Magazine recently, she omitted to say who her…
Last Friday I introduced a Private Member’s Bill which includes clauses to clarify local authority powers over the Disabled Parking Badge scheme and extends it to people working on UK military bases abroad. The Bill has already been through the Commons unamended and unimpeded because it has cross-party support. In the Lords, as is customary,…
