Lord Crisp is leading a debate tomorrow on the global impact of the five leading chronic diseases — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease and mental illness, so called NCDs (non-communicable diseases, to distinguish them from communicable, ie infectious diseases). This follows on from a recent high level meeting of the UN at which the…
My last blog on the breakdown of the Usual Channels generated a torrent of comments on the Welfare Reform Bill. This is fine, indeed very welcome but as a result of organisations passing on my parliamentary e-mail address I have now received a torrent of messages to which I am simply unable to respond adequately…
Yesterday the ‘Usual Channels’, that’s the chief party whips meeting in private, failed to agree that the Welfare Reform Bill should be debated in its committee stages ‘in Grand Committee’, that is outside the main chamber. Grand Committee is usually held in the Moses Room but for Bills likely to generate more interest there is…
Most of the noise about the Localism Bill has been generated over changes to the planning regime to enable development to occur quicker and more responsively to local housing and development needs and opportunities. It’s very hard to tell what the outcome will be…we certainly need more home building and local business development and I…
I’m back. Regular readers know very well where I’ve been so I won’t go on about how lovely it was and I have to say it’s very hard to come back to the grey skies of Norfolk and today’s torrential rain. We needed it for the garden but why couldn’t it have fallen out of…
