I am always away the first two weekends in January – the first for the annual Study of Parliament Group conference and the second in order to serve on the interview panel for Thouron Scholarships – so this is the first opportunity of the year to pen a quiz. This is is on quotations. As…
Somebody recently asked if I got to see more of London since I joined the Lords. They presumed that I did. I had to point out that I used to see more of London before I became a peer than since I became one. Indeed, I rarely see much beyond the Palace of Westminster. On…
The House returned on Tuesday and it has proved already an interesting week. Both Houses had the statement on the constitutional position of Scotland, accompanied by a consultation paper on a referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom. There was notable cross-party unity on the subject. That was Tuesday. Then yesterday, we had…
At the Study of Parliament Group conference at the weekend, one of the panels was on the process of socialisation for parliamentarians. The emphasis was on new MPs and how the process has changed over recent years, with a far more extensive process of induction. It used to be the case that, once elected, MPs…
Last week, the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill achieved some unexpected publicity. There was a leak from the committee about what had been discussed as to the proposed size of the House. On what one suspects was a slow news day, the BBC had a substantial item about the committtee’s deliberations. This…
