Lord Knight... tapping away

It is now not unsual to see peers in the chamber checking their smartphones.  Some now also make use of iPads.  Baroness Butler-Sloss used hers instead of paper when delivering a speech recently.  During the Second Reading debate yesterday of the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, Lord Knight of Weymouth was sat on the Opposition Front Bench busily tapping away on his iPad, presumably making notes ready for his speech winding-up for the Opposition.  Indeed, it may explain a particular passage in his speech: ‘I do not know if noble Lords tweet, but I do, and when I have asked Twitter and Facebook about this [need for the Bill], the overwhelming response is “about time”.’

This approach to new technology rather contrasts with the comments made by his colleague, Lord Myners, in the preceding speech, when he commented: ‘Unlike many other Members of the House, I have not been lobbied on this Bill.   This may well be because I never open my parliamentary e-mail box and therefore do not read the e-mails that other noble Lords have been receiving.  Perhaps I am in error in doing that.’

The extent to which members now use e-mail is such that Lord Myners’ comments may merit the equivalent of a Bateman cartoon…

Curious as to what was taking so long, I put in a parliamentary question to our brand new Chairman of Committees, Lord Sewel.  I have reproduced the exchange below.

Lord Tyler:  To ask the Chairman of Committees what progress has been made since 2009-10 in delivering archived video coverage of parliamentary proceedings to mobile devices.[HL168]

The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel): The Parliamentary Recording Unit is currently working with its video contractor on the introduction of live streaming to mobile devices, which will be available from October 2012. It is also developing options to extend access to archive video covering the past three years of House of Lords proceedings. Separate investigations are under way into options for the digitisation of audio and video tapes dating back to the 1970s, and for enabling this material to be delivered alongside current video output.

So soon citizens will be able to keep an eye on what we’re up to anywhere and, if they don’t like what they hear, go back to the 1970s and listen to the pronouncements of our predecessors instead!

Of course, if the Commons make the same material available, I will be able to sit on a bus and listen to my maiden speech from March 1974, when I was elected in Bodmin for only six months until the October election.  That really will be a ride down memory lane…

“So what does she think about the government’s plan to reform the Lords? Straight-backed in her chair, she rolls her eyes. The coalition is, she says, a “pain in the neck … the days are longer, things are more drawn out, a lot of the time it’s just plain ‘your turn, Charlie.’” (During one particularly late vote, or so I’ve heard tell, she turned to her neighbour and said: “This is like the blitz – only without the sex, of course.”)…!”

But this exercise has been an incredibly sobering experience for me. I have spent many years working in the developing world amongst communities where food is scarce and have seen for myself how heartbreaking it is for mothers to see their small children waiting patiently in line for a nutritionally inadequate main meal – usually their only meal of the day. Too often this consisted of a thin soup with some maize or cassava to bulk it up. Food – good quality, nutritionally balanced food – is essential not just for life, but to help children grow and develop healthily. And yet there are millions of children for whom there is no guarantee of a regular, plentiful source of nourishment.

You may well be asking what effect five days of a relatively meagre diet will have on a very well-fed adult and how on earth this might have a meaningful impact on starving children all over the world.

Well, I now have a fraction more personal understanding of what it feels like to be too hungry to sleep.  And due to the generosity of friends and sponsors, a number of peers who have taken part in this event have raised a significant amount of money for various charities working at grassroots level, who really make a difference in providing assistance to some of the world’s most disadvantaged people. Our minor and short-lived hardship should have a profound impact on people living on very low incomes right across the globe.

The last five days have also made me realise – with a shock – how much food we actually consume, way over and above the amount we need to survive and be healthy.

Living Below the Line is still a new campaign in the UK and I hope that next year, even more people will take up the challenge and join in. The lasting effect could be that we all learn to eat less and be more pro-active in insisting on a more equitable distribution of food around the world.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/120510-0002.htm

Any views?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/120510-0002.htm

I have been struck, listening to in particular (but by no means exclusively) to Labour Peers, that the question of primacy of the Commons has become the obsessive hobby horse of so many in the Lords.  Curiously, most MPs I speak to, of all parties, do not worry so much about the prospect of a fairly assertive second chamber, able to be difficult and get in the way of the government of the day. 

MPs, particularly backbenchers, are often frustrated by their inability to act as a brake on the executive, when part of their role (on the government side at least) is to sustain the government in power.  Many of the Labour Peers are, however, former Ministers.  There are erstwhile Chief Whips and Secretaries of State aplenty. 

I think this may impact on the particular end of the telescope from which they view this issue.  There is a philosophical assumption on the part of some that the overriding consideration of our constitution should be for “the government to get its way”.

It is a fair perspective.  There is certainly merit in having a system which permits a party (or parties) to secure office, and to deliver a programme on the basis of what was promised to the electorate.  Students of the US system, awash with checks and balances, will know the difficulties there of getting anything done – take, for example, the endless wrangling required to introduce free healthcare.

The Westminster system, by default, is the polar opposite.  As the respected columnist, Andrew Rawnsley, once put it, “Within his own universe, no democratic leader is potentially more powerful than a British Prime Minister with a reliable parliamentary majority and an obedient Cabinet.”  Most committed parliamentary reformers take the view that this is a defect, not a strength, in our system.  Hence Lord Hailsham’s condemnation of “elective dictatorship”.

Liberals in particular view with suspicion the idea that temporary stewards of the State Apparatus (a government) should secure a brief election victory, on a minority vote, and then be able to legislate virtually unchecked for five years.

For reformers, the question of primacy of one House over another – though important to ensure a functional constitutional balance – is secondary to the issue of Parliament’s position relative to the Executive.  The refrain about primacy of the Commons can all-too-easily mean “primacy of the Executive”:  the ability of the Government to overturn logical, well-argued, long-discussed arguments in the Lords at the whim of a pliant, whipped majority in the Commons.

A stronger second chamber – however composed – would challenge this orthodoxy, and reinforce the position of Parliament as the country’s sovereign body.  However, we can hardly expect former Government Chief Whips to be happy about that!

Meanwhile, how can the opponents of reform use the primacy argument to dig into the last ditch, threatening filibustering, to resist a reform bill which arrives from the Commons?

There was the usual pageantry for the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday.  Given that it was a two-year session, some new peers were attending the ceremony for the first time.  The chamber was packed.  (One year, there were empty benches at the back, the result apparently of a shortage of robes. )  The timetable doesn’t change, so everyone knows the routine.  Nowadays, there are television screens in the chamber, so we can see what is going on outside.  Previously, we would be sat in the chamber for over an hour waiting for the Queen to arrive, without seeing any of the proceedings leading up to her arrival. 

The occasion is symbolically important as it is the one occasion when the legal entity of Parliament – the Queen-in-Parliament – assembles.   As peers, we have to wear our robes.  (It was quite hot wearing them.  One advantage when State Opening was in November was that it was cooler.)   As regular readers will know, one thing guaranteed to infuriate peers is when a story about the House of Lords appears in the press and it is accompanied by a picture of peers at State Opening.    

The ceremony is quite short.  This year, the speech was rather sparse in content, and the Queen sounded a little hoarse in reading it.  It was well trailed that there would be a reference to reform of the Lords, but the reference came towards the end of the speech and in rather opaque form.   A Bill would be brought forward to reform the composition of the House.  There was no reference to election.  That leaves quite a degree of latitude.  The fight goes on.

The Olympic Truce wasn’t just part of the ancient Olympic Games, it was their entire point. The Games being conceived in 776BC as means of allowing fighting men of different city-states to rise above their differences and to compete in the temple of the king of the gods together as Olympians. The Olympic Games and their accompanying Sacred Truce were undoubtedly one of the most inspiring ideas to emerge from ancient Greece and they have a resonance for us today.

The idea was that if you could break the perpetual cycle of violence and open a window of peace and lift the eyes and minds of competitors and spectators beyond their differences in order to celebrate what they had in common, then it would show that peace was possible, that war was not the inevitable human condition, we could rise above our differences.

In the Modern era of the Olympic & Paralympic Games the  Olympic Truce the truce has become more symbolic, than sacred. Since 1994 the Olympic Truce has been the subject of the of a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, however although most countries of the United Nations signed the truce resolution, there have only been a few examples of it being implemented. My walk campaign ‘Walk for Truce’ (www.walkfortruce.org) aimed to broaden awareness and extend implementation of the truce.

I was delighted that this campaign was quickly supported by The Foreign Secretary, William Hague as it was seen to fit very much with the emphasis which the government were placing on conflict prevention and in highlighting that resolutions of the UN should only be about fine words and ideals but should be backed by action.

The resolution is always proposed at the UN by the host nation of the Games. In October 2011 Lord Coe, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government proposed the Resolution ‘Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal’. The resolution when presented was not only agreed to by all 193 member states of the United Nations, it was co-sponsored by every member state of the United Nations.

This is why the prime minister, David Cameron has called the Olympic Truce, “an historic opportunity”. It is an opportunity to rediscover the ancient ideals and vision of the founders of the Olympic Games and apply them once again in a modern setting. It is an opportunity to hand on a legacy from London 2012 which stretches far beyond medals won and records broken, and is represented in lives saved and hope restored. To paraphrase the Chinese proverb, ‘It is better to light a flame than to curse the darkness’. So when this ‘flame’ of the Olympic truce is lit in London our desire is that it will not be extinguished at the closing ceremony on September 9 but will grow stronger and burn brighter as it is handed on to Sochi, Rio de Janeiro, Pyeongchang and beyond. That is a legacy worth working for….and walking for.