1 July 2010 : Column 1906 2.34 pm Lord Hylton: My Lords, I intend to confine myself to our objectives within the Middle East. Our national interest lies in trade. On Tuesday, I took part in a live video link between this Parliament and some Palestinian MPs, all of whom, as it happens, were threatened…
There was an interesting question from Baroness Coussins last week. She asked for the Government response to the Paris declaration of June 23 on the global shortage of qualified linguists, noting that the European Commission had called on countries to invest more in language education in schools. But in this country the study of modern languages beyond the…
This week the quiz is a straightforward one to identify particular members of the House of Lords. As this blog has variously noted, the House is notable for the range of its membership. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. 1. The House of Lords has just…
I should be most grateful if you would ask your Government to defer, or better still, cancel the deportation from East Jerusalem of the following persons: Mr Khalid Abu Arafa, former Minister for Jerusalem Affairs; Mr Ahmed Attoun; Mr Mohamed Abu Tayr; Mr Mohamed Imran Totah All four were elected to the Palestinian Legislature in…
Among the best speeches in yesterday’s debate on Lords reform were those made by Lord Cope of Berkeley on the Conservative benches, Lord Walton of Detchant on the cross-benches and Lord Rooker on the Labour benches. Lord Rooker drew on his experience in both Houses, including as a minister. One of his most telling observations was: “After…
Yesterday’s debate on a motion to take note of the case for reform of the House of Lords occupied almost nine hours with sixty-seven speakers. Many speakers, myself included, distinguished between reform and destruction. Getting rid of the House of Lords is not reform of the House. Most of us who spoke favour reform in order to strengthen the…
During our debate yesterday on reform of the Lords, there was a most interesting contribution from the Earl of Sandwich. You can read his and all the rest of our speeches here: This reminded me of a fascinating historical “what if” I came upon in my current bedtime reading. I had previously thought that the…
This last two days we’ve been meeting in the Chamber 15 minutes early to accommodate the influx of new peers. Why we continue to have new people joining us when one of the key issues is how to reduce the size of the Chamber is something of a puzzle but they keep coming! The six…
I’m having a tutorial on how to use these three social networks and I am interested to see if I can use them to extend the reach of Lords of the Blog.
