Monday March 15th: Met two Muslims working on full citizenship and inter-community cooperation in Britain Portcullis House: Kurdish New Year celebrations. 1 Parliament Street: Dinner with visiting Parliamentarians from the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq. Tuesday March 16th: Talk, discussion and lunch for Professor Avi Schlaim of Oxford University on the current situation in Israel…
Monday 15 March was a particularly busy day for me in the House. The day started with a question from Lord Pearson of Rannoch (the leader of UKIP) on whether the UK could be required to provide financial assistance to an EU Member State “threatened with severe difficulties”. After answering Lord Pearson’s tabled and supplementary question I had to field questions from other peers on the same subject for that part of the allocated 7½ minutes that remained outstanding. In practice I was let off rather lightly as a fair amount of time was taken up as peers endeavoured to establish their right to ask the next question on the subject. Eventually the Leader of the House, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, stepped in to provide much appreciated guidance. The questioning ended with Lord Tebbit asking me to confirm that I would forthright resign if any costs fell on the British taxpayer in respect of any bail-out of Greece. Lord Tebbit and Lord Pearson are both regular bloggers elsewhere.
There were some interesting exchanges in the House yesterday when Viscount Tenby asked at Question Time whether the Government planned to change the law to allow peers to vote in general elections. He pointed out that, if prisoners were allowed to vote, the only people barred from voting would be those deemed incapable of voting and…
Every six months chairs of foreign affairs committees from each national parliamentary chamber in the EU get together to discuss foreign affairs at a European level. It’s a small part of making the EU more accountable. The group is known as COFAC (Chairs of Foreign Affairs Committees) and as chair of the Lords’ EU foreign…
I suffer from diabetes so I have followed medical progress and treatment opportunities closely. There is always a fear of blindness with this condition so it is really encouraging to find the Government is introducing retinopathy screening to all potentially vulnerable groups nationwide whose eyesight is threatened. But we have to find new ways of…
Anglican Prayers are read at the beginning of each sitting at 2.30 precisely until 2.35pm when Questions begin. I regularly go to prayers simply in order to get a seat. If it’s a popular day, crossbenchers will only get a seat if they do pray! I rather like prayers, the ancient language of the 17th…
I was speaking the week before last at the Dukeries College in Nottinghamshire and one pupil asked about compulsory voting. I asked the opinion of the audience. There was a majority, but only a small one, against making voting compulsory. When I asked the same question last week to pupils at Bradfield College, Near Reading, there…
My committee, Merits of Statutory Instruments, is suffering from overload. In January we scrutinised more than 100 new pieces of delegated legislation and in February/March we have had another 200 to look at. The reason for the increase may be a last-minute attempt to get them through before the announcement of the general election, or…
Yesterday we got out for a proper spring walk in sunshine for the first time this year, around Castle Acre in West Norfolk, one of the best preserved Norman settlements in the country. The ruined priory at one end of the village is the perfect romantic ruin, the castle rather more dilapidated at the other…
