I have visited this place regularly since 1978. Last week I was invited to come over again by a friend, older than me. The background was one or protests and of violent riots. Sixty-four or more police officers have been injured, many arrests have been made, while buses and cars burned and traffic was disrupted,…
Severn barrage: decarbonising shouldn’t come at any cost As one of the few civil engineers in Parliament, I’ve long tracked the debate around attempts to harness the power of the Severn Estuary. Huge potential undoubtedly exists, but as the UK seeks to decarbonise its energy mix, projects of this nature and scale still need to…
Even within Scotland’s sometimes turbulent history, the Highland Clearances stand out as a notorious episode which changed the face of our country. Families were ripped away from their homes and stripped of their livelihoods. Many moved from the Highlands to the Lowlands, but many more left these lands forever. As they made new lives in…
We are all back at work now, after our Christmas break. You might think that a bit of Christmas spirit would have lasted into the New year, but it seems to have evaporated and there is a lot of sharp argument on a host of topics. I feel really sorry for the New leader of the House,…
During the Xmas break, I read a wonderful book that I should have discovered earlier – No Expenses Spared, by Winnett and Rayner (2009). The authors are two of the journalists at the Daily Telegraph who uncovered the MPs’ expenses scandal, and they explain how the stories unfolded. It makes for fascinating reading, but it…
When biofuels were being proposed as a possible solution in the search for reductions in emissions no one could quite have imagined the impact which this policy would have on the poorest on our planet: First, the feedstock for the biofuel production is being imported into the richest developed countries of the US and EU…
Those following the debate on by how much the Coalition Government should increase welfare payments in the coming years, may have noticed that some Liberal Democrat MPs voted in both lobbies of the House of Commons. This was duly recorded, and stands as an ad hoc way for MPs to show an abstention in Hansard.…
At the Study of Parliament Group annual conference, held last weekend in Oxford, one of the subjects discussed was e-petitioning. The system that has been introduced is proving somewhat dysfunctional: it raises expectations that cannot be met as well as exacerbating the tendency to confuse Government with Parliament. People sign a petition on a government website…
December saw the final stage in the passage of the Financial Services Bill through the HOL. The behaviour of certain people in the City of London has clearly been unacceptable but there is no doubt that a buoyant financial services sector contributes greatly to the country’s general prosperity. There is a real danger that the…
