Today concern about the potential break-up of Britain – in light of the planned referendum on independence for Scotland – will be raised in a debate in the House of Lords. This is a subject about which I care deeply and while I accept that the people of Scotland certainly have a right to vote…
For those of us who believe that social security (aka welfare) has a vital role to play in preventing and alleviating poverty and in providing a degree of economic security in these insecure times, the last few weeks have been disheartening. I’ve just caught up with the latest British Social Attitudes Survey . It shows public…
Back in the House today for the first time since March…a glorious summer in Italy and a lovely spring and so far a sunny autumn in Norfolk. Returning then with some ambivalence about spending these mid-weeks in London but the draft Social Care Bill has arrived and will go into pre-legislative scrutiny later this autumn,…
When the Coalition came into power it set the Department of International Development (DFID) a target of allocating 30% of the UK’s bilateral official development assistance (the term devised by the OECD and its member countries to determine whether funding or other support counts as aid or not) by 2014-15. In many ways this was…
Peers are back at work today: that is, the House returns from its Summer Recess, but (of course) many of us have been busy on public business of various sorts. I spent a very thought-provoking afternoon at a Sixth Form last week, being put on the spot by very bright students in a Question and…
Monday 8th October I have an Oral Question to the government on small business development: With the domestic market slugging exports could provide the turbo boost for the recovery, however only 1 in 5 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) exports its good and services overseas. How can government encourage this figure to grow? Broaden…
Last year, in order to mark the centenary of the passage of the Parliament Act 1911, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, organised a series of lectures on great parliamentarians. Each was delivered by a parliamentarian and broadcast by BBC Parliament. I gave the lecture on Enoch Powell. At the end of the series,…
What do Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, President Obama, Mitt Romney and Jimmy Savile have in common? They were made or broken by their television appearances; and their visual impact was more significant with the public than the words they spoke and the actions they took or promised to take. It was…
Disability Benefits The Today programme on Radio 4 is geared towards doing very short pieces, presumably in order to keep people’s attention who are busy doing other things between 6 am and 9. Their feature today on benefits was frustrating because it added to the confusion which the heading of this blog engenders. The disability…
