Each year, I table a question asking how many items of mail were received in the Palace of Westminster in the previous year. I have previously written on how the number of letters we receive has declined in recent years. In 2006, for example, 4,789,935 items of post were received. In 2010, the figure was…
The Government has suffered two defeats this week on the Welfare Reform Bill, both attracting considerable media attention. The fact of defeat is, as I have previously noted, not particularly unusual. These two defeats, though, are noteworthy, the first for the fact that it was Liberal Democrat votes that accounted for it. The Government is…
I detect that attitudes towards drugs policy are starting to move, both at the international and the national level. The Home Affairs Committee in the House of Commons announced last year that it was undertaking an inquiry and invited submissions. It has now started taking evidence and has heard from Sir Richard Branson, who serves on…
November 28, 2011 was historic in the DRC; the first ever democratic national election organized by the Congolese themselves. Indeed it was only the second time since independence in 1960 that a multi-party electoral vote would be set to determine the presidential seat. However, this relatively undeveloped voting system left the electoral process wide open…
I am always away the first two weekends in January – the first for the annual Study of Parliament Group conference and the second in order to serve on the interview panel for Thouron Scholarships – so this is the first opportunity of the year to pen a quiz. This is is on quotations. As…
Much of the debate around reforming the Lords gets caught up in the idea that the two Houses are rivals, where one gaining legitimacy automatically undermines the capacity of the other to do its job. In fact, the two Houses work best when they work together, and for that having a more assertive Lords can…
Somebody recently asked if I got to see more of London since I joined the Lords. They presumed that I did. I had to point out that I used to see more of London before I became a peer than since I became one. Indeed, I rarely see much beyond the Palace of Westminster. On…
Lord Norton has referred to the Welfare Reform Bill defeats in the Lords, which I’ve been giving some considerable thought to. I voted with the Government against the amendment by Baroness Meacher to continue ESA for young disabled people who have resources of their own to support them and have not contributed to what is…
The House returned on Tuesday and it has proved already an interesting week. Both Houses had the statement on the constitutional position of Scotland, accompanied by a consultation paper on a referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom. There was notable cross-party unity on the subject. That was Tuesday. Then yesterday, we had…
