The Lord Speaker

The upper floor in the south-east corner of the Palace comprises what used to be the residence of the Lord Chancellor.  It includes a magnificent room, overlooking the Thames, called - not surprisingly – the River Room. 

Its use is now within the responsibility of the Lord Speaker.  She has made it available primarily for charitable and parliamentary functions.  Last year alone, forty charities held receptions there, each sponsored by a member of the House.   This strikes me as a very good use of part of the Palace, helping link parliamentarians with outside bodies and especially with bodies that do good work, have a message they want to convey and benefit from the opportunity to talk to members of the House.  It is also a good way of enabling such bodies to get an appreciation of what the House does.

One of my personal interests is photography. The aim of the APPG on Photography is ‘to promote interest in photography among Members of both Houses and to mount an annual exhibition of photographs by Members of this House that subsequently tours the country’. This year’s exhibition is currently being organised and all parliamentarians were recently invited to submit photographs. I submitted 5 and was surprised to discovered that at least one of these will be displayed in the exhibition of 130 – and one has been chosen as one of 7 ‘Judge’s Choice’ photographs. I am very much looking forward to finding out which has been chosen when I visit the exhibition on the 21st April.

Whilst peers do some of these things too, I often find that peers are more able to make charity work a priority. Many peers are patrons, trustees, fellows, presidents and chairs of some, if not many, charities. I am personally involved with over 100 charitable organisations.

One of these organisations is the Lions Clubs International Foundation, a network of 1.3 million men and women in approximately 45,000 clubs in 202 countries and geographical areas in the world since 1917. They work together to answer the needs that challenge communities around the world. Known for working to end preventable blindness, Lions participate in a vast variety of projects important to their communities, ranging from cleaning up local parks to providing supplies to victims of natural disasters.

Yesterday, Tuesday 11th March, Lions Clubs International celebrated Lions Day with the United Nations. This event was hosted in the Houses of Parliament. Speakers included Mark Francois MP, Peter Kessler of UNHCR UN Refugee Agency and Vice Chairman of the Special Olympics GB, Paul Anderson. At this event, I was caught completely off-guard when I was made a Melvin Jones Fellow for humanitarian services and presented with a plaque. Lions is a unique organisation, contributing so much to alleviate disadvantage suffered by people across the world. It is a pleasure to work with such organisations and I know my colleagues, in both houses, feel the same.