On Thursday last week, the Government tabled a measure to bring forward changes to the electoral registers which provides the basis for conducting our elections and reviewing constituency boundaries. It probably hoped that nobody would notice that this change could remove nearly two million people from the voting registers by the end of this…
On Tuesday, I took part in the Rehab Parliamentary Pancake Race. The annual contest, now in its sixteenth year, involves teams of MPs, Peers and members of the Press Gallery racing (and flipping) their way around Victoria Tower Gardens in aid of the disability charity, Rehab. Despite allegations of some unparliamentary behaviour, the MPs’ team managed…
Today, Lord Collins of Highbury asked a question about how the Government was responding to the rapidly growing number of people with diabetes. I used the question to draw attention to the report that I launched today on “Keeping people with diabetes out of hospital.” The report was drawn up through a series of meetings…
When I first came to the Lords (1999) the library was inaccessible for me because it was very heavy smoking area. Some of the dining areas were also unpleasant and dominated by cigar smoke. I remember Charles Kennedy coming to an afternoon tea in the Peers Dining Room that I hosted for all of us…
