Lord Soley raises the important question of lobbying, that is, making representations in order to achieve a change in public policy. Lobbying is often used as a perjorative term, but it is intrinsic to a free society. In the USA, it enjoys constitutional protection. Lord Soley rightly identifies transparency as crucial to parliamentary lobbying: it…
I am not going to comment on the allegations against the four Members named in the press as they have yet to state their defence but already immense damage has been done to the reputation of the House. So while we wait for further reform of the Lords (which in my view ought to be incremental)…
Parliamentarians, especially MPs, receive a mass of letters. Each year, I put down a question asking how many items of mail were received in the Palace of Westminster in the previous year. Last month, I was given the figures for 2007. A total of 4,199,853 items of post were received. The percentage split between the…
