In the summer of 1988, before starting sixth form, I read one of our set texts, ‘Schindler’s Ark’. It was professionally recorded for the RNIB’s talking book library and it impacted me profoundly. Keneally caught all of it. So powerfully, so appallingly, so accurately. Civilisation paused, put aside, gone away, not here. I listened to …
Category archives: The House of Lords
Tax should not be so taxing
Tax, a temporary aberration has proven itself particularly permanent. Of itself, this is neither good, nor bad but we should surely be using every tool at our disposal to make sure our tax system works for the common good. Last week I was pleased to participate in a debate in the House of Lords considering …
SolarWinds Cyber Attack
Today in the House of Lords the government was questioned on their response to the SolarWinds Cyber attack, first reported in December 2020. In the light of the attack I asked the government to again commit their full support to the UK cyber industry. The attack was one of the largest and most sophisticated cloud …
Get Musicians Moving
Visa arrangements for UK musicians in the EU, the show must go on. I love music, it has got me through everything in life, the good, the bad, the lot. When I lost my sight it was a lifeline, music kept me going: Iron Maiden, Madonna, Magnum, more. Before competing at Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, …
Technology for Essential Services
Yesterday, I was delighted to take part in a short debate on the risks and opportunities involved in the deployment of large scale technology for our essential services. “Would my noble friend the Minister agree that there are huge advantages for citizen and state, local and national government, to be gained through the considered, ethical …
21st Century Frictionless Trade – Lords debate UK EU Trade Agreement
“My Lords, there exists a need, there exists an opportunity, a pressing need, a potentially transformational opportunity. The need for a border fit for the 21st Century, the opportunity; a digitally enabled, free trade flowing, free trade growing border delivered by the best of our talent deploying the best of our technologies. Artificial Intelligence, Distributed …
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Obesity Crisis Meets Covid Crisis
Today I was pleased to take part in a short debate on the latest report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Obesity: ‘The Future of Obesity Services’. The report was launched in November 2020 and makes several recommendations including that the Government: conduct research into the links between socioeconomic deprivation, ethnicity and obesity, provide …
Protecting Democracy
I sat down with BBC Cyber-security reporter Joe Tidy to discuss the recommendations of our House of Lords report into Democracy and Digital Technologies – and to try and answer the question posed by the webinar which was about how the UK Parliament is combatting online attacks on elections. It was a good opportunity to …
Wine prices set to soar – we can stop this.
This one is very clear, if we don’t stop a specific piece of (completely unnecessary and avoidable) red tape coming in on January 1st 2021, red wine and all its other delightful forms will suffer a serious price spike and the range available to us will significantly drop. In short, there’s a form, VI-1, which …
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