Business of the House his week

Asylum-seekers: torture victims

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/
ldhansrd/text/70517-0001.htm#07051777000006

The Government doesn’t train officials at Immigration Removal Centres to recognise torture victims, and although allegations of torture by detainees are usually but not always reported, they aren’t properly followed up.

House of Lords (Amendment) Bill

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/
ldhansrd/text/70518-0003.htm#07051825000004

My first speech on House of Lords reform for 38 years (see previous one in the post a few days ago). My Bill seeks to end the by-elections held when a hereditary peer dies, to maintain the number of hereditaries at the arbitrary figure of 92 decided in an agreement between the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, and the then Leader of the Opposition, Viscount Cranborne, in 1999. The Liberal Democrats weren’t consulted, and we didn’t agree to this Gilbert and Sullivan arrangement.