I spent some time tonight at the Cyprus High Commission viewing a very powerful exhibition of photographs showing how a huge number of churches and places of worship have been desecrated in those parts of Cyprus that were invaded and occupied by Turkish forces in 1974.

The photographs were taken by Doros Partasides who settled in London with his family after the 1974 invasion (he also photographed the invasion itself and its aftermath).  In the last few years, it has been possible for him to return and, as he puts it, that it was “with great trepidation” he finally visited his father’s village in the occupied area for the first time in over thirty years.

He writes:

“It was if time had stopped there in 1974.  It was immeasurably moving for me.  I decided then to record these tragic images and so this long photographic journey began.

The first church I photographed was in the village of Gerolakos.  … The doors were shut.  Inside, a hut had been erected next to the altar labelled ‘KEBAB’.

From then on, wherever I went, the message of devastation was the same.  I encountered abandoned churches to the point of collapse, interiors desecrated with animal and human waste, precious frescoes defaced, altars and icon stands damaged beyond recognition; churches transformed into mosques, places of entertainment, military headquarters and watchtowers; cemetaries strewn with broken headstones, the graves themseves dug up.

My camera became my weapon.  The anger and horror I experienced served only to give me the strength to continue recording this terrible destruction of my religious heritage.”

It is likely to be “nasty, brutish and short”.

Tomorrow is the Queen’s Speech and I know no more than anyone else about what will be included, but in any event the reality is that few if any of the Bills announced tomorrow will make it in to law before Parliament is dissolved for the General Election.

Look at the arithmetic.

The House of Lords will in practice be the limiting factor.  There are normally three sitting days each week in the Lords for Government business.   (This rises to four in July and October, but that is not relevant to this calculation.)

After the Queen’s Speech debate finishes next week, there will be ten full days available for Government business before  Parliament rises for the Christmas Recess on 16th December and one of these is already allocated for a full day of consideration of the Eames Report on reforms to the House of Lords Code of Conduct (and another day may also be lost to consideration of the Senior Salaries Review Board review of House of Lords allowances).  At best, this means nine days before the end of December.

Parliament reassembles on 5th January and rises again for a “half-term” recess on 10th February.  This provides another seventeen days for Government business.

Parliament then restarts on 22nd February and is unlikely to run past the end of March before the Easter break and the likely dissolution of Parliament for a May General Election.  This gives at best another eighteen days for Government business.

No more than 44 days in total.

Most of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech will begin their passage in the House of Commons.  This is the norm for controversial Bills and for “flagship” pieces of legislation (as most of the Bills to be announced tomorrow are likely to be).  Such Bills cannot reach the Lords until they have completed their Commons’ stages.  so as a result, nothing substantial is likely to be ready for Lords’ consideration until end-January at the very earliest.

Three Bills have been the subject of Carry Over motions and have already had some consideration in the Commons.  In theory, these might reach the Lords a little earlier.  However, none are likely to get a swift passage once they get there.

One is the Equality Bill, which is substantial and likely to receive particularly rigorous line-by-line consideration in the Lords.  Another is the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which is also wide-ranging and because of some of the changes proposed in it for the House of Lords and, in particular, the remaining hereditary peers is also likely to attract especially thorough (and slow) Lords scrutiny.

So how many Bills will emerge from the 2009/10 Parliamentary Session as Acts?  My guess is no more than a handful – and possibly none of the major ones.

They will all have to wait for a reinvigorated Labour Government to announce them in the Queen’s Speech next June ……

Parliament has been prorogued. The 2008/9 Parliamentary Session ended on 12^th November 2009 and the new Session begins with the Queen’s Speech on 18^th November 2009.  I suspect the 2008/9 Session will be remembered for the expenses and other scandals that engulfed both House rather than for the legislation enacted during it.  However, some major Bills were passed and became Acts of Parliament.  These included the:

• Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act:  this provides a statutory framework for and a right for 16-18 year-olds to apprenticeships; gives employees a right to request time-off for training; gives local government responsibility for funding education and training for 16-18 year olds; changes school inspection arrangements; creates a new parental complaints service; and strengthens accountability.
• Banking Act:  this provides a permanent system for dealing with failing banks; and gives the Bank of England a new “financial stability” objective.
• Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act:  this changes the rules on naturalisation; gives new functions (and new duty to safeguard children) to the UK Border Agency; and introduces powers to control all those arriving in the UK from the rest of the Common Travel Area.
• Business Rate Supplements Act:  this gives upper tier local authorities (in London, the Greater London Authority) the power, following consultation, to levy an additional business rate for economic development purposes (including Crossrail in London).
• Coroners and Justice Act:  this reforms and updates the law on coroners; extends the laws on child pornography to cover non-photographic images; increases the flexibility on hearing evidence from vulnerable witnesses etc.
• Health Act:  this gives statutory force to the new NHS Constitution and sets out the responsibilities of patients and staff; introduces direct payments for health services to give patients greater control over the services they receive; makes provision for more information on service quality to be made available to patients and others; and introduces new measures to protect young people from the harm caused by smoking.
• Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act: this makes provisions to encourage the greater involvement of people in local authority decision-making; creates an obligation on councils to respond to petitions; establishes a new body to represent the interests of tenants; and places a new duty on local authorities to assess economic conditions in their area and to work with Regional Development Agencies to produce a single regional strategy.
• Marine and Coastal Access Act:  this reforms the law on marine regulation, fisheries management and marine conservation; and enables the creation of a walkable route around the English coast.
• Parliamentary Standards Act: this created the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
• Policing and Crime Act: this strengthens police accountability; creates an offence of paying for sex with trafficked or coerced women; tightens regulation of lap-dancing clubs; and amends police powers for dealing with young people drinking in public.
• Political Parties and Elections Act: this strengthens the powers of the Electoral Commission; alters the definition of election expenses; and requires greater clarity on the source of political donations.
• Welfare Reform Act: this abolishes Income Support and moves all claimants on to either Jobseekers’ Allowance or, if sick, on to Employment and Support Allowance; introduces a new regime of sanctions for non-attendance at JobCentres; and provides additional powers for the enforcement of child maintenance arrears.

In addition, the House of Lords spent seven full days debating the Postal Services Bill, which would have enabled a minority stake in the Royal Mail Group to be sold whilst ensuring that the Group remained in public ownership, would have transferred the Royal Mail’s historic pension deficit to the Government and would have created a regulatory regime for the postal services sector under OFCOM.  In the event, the Bill, having passed all its stages in the Lords, was introduced in the House of Commons and then abandoned.  The Bill has now fallen with the end of the Parliamentary Session. Three major Bills that have had their Second Reading debates and some Committee discussion in the House of Commons have been the subject of Carry Over motions, which means that they have not fallen with the end of the Parliamentary Session and their progress through Parliament can be resumed in the new Session.  These are the:

• Child Poverty Bill:  this would give statutory force to the Government’s 1999 commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, placing a duty on Ministers to meet income poverty targets and requiring the regular production of a child poverty strategy.
• Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill:  this would end “by-elections” to replace the remaining hereditary peers that sit in the Lords when they die; would make it possible for members of the Lords to resign or to be suspended/expelled; introduce a new Parliamentary process for the ratification of Treaties; establish a statutory basis for the running of the civil service; end the Prime Minister’s role in appointing senior judges; introduce new rules on protests around Parliament and a variety of other constitutional adjustments.
• Equality Bill:  this would harmonise and extend anti-discrimination legislation; would place a unified duty on public bodies; extend discrimination protection to the membership of private clubs; require employers to review and publish gender pay differences within their organisations; extends age discrimination legislation outside the workplace; and much else besides.

The number of defeats suffered by the Government this session is the lowest in any full session since the Labour Government was elected in 1997.  This session the Government was defeated on 24 occasions (out of 89 votes in total).  Last session there were 29 defeats.   By contrast there were 45 Government defeats in the 2006/7 session and 62 in the 2005/6 session.  To put these numbers in context: the last Conservative Government under John Major suffered only 62 defeats in the entire 1992-97 Parliament.

Labour now has 212 members in the Lords and is the largest Party, but this only amounts to 30% of the total membership of 705.  There are 190 Conservative peers (27%), 183 cross-benchers (26%), and 71 LibDems (10%) – the remainder comprise 26 Church of England bishops/archbishops and 23 non-affiliated or other. The reality of these numbers is that the Government does not have an automatic majority to carry through its legislation.  At any one time, the opposition parties can combine to defeat the Government, particularly as a significant proportion of the cross-benchers will usually vote with the opposition, depending on the issue.

The BBC has picked up on yesterday’s mini-row about the curse of “Reply All”.  What started the problem was an email from Mark Pritchard MP asking, what he no doubt thought was an innocuous question, about who might be interested in joining a new All-Party Group on Cyber-Security.  He had sent it to all MPs and Peers on the Parliamentary email system.  This in itself is not uncommon.

Derek Wyatt MP then responded to say – I paraphrase – that, as one of the handful of Parliamentarians interested in and knowledgeable about cyber issues, he  hadn’t known that Mark Pritchard was also concerned about such matters, that there were a number of other All-Party Groups in existence that looked at cyber questions and, given the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups in general, was an additional one really necessary.  Perhaps in an effort to stifle the fledgling prior to birth he pressed the “Reply All” button and sent his comment to all MPs and Peers.

This then prompted, first, a cascade of MPs and Peers agreeing with him that there were far too many All-Party Groups (all sent using “ReplyAll”) and, second, a torrent of MPs and Peers complaining about the excessive use of the “Reply All” button (some of them were quite intemperate in tone, typed in capitals and used red ink) but also – no doubt to emphasise how irritating it was – sent “Reply All”.

There are, of course, two issues here.

The first is why for so many people is it their default reaction when responding to something to tell an entire mailing list that unfortunately they cannot attend a particular meeting or whatever it might be.  No doubt, it is assumed that their presence or otherwise is so crucial that the response of others will be determined by what they say.   This is sheer arrogance.  If they are that self-important, there are other outlets – they could take up blogging, for example.

Parliamentarians are not, in fact, the worst offenders.  I find members of the London Assembly and their staff are even more profligate with the “Reply All” button.

The second issue is the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups these days.  If you want to count them, look here.  There are so many that it is often impossible for them to find a room, however small, in the Parliamentary Estate for a meeting.  Often there are so many competing Groups meeting simultaneously that most of them are lucky to get more than two or three Parliamentarians even to look in for a few minutes.

And just for the record I responded to Mark Pritchard saying this was a topic I was interested in and in which over the last few years I had been actively involved.  I didn’t press “Reply All” – my reply was just to him – but I also said I had some sympathy with the view that the issue could be pursued ender the umbrella of one of the existing groups.

I intervened in Lords Question Time today on the issue of terrorist websites.

This is my second contribution to Question Time in three days – I am beginning to fear that it may be habit forming …..

For those who are really interested, the full exchanges were as follows:

3.23 pm

Asked By Lord Naseby

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many websites have been closed under the Terrorism Act 2006.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): My Lords, the police’s preferred route for removing potentially unlawful terrorist content is through informal contact with the internet service provider. They are happy with the impact of this approach to date. As a result, it has not yet been necessary for them to use the formal powers given under the Terrorism Act 2006 to close any websites.

Lord Naseby: My Lords, is it not extraordinary that—after an Act was passed following the 7/7 bombings, in response particularly to pressure from Prime Minister Blair; and in view of the emphasis that the current Prime Minister puts on terrorism—according to the Answer that the noble Lord has just given, we are still allowing these websites to exist and to be the lungs of publicity for the terrorists, modified only by the judgment of someone in the police force?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, my Answer did not say that we are allowing those things to happen; we have a whole raft of measures. We are removing websites on a voluntary basis with the ISPs. We are countering them by putting our own stuff on them. We are talking to local community activists, who put stuff on the websites. We are looking at how we can filter them. We have talked to all the various providers to ensure that we do that filtering, and we have looked at reducing access in areas of search engines and in things like Facebook. We are doing a huge raft of work. Indeed, I would be embarrassed to stand here, having been doing this for two years and pushing it, to find that we had not done that. We are out there in amongst it really trading blows toe-to-toe. We are doing that and we are actually getting somewhere on this. Now, that does not mean that we do not have to keep working—it is very difficult. As we know—and this is part of the Cyber Security Strategy—a lot of this is international. A lot of this is abroad—it is carried on by ISPs abroad. We have to deal with them internationally. However, I can assure this House that we are really working hard in this area. We will jolly well get there, and we will jolly well knock them for six finally.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, can Minister say a little more about how his department co-operates with other countries which are hosting websites of this nature?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Baroness touches on something that is very difficult. We are in negotiation with a number of countries about this; as I said, the issue impinges on our whole Cyber Security Strategy. Cyberspace is global—that is one of the problems with it—and many of these actors are acting elsewhere. Finding out who has done something, finding out which server the information is on and where it has come from, is very difficult. It takes very detailed and hard work. I am glad to say that we have some of the best people in the world doing this work, but it is highly complicated.

We deal with those countries, negotiate with them and talk about these things. However, some countries are not willing to do this—it is quite difficult—which is when we have to confront the problem and approach it in other ways. But we are working with many countries and trying to get international agreements. We have managed to do that in terms of paedophilia and child pornography and we need to try to do the same in this area, but it is much more complicated. What is violent extremism and what it is allowable for someone to say involve difficult nuances.

Lord Swinfen: My Lords, are some of these websites a source of information in the battle against terrorism?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I do not think that I want to talk about that.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, my noble friend indicated that it had not been necessary to use the powers under the Terrorism Act 2006 because of the levels of co-operation and work being done with internet service providers to block access to particular sites. Is that co-operation forthcoming from all the internet service providers operating in this country, or are some providers perhaps less co-operative?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, so far, the police have not found it necessary to use what they could use from the Act. That means that they have managed to achieve what they want to achieve. It would be wrong to say that everyone is as co-operative, because they are not. There is one area of weakness that I thought someone might ask me about, and that I am not happy with. It is that because police forces are operationally separate, they have probably not recorded formally as well as they should exactly when they have shut down a site. We are in negotiations about that. When we passed the Act in 2006, we laid down a requirement to make such records, but it has not really been done. The Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism is now talking in great detail to the Association of Chief Police Officers, and the requirement will be met. We need to make sure that records are properly kept because we need to have precise facts to work on. The successes of the police forces are not being registered, and that needs to happen.

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, apropos of the Minister’s last remark, did he say how many sites have been recorded as having been shut down?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I would be nervous of giving a figure because it would be meaningless as records have not been kept by all 51 police forces around the country. That is why we are doing this work now to ensure that records are formally kept. We are talking with ACPO about the need to get the precise figures. We need statistics and figures that are meaningful and can be accepted and used within this House.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, surely the terrorism websites should be closed down by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, not by local police forces.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, we operate in this country by letting the local police carry on and take those particular actions. SOCA is very closely involved in some of these arenas, as is GCHQ and others, but the police take the action.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, can we have some advice on websites that instruct people on how to make bombs and are, in effect, sources of information rather than terrorist websites? It is unfortunate that people can just Google the question, “How can you blow everybody up?”.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Earl identifies a difficult area. If that is tied to things that are inciting people to take action, it is much more straightforward, but it is very difficult when it is just straight information. One of the reasons I am concerned about the whole area of CBRNE—chemical, biological, radiological and novel explosive-type stuff—is that the availability of such detailed information on the internet is quite worrying. A lot of that—for example, stuff to do with biological—we cannot take off because there is no reason why it should not be there. However, it is extremely worrying because, more than ever, there is access to things that are very dangerous.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, when we use the word terrorism in this context, are we mostly referring to violent Islamism, to the jihadists, or are other sects involved when we use that word, in which case how many and to what extent?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the word terrorism applies to a whole spectrum of people. The greatest threat to our nation at the moment, without a doubt, is al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, but there are a number of others. I would not wish to go through them all, but all of them are monitored and have action taken against them if they are breaking the law.

The Parliamentary Session is due to end some time tomorrow and the Lords and the Commons are now playing ping pong – trading amendments so that Bills can be finally approved by both Houses in the same form so that they can receive Royal Assent before Prorogation.

The Coroners and Justice Bill has now returned to the Lords.  The Commons have reversed some of the changes made to the Bill by the Lords at earlier stages.  One of these was an amendment proposed by the Liberal Democrats and carried with the support of the Conservatives that – in effect – would have enabled the fact of sexual infidelity as being a mitigating factor in arguing that a charge of murder should be reduced to manslaughter.

The House of Commons disagreed with the amendment and returned the Bill without the amendment to the Lords.  The Liberal Democrats have today re-proposed their previous amendment (in a different form).  On this occasion the Conservatives abstained and the LibDem bid has been defeated by 157 to 63.

There was an excellent speech from Baroness Joyce Gould – as a non-lawyer, in a debate dominated by barristers – in which she said:

“My Lords, I rise to oppose the amendment and ask for the reintroduction of the original clause.  …..

I do not have and cannot give examples of what has happened in court; I cannot cite cases. I can cite the views of many hundreds of women who feel absolutely outraged that this House deleted the clause in the first place. The Women’s National Commission, of which I am chair, and which, as my noble friend said, represents 550 very varied women’s organisations, large and small, around the country, was inundated with queries as to how that could possibly happen. No one believed that it could. As a consequence, I was asked as chair whether I would write to the Secretary of State for Justice expressing the concerns of those many women, which I did. I was delighted—as I am sure they were as well—to see it back. I hope that it stays in the Bill.

The Women’s National Commission has long known from our work with the violence against women sector the devastating effect of domestic homicide on families and communities. In the UK, two women a week die at the hands of their partners. That level is clearly unacceptable, but until violence against women is eradicated, we must ensure that justice is served on those men who commit such crimes.

As has been said, the law of provocation has a long history. The killing of a wife or girlfriend by a partner because of an actual or suspected infidelity—she may never have done anything, but he thinks that she has—has often been used in the past to reduce murder to manslaughter. The law should be clear that it is no longer acceptable in the 21st century—not the 18th century, the 21st century—that anyone owns anyone. The penalty for infidelity—which in itself is not a crime—should not be one of killing by anyone. Those partners who believe it right to kill should always go on trial for murder. In this instance, our concern is that men who kill women should not be able to plead the traditional argument that she was unfaithful, or that she might have been unfaithful, to support a plea of loss of self-control.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, cited the Humes case of 2002. The point about the Humes case was that the judge accepted the manslaughter provocation. It did not go a jury, and yet we have heard an awful lot about how the clause is unnecessary because juries would understand in this modern age. That case did not go to a jury; the judge took the decision. Therefore, the argument in respect of juries collapses. I find it extraordinary that those arguments have been put.

It is vital that the Bill is amended once more to reintroduce the clause and to return it to the Commons. Without the clause, the Coroners and Justice Bill will allow men who perpetrate violence against women to operate with impunity. It is vital that we protect women and children by supporting the clause. Infidelity alone cannot and should not provide a defence for murder.”

I have a confession to make.  At least once a day I read Iain Dale’s blog.  Sometimes I find it amusing and sometimes I find it interesting, particularly as a means of understanding the modern Conservative mindset.  Occasionally, of course, I read it as an antidote to low blood pressure.

Today, he had a good rant with “This Pseudo-Fascist Plan Must be Scrapped“.  This relates to the proposals on communications data and the need to preserve these for law enforcement purposes.

Reading the rant, I was surprised – not at its tone (Iain Dale is renowned for giving good rant), but at what I naively assumed was the factual trigger for the rant.  It sounded as though the Government was pressing ahead with legislation on this with a view to getting it passed this side of a General Election.  I was surprised for two reasons: first, that I had missed the announcement; and second, I had understood that this was not what was intended.

However, such was my faith in Iain Dale that I have only just got round to checking the facts.

And what did I find?  The entire rant was based on absolutely nothing.

The Government has NOT announced that it is pressing ahead with legislation.  All it has done is publish the results of its consultation exercise on the issue.  And sensible commentators (not Iain Dale) have recognised that the plans have been shelved.  The idea of a single Government database had in any event been dropped months ago.

I have two warnings for Iain Dale.

First, if he gets himself this worked up about something that ISN’T happening, he will need to be on heavy-duty tranquillisers long before we get into a General Election campaign.

And second, as I have pointed out before, there is a real and serious issue here that any Government must address.  As I said before the consultation was launched:

“At present, telephone companies keep data on their subscribers who make telephone calls, who they connect to and for how long.  They do this, so that they can bill people.  For many years, it has been possible for the police to access this data as part of their investigations into crime.  To do so, they have to get proper authorisation, certifying that accessing the data is proportionate to the crime being investigated and each case has to be considered individually.  The data can be used as evidence in Court and does not involve tapping the call and listening to the content.  Many trials rely on this evidence for criminals to be convicted – there is a murder trial under way at the moment where the crucial evidence is which mobile phones contacted each other just prior to and immediately after the murder took place.

But – and this seems to have passed the pundits by – technology is changing.  Telecoms companies (both fixed line and mobile operators) are building new networks based on VoIP technology.  This is cheaper and more flexible and - critically – does not require detailed call-by-call billing.  The data on which so many trials now rely will soon cease to exist.  The Government is therefore quite rightly going to consult on what can be done to capture this information and allow it to be used in criminal investigations where necessary.

It is not about giving the police more powers to pry into people’s personal lives.  It is about not losing vital material that is currently used to catch criminals.

And, of course, new forms of communication are being created all the time (eg. on social networking sites and chat facilities built into on-line gaming).  Should the police have powers to find out who is communicating with who in these new ways?  That’s what the consultation is about.  It is not some monstrous new assault on civil liberties.  It is allowing a sensible debate about how existing powers should be modified to reflect the changes in technology.”

Unless Iain Dale wants to see the police having to fight serious criminals with even less information available to them than they have at the moment, this is a nettle that is going to have to be grabbed.

The House of Lords today agreed to refer back a recommendation that would have given force to the House of Commons purported decision to stop UK MEPs from having passes admitting them to the Parliamentary Estate.  The House of Commons decision was intended to avoid having to allow the BNP MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, access but would have had to apply to all MEPs.

In practice, this is not just a matter for the House of Commons.  The Parliamentary Estate is a single entity and there is currently no way in which a passholder can be prevented from entering both ends of the building; it follows therefore that as currently constituted both Houses have to agree to deny passes to particular categories of person.

The original decision to give MEPs passes was intended to facilitate communication between UK MEPs and the UK Parliament and, when the issue was brought to the Lords today, the unanimous view expressed was that this interchange was valuable and important.

There are some 12,000 passholders with access to the Parliamentary Estate – the occasional access by MEPs has not produced any visible problems.

Summing up Lord Brabazon of Tara said:

“The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I think I can honestly say that I have heard enough. [Laughter] Seldom have I heard such unanimous opposition by noble Lords on all sides and of all political complexions to a House Committee report. I can say that the committee should indeed reconsider this matter, taking into account what has been said today, and we will therefore do just that. Perhaps I may say that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is absolutely correct to refer this matter back to the House Committee, so I recommend that the House should agree with his amendment.

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.”

What was left unsaid was: why give Nick Griffin and his sidekick another opportunity to claim martyrdom?

I see from the Evening Standard that a member of CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms command, has had to stand down/withdraw*/quit the command after his profile on an adult dating site came to light.

Apparently, on the site he appears as “funboybobby”, had posted pictures with his weapon displayed and as the Standard puts it:

“In some photographs the CO19 officer appeared aroused while in another he showed off a tattoo above his bare bottom.”

A Met spokesperson said:

“We expect firearms officers to display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement on a daily basis.”

I would, of course, hope that all officers display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement.  The spokesperson then continued:

“This case highlights serious concern about the officer’s judgement.”

Indeed!  I would hope that everyone understands the dangers of putting too much personal information on social networking sites – see my earlier comment following the debate I initiated in the House of Lords.

Or as the Standard reports:

“One source close to CO19 said officers could not lay themselves open to blackmail: “Armed officers keep surveillance on terrorists and serious criminal suspects. It is not appropriate that their most personal details should be open for anyone to view.””

Although, I am not quite clear which personal detail the source had in mind in this case ….

Also, the question arises how did Metropolitan Police management find out about “funboybobby”?  Were they trawling the adult dating site in question?

*searching for a term without triggering a double entendre

At today’s Lords’ Question Time, I am afraid that a spirit of devilment got the better of me.  There was a question on the progress being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.  I should make it clear that I am a great supporter of the Government’s proposals to ensure that all citizens have access to broadband services.  However, the automatic sense of entitlement that was being expressed on behalf of rural interests finally got the better of me, so I intervened to ask:

“My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?“

In essence, the answer was that this would indeed be yet another subsidy that everyone else would pay for by the 50p levy on fixed line telephony.  This will go with the subsidy to ensure that all rural households can get digital TV, the subsidy that maintains less well-used roads in rural areas, and, of course, the many subsidies paid to farmers.

This was regarded as being rather “controversial”, but an interesting number of Peers from all parts of the country came up to me afterwards and congratulated me for raising the “elephant in the room” …..

The full series of exchanges were as follows:

“Internet: Broadband

Question

2.52 pm

Asked By Baroness Byford

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Davies of Oldham): My Lords, the Digital Britain White Paper outlined the Government’s universal service commitment for broadband at a speed of 2 megabits per second to virtually every community in the UK by 2012. The paper also outlined plans for a next generation fund, to help to deliver next generation broadband to at least 90 per cent of homes and businesses by 2017. The Network Design and Procurement Company will be responsible for the delivery on behalf of the Government.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that response, I understand that Ofgem does not have powers to compel internet service providers to provide broadband in rural areas, which has resulted in some 166,000 people having no internet at all and more than 2 million having inadequate service provision. How will the broadband be delivered in these circumstances, particularly with regard to the proposed new megabyte speeds of 24, 40 and 100? Will this not be more focused on urban areas, leaving rural areas out in the cold?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, Ofgem cannot command to be done what cannot be done technically. The noble Baroness is right to identify that a percentage of our households cannot receive the requisite signal. We are addressing that. Under the universal service commitment, which we have been following since the summer, we are committed to ensuring that all households have access to the basic service of 2 megabits per second. The second, longer-term project concerning vastly improved speeds, to which the noble Baroness referred, depends partly on market conditions and provision by private companies, but the Government are also taking steps to ensure that we universalise that service in due course as far as we are able to do so.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, with more and more people in rural communities working from home and the increasing trend to media-rich content, the requirement for broadband speeds is more in the region of 50 to 100 megabits per second? What assurances can the Government give that rural communities will move to these speeds in the future?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is exactly the objective of the next generation access. It is clear that we will not be serving our communities, nor will we be remaining competitive with other countries, if we do not guarantee that next generation broadband is more universally available than it is at present. Certainly, there is provision of broadband at present from, for instance, Virgin, while BT is also interested in spreading its reach in these terms. However, the Government are concerned about that reach and I am grateful to the noble Lord for emphasising how important it is.

The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, the problem of lack of access to broadband is compounded for those rural communities that have poor analogue TV, no digital TV and often, at best, limited mobile phone connectivity. Do the Government have any plans to provide suitable grant aid to enable local rural communities to develop their own broadband, where it is clearly not commercially viable to provide that through the telecoms company? If there are no plans, will they consider that as part of implementing Digital Britain?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, far from there being no plans, there is a major government commitment to meeting the exact objective that the right reverend Prelate has indicated. We are going to use funds from the digital switchover—£175 million—to guarantee that we reach those areas that have not got digital television at present; the development of broadband goes along with that. The Government have identified the funds that will be made available. We have not the slightest doubt that that is merely objective No. 1. The right reverend Prelate will recognise that we are spreading digital television across the whole of the UK in the next four years.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that may be regarded as a somewhat provocative question in some quarters. I merely emphasise to my noble friend that we are intending to guarantee that these services are available across the whole country, because they are essential to our future economic and social success. That is why there will be a tax on telephone users of 50p per month for a line—we are not talking about an excessive amount—to subsidise and help to spread the opportunities across the whole country, in circumstances where we could not possibly have parts of our communities having no access at all to these services.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am tempted to invite the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to come with me to visit some of my upland sheep farmer friends, who do not exactly have a luxurious lifestyle. Back in July, Defra announced that money from the European economic recovery plan, which rural development agencies would use as part of the rural development programme, would help to fill some of the holes in broadband provision, not least for my upland sheep farmer friends and for people in places like that. What is the mechanism by which this money will be used and what will it be used for?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we are of course grateful for resources from wherever they emerge, but the noble Lord will be all too well aware that £2.5 million from Europe is a flea bite in relation to the total issues to be addressed. While it is welcome and is directed towards particular areas, the context of this question is universal access. That is a massive project and we have given clear indications since the summer of how we intend to tackle it. It can be fulfilled only by a long-term commitment to the objectives that I have identified.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords—

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, if noble Lords asked shorter questions and gave shorter responses, we would have time for more questions. We are in the 24th minute.”

Provocative – me?