Inside The Lords: cronies, codes of conduct and conversations in public

Claire Fox reflects on a week in parliament - and pays tribute to the late Alex Salmond and Kevin Bean.

Inside the Lords this week is coming to you from the madness of Battle of Ideas festival prep - surrounded by boxes and excited team members looking forward to this weekend. I hope you’ll join us, tickets are still available and will be available on the door - so don’t miss it.

This week, people have been discussing Labour’s investment summit and their economic plans. I don’t want to disregard their announcements - we need economic growth and we should encourage anything that looks like it’s moving in that direction. But the government’s focus on simply getting money in, with no substantial plans for a vision for economic change, is a little disheartening. For example, the announcements around workers’ rights are lukewarm - the kind of tweaks to zero-hours contracts or flexible working that make sense, but aren’t about to set the world alight.

One thing that is worrying is Labour’s plans to update the Equality Law, requiring employers to protect their staff against ‘harassment’ from third-parties. In essence, that means pubs or clubs or event organisers would be liable if a staff member complained that they’d been harassed by a punter - and we all know that harassment can mean anything we want it to these days. This could really get in the way of any organisation operating - from students unions to political event organisers to hospitality.

Speaking of harassment, we’ve been discussing updating the Lords’ code of conduct - I gave a speech in which I pulled apart the code, showing that what it was really all about was policing the way parliamentarians could speak in a censorious fashion.

We also had a Lords question on the rise of religious hatred, so I stressed the need to avoid introducing censorious blasphemy laws by the back door. And, on the third anniversary of the brutal murder of Sir David Amess by an Islamist fanatic, I asked whether we can we stop conflating Islamism with a hatred of Muslims.

The Labour Party has had its first 100 days in office - and I keep thinking that they’re just not interested in having conversations for the public, with the public, in public. Instead, the public are treated like a stage army. You can see this in the way in which they responded to the cronyism charges. When the public complain about anything, be it winter-fuel allowance cuts or the passes for glasses scandal, Keir Starmer looks outraged that anyone would have the temerity to criticise him. There is no openness to debate or discussion - I don’t need to tell you that that’s not our style at the Academy of Ideas.

I just want to finish on a tribute to two people who have passed away in the last week - Alex Salmond and Kevin Bean. Alex Salmond and I have been on panels on opposite sides of many debates, but he was also a speaker at the Battle of Ideas festival. And unlike many of his colleagues and fellow politicians, he was a man who took debate seriously - always respecting free speech and determined to argue his point rather than shut down his opponents. His death is a terrible tragedy and a loss. In a different realm of politics, we also lost Dr Kevin Bean - a brilliant academic and political organiser in Liverpool. Like Salmond, me and Kevin often didn’t agree but he was an excellent thinker and speaker, also joining us at the Battle of Ideas festival, and a friend. His students in Liverpool paid the best tribute to him - that he always made them think, and challenged them to go beyond themselves. We will miss him.

If you want to talk about anything that’s going on - from immigration issues to the latest in arts and culture, from free-speech wars to the state of the economy, join me on Saturday and Sunday at the Battle of Ideas festival. Come up and say hello to me and the rest of the team, we’ll see you there.