Inside The Lords - prisoners, media regulation and Debating Matters
Claire Fox reports from a week inside the House of Lords.
I spend a lot of time slagging off what goes on in here but there are many positives. For example - inside the Lords this week, Baroness Stowell and Lord Forsyth got together to argue that foreign states shouldn’t own British media, relating to the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. The reason why it was positive is because, despite many people trying to stop it, they got cross-party support and pushed the government to take action. A reminder that change can happen.
The big event this week was my amendment on IPPs (Sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection) - and you can watch it below. I was extremely nervous the night before, because people suffering these indefinite sentences and their families are suffering so much, and I knew there wasn’t much hope of getting some answers for them. But, despite that, I wanted to raise the issue as much as I could in the Lords in the hope that the conversation carries on. It was my longest speech to date as I wanted to make sure I got everything in.
Before my speech, I was spontaneously moved to speak on the injustice associated with these indefinite prison sentences - by the way, that were abolished 13 years ago - but still keep people in prison who have long done their time. The threat of suicide is often used and abused as a means to strong-arm people towards supporting an issue, but in the case of IPP prisoners it’s a real problem. People who have been in jail for decades on indefinite sentences, who have their hopes of getting out continuously dashed without reason, often tragically take their own lives.
In the run up to the election, both parties want to look tough on law and order, and that single-minded approach means that they were unwilling to engage in this specific issue of injustice for prisoners. What a shame. After the minister and Labour Party both said no to my re-sentencing amendment, tellingly echoing each other word for word, I got the last word - at least.
Later on in the week, I got up and made a critical defence of GB News. There was a short debate scheduled about regulation of broadcasting, organised by some peers associated with Hacked Off, and so I guessed that it would be all about bashing certain media organisations. I was right. Funnily enough, I had just been on BBC Politics Live in which we had a pretty good debate about Islamism and new extremism measures where I was given space to lay out my stall - which was in contrast to the display on Question Time this week, where Melanie Phillips got a mountain of abuse before she even opened her mouth on the programme. My point is, if we believe in media plurality, we can’t be sectarian and we can’t simply defend the media we like.
The last thing to say is that we filmed Inside The Lords on a Friday for a very exciting reason - Debating Matters came to the Lords. We will update you on our Substack in the coming weeks with a report from the competition, but just to say that it was a fantastic success. As you know, the quality of debate inside these chambers can sometimes be pretty poor. Debating Matters is an example of what political engagement and public debate should be about - with spirited exchanges from some fantastic sixth formers on everything from cancel culture to repatriating artefacts. Free speech and open debate is alive and well, we just have to make sure we give it the space to happen. See you next week.