House of Lords: Membership

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Trumpington (Con)]

My Lords, the Question is very similar to one I already have down on the Order Paper. I am looking for brevity and accuracy. The brevity applies to the Minister as much as it does to the questioner. Can the Minister, as well as those who are asking questions, be more brief in future?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I accept the point made by my noble friend.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the staff who have turned up in the middle of their holidays. The food was warm and this place is as warm as it ever gets. Everything ran smoothly, as though it were a perfectly ordinary weekday event in the middle of the Session. We owe the staff a big debt of gratitude.

I had to speak today because I owe Margaret Thatcher everything. In 1980 she delivered her first Honours List. There were six men and me—rather like today.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Trumpington]

I was so lucky to come here and to have worked for her and with her, and fought with her. The fighting was part of the process. She liked to have something to fight against. It gave her ideas and helped her make up her mind later. I remember a poor man who sat between us at a dinner. I said, “The Daily Mirror is quite right about the mentally handicapped”. She said, “The Daily Mirror is never right”. That started us off. I think the poor man thought we were going to hit each other, and probably him, in the middle of the dinner. That was the way it was.

The alternative was the incredible kindness on one occasion when in terror I had to attend a full Cabinet meeting simply because my boss was unable to get there. I only had one remark, which was, “Professor So-and-So should get the job. The Department for Education agrees”. In terror I said it three times. I also had not had the opportunity to see how the Cabinet worked. It was quite a revelation. When the meeting was over and she was leaving, she came up to me, patted me on the shoulder and said: “I’ll see that your professor gets the job”. That was the way in which we operated. It was either death to the end or eternal friendship—and I know which I would choose. I send my very warmest sympathy to her family and say what a great loss it is to me personally and to all her friends and admirers, wherever they are.

I will say one more thing. It is curious that all the speakers today, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, have been men, and none has commented on her beauty.

[Noble Lords]

Lady Williams.

[Baroness Trumpington]

I beg her pardon. None commented on her beauty. She was a beautiful woman. It took a French President to appreciate that, even if his remark had a twist—but that is typically French.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement) Order 2011

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, may I support the noble Lord, Lord Barnett? I have just put down a Question to that very effect, but unfortunately it must wait a month before it can be heard in this House. I strongly support the point that the current arrangements are a total failure and should revert. Any suicide bomber who wishes to attack this place certainly could do so without somebody looking at the bottom of their car. Please will the Leader do something about it today?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, before we go down this route, could we just remember that we have a duty to secure the security of this institution? Difficult decisions have had to be taken and we should be very careful about rescinding them.

Nuclear Reactors

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s question. The reality is that we have waste, so it will not improve the situation with regard to nuclear waste. This Government are very concentrated at the moment on recovering from 25 years of no nuclear activity with what we have. We have to concentrate on the reactors that are available, which we have had approval for, in order to get our next-generation nuclear power off the ground. We know fully that thorium reactors will take 10 to 15 years to develop. There is a high cost in that development and, at the moment, I would not put it as a priority unless the research report that comes out at the end of this summer advises us otherwise.

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, please forgive my ignorance, but what is thorium?

[Lord Marland]

If only my O-level science teacher could see me now. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that question because I have learnt a lot about thorium recently. For those who wish to know, it is named after the Norse god Thor. It comes out of monazite sands, which are largely found in India and Norway, and is generated by a sifting process. The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that it is dimorphic, which I am happy to explain means that it changes from face-centred to body-centred. However, other noble Lords are far more qualified than me to inform us about thorium. All I would say is that it requires two neutrons to process it rather than one. The noble Baroness can find all sorts of other facts in Wikipedia, as, indeed, did I.

Public Disorder: Policing

Baroness Trumpington Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Trumpington]

My Lords, I have two questions for my noble friend. First, I understand that Westminster Underground station and the road outside Parliament were closed. Surely it is not right that people should be prevented from arriving here as well as from leaving here.

Secondly, I had a tiny hope that good might come out of very bad and that the people who are tented around Parliament Square might have been overrun. However, to my great gloom this morning, there they are still. How did they manage it?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s first question, I think we all regret that Members of either House could not arrive at Parliament and leave easily on Thursday afternoon. However, pedestrian access was maintained at all times.

On my noble friend’s second question, she may well say that good could have come out of bad. However, the Government, more strategically, are looking at ways of improving the Parliament Square situation, and I hope that an announcement will be made shortly.