House of Lords: Press Office

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself in a difficult situation because for part of my career I was a director of a company called Research Services Ltd, which did the National Readership Survey, which was used as a basis for advertising and all forms of communication. Mark Abrams—slightly to the left of myself—was our guru, and I found myself also involved in the race relations study. Therefore, I have a love of information and data, particularly about your Lordships’ House.

The difficulty I have found with the press department, which I spoke to earlier today, is that its hands are tied. I said, “Well, whose hands are not tied?”. “My Lord, your hands are not tied”. “If you were me, what would you provide me with as a list of those people we should communicate with?”. “My Lord, you may have some suggestions to make”. I made certain suggestions and a list was produced that I would possibly be able to circulate to your Lordships, with emails, telephones—direct things—for 127 journalists, who, when I have introduced a Bill, have effectively become friends because only Peers can talk to the press. I find this very strange and I am not sure how it could be changed in any way, but people are waiting for stories. They can be written by anyone. You have to spend only a moment in the Bishops’ Bar and you have a new story.

On occasions, I made a few mistakes. I made a suggestion that we should possibly look at consulting with the Australians before we had the referendum relating to Scotland because there were 54 million Scots worldwide. To my horror, a journalist called me the next day, saying, “You are front page of the Sunday Post in Scotland: ‘Lord Selsdon says Obama is Scottish’”, because in Scotland you take your seeds, as it were, through the female line.

There are so many stories that we could write about this place and we have so many would-be journalists and writers and preparers of speeches. Therefore, I feel that we should ask ourselves to solve the problem.