House of Lords: Press Office

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Hodgson on initiating this most timely debate. The problem we have is that we are now seen as a legitimate target by far too many people. I will make one or two suggestions as to what we have to face up to. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, put his finger on one of the problems: we have to change the governance of the House. If we want things to stay the same, they have to change, to quote someone else.

First, we have to have some sort of rebuttal unit. If something appears in the press which is wrong in fact, there must be someone here who is authorised to correct it. I am not talking about the politics of it but the sheer, straightforward facts. For it to take ages for three chairmen—the Leader of the House, the Chairman of Committees and the Speaker—to agree who should write a letter about champagne is just shambolic.

Secondly, we need a proper press cuttings service so that at least in the Library and online your Lordships can see day to day what is being said. Thirdly, the political parties and the Cross Benches have to look at having a press service. There has to be a press officer in each one, so that if the rebuttal person is asked for a comment, they can say, “This is beyond my pay grade. Go to the party press office”. We must reach out. We must be much more flexible. That will require a change in governance, and we will have to face up to some problems.

I am reminded of the words from the Kipling poem,

“it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that”,

until you go to war. When the tax credits issue came up, we got an enormous amount of credit. Many people have come up to me about it, including one Conservative MP this week, who said, “You really did the right thing there”, although we were all whipped and did all in our power to defeat the opposition Motion. None the less, we can do things right, we must do things right and we have to shape the balance differently, but we will have to change.