Lord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cormack's debates with the Department for Transport
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Cormack
My Lords, I declare my interest as a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and as the organiser of a scheme that brings American students to work in Parliament for a period each year. I greatly welcome the sensitivity of the Statement, but I urge my noble friend to ensure that the monitoring to which he referred is indeed careful, continuous and very sensitive. Does he agree with me that it is better that a few bogus students come into this country than that a single potential Nobel Prize winner is kept out?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I agree with most of what my noble friend said—nearly everything, in fact. He touched on the parliamentary interns. I have used them in the past. I asked my officials about parliamentary interns this morning. I hope we maintain an effective system and I am sure we will monitor that very carefully.