The House of Lords gets a little bigger... and a little more diverse too...

Ros, along with her colleagues on the House of Lords Appointments Commission, has been busy interviewing potential candidates to join the crossbenches. Strange, you may think, that the supposedly partisan members of the Commission should take part in such an exercise, but I see it as a way of ensuring that those with a party political background don't take up those places intended for people from beyond the Westminster bubble.

And yesterday, the latest nominees were announced. Quoting from the House of Lords Appointment Commission's website;

Sir Donald Curry is the Chair of NFU Mutual Insurance Society (a leading rural general insurance and life/pensions company) and is also the non-executive Chair of the Better Regulation Executive, which works with government departments and regulators to help reduce regulatory burdens and red tape. Since 2009 he has been the Chair of Leckford Estates (a 4,000 acre estate owned by Waitrose/John Lewis Partnership) and adviser to the John Lewis Partnership and Waitrose on agricultural and food strategy. He founded the charity ‘At Home in the Community’ in 1991, and remains the Chair of the organisation, which is based in the North East of England and provides care for people with learning disabilities. Sir Donald is a former Chair of the Meat and Livestock Commission and served for many years as an adviser to government on sustainable farming and food. In 2001 he was asked by the Prime Minister to review farming and food policy, and his subsequent Report ‘Farming and Food – a sustainable future’ (The Curry Report) led to a fundamental review of Government policy and influenced the Common Agricultural Policy reform package of 2003. He currently farms 440 acres of arable and lowland grass in Northumberland. 

Dr Indarjit Singh CBE is the Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations UK. He is the Vice Chair and founding member of the Inter Faith Network UK, a national body promoting inter faith understanding, and is Head of the Sikh Chaplaincy Service, which works for the pastoral care of Sikhs in prisons. He is also the co-ordinator of pastoral care for Sikhs in hospitals and in the Armed Forces, and a trustee of the World Congress of Faiths. Dr Singh has represented the UK Sikh community on national occasions, including the Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph and the Westminster Abbey Service to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coronation of HM the Queen. In 2008 he became the first Sikh to address a major conference at the Vatican, when he gave a keynote address on the need for respect and tolerance between world faiths. He has served on the Home Secretary’s Advisory Council on Race Relations; on the British Medical Association’s Medical Ethics Committee; and was a member of a working group which advised the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for International Development on issues of third world debt and poverty relief. Since 1984, he has been a regular contributor to ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4’s Today Programme, and has made frequent World Service broadcasts. He has a First Class Certificate in Mine Management and has worked on mining and civil engineering projects in the UK, India and Dubai.

They appear, on the face of it, to be the very sort of people we need to bring into Parliament. Indeed, it is interesting to note that, when listeners to Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' listeners were polled for their views as to who would make a good 'People's Peer', Dr Singh was the runner-up... to Bob Geldof.