I want to write to Lord Patten
Lord Patten: ...the same argument used again and again, over protests and demonstrations, before debates on the Public Order Bill came to their end. We are going to get the same things again about the right to strike in this debate. There will be more than a spot of déjà vu in this Chamber over the next few weeks and months because we are all struggling—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I, and other...
Lord Patten: ...of Norbiton on 28 January (HL412), whether they will now answer the question put, namely what provisions any such legislation will include to protect the rights of railway managers dealing with strike action.
Lord Patten: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Vere of Norbiton on 7 January (HL63), when they intend to introduce legislation to guarantee that, in times of strike action on rail, a pre-agreed minimum level of train service is provided; and what provisions such legislation will include to protect the rights of railway managers.
Lord Patten: ...Commonwealth Ministers that they should tell taxpayers just how many other departments beside the FCO are intimately involved in foreign affairs, albeit sometimes at one remove. Finally, if I may strike a personal note, I much admire the individual civil servants in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who are on the front line, dealing with difficult and sometimes, I have to say, morally...
Lord Patten: ...Princes of Wales do this kind of thing—on housing for the working classes, in the latter part of Victorian times, and spent four hours talking to dockers, trying to bring about peace in the dock strike in the 1880s. So this is a strong tradition, and many of these things led to the doctrine of subsidiarity. Many of them then got spun into those short, pithy pastoral letters that I was...
Lord Patten: ...matters of right and wrong, while being what could only be described as a high-church atheist in his total disbelief of the eternal or any deity. I also trust that my noble friend's speech will not strike a utilitarian note towards religious groups along the lines of just how useful their cash and skills are, at a time of organising the delivery of voluntary work in these moments of...