Lord Speaker's Corner: Baroness Morgan of Cotes

'I put an amendment down through the Domestic Violence Bill, which was about intimate image abuse. And that was passed with the support of, we work with ministers and the support of the House, that was important. Now I'm working on the Online Safety Bill to put down various amendments including one in relation to violence against women and girls.’

Nicky Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes, has been a member of the government in both Houses of Parliament as well as serving as a backbencher, as Chair of the Lords Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee and most recently chaired the external UK Commission on Covid Commemoration. In this wide-ranging interview, Baroness Morgan explains what inspired her to get into politics, who asks the hardest questions to ministers and her current focus, including on convincing government to make changes to legislation.

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Watch a video of the interview, or read on for a transcript.

Transcript

Lord Speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith:

Baroness Morgan, welcome to Lord Speaker's Corner. Delighted to have you. My first question is quite simple. You've had a very successful career in the City and in law. Why politics?

Baroness Morgan of Cotes:

Well, thank you very much for having me this morning. And well, I suspect like lots of people in both Houses, I was always very interested in politics. I joined the Conservative Party when I was 16. My father, who sadly died in November, was a Conservative councillor, so he got me involved. I was delivering leaflets for him probably from the age of five or six. And so he could see that I was interested in politics and current affairs. I was involved through university. And yes, I was busy in the City as a solicitor for 16 years, but always had that political interest. So first stood in 2001 in Islington South, didn't trouble, the then re-elected Chris Smith as a Labour MP. And then in 2004 I was chosen to fight the Loughborough seat, which Stephen Dorrell had held in a previous incarnation and I had to do that twice and then was finally elected in 2010.

Lord Speaker:

So persistence is the name of the game, is it?

Baroness Morgan:

I think it is. And I talk a lot. I mean, when I was Education Secretary, I talked a lot about character and I think persistence is one of the great skills that we want everyone to develop because yeah, I think you've got to keep going. And again, I think both Houses probably are full of people who have worked very, very hard to get into politics and have made that decision to give up doing something else in order to have a political career.

Lord Speaker:

In the House of Commons you were a backbencher, you were a Secretary of State and indeed you were a chair of a committee, a very influential committee, the Treasury Committee. What's your experience and what are your highlights from that time in the Commons?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I mean look, I loved being a Member of Parliament, although for various reasons I was ready to give up in 2019. Yes, I started off being a PPS to Lord Willetts who's now here, David Willetts, as Universities Minister. I loved being a Secretary of State. Obviously just sitting around the Cabinet table is a huge privilege. Education is a difficult job though because everybody has a view on education. We've all been parents, we all perhaps know people who are teachers, we've all got a view about our children at schools. And eventually I became Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.

But you mentioned the Treasury Select Committee, which I'm looking at a previous chair as well and I love that, I think that was probably one of the great highlights actually of my career because as you know, you can shape that agenda, you are doing it independently of your party and government and you can make a real difference. And what's not to like about the ability to quiz the governor of the Bank of England, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, the head of perhaps big banks, asking them some difficult questions? And I really enjoyed that period of my time in the House of Commons.

Lord Speaker:

Ditto. But in my case, I was right in the middle of a financial crisis.

Baroness Morgan:

I know, exactly.

Lord Speaker:

But it was, being able to shape that is really, really important. And in fact, you are perhaps unique in having a Secretary of State role in Digital Culture and Media in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords. What was the difference?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I think they asked tougher questions in the House of Lords because obviously there are real experts here. I must find out how many people have actually had exactly the same role in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It was obviously a bit of a shock to come into the House of Lords and come straight to the despatch box, even my maiden speech had to be very short and given from the despatch box. I didn't expect to be asked to join the House of Lords, I thought that I had escaped frontline politics in the autumn of 2019 before the general election, I was planning on a life outside and then the Prime Minister phone me on the Monday morning after the election and said, 'Look, Nicky, I don't want to have a reshuffle. Will you go to the House of Lords? Will you carry on being Culture Secretary for a number of weeks until I do decide to make some changes to government?' So how could I say no?

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely when it comes from Number 10. When I was coming into the House of Lords, people mentioned - or it was on the horizon - 'A bit of a sleepy environment. It'll be nothing like the House of Commons and you'll not enjoy it.' Tell me, what is the feature of House of Lords for you?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I think it is the expertise of the members. The very piercing questions that they ask, the quality of the debates. I mean, I think probably both Houses rose to the occasion when we paid tributes to the Queen last year. But the recollections of members of the House of Lords from their time working with her, serving her, observing her at events, but also just in debates and putting out amendments.

And I think the big thing for me in the House of Lords, obviously what you don't have is the constituency involvement. I loved being a constituency MP, but there is a certain amount of enjoyment in saying, 'Actually these are the issues I'm going to talk about because this is what I know about and I can hopefully make a big contribution to making sure we've got better legislation.' And every time I sit in the House of Lords chamber, even if it's just I'm here doing meetings, pop in, I learn something from people who are speaking because they know about the field that they're talking about. So for me, I'm not sure I'd agree with the sleepy description at all, I think it's pretty lively at times. It just might be that the liveliness is perhaps a little more subdued perhaps sometimes than the rowdiness of the House of Commons.

Lord Speaker:

I would say more civil.

Baroness Morgan:

More civilised definitely.

Lord Speaker:

But in terms of amendments, you mentioned that issue, but you've already made your mark here in amendments. Tell me about that.

Baroness Morgan:

Well, so one of the first things I did, and of course this is happening during lockdown when we were all doing it via Zoom, and I think just enormous credit as well to all of the House of Lords staff and authorities who rose to that occasion to make sure that we could carry on contributing to legislation. So I put an amendment down through the Domestic Violence Bill, which was about intimate image abuse. And that was passed with the support of, we worked with ministers and the support of the House, that was important. Now I'm working on the Online Safety Bill to put down various amendments including one in relation to violence against women and girls. We want the regulator Ofcom to have a specific code of practice on that. And I'm also working with fellow peers from the fraud inquiry that I chaired last year on an amendment to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which we're also debating at the moment.

And I think that just shows the power of - we have the inquiry, I was privileged to chair it, fantastic peers I got to work with. And again, that's a great thing to work with people you don't know and then you come up with the inquiry report, you say, 'Actually the law does need to be changed. We have an opportunity with this bill. We're all working together. We've picked up amendments and issues from the House of Commons.' And I really hope that ministers will listen in the House of Lords. And I think by and large ministers in the House of Lords work incredibly hard. They have to listen to what people are saying, the government doesn't have a majority and have to work very hard to make sure they find a way through their legislation.

Lord Speaker:

If I remember correctly, in the 2019/21 session, there were 1083 amendments passed, but only 83 were the result of divisions. So the rest were as a result of committee stage engagement with ministers and whatever. And I think that's what happened in your Domestic Abuse Bill.

Baroness Morgan:

That's right.

Lord Speaker:

And your fraud bill, can you take us through that? Because the House of Lords does have a real role and I think at times we're too shy to elaborate on that.

Baroness Morgan:

I totally agree with you. I mean, I think the House of Lords, absolutely it has a major role in improving the laws that we pass as a Parliament. I think because we have the time, but also as you say, because the ministers in the Lords will engage often early and will continue the engagement with peers on all sides to come up with... It could be a compromise. It might not be that we get everything that we absolutely want, but actually a change in the law, a step forward, an improvement in regulation based on experience, based on what we are hearing in testimony from outside from witnesses in the case of an inquiry.

And as I say, I think one of the great unsung sort of groups of people are the House of Lords ministers because they have to cover everything within a departmental brief and they spend a lot of time engaging. And I think actually a lot of the government departments and probably House of Commons ministers, think it's all a bit of a mystery really how the House of Lords works. But the other thing of course is they can't guillotine business here in the same way. So of course both sides work together to make sure people aren't sitting through the night on a repeated basis. But the fact is actually you can have proper lengthy, detailed debates. And I go back to the point about being asked difficult questions, ministers can't get away in the House of Lords with trite answers or too many promises of future action because the peers won't stand for it. And I think that's a real service to the nation.

Lord Speaker:

You mentioned the Fraud Act, the House Lords is really unique in being able to look back on acts and see how well they worked. You looked at the 2006 Fraud Act in that. What were your conclusions on that? Because it was a very, very substantial report and I think very influential that the government have listened to that.

Baroness Morgan:

Well they have and we're waiting for more to come. So I think the House of Lords again is unique in setting up a number of special inquiries every year. So in this case, it was Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Vaux who had put forward both a review of the Fraud Act 2006, but also the regulation of digital and online fraud. And I defy anybody listening not to have been the victim of some kind of attempted online fraud, whether it's a WhatsApp message or a phishing message or an email that's trying to get your bank account details probably in the last couple of months actually. And so they were right to say, 'Let's look at the Fraud Act 2006,' which ultimately we concluded was in pretty good shape and isn't in need of substantial reform.

But then the whole issue of online digital fraud, since we'd probably last looked at all of this and for the police as well and the law enforcement agencies, the massive growth of social media platforms, the telecoms companies for whom actually often we're getting these messages through, the internet services providers. We often focus at the end of... We called our report 'Breaking the fraud chain', because there is a whole chain from when people first encounter the messages of a fraud, right the way through to when they instruct their bank to transfer the funds to a fraudster who then whisked them away probably overseas very, very quickly.

So we looked at the whole fraud chain and said the whole thing's got to be tackled. And as a result, we are now putting forward an amendment to the Economic Crime Bill on failure to prevent fraud - that the corporate bodies should have responsibility if people are using their services and those services are being used to perpetuate fraud, then those corporate bodies should have a responsibility to do all they can to make sure that that doesn't happen and they protect their users. And we'll see where we get to. The government, interestingly in the House of Commons conceded the failure to prevent offence in principle, but as ever, what will happen in the House of Lords are detailed meetings and negotiations almost with ministers about the wording of the amendment because hey, the government's very aware, they don't have a majority and particularly if you get the influential cross-benchers behind you, that really does count for a lot. But we try also, I think, in the House of Lords to do things on a very cross-party basis. I think that's much stronger if we can do that.

Lord Speaker:

Technology is increasing at a huge rate. And for me, even when I was chair of the Treasury Committee, the lag between appropriate legislation and being able to deal with issues was evident. For example, the Consumer Credit Act, I remember lobbying the government at the time just after 2001 saying, 'Look, we need to update this 1974 Consumer Credit Act before the internet.' I think we did manage to achieve that and I think it's a 2006 Act, but I don't think much has happened since then. What can Parliament do to be up with the game?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I think it's probably incumbent in all of us to make sure just actually that we are aware of all the different technologies. I mean one of the great things again about being a member of Parliament in both Houses is you have obviously a lot of people contact you, they've got their own agendas, but there are times actually, we have the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology as well, there are bodies that can actually hopefully train us and make us aware of all the different technology and the way that it's being potentially used and abused. And also I think these special inquiries, I think a short, sharp inquiry on whether a piece of legislation needs to be updated, it's amazing how people will by and large want to give evidence to a House of Lords or House of Commons inquiry.

And I suppose the other thing is, and this is a big debate in the House of Lords which is actually how much discretion do you give to ministers or regulators so that they can update practices without necessarily having to return to Parliament for an update of the whole law. And so that's quite a big controversial thing. I think one of the things actually we probably are going to have to consider, there is already a committee that looks at the different regulators, but as the regulators become more important, for example Ofcom getting more powers under the Online Safety Bill, I would say there's an even greater role actually for members of the House of Lords without fear or favour, reliant on their sort of experiences to actually be looking very hard at how the regulators are carrying out their activities. And I think again, that's something we can do for the country.

Lord Speaker:

When I was Senior Deputy Speaker, I was charged with the review of committees and it was implemented just as I left office. One of the committees that we established was the Industry and Regulators Committee and these were the very points that they were making. Bu I always took great pride in the select committees here because their findings were pretty profound and deep and crosscutting, which is not the same as with House of Commons where they mirror the departments on that. But some would say, well what use is it just producing committee reports and they go nowhere? Your experience as a cabinet minister, your experience in the Commons and the Lords, what effect do these select committee reports have?

Baroness Morgan:

Well they often shine a light, and sometimes it can be an uncomfortable light if you are in the government, on an issue that you know needs to be dealt with. I think still there's probably a little bit too much defensiveness in government, both ministers and officials sometimes about 'why is this outside body telling us about our area and everything else?' I think we need to break that down a little bit. So I think it's incumbent on committee chairs and committee members to work with ministers and to say to them, 'Look, this report is coming, this is what it's saying. I think this is how it'll help you and your agenda.'

For example, so we know that the government has been working on a fraud strategy. One of the things we recommend is that fraud become part of the strategic policing requirements. So the government makes it clear to police forces this is important. That has now happened, fraud is getting a mention in the strategic policing requirement published last month. We're waiting for the fraud strategy, we've got this failure to prevent.

I think one of the challenges sometimes for committees, and we've both been in the select committee chair, you produce a report, get some coverage, and then you're onto the next thing. Again, I think the House of Lords has got perhaps, hopefully it's members have got a bit more time to keep the pressure up. So although the fraud inquiry ended in November of last year, the reason we're all working together on the amendment, the reason I'm still doing talks about the fraud inquiry, I'm still working and chairing a round table tomorrow on it is because you've got to keep the pressure up.

And we talked about persistence at the beginning and I think actually persistence in government and persistence in politics is very much needed because you do get change but it often takes quite a long time. And that's again where I think the Lords, because you're not worrying so much about elections and being elected, you can think longer term and it may well be that we might come back, somebody might say in five years time, 'Can you just revisit that inquiry again and find out what happened?'

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely. And again, from my time as chair of the Treasury Committee, I always used to say, 'Get it on the record.' So the record is really very important because it can help. And I feel that the House of Lords has a channel to the public, to society as well, which hopefully government listens to. Is that the case as Secretary of State?

Baroness Morgan:

Yeah, definitely, absolutely. I think again, if your Lords minister comes back, you've got a piece of legislation or a regulation you want passed, your Lords minister comes back to you as the Secretary of State and says, 'We've got trouble in the House of Lords because they're not going to accept it as it's currently drafted,' you have to do something about it. And again, I do think that actually, so again, one of the things is the House of Lords are meant to be - many of them doing other things, I have a portfolio of interests outside. And so actually talking to people, listening to different - whether it's a business or another charity you're involved with or a university perhaps or whatever it might be, the whole point is to keep bringing that experience back and say, 'But this is the way it's working in the real world and this is the way it's perceived. This is the way we are perceived. Actually what can we do to change that?'

Lord Speaker:

How do you temper the frustration of your former colleagues who are Secretaries of State in the other place saying, 'House of Lords, it's a pain the neck, it's just holding up our stuff,' how do you charm them?

Baroness Morgan:

Well I say that actually I think well, better legislation. I say, 'Look, you should be nice to the House of Lords because actually again, you might find your legislation gets stuck or even doesn't make it onto the statute book.' And I think probably those of us who have been in both Houses are in a unique position to be able to talk to ministers of all hues and just explain this is the way that the Lords works and actually it's important. And the government often will use the House of Lords to put amendments down, again, things that have come up in this course of scrutiny, legislation, things that need to be improved, they will put the amendments down. So I think it serves a purpose for the government as well actually.

Lord Speaker:

I remember being a whip in the Labour government from 1997 on and sitting in the whips' office and looking at one bill about, I better not mention the bill because I'd embarrass the Secretary of State who's now here, [laughter] but we were looking at the bill saying, 'Clause 13, that won't get through the House of Lords, clause 21 won't get through.' And we'd a heck of a time trying to convince the Secretary of State that they really had to sharpen up before it, but they didn't sharpen up before it ensure as heck clause 13, clause 21 proved problematic as a result of that. So I had empirical experience of that. [laughter]

Baroness Morgan:

Hopefully they might learn the next time round.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly, exactly.

Baroness Morgan:

When that's pointed out to them, they might say, 'Yeah, actually I better listen to that.'

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, exactly. Covid and Covid Memorial, you're chairing the committee, really serious issue, very much a privilege for you to do that and very appropriate. Tell us about that.

Baroness Morgan:

Yeah, so I was asked by the then Prime Minister in July of last year to chair the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration. Of course we're sitting here and just across the river is the National Covid Memorial Wall which I had the privilege of visiting, which is maintained by a group of extraordinary volunteers who've shown the most remarkable resilience, all of them bereaved in some way because of Covid. We've had commissioners, there are 11 commissioners including me from appointments across the United Kingdom, all sorts of different walks of life as well. The report is actually finished and due to be sent to the government by the end of this month. And we await the government to publish it and to obviously respond.

I think, so the thing that somebody said to me when we were going around the different meetings, we had a lot of stakeholder meetings and surveys was everybody lost something. And so whether it was a loved one and, of course, there were people who died in the pandemic not of Covid but perhaps of something else. But interestingly, the Bishop of London, a member of this House has also been chairing something called the UK Commission on Bereavement, and I think the loss of those bereavement rituals, the things that we take for granted - being able to say goodbye to loved ones not happening has really just obviously added to the trauma that people suffered. But equally, we're also tasked with remembering frontline key workers, the achievements of UK science and I think the sort of community and volunteering spirit. And again, we're all aware in our own communities of how everybody pulled together to help others. So we are going to come up with a range of different recommendations, one recommendation would not cover that broad remit.

I think one of the other things that, again, perhaps as a former constituency MP you won't be surprised at, which is when people have something traumatic happen to them, of course they want that to be talked about by the government, remembered, but they also want to stop other people going through it as well. So some of this was about, how can we prepare and be resilient for future pandemics or natural hazards? So one of the things, for example, UK science, obviously massive contribution with the vaccines. How can we support that so that actually there is preparation already going into building national resilience in the future? And how do we talk about this period of history? And of course people have got mixed views, some people just want to move on, some people can't move on, some people have course have got long Covid or are immunocompromised, they're still shielding. So it's been very humbling actually to do all the meetings. My commissioners have been brilliant and I very much hope the government will accept the recommendations and we've done justice to what we've been told by the bereaved families.

Lord Speaker:

Only a month or so back, we had a Lord Speaker's lecture Professor Sharon Peacock addressed us, and she was right at the forefront of the vaccine and the genomic chains as a world expert on it. But what's come up is the need to support science still and have a long term view because this isn't the last pandemic and also have a global view. What advice do you have for society, for government on that Nicky?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, we talked, didn't we, a bit about digital capabilities here and outside. I think there's also, probably we have a lack of scientists of all sort of backgrounds in both Houses of Parliament. So I think that again, in trying to encourage people to come forward, it'd be great to have more people.

Lord Speaker:

Well there's quite a representation in the House of Lords. I mean even the crossbenchers, there's well over 20 scientists, but in the House of Commons, and by the way, I was a scientist, it was pretty miserable, about six or 7%.

Baroness Morgan:

Yeah, and I think, so more on that, but I think then an appreciation of science more broadly in society. I mean outside, I'm on the board of the Science Museum Group, which obviously looks to build science capital. And for many young people their first encounter with science will be visiting a museum, perhaps doing something through school. But I'm also chair of the Careers and Enterprise Company. And the more that we can help to explain to young people why what they're learning in school actually could lead to particular careers which are literally lifesaving and sometimes lifesaving not just in this country but around the globe, as the vaccines were. And I'd have thought this is the opportunity actually to really invest and say how can we pick out the brightest and the best and have, whether it's a fellowship or a scheme or whatever, to make sure that UK science is seen to be.

I mean the Prime Minister has committed and wants the UK to be a science superpower, but you've got to go right back to inspiring... And again, I'm sure as constituency MPs we've all been part of local competitions, getting young people inspired by science. You have to keep that going. It's very easy for young people to lose that sense of awe and wonder and want to do things. So how do we keep that going? How do we build all of our own science capital though, however old we get, having that curiosity, listening to people when they're talking in the House of Lords about their experiences? All of that is very important.

Lord Speaker:

You've done many things and you're still doing an awful lot outside and you're attending the House of Lords, some people would think that if you're a member of the House of Lords, you've got to be here fulltime. Well that is certainly not the case. And I think you're illustrating that point for me that you're doing so many things in society but coming along here and still engaging. How can you articulate that more so that people get the message about the purpose of the House of Lords and what we're here for?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I think these sorts of, hopefully, conversations are important and people understanding. And I think probably for those of us who are doing other things, I think where we can explain actually what we then have the opportunity to do in the House of Lords can assist organisations, we can bring the benefit of those discussions we have outside back into to help to improve the debate and the scrutiny, really inform debate and scrutiny that's happening here. I think it's very important.

I think one of the great things we should need to emphasise is that's exactly what we want, we want people who are hopefully busy doing other things, will bring their experiences in - we shouldn't be a fulltime House. We are different from the House of Commons and we should absolutely make the most and capitalise on that difference. We offer something completely unique, I think, to society and we all need to be better about... I mean there are fantastic programs that the House of Lord does - about going into schools, going into colleges and people are always interested.

And when you start talking about what you actually do in the House of Lords, people are really quite, I think amazed sometimes, they're interested about what you can do and things as you said, like the fraud inquiry again, if we can get certain key amendments through to actually make a real difference to people's lives. If we can get the tech platforms, the big ones to really think about the misogynistic content, and we are recording this obviously when the Metropolitan Police are under a lot of criticism for that. But if we can really tackle misogyny in society on our social media platforms and show the House of Lords led the way on that, then hopefully that resonates with people outside.

Lord Speaker:

I had Louise Casey in this office just a couple of weeks ago and she's done a fantastic job on that. It's out just now. What message do you have for police forces, for society, for how they go about protecting women from domestic abuse and others? Because I know you've always been very interested in that.

Baroness Morgan:

Well, as a former Minister for Women, and I think Louise Casey has done a tremendous job. And I think again, actually a member of this House, she's produced a series of different reports, she's a very trusted voice and she gets to the heart of an issue. The first thing is to admit that there's a problem. So actually, whether it's a police force, whether it's another institution, you have to admit there is an issue. And then actually think, how are we going to find the bad apples? How are we going to weed them out?

And other people have got to be a part. So allyship, male allyship to help tackle violence against women and girls is really, really important. And I often found, actually when I wanted to do something, it wasn't until I spoke to perhaps a minister who had daughters and I would say, 'Do you want your daughters to have to deal with all of this?' Actually, that then changed the mindset and it was like, 'No, I don't want them to have to deal with misogynistic content or potential abuse and everything else.' that then would change the way that they looked at things. So I think making it real for people.

But I'm afraid to say I think that the Metropolitan Police have got a long, long way to go to rebuild the confidence of women and girls in London. As Louise Casey said, everyone should report everything that happens to them, but the way individual officers conduct themselves every time they come into contact with a member of the public, particularly on an issue as serious as sexual abuse or rape will make a tremendous difference in rebuilding that trust.

Lord Speaker:

The commissioner was in Parliament a month or so back talking to Mr. Speaker and myself, on it and these are very points that we raised with him. But the issue of culture, culture is a process which takes a long time in that and it needs leadership. What's your definition of leadership given the various positions that you've held and still hold?

Baroness Morgan:

I think it's about having a clear set of priorities, a clear strategic vision, and actually being able to communicate that and to take people with you. And listening, listening is incredibly important. It's not all about just saying, 'I know it all and this is the direction we're going in,' it is saying, 'Now I'm clear about this is where I think we should head,' but then actually when you get the feedback actually saying, 'That's a really good point and we should just adjust this because actually I didn't think about that viewpoint and now I should.'

And you are right, I think, look, we have a debate about there's culture in Parliament, there's leadership here, leadership in government, leadership of the country, all tremendously important. And again, I go back to talking to young people about their future options around jobs and careers. The role modelling is phenomenally important. So again, everything that we do as members of the House of Lords being what we are, being monitored and watched, all of that we do is really important for the tone we set.

Lord Speaker:

So you would distinguish between hearing and listening and you would advocate a culture of encounters? Is that...?

Baroness Morgan:

Yeah, I think yes, and I think people should always know that they can talk to leaders. And there will be times when you can't take on, and as we know, you'll get lots of conflicting views. But I think engagement... Many, many, many years ago when I was first a candidate in Loughborough, one of my wise old councillors said to me, 'Never underestimate the power of explaining why you've made a decision.' And often actually when you explain something, you might say, 'I can't do everything that you've asked me for, but this is why, and this is what I've done about it,' actually, people by and large are reasonable enough to understand that it's the lack of engagement, the lack of listening and hearing what people are saying to you that I think gets people so frustrated.

Lord Speaker:

So turning up, I think it was Woody Allen said, 'Success is 90% turning up.'

Baroness Morgan:

Yes. [Laughter]

Lord Speaker:

Lastly, Nicky, thanks for such a really enjoyable conversation and instructive, educational, but let's finish on a bit of a lighter note. You and I have run marathons and I have done more than half a dozen marathons in my life. I did the London Marathon and on one occasion it was a very hot day and about five kilometres, miles out, I felt my hamstring going. But some kind soul, a spectator at the side shouted that they'd ointment and they'd rub my hamstring and I declined saying no, it would probably appear in page one of The Sun the next day. So I hobbled along to the finishing line. Any funny ones for you?

Baroness Morgan:

Well, I did the London Marathon in 2013. So you've done definitely more. I've done one marathon, I've done a few half-marathons. And I thought I was doing pretty well and I passed Ed Balls somewhere in Docklands and I don't quite know how, but as I got to the end, literally was running up the Mall and they said, 'Oh, congratulations to Ed Balls for finishing.' And I thought, 'How did he overtake me? I didn't see him.' And then my five year old son was watching and he said, 'Well done, mummy,' he said, 'But you were overtaken by a beer bottle and a fire extinguisher.' [Laughter]

Lord Speaker:

Very good. Oh well, okay. No beer bottles in here and hopefully, I know I'm joint chair of the R&R Commission, no fire extinguishers required.

Baroness Morgan:

Thank you.

Lord Speaker:

Thanks very much.