Author Archives: Lord Tom McNally

Tom McNally writes: we must not let the best be the enemy of the good

By Lord Tom McNally | Published 18th May 2011 - 9:12 am

To get the full flavour of the task facing the Government when contemplating Lords reform can I recommend going to the House of Lords website and calling up the Hansard for 17 May? There you will read an hour of exchanges when Lord Strathclyde (the Leader of the House) repeated the Government statement on House of Lords reform which Nick Clegg had made in the Commons. There was very little support around the House for the Coalition’s vision for reform.

I believe Nick Clegg has done the House of Lords the courtesy of treating the House of Lords like grown-ups. …

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Youth Justice: the minister’s view

By Lord Tom McNally | Published 8th March 2011 - 11:01 pm

Since I became Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice last May I have been working with Ken Clarke and the other Ministers within the department to make radical changes to the criminal justice system. Our plans are about finding out what works – the methods of rehabilitation and punishment which actually reduce crime.

One of the key aspects of this vision is preventing and tackling offending by young people. In England and Wales the number of children aged 10 to 17 grew rapidly during the course of the 1990s and into the second term of the Labour government in …

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Leader article: Peer Pressure

By Lord Tom McNally | Published 16th December 2007 - 9:55 am

A dozen years ago, when I first took my seat in the House of Lords, there were a number of self-deprecating jokes which summed up how the country saw the House of Lords and how it saw itself:

There was the Peer who dreamt he was speaking in the Lords, and when he woke up he was.

There was the Peer who read the Times Obituary column each morning to make sure his name was not there. If it wasn’t he went in.

Thus was this anachronistic, quaintly amusing arm of our governance seen by friend and foe alike. It survived, in …

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Tim Garden: An Appreciation

By Lord Tom McNally | Published 22nd August 2007 - 6:34 pm

You would expect someone with the titles Marshal of the Royal Airforce, Professor, the Lord Garden to be, at the very least, a little self important if not down right pompous. I had not met Tim Garden before Charles Kennedy nominated him for a place in the House of Lords in 2004. So I was not prepared to meet so fully a paid up member of the human race. My sense of humour can veer towards the schoolboy, so calling one of the highest ranking officers in the Royal Airforce “Biggles” could have tried the patience of lesser men. But …

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