HGS learns with the Lords
On Friday the 4th of April, years 10 and 12 students from HGS were pleased to host students from KE Aston and KEHG as well as our esteemed guest Lord Jeff Rooker. Please see below for a write up of the event from Sarujan Kasinthan (10G) and his thoughts on the visit.
On Friday, I was fortunate enough to attend the talk that Lord Jeff Rooker presented on the United Kingdom’s Democratic System. In this, he explained the role of Lords as well as other significant governing officials such as Bishops. After this, he elaborated on the structure of the parliament itself by explaining the various categories of people such as the Lord Speaker, House of Lords and the House of Commons with their respective duties.
After covering the fundamentals of the political system, he gave us a walkthrough of how to become a Lord for those who were interested in a career path such as his. His advice was to first get a job that has a meaningful impact on society, and he used an ‘army sergeant’ as an example as these types of professions are more likely to become Lords than normal jobs. This is because the Lords are often appointed for their entire lifetimes so applications must stand out to them if you want to have a chance however, they are more likely to be selected by the Lords Internally than compared to applying to be one. The main topic of the talk was arguably the epitome of being a Lord. SCRUTINY. Lords are meant to scrutinise government legislation and hold them to account. Jeff Rooker went through the different tiers of scrutiny and that this was perhaps the primary role of a Lord, and he also mentioned that they can make amendments to proposed laws or ‘bills’ as they were called.
When it came to the questions, on one of his proposals, he explained the case where he insisted that the government should add folic acid to flour to prevent neural defects in babies. This is because the main cause of this disorder was a lack of folate within the mother’s diet that prevented the neural tube from closing, and therefore permanent damage is inflicted upon the baby’s body. I could tell he was very compassionate towards the babies who were born disabled and had defects and somewhat provoked as he told us that the folic acid legislation had still not been implemented after 3 months of the consultation in which they had agreed to do it. In fact, in one of his interviews representing the House of Lords, he described it as being ‘criminal’ because it was like they had the cure but were not doing anything about it.
In conclusion, I believe that Lord Jeff Rooker’s talk was very intriguing because of the anecdotes and advice he gave us on that day, that had given me an insight of the role and purpose of being a Lord and what responsibilities it carried to its name. The campaigning, scrutiny and consideration is just some of many qualities a good Lord should possess. I am very grateful to be able to witness Lord Rooker’s Talk as up until this point I have only seen Lord’s debate on the news but on Friday I got to witness one in person. It has been a truly inspirational experience.
