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Lord Pearson puts wind up Labour peer

Monday, 19th July 2010

The leader of UKIP should be allowed to sit on the Government benches in the House of Lords, a Labour former minister demanded today.

Lord Davies of Oldham spoke out angrily after UKIP leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who now sits on the the Labour side of the chamber, asked another in his series of anti-European Union questions.

Before the election Lord Pearson sat on the Opposition benches alongside his former  colleagues in the Tory party.

But because the main parties swapped sides due to the change in Government at the election, although he still sits on the Opposition benches he is now surrounded by Labour peers.

Lord Davies, speaking for Labour, asked Treasury minister Lord Sassoon: "Given the range of opinions that exist on the Coalition benches from Europhiles to Eurosceptics, would it be possible for you to prevail upon the Leader of the House (Lord Strathclyde) to provide a little niche corner for Lord Pearson of Rannoch as he neither speaks for these benches or on behalf of these benches, and he shouldn't speak from them?"

Lord Sassoon did not reply directly, but Lord Stoddart of Swindon, an Independent Labour peer who shares many of Lord Pearson's views on Europe, said: "Members of this House can speak from any bench they wish and until 1985 the Labour party was in fact in favour of complete withdrawal from the European Union."

Lord Davies' intervention followed Lord Pearson's questions on the liability of EU members for other countries' debts.

He asked: "Doesn't history teach us that trouble lies ahead when a regime feels free to break its own laws with impunity, when it is supported by a puppet court and when its people are powerless to get rid of it? Isn't that exactly what we have now got in the European Union?"

Lord Sassoon replied that whatever he said he would be unable to convince Lord Pearson.

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