A View from the Lords, with LORD GREAVES

LITTLE did I imagine, when I wrote last week that "occasional saboteurs" would try to disrupt the House of Commons as they debated the Hunting Bill, just how true it would become!

So what are we to make of it? Does it really matter if people reach the floor of the Commons for the first time since the reign of the ill-fated Charles I some three and a half centuries ago?

Are MPs being over-sensitive or pompous about the sanctity of their chamber?

Could the young men in their slogan T-shirts really have been carrying guns or lethal powder?

Already, people are mocking a Parliament guarded by retired soldiers on the wrong side of middle age, dressed in mediaeval costumes more suited to Shakespeare and pantomimes than to the 21st century, and armed with nothing more than a sword or two between them.

Yet their Lordships survived the invasion a few years ago by the lesbians who abseiled down ropes from the Lords balcony in protest at the infamous "section 28" laws on promoting homosexuality (though lots of peers still talk about it!)

Many thousands of people enter the Palace of Westminster - the main Parliament building - every working day. I've seen estimates of 20,000 to 30,000.

In addition, there is the rest of what they call the Parliamentary estate - offices, meeting rooms, places to eat - in many surrounding buildings such as the handsome new Portcullis House across Bridge Street from the "Big Ben" tower, and Millbank House across the road from the Lords where many of us have a desk and a phone.

Surely all these people and places are entitled to the same protection from genuine terror attacks as the MPs in their chamber.

Yet I really cannot get over-excited if a few visitors behave in a silly way, if they are not carrying weapons or explosives or lethal chemicals or bugs.

The answer must rest with efficient and adequate security around the perimeter and throughout the building, under the control of a single authority which is in turn responsible to Parliament itself.

What we must not do is to panic and stop citizens coming to meet and talk to their elected representatives - and indeed to those of us who, while not elected, still do what we do on behalf of all the people.

We must not stop it being a place where people come to "parley" - to talk - for talking is the very essence of democracy.