The World

I am grateful to Alan Beattie for drawing my attention to this fantastic exchange a few weeks ago in the House of Lords on pest control. It quite restores my faith in Parliament. The debate about the best way of dealing with mice in the Palace of Westminster is so beautifully droll that it is hard to believe that it was not scripted. It is certainly England at its finest, combining elements of Pinter and Monty Python.

I particularly like the discussion of the utility and indeed existence of “hypoallergenic cats”. I am pretty sure that they do exist. But I would warn their noble lords that cats that do not provoke allergies tend to be almost hairless, and therefore not very easy on the eye. I was also struck by the incredible claims made for the hit-rate of the last House of Lords cat. Baroness Finlay of Llandaff says – “Miss Wilson, when she was a resident superintendent in this Palace, had a cat that apparently caught up to 60 mice a night. The corpses were then swept up in the morning.” Personally, I find this hard to believe. Sixty a night? Talk about no rest for the wicked.

Lord Brabazon of Tara muses interestingly on the difficulty of telling one mouse from another – as well as their eating habits: “My Lords, I am well aware that there are still mice around. I saw one in the Bishops’ Bar only yesterday evening. I do not know whether it was the same one that I saw the day before or a different one; it is always difficult to tell the difference between the various mice that one sees. We believe that the problem is getting better. Cleaning is one of the measures we are taking, as I outlined in my original Answer. As I speak here this afternoon, the Bishops’ Bar and the Guest Room are being hoovered, so we can get rid of the food scraps from lunch. If you were a mouse, you would rather eat the crumbs of a smoked salmon sandwich than the bait. Therefore, we want to remove the crumbs as quickly as possible.”

Well said. Cleaning! What a great idea, whatever will they come up with next? But anyway, read the entire exchange. It is the most powerful argument against the abolition of the House of Lords that I have yet come across.