MPs on the justice select committee were supposed to be going to South Africa – to find out more about prisons – on a five-day trip next week.
It’s purely a “co-incidence” that they would have been there for the Lions tour of SA, according to officials. Naturally.
But sport-loving MPs may now be rather unhappy that the trip has been cancelled because of the Speaker’s election.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
Nicholas Timmins is public policy commentator, having been the FT's public policy editor from 1996 to 2011. He was a founder member of The Independent and before that he worked for The Times. He is author of "The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State". 
Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.
Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.
FT Westminster on Twitter
Follow the FT's Westminster blog
