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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb: Lord Speaker's Corner

14 May 2025

Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, speaks about why she is campaigning on topics including salmon farming and water company pollution in the latest episode of Lord Speaker’s Corner.

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Lord Speaker:

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, Jenny, welcome to Lord Speaker's Podcast. Maybe we could start by giving a reflection on your early life. Moulsecoomb is a housing estate near Brighton of social housing, so your origins and background.

Baroness Jones:

Thank you, Lord Speaker. It's really nice to have an opportunity to just chat. Yes, I grew up in a council estate in Brighton and I had a very 1950s post-war type upbringing. The estate was built as homes for heroes, so my dad who'd been a cook in the RAF was allocated a house. It was a security thing for the whole of my younger years. I went to primary, I went to the grammar school. I had a great, happy childhood. We were very poor, but we never went hungry or went cold.

Lord Speaker:

But you left school and then you went back as a mature student.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Well, I left school and I went to London to do a course, but I absolutely loathed it. I got sucked up into CND demonstrations and things like that. Then I went back to my hometown and I met my future husband. We got married, had kids, we travelled with his work, which was as a water engineer. I lived in Africa, I lived in the Seychelles, both of which were fascinating.

But quite difficult, because I'm somebody who likes to be doing stuff and be involved. In both those countries, they didn't really want expatriate wives to be involved in anything. I spent a lot of time riding horses in Lesotho and scuba diving in Seychelles.

Lord Speaker:

Good. It doesn't go with your present image.

Baroness Jones:

No, no, I know [laughter]. Mind you, the horses were great.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah.

Baroness Jones:

Well, so was the diving. When I was diving one time, we were out in a boat and obviously it's very hot. Everybody is getting a bit tetchy, there are about four of us to go in the water. All of a sudden, a whale shark appeared. This is the biggest fish in the ocean. Although it's absolutely huge, it eats tiny, little fish. We all scampered down to the bottom of the ocean and just looked at this thing. It was quite curious about us, so it swam around us. That has got to be one of the most amazing times of my life.

Lord Speaker:

Terrific, terrific. You then went into education as a mature student, something that we have in common-

Baroness Jones:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

... on that. I felt, as a mature student, that I was on the road to education and it was hard for me to get off a few degrees after that.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, right. Right.

Lord Speaker:

What did education do to you as a mature student?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I got divorced and then I was really casting around for something to do. I thought, "Well, going back into education would be really good for me." I looked for what I thought would be the easiest possible degree, so I took archaeology, which proved not to be that easy.

Lord Speaker:

I wouldn't think it would be the easiest degree.

Baroness Jones:

No, it wasn't the easiest, but it was fascinating. It meant that, for the next 10 years, I travelled all over the Middle East digging different periods, different countries. That was quite an experience.

But the course itself, there were quite a few of us mature students. We did actually form a support group almost. We liaised with the younger people as well, obviously. But as mature students, we had particular struggles, if you like, but we supported each other.

Lord Speaker:

Add a bit of colour to your experience in the Middle East. After all, it was 10 years.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Well, I was what they called a dirt archaeologist, which was I just dig. I dug in all sorts of eras. My preference is, well, post-Roman stuff just leaves me cold, I'm afraid, so I like everything before the Christian era. But I dug in Egypt and I handled Neolithic remains. I dug in Syria and that was a 13th Century AD glass factory. In Jordan, that was Neolithic, and so on. It was a complete mix.

But I was a terrible archaeologist because, to be a good archaeologist, you need to read a lot and stay up to date with what's going on, because there's new discoveries virtually every day. I wasn't very good about keeping up with those.

Lord Speaker:

But it gave you a discipline.

Baroness Jones:

It gave me a sense of how I like working hard, essentially. That was good to know, because as a mother, you work really hard, but it doesn't always feel like work, whereas this was paid work that I was doing. In Ethiopia, for example, I didn't do very well in Ethiopia because I was vegetarian when I went there. It was in the early days of my archaeology. It was just after a bout of war and there were no vegetables to eat. At lunch, we had pasta with a quite thin tomato sauce. For dinner, we had boiled goat. After two weeks and I'd lost about half-a-stone, I started eating the boiled goat. That, quite honestly, stopped me being vegetarian because if you can eat boiled goat, you can certainly eat other meats. Yeah. But then, we were digging up some 1000-year-old monoliths. It's been quite varied, my archaeology.

Lord Speaker:

Then you come back to the UK, and if I'm correct, you joined the Green Party in 1998.

Baroness Jones:

Is that right? No. No, '88. '88 I joined.

Lord Speaker:

'88, 10 years earlier. What took you into the Green Party?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I'd always been interested in growing food and being careful with trying not to consume too much. It just fitted my ethos. When I came back from the archaeology, I got a job in an office, in an accounts office, and thought I was settling in there. But in fact, I very quickly got elected onto the London Assembly, almost by happenstance, almost by-

Lord Speaker:

That was in 2000, the year 2000?

Baroness Jones:

In 2000. That was almost by accident, yes. It was a bit of a shock to my system. After the first year on the London Assembly, the Evening Standard did a league table of the 25 Assembly Members and I came bottom. That was a-

Lord Speaker:

Bottom for what?

Baroness Jones:

Everything, really. Talent, I suppose.

Lord Speaker:

It wouldn't be attendance, for example? It wouldn't be commitment?

Baroness Jones:

No, no. It would be more about being able to speak, challenging the mayor, just positioning, I suppose. Anyway.

Lord Speaker:

But politics was a new environment for you, wasn't it?

Baroness Jones:

It was a new environment. And also, it came at a huge sense of responsibility because we, 25 people, had the opportunity to hold the Mayor of London, a quite powerful role, to account. He had to answer to us. He sat in front of us once every month and answered our questions.

Lord Speaker:

Was that Ken Livingstone?

Baroness Jones:

That was Ken Livingstone. I was on it for 16 years.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, yeah.

Baroness Jones:

The first eight years were Ken Livingstone. He was a brilliant mayor. I know he gets bad press in all sorts of ways, but he really cared about London, he really cared about Londoners, and he did his absolute best. He was also, because he knew where he wanted to go ... For example, he wanted London to be cleaner, and he wanted better public transport, and all these things. He was prepared to listen to other people's ideas, and if they fitted, then he would use the ideas, which was great for Green. You could have a chat with Ken in the lift and he'd say, "Oh, all right, that's a good idea." Then half-an-hour later, you'd have a call from his office to say, "Oh, can you come up and explain what you've told Ken he's got to do?"

Whereas with Boris Johnson, who was there for the second eight-year chunk that I was there, he was completely useless.

Lord Speaker:

I think I read that you liked him.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, yeah, I really liked him. He made me laugh.

Lord Speaker:

But you also liked him and didn't like him.

Baroness Jones:

Well, I didn't like him as a mayor. I thought he was a rubbish mayor. The one talent he did have was he employed, he gathered people around him who could do the job for him. He had some very good people in post. I think that's where he went unstuck as Prime Minister, because I think he had less choice about who he gathered around him. But then, of course, he made some very bad choices.

With Boris, as an Assembly Member, if I met him in the lift in the basement and I got out on the fourth floor, if somebody else got in with a better idea or different idea, he'd have changed his mind by the sixth floor. He was utterly unreliable.

Lord Speaker:

Well, we've all got flaws.

Baroness Jones:

Right. Yes, yeah. [Laughter] I suspect he's got more than most.

Lord Speaker:

You're really interested in sustainable transport.

Baroness Jones:

I'm interested in a lot of things.

Lord Speaker:

And you worked with Ken Livingstone on that.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

Tell us a bit about that, because it seems a success down to Ken Livingstone and yourself involved.

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you. Ken Livingstone had this idea, because he'd looked at a lot of models about how to reduce traffic in London, because clearly the air was very polluted. And also, the streets were so clogged up. He had the idea of putting in the congestion charge. It was a deeply unpopular measure. He said at one time the only two groups supporting him were "the Greens and big business." The City supported it because they could see the advantages of having less traffic on their streets.

One of the options that I put forward was doing more on walking and cycling, which he took up. On the first day of the congestion charge, he told me that he was standing with his chief of staff looking out of the window of City Hall at Tower Bridge and there was absolutely no traffic on it. He said it was like watching tumbleweed go across and it did cross his mind that he'd gone too far. But he hadn't, of course. It was definitely the right move.

It also meant that public transport could improve, particularly the buses. I can remember going to work on a bus one day and actually seeing somebody in a suit going into the City. I'd never seen that in London before. There was a wider bus ridership than previously. He was good. He was good on that.

Lord Speaker:

You're there for quite a time. 2000 to 2016, is that correct? What were your achievements there? Because your focus was environment, it was on healthy foods, it was on violence against women, as well as sustainable transport. What are the hallmarks for you?

Baroness Jones:

I chaired London Food, and that was a body of people and it was a very diverse body. It was a board of ... We had an organic restaurateur. We had somebody from the City. We had people from all over. We came together to devise sustainable food for London, because we were all concerned that there could be shortages in the future, problems with deliveries, or whatever. Actually, drawing up a way to make sure that Londoners had enough food even when times were hard was quite useful.

The thing that came out of that report was that it was all very well growing organic food, that's great. But actually, you need to eat local food. If you eat local food, you're supporting the people around London, you're supporting the farmers and the growers. That impacts on other Londoners who work there and of course, the food is fresher. But there were EU regulations at the time which meant that schools and hospitals couldn't just say they wanted apples from Kent, say, because of all the EU regulations. We found ways to get round them a little bit. For example, if you specified particular packaging, then they could buy apples from Kent and not apples from Spain, or wherever.

Lord Speaker:

In 2013, you came into the House of Lords.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

What made you come into the House of Lords? Because it would seem as if you'd maybe have looked at it from the outside and said, "I don't want to be with those fuddy-duddies."

Baroness Jones:

Well, I was getting older. I felt there might be a place for me here.

I suppose, when you're a Green, you stand for everything. We have lots of internal elections and external elections, and you are encouraged to stand because if you don't have enough people to stand, then you can't get them elected. One of the elections internally was for a list of people who, if the government offered a seat or more than one seat in the House of Lords, then we would say, "Right, here's this person." We ran the list, I came top. We ran it again five years later and I came top again. When they offered us a seat, I was the first person on the list.

I didn't actually want to come in here at first because I still had two years left to run on the London Assembly. I thought my role there had more impact.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah.

Baroness Jones:

Challenging-

Lord Speaker:

Local impact.

Baroness Jones:

Yes, but challenging the mayor and being able to do things locally, yes. I came in part-time at first. It was a shock. It was unlike ... I'd been elected to a local council before. It was a shock.

Lord Speaker:

Where was it a shock?

Baroness Jones:

Well, the nicest people in the House were the Conservatives. They were the ones who actually ... I know. They were what ones who actually talked to me, had a cup of coffee with me sometimes, could explain things to me. The other political parties weren't really interested in me at all, so I had to fight for my place for a bit.

When I first came in, I'd got a lot of, "Why are you talking about," whatever, education, or housing, or whatever. "Why are you talking about that? That's not the environment." I had to explain to people everything is about the environment. If you build the wrong houses in the wrong place, then it's a disaster for future flooding, and so on. But nobody says that anymore. My colleague Natalie Bennett and I, we do talk on as many topics as we can. Nobody says, "Why are you as Greens speaking about this?"

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. You have strategy sessions with Natalie, don't you? Because your agenda is very ordered, as I can see it.

Baroness Jones:

Well, in fact, we hardly ever meet because we're both so busy. We occasionally meet in the corridor. "Where are you going? Oh, I'm going here."

At the start of every session, we look at what the government's planning to do, we look at the list of bills coming through, and we more or less divide them up. It's not possible really to divide them all the time, because sometimes it needs both of us in there on different aspects. But we divide them up and we also rank the bills as whether they're important or not. Obviously, an environment bill would be very high priority, and other bills perhaps not so much. But then we get caught by surprise. For example, we had ranked the Crown Estates Bill as not very important. Then of course, all sort of things cropped up.

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely.

Baroness Jones:

Including the salmon farms. We do try to organise our time.

Lord Speaker:

Is there a campaign needed on salmon farms? Because a number of members have mentioned to me about the contamination, and the lice, and the need to do something. One member actually the last week mentioned, they'll be nameless, but said that there doesn't seem to be a general awareness of the issues.

Baroness Jones:

No. It's quite striking that people carry on eating salmon, even though the way they're produced in salmon farms is absolutely horrifying. It is the lice. They suffer. The fish in the farm suffer, quite often die in their pens because the lice have eaten so far into their flesh, and so on. But there's the impact on the wider world as well, because of course salmon farms are on the coast, they're in the sea. Wild Atlantic salmon going past these fish farms can get poisoned by the toxic stuff, all the antibiotics and so on, coming off the farm fish. Also, farmed fish mate with the Atlantic salmon, which is deeply unhealthy for that particular species.

Lord Speaker:

When you came in the House, I believe Baroness Hamwee was a member of the London Assembly and she referred to you as being "feisty."

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

And you don't take any hostages.

Baroness Jones:

That's right.

Lord Speaker:

Is that a realistic assessment of Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb?

Baroness Jones:

Yeah, perhaps it is. I think I've got worse as I've got older as well. I didn't know what she was going to say. She didn't check it with me.

Lord Speaker:

Well, I have to say, as Speaker sitting on the woolsack and just observing, that I don't see you getting worse in any way. What I see is someone interested in the subjects and the rest of the House listening to you on that.

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you. I think I can be quite rude.

Lord Speaker:

Then again,-

Baroness Jones:

I go too far.

Lord Speaker:

... a little snort at the Bishops, or something like that. [Laughter]

Baroness Jones:

Somebody said to me once I get away with a lot in here because people know that I care about what I'm saying.

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely.

Baroness Jones:

They see that I'm honest about it.

Lord Speaker:

There's an authenticity.

Baroness Jones:

An authenticity, yes. Exactly. Somehow, that's less offensive. Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

If you're talking to young people in the Lord's education programmes, or whatever, what would you say to them about the House of Lords?

Baroness Jones:

Clearly, the Green Party would abolish the House of Lords. We would make it all elected. We would sweep away some of these really stupid, archaic practices that we have here. But at the same time, while we've got this system, it actually weirdly works.

Most people, when I talk to them, they've got no idea what we do here and they don't understand it. But I do get more and more emails from people saying, "Over the past few years, I always used to think that House of Lords was a waste of time, but now I say thank God because we stopped the last government from doing some awful things."

Lord Speaker:

Sewage.

Baroness Jones:

Sewage.

Lord Speaker:

That was an item because you worked with some hereditary peers on that particular issue, the Duke of Wellington.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

For whom you've got great admiration.

Baroness Jones:

Indeed, yes. The Duke of Wellington is quite a classic. He led the charge on trying to hold the water companies to account. He ended up working quite closely with Feargal Sharkey, who is the son of dissident Irish Republican parents.

Lord Speaker:

From Derry/Londonderry, or Stroke City as he calls it.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, does he? But that, yes, we all fell in behind the Duke of Wellington. He did give us an example of how you can do things very gently. That's not my style, but I could see that it worked for him.

There's other things as well. The government doesn't always get its own way. I think that's quite important, that we sometimes say, "You've got to think again." We do have a convention that, if something's in the governing party's manifesto, we don't fight it. But sometimes, I'm not sure that's right. I would massively change the House of Lords, but it does work.

I do get told off for running in the corridors, which always irritates me. But there are quite a lot of people with walking sticks, so that's probably not a bad idea.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. I think I read about the climate protest and the Extinction Rebellion, was it 2019, when you were trying to get through to the House of Lords. You spoke to the protestors and said you were really surprised you got quite a warm welcome.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Yes!

Lord Speaker:

What did you say to them?

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Well, I think by then, they knew a bit about me and the fact that I supported protest, peaceful protest. No, they did give me ... I was at something here, I think last week or the week before, and it was for women. It was International Women's Day. I went to the meeting and it was absolutely packed, and I was very tired, I wanted to go home. But I thought I'd make a bit of an effort and somebody in the room recognised me. Almost at once, a bunch of young women turn round and said, "Oh, Green Party! Oh! House of Lords, oh!" They were interested. That was a bit of a shock. I think there's a lot of quite politically aware younger people out there and the House of Lords does not have such a terrible reputation as it used to have.

Baroness Jones:

think it is a surprise to a lot of people still, because most MPs don't have the opportunity to read the bills. They don't have time.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly.

Baroness Jones:

They've got thousands and thousands of constituents who want attention or who need attention. It's down to us here in the Lords to actually read the bills, see the flaws, and correct them if we can.

It is interesting, because we have the crossbenches. I can't remember how many we've got, 200 now? Something like that.

Lord Speaker:

Just under.

Baroness Jones:

They are an enormous source of expertise. All the people, the former judges, and the people who are still King's Counsel on the benches, they help. There are times when they say, "We can't pass this. It's illegal." Then the whole House listens.

Lord Speaker:

The sadly departed Lord Judge.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, I miss him.

Lord Speaker:

I know. With his precise analysis of issues and the influence he had in legislation.

Baroness Jones:

I felt myself a friend of his and I was very sad when he died. But that is what happens here, isn't it?

Lord Speaker:

Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales at one stage.

Baroness Jones:

He was, yes, yes. He was so calm and considerate.

Lord Speaker:

Can I take you back to March 2021 and the tragic case of Sarah Everard and her abduction.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

I know you were prominent in that. But you did say that you were considering an amendment to put down to have a curfew for men not to be in the streets after 6pm. I don't think it would have been an exaggeration to say that it got a real big hit, big attention.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Yeah, it made some waves. The thing was, I was in a debate here in the House, on domestic violence. We'd been talking about it's mostly male violence against women. It was 8:30 at night, which is when I don't want to be here in the House anymore. I don't like staying late. I was just about to speak and then something came through on my phone about a local police commander who said something along the lines of, "Now, ladies, if you live in this area, don't go out after dark without a male member of your family," or something. I was tired, I was irritable.

Lord Speaker:

You exploded.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. It was awful to listen to all this stuff about domestic violence, and then to have ... Yes, so I said that. And said, "I'm considering bringing an amendment to stop men going out on the streets." I could see the Whip and the Minister opposite me going to each other, "Where does that come from?" It did cause a bit of kerfuffle. My grandchildren were thrilled when all their friends from America, and Australia, and Nepal, and places, they all were texting saying, "Your granny!"

Baroness Jones:

I was on a train going home to Dorset the next day and I got this phone call from the Green Party. They said, "Oh, your comment about a male curfew, it's just gone everywhere." I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry." They said, "No, that's fine. It's really good." They were quite happy with the attention.

But I had a lot of emails from women and they were saying things like, "Oh, does that mean I can go running on a towpath at 9:00 at night without being harassed or murdered?" Yeah. It wasn't a joke, but it-

Lord Speaker:

No, it was a very serious subject.

Baroness Jones:

Yes, yeah.

Lord Speaker:

It, should I say, arrested attention.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Yes.

Lord Speaker:

2014, Occupy London. Were your grandchildren pleased when you got arrested, or maybe others in the family pleased when you got de-arrested?

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Well, yeah, de-arrested within about three minutes.

The thing about the Green Party, if you get arrested, obviously not for fraud or anything like that, but if you get arrested because you're out on the front lines at a demonstration, it's almost a gold star. I didn't mean to get arrested. I was trying to calm things down and the police had clearly had enough.

But when I got back into the House, I said to a couple of people, "I've just been arrested." The only almost adverse comment I'd got from anyone was, "Aren't you a bit old to get arrested?" Oh, yeah. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. I got arrested.

Lord Speaker:

The issues that you focus on, obviously it's wide-ranging. But maybe, electoral reform, education, violence against women. What other big issues? Obviously, sustainable food and environment, healthy living. I think you want to provide an example to others by the work you do in your allotment.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, yes. Well, actually, the allotment is only for me. It's only for me. But I do talk about it on social media.

Lord Speaker:

Do you mediate? Do you meditate when you get there?

Baroness Jones:

No, I work. I get my hands dirty and I go home with scratches all up my arm, and that sort of thing.

My favourite thing on the allotment is to grow fruit because it's the least effort. You do have the chop the raspberry canes down, or whatever. But growing fruit means you've not only got lovely raspberries, and black currants, and gooseberries, and so on, all summer.

Lord Speaker:

Young people, getting to young people, I know that's a big part of your advocacy. What message do we need to give young people?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I think talking to them and leading by example. What you're doing, about going out and talking to them, and showing them that politicians can be accountable, and that any of them can ask any of us any questions they like. I don't normally go to universities to speak. I get invitations from time-to-time, but it's usually on a Friday evening or something, and I just want to get back to my allotment. But the few times I have done it, I went to Cambridge, I did something in Exeter just recently, young people do love it. They love to hear about it. They like to feel that they're talking to somebody who is engaged.

I'm not sure. Would you call this frontline politics? Sometimes it is. Would you say?

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. I think Lord Hennessy, esteemed historian and a real addition to the House of Lords, he has called the House of Lords "the best think tank in the country." And that we influence the public debate. I'm quite taken by that. Perhaps we don't influence it immediately.

For example, I remember a report by the Health Committee, Lord Patel chairing it. It was presented to the government, nothing happened for a few years. They then came out with a white paper and almost everything that was in Lord Patel's paper was adopted as a white paper by the government. Maybe it goes with age and experience. We give that information, we give it in a gentle way, but we just hope it gets taken up at some time.

I think the model here of engagement with peers and others, listening, and understanding issues with a depth I think is really important. I think people value that.

Baroness Jones:

I think you're right. I personally am too impatient. As I said, I've been a Green for a long time, for decades.

Lord Speaker:

I think you're under-valuing yourself. You are impatient and I can sympathise with that, but your impatience doesn't impede the positive engagement that you have.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. What I have noticed is that, when I talk about climate change, there used to be people who told me, here in this House, "It doesn't exist. What are you talking about? The climate's always changed." Now I hear a little bit of that, but I hear more now about people who accept that climate change is happening, but not as fast as I'm saying, and that sort of thing. Things are changing a little bit on the issue of climate change, which is what I care about. And all the impact that that's going to have on our lives, whether it's flooding, or drought and food shortages, and that sort of thing.

I think that we as humans are astonishingly destructive to nature. You mentioned earlier my work on sewage and that has been a real, well, a real anxiety-inducing issue for me because we've seen water companies polluting out waterways, our beaches, our lovely fishing streams. Our chalk streams that are very rare and precious. And yet, we still can't stop them doing it. They are still doing it. They are still polluting. Up until a week ago, they were definitely still polluting Lake Windermere, for example. A most amazing place. Nature gets destroyed and sometimes it can't be replaced. It won't grow back. Some things will, but a lot of the ecology we have here just won't. It's too rare and it's too precious. I do get quite angry about that, water companies.

Lord Speaker:

Okay. Your valedictory message on Lord Speaker's Podcast, what is it?

Baroness Jones:

I would say that politics is absolutely crucial for us all. People try not to get involved in politics, but actually, politics is about absolutely everything. It's about who spends the money and who gets the money.

Lord Speaker:

Baroness Jones, thank you very much. It's been a great interview. Can I say that you add life, experience, knowledge to the House of Lords?

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you.

 

In this episode

‘We’ve seen water companies polluting our waterways, our beaches, our lovely fishing streams… our chalk streams that are very rare and precious. And yet, we still can’t stop them doing it.’

Baroness Jones is one of two Green members of the House of Lords alongside Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle. In this episode, she speaks to Lord McFall of Alcluith about why she campaigns on a wide range of topics.

‘People carry on eating salmon, even though the way they’re produced in salmon farms is absolutely horrifying. It is the lice. The fish in the farm suffer, quite often die in their pens because the lice have eaten so far into their flesh. Wild Atlantic salmon going past these fish farms can get poisoned by the toxic stuff, all the antibiotics and so on, coming off the farm fish.’

Baroness Jones describes how members initially questioned the Green link to various issues when she first joined the Lords but how that has now changed. She explains ‘I had to explain to people everything is about the environment. If you build the wrong houses in the wrong place, then it's a disaster for future flooding, and so on.’

Baroness Jones also shares how she came to the Lords after training as an archaeologist and later serving as a London Assembly Member and Deputy Mayor.

Listen now

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Transcript

Lord Speaker:

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, Jenny, welcome to Lord Speaker's Podcast. Maybe we could start by giving a reflection on your early life. Moulsecoomb is a housing estate near Brighton of social housing, so your origins and background.

Baroness Jones:

Thank you, Lord Speaker. It's really nice to have an opportunity to just chat. Yes, I grew up in a council estate in Brighton and I had a very 1950s post-war type upbringing. The estate was built as homes for heroes, so my dad who'd been a cook in the RAF was allocated a house. It was a security thing for the whole of my younger years. I went to primary, I went to the grammar school. I had a great, happy childhood. We were very poor, but we never went hungry or went cold.

Lord Speaker:

But you left school and then you went back as a mature student.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Well, I left school and I went to London to do a course, but I absolutely loathed it. I got sucked up into CND demonstrations and things like that. Then I went back to my hometown and I met my future husband. We got married, had kids, we travelled with his work, which was as a water engineer. I lived in Africa, I lived in the Seychelles, both of which were fascinating.

But quite difficult, because I'm somebody who likes to be doing stuff and be involved. In both those countries, they didn't really want expatriate wives to be involved in anything. I spent a lot of time riding horses in Lesotho and scuba diving in Seychelles.

Lord Speaker:

Good. It doesn't go with your present image.

Baroness Jones:

No, no, I know [laughter]. Mind you, the horses were great.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah.

Baroness Jones:

Well, so was the diving. When I was diving one time, we were out in a boat and obviously it's very hot. Everybody is getting a bit tetchy, there are about four of us to go in the water. All of a sudden, a whale shark appeared. This is the biggest fish in the ocean. Although it's absolutely huge, it eats tiny, little fish. We all scampered down to the bottom of the ocean and just looked at this thing. It was quite curious about us, so it swam around us. That has got to be one of the most amazing times of my life.

Lord Speaker:

Terrific, terrific. You then went into education as a mature student, something that we have in common-

Baroness Jones:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

... on that. I felt, as a mature student, that I was on the road to education and it was hard for me to get off a few degrees after that.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, right. Right.

Lord Speaker:

What did education do to you as a mature student?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I got divorced and then I was really casting around for something to do. I thought, "Well, going back into education would be really good for me." I looked for what I thought would be the easiest possible degree, so I took archaeology, which proved not to be that easy.

Lord Speaker:

I wouldn't think it would be the easiest degree.

Baroness Jones:

No, it wasn't the easiest, but it was fascinating. It meant that, for the next 10 years, I travelled all over the Middle East digging different periods, different countries. That was quite an experience.

But the course itself, there were quite a few of us mature students. We did actually form a support group almost. We liaised with the younger people as well, obviously. But as mature students, we had particular struggles, if you like, but we supported each other.

Lord Speaker:

Add a bit of colour to your experience in the Middle East. After all, it was 10 years.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Well, I was what they called a dirt archaeologist, which was I just dig. I dug in all sorts of eras. My preference is, well, post-Roman stuff just leaves me cold, I'm afraid, so I like everything before the Christian era. But I dug in Egypt and I handled Neolithic remains. I dug in Syria and that was a 13th Century AD glass factory. In Jordan, that was Neolithic, and so on. It was a complete mix.

But I was a terrible archaeologist because, to be a good archaeologist, you need to read a lot and stay up to date with what's going on, because there's new discoveries virtually every day. I wasn't very good about keeping up with those.

Lord Speaker:

But it gave you a discipline.

Baroness Jones:

It gave me a sense of how I like working hard, essentially. That was good to know, because as a mother, you work really hard, but it doesn't always feel like work, whereas this was paid work that I was doing. In Ethiopia, for example, I didn't do very well in Ethiopia because I was vegetarian when I went there. It was in the early days of my archaeology. It was just after a bout of war and there were no vegetables to eat. At lunch, we had pasta with a quite thin tomato sauce. For dinner, we had boiled goat. After two weeks and I'd lost about half-a-stone, I started eating the boiled goat. That, quite honestly, stopped me being vegetarian because if you can eat boiled goat, you can certainly eat other meats. Yeah. But then, we were digging up some 1000-year-old monoliths. It's been quite varied, my archaeology.

Lord Speaker:

Then you come back to the UK, and if I'm correct, you joined the Green Party in 1998.

Baroness Jones:

Is that right? No. No, '88. '88 I joined.

Lord Speaker:

'88, 10 years earlier. What took you into the Green Party?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I'd always been interested in growing food and being careful with trying not to consume too much. It just fitted my ethos. When I came back from the archaeology, I got a job in an office, in an accounts office, and thought I was settling in there. But in fact, I very quickly got elected onto the London Assembly, almost by happenstance, almost by-

Lord Speaker:

That was in 2000, the year 2000?

Baroness Jones:

In 2000. That was almost by accident, yes. It was a bit of a shock to my system. After the first year on the London Assembly, the Evening Standard did a league table of the 25 Assembly Members and I came bottom. That was a-

Lord Speaker:

Bottom for what?

Baroness Jones:

Everything, really. Talent, I suppose.

Lord Speaker:

It wouldn't be attendance, for example? It wouldn't be commitment?

Baroness Jones:

No, no. It would be more about being able to speak, challenging the mayor, just positioning, I suppose. Anyway.

Lord Speaker:

But politics was a new environment for you, wasn't it?

Baroness Jones:

It was a new environment. And also, it came at a huge sense of responsibility because we, 25 people, had the opportunity to hold the Mayor of London, a quite powerful role, to account. He had to answer to us. He sat in front of us once every month and answered our questions.

Lord Speaker:

Was that Ken Livingstone?

Baroness Jones:

That was Ken Livingstone. I was on it for 16 years.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, yeah.

Baroness Jones:

The first eight years were Ken Livingstone. He was a brilliant mayor. I know he gets bad press in all sorts of ways, but he really cared about London, he really cared about Londoners, and he did his absolute best. He was also, because he knew where he wanted to go ... For example, he wanted London to be cleaner, and he wanted better public transport, and all these things. He was prepared to listen to other people's ideas, and if they fitted, then he would use the ideas, which was great for Green. You could have a chat with Ken in the lift and he'd say, "Oh, all right, that's a good idea." Then half-an-hour later, you'd have a call from his office to say, "Oh, can you come up and explain what you've told Ken he's got to do?"

Whereas with Boris Johnson, who was there for the second eight-year chunk that I was there, he was completely useless.

Lord Speaker:

I think I read that you liked him.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, yeah, I really liked him. He made me laugh.

Lord Speaker:

But you also liked him and didn't like him.

Baroness Jones:

Well, I didn't like him as a mayor. I thought he was a rubbish mayor. The one talent he did have was he employed, he gathered people around him who could do the job for him. He had some very good people in post. I think that's where he went unstuck as Prime Minister, because I think he had less choice about who he gathered around him. But then, of course, he made some very bad choices.

With Boris, as an Assembly Member, if I met him in the lift in the basement and I got out on the fourth floor, if somebody else got in with a better idea or different idea, he'd have changed his mind by the sixth floor. He was utterly unreliable.

Lord Speaker:

Well, we've all got flaws.

Baroness Jones:

Right. Yes, yeah. [Laughter] I suspect he's got more than most.

Lord Speaker:

You're really interested in sustainable transport.

Baroness Jones:

I'm interested in a lot of things.

Lord Speaker:

And you worked with Ken Livingstone on that.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

Tell us a bit about that, because it seems a success down to Ken Livingstone and yourself involved.

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you. Ken Livingstone had this idea, because he'd looked at a lot of models about how to reduce traffic in London, because clearly the air was very polluted. And also, the streets were so clogged up. He had the idea of putting in the congestion charge. It was a deeply unpopular measure. He said at one time the only two groups supporting him were "the Greens and big business." The City supported it because they could see the advantages of having less traffic on their streets.

One of the options that I put forward was doing more on walking and cycling, which he took up. On the first day of the congestion charge, he told me that he was standing with his chief of staff looking out of the window of City Hall at Tower Bridge and there was absolutely no traffic on it. He said it was like watching tumbleweed go across and it did cross his mind that he'd gone too far. But he hadn't, of course. It was definitely the right move.

It also meant that public transport could improve, particularly the buses. I can remember going to work on a bus one day and actually seeing somebody in a suit going into the City. I'd never seen that in London before. There was a wider bus ridership than previously. He was good. He was good on that.

Lord Speaker:

You're there for quite a time. 2000 to 2016, is that correct? What were your achievements there? Because your focus was environment, it was on healthy foods, it was on violence against women, as well as sustainable transport. What are the hallmarks for you?

Baroness Jones:

I chaired London Food, and that was a body of people and it was a very diverse body. It was a board of ... We had an organic restaurateur. We had somebody from the City. We had people from all over. We came together to devise sustainable food for London, because we were all concerned that there could be shortages in the future, problems with deliveries, or whatever. Actually, drawing up a way to make sure that Londoners had enough food even when times were hard was quite useful.

The thing that came out of that report was that it was all very well growing organic food, that's great. But actually, you need to eat local food. If you eat local food, you're supporting the people around London, you're supporting the farmers and the growers. That impacts on other Londoners who work there and of course, the food is fresher. But there were EU regulations at the time which meant that schools and hospitals couldn't just say they wanted apples from Kent, say, because of all the EU regulations. We found ways to get round them a little bit. For example, if you specified particular packaging, then they could buy apples from Kent and not apples from Spain, or wherever.

Lord Speaker:

In 2013, you came into the House of Lords.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

What made you come into the House of Lords? Because it would seem as if you'd maybe have looked at it from the outside and said, "I don't want to be with those fuddy-duddies."

Baroness Jones:

Well, I was getting older. I felt there might be a place for me here.

I suppose, when you're a Green, you stand for everything. We have lots of internal elections and external elections, and you are encouraged to stand because if you don't have enough people to stand, then you can't get them elected. One of the elections internally was for a list of people who, if the government offered a seat or more than one seat in the House of Lords, then we would say, "Right, here's this person." We ran the list, I came top. We ran it again five years later and I came top again. When they offered us a seat, I was the first person on the list.

I didn't actually want to come in here at first because I still had two years left to run on the London Assembly. I thought my role there had more impact.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah.

Baroness Jones:

Challenging-

Lord Speaker:

Local impact.

Baroness Jones:

Yes, but challenging the mayor and being able to do things locally, yes. I came in part-time at first. It was a shock. It was unlike ... I'd been elected to a local council before. It was a shock.

Lord Speaker:

Where was it a shock?

Baroness Jones:

Well, the nicest people in the House were the Conservatives. They were the ones who actually ... I know. They were what ones who actually talked to me, had a cup of coffee with me sometimes, could explain things to me. The other political parties weren't really interested in me at all, so I had to fight for my place for a bit.

When I first came in, I'd got a lot of, "Why are you talking about," whatever, education, or housing, or whatever. "Why are you talking about that? That's not the environment." I had to explain to people everything is about the environment. If you build the wrong houses in the wrong place, then it's a disaster for future flooding, and so on. But nobody says that anymore. My colleague Natalie Bennett and I, we do talk on as many topics as we can. Nobody says, "Why are you as Greens speaking about this?"

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. You have strategy sessions with Natalie, don't you? Because your agenda is very ordered, as I can see it.

Baroness Jones:

Well, in fact, we hardly ever meet because we're both so busy. We occasionally meet in the corridor. "Where are you going? Oh, I'm going here."

At the start of every session, we look at what the government's planning to do, we look at the list of bills coming through, and we more or less divide them up. It's not possible really to divide them all the time, because sometimes it needs both of us in there on different aspects. But we divide them up and we also rank the bills as whether they're important or not. Obviously, an environment bill would be very high priority, and other bills perhaps not so much. But then we get caught by surprise. For example, we had ranked the Crown Estates Bill as not very important. Then of course, all sort of things cropped up.

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely.

Baroness Jones:

Including the salmon farms. We do try to organise our time.

Lord Speaker:

Is there a campaign needed on salmon farms? Because a number of members have mentioned to me about the contamination, and the lice, and the need to do something. One member actually the last week mentioned, they'll be nameless, but said that there doesn't seem to be a general awareness of the issues.

Baroness Jones:

No. It's quite striking that people carry on eating salmon, even though the way they're produced in salmon farms is absolutely horrifying. It is the lice. They suffer. The fish in the farm suffer, quite often die in their pens because the lice have eaten so far into their flesh, and so on. But there's the impact on the wider world as well, because of course salmon farms are on the coast, they're in the sea. Wild Atlantic salmon going past these fish farms can get poisoned by the toxic stuff, all the antibiotics and so on, coming off the farm fish. Also, farmed fish mate with the Atlantic salmon, which is deeply unhealthy for that particular species.

Lord Speaker:

When you came in the House, I believe Baroness Hamwee was a member of the London Assembly and she referred to you as being "feisty."

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

And you don't take any hostages.

Baroness Jones:

That's right.

Lord Speaker:

Is that a realistic assessment of Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb?

Baroness Jones:

Yeah, perhaps it is. I think I've got worse as I've got older as well. I didn't know what she was going to say. She didn't check it with me.

Lord Speaker:

Well, I have to say, as Speaker sitting on the woolsack and just observing, that I don't see you getting worse in any way. What I see is someone interested in the subjects and the rest of the House listening to you on that.

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you. I think I can be quite rude.

Lord Speaker:

Then again,-

Baroness Jones:

I go too far.

Lord Speaker:

... a little snort at the Bishops, or something like that. [Laughter]

Baroness Jones:

Somebody said to me once I get away with a lot in here because people know that I care about what I'm saying.

Lord Speaker:

Absolutely.

Baroness Jones:

They see that I'm honest about it.

Lord Speaker:

There's an authenticity.

Baroness Jones:

An authenticity, yes. Exactly. Somehow, that's less offensive. Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

If you're talking to young people in the Lord's education programmes, or whatever, what would you say to them about the House of Lords?

Baroness Jones:

Clearly, the Green Party would abolish the House of Lords. We would make it all elected. We would sweep away some of these really stupid, archaic practices that we have here. But at the same time, while we've got this system, it actually weirdly works.

Most people, when I talk to them, they've got no idea what we do here and they don't understand it. But I do get more and more emails from people saying, "Over the past few years, I always used to think that House of Lords was a waste of time, but now I say thank God because we stopped the last government from doing some awful things."

Lord Speaker:

Sewage.

Baroness Jones:

Sewage.

Lord Speaker:

That was an item because you worked with some hereditary peers on that particular issue, the Duke of Wellington.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

For whom you've got great admiration.

Baroness Jones:

Indeed, yes. The Duke of Wellington is quite a classic. He led the charge on trying to hold the water companies to account. He ended up working quite closely with Feargal Sharkey, who is the son of dissident Irish Republican parents.

Lord Speaker:

From Derry/Londonderry, or Stroke City as he calls it.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, does he? But that, yes, we all fell in behind the Duke of Wellington. He did give us an example of how you can do things very gently. That's not my style, but I could see that it worked for him.

There's other things as well. The government doesn't always get its own way. I think that's quite important, that we sometimes say, "You've got to think again." We do have a convention that, if something's in the governing party's manifesto, we don't fight it. But sometimes, I'm not sure that's right. I would massively change the House of Lords, but it does work.

I do get told off for running in the corridors, which always irritates me. But there are quite a lot of people with walking sticks, so that's probably not a bad idea.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. I think I read about the climate protest and the Extinction Rebellion, was it 2019, when you were trying to get through to the House of Lords. You spoke to the protestors and said you were really surprised you got quite a warm welcome.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Yes!

Lord Speaker:

What did you say to them?

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Well, I think by then, they knew a bit about me and the fact that I supported protest, peaceful protest. No, they did give me ... I was at something here, I think last week or the week before, and it was for women. It was International Women's Day. I went to the meeting and it was absolutely packed, and I was very tired, I wanted to go home. But I thought I'd make a bit of an effort and somebody in the room recognised me. Almost at once, a bunch of young women turn round and said, "Oh, Green Party! Oh! House of Lords, oh!" They were interested. That was a bit of a shock. I think there's a lot of quite politically aware younger people out there and the House of Lords does not have such a terrible reputation as it used to have.

Baroness Jones:

think it is a surprise to a lot of people still, because most MPs don't have the opportunity to read the bills. They don't have time.

Lord Speaker:

Exactly.

Baroness Jones:

They've got thousands and thousands of constituents who want attention or who need attention. It's down to us here in the Lords to actually read the bills, see the flaws, and correct them if we can.

It is interesting, because we have the crossbenches. I can't remember how many we've got, 200 now? Something like that.

Lord Speaker:

Just under.

Baroness Jones:

They are an enormous source of expertise. All the people, the former judges, and the people who are still King's Counsel on the benches, they help. There are times when they say, "We can't pass this. It's illegal." Then the whole House listens.

Lord Speaker:

The sadly departed Lord Judge.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, I miss him.

Lord Speaker:

I know. With his precise analysis of issues and the influence he had in legislation.

Baroness Jones:

I felt myself a friend of his and I was very sad when he died. But that is what happens here, isn't it?

Lord Speaker:

Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales at one stage.

Baroness Jones:

He was, yes, yes. He was so calm and considerate.

Lord Speaker:

Can I take you back to March 2021 and the tragic case of Sarah Everard and her abduction.

Baroness Jones:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

I know you were prominent in that. But you did say that you were considering an amendment to put down to have a curfew for men not to be in the streets after 6pm. I don't think it would have been an exaggeration to say that it got a real big hit, big attention.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Yeah, it made some waves. The thing was, I was in a debate here in the House, on domestic violence. We'd been talking about it's mostly male violence against women. It was 8:30 at night, which is when I don't want to be here in the House anymore. I don't like staying late. I was just about to speak and then something came through on my phone about a local police commander who said something along the lines of, "Now, ladies, if you live in this area, don't go out after dark without a male member of your family," or something. I was tired, I was irritable.

Lord Speaker:

You exploded.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. It was awful to listen to all this stuff about domestic violence, and then to have ... Yes, so I said that. And said, "I'm considering bringing an amendment to stop men going out on the streets." I could see the Whip and the Minister opposite me going to each other, "Where does that come from?" It did cause a bit of kerfuffle. My grandchildren were thrilled when all their friends from America, and Australia, and Nepal, and places, they all were texting saying, "Your granny!"

Baroness Jones:

I was on a train going home to Dorset the next day and I got this phone call from the Green Party. They said, "Oh, your comment about a male curfew, it's just gone everywhere." I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry." They said, "No, that's fine. It's really good." They were quite happy with the attention.

But I had a lot of emails from women and they were saying things like, "Oh, does that mean I can go running on a towpath at 9:00 at night without being harassed or murdered?" Yeah. It wasn't a joke, but it-

Lord Speaker:

No, it was a very serious subject.

Baroness Jones:

Yes, yeah.

Lord Speaker:

It, should I say, arrested attention.

Baroness Jones:

Yes. Yes.

Lord Speaker:

2014, Occupy London. Were your grandchildren pleased when you got arrested, or maybe others in the family pleased when you got de-arrested?

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. Well, yeah, de-arrested within about three minutes.

The thing about the Green Party, if you get arrested, obviously not for fraud or anything like that, but if you get arrested because you're out on the front lines at a demonstration, it's almost a gold star. I didn't mean to get arrested. I was trying to calm things down and the police had clearly had enough.

But when I got back into the House, I said to a couple of people, "I've just been arrested." The only almost adverse comment I'd got from anyone was, "Aren't you a bit old to get arrested?" Oh, yeah. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. I got arrested.

Lord Speaker:

The issues that you focus on, obviously it's wide-ranging. But maybe, electoral reform, education, violence against women. What other big issues? Obviously, sustainable food and environment, healthy living. I think you want to provide an example to others by the work you do in your allotment.

Baroness Jones:

Oh, yes. Well, actually, the allotment is only for me. It's only for me. But I do talk about it on social media.

Lord Speaker:

Do you mediate? Do you meditate when you get there?

Baroness Jones:

No, I work. I get my hands dirty and I go home with scratches all up my arm, and that sort of thing.

My favourite thing on the allotment is to grow fruit because it's the least effort. You do have the chop the raspberry canes down, or whatever. But growing fruit means you've not only got lovely raspberries, and black currants, and gooseberries, and so on, all summer.

Lord Speaker:

Young people, getting to young people, I know that's a big part of your advocacy. What message do we need to give young people?

Baroness Jones:

Well, I think talking to them and leading by example. What you're doing, about going out and talking to them, and showing them that politicians can be accountable, and that any of them can ask any of us any questions they like. I don't normally go to universities to speak. I get invitations from time-to-time, but it's usually on a Friday evening or something, and I just want to get back to my allotment. But the few times I have done it, I went to Cambridge, I did something in Exeter just recently, young people do love it. They love to hear about it. They like to feel that they're talking to somebody who is engaged.

I'm not sure. Would you call this frontline politics? Sometimes it is. Would you say?

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. I think Lord Hennessy, esteemed historian and a real addition to the House of Lords, he has called the House of Lords "the best think tank in the country." And that we influence the public debate. I'm quite taken by that. Perhaps we don't influence it immediately.

For example, I remember a report by the Health Committee, Lord Patel chairing it. It was presented to the government, nothing happened for a few years. They then came out with a white paper and almost everything that was in Lord Patel's paper was adopted as a white paper by the government. Maybe it goes with age and experience. We give that information, we give it in a gentle way, but we just hope it gets taken up at some time.

I think the model here of engagement with peers and others, listening, and understanding issues with a depth I think is really important. I think people value that.

Baroness Jones:

I think you're right. I personally am too impatient. As I said, I've been a Green for a long time, for decades.

Lord Speaker:

I think you're under-valuing yourself. You are impatient and I can sympathise with that, but your impatience doesn't impede the positive engagement that you have.

Baroness Jones:

Yeah. What I have noticed is that, when I talk about climate change, there used to be people who told me, here in this House, "It doesn't exist. What are you talking about? The climate's always changed." Now I hear a little bit of that, but I hear more now about people who accept that climate change is happening, but not as fast as I'm saying, and that sort of thing. Things are changing a little bit on the issue of climate change, which is what I care about. And all the impact that that's going to have on our lives, whether it's flooding, or drought and food shortages, and that sort of thing.

I think that we as humans are astonishingly destructive to nature. You mentioned earlier my work on sewage and that has been a real, well, a real anxiety-inducing issue for me because we've seen water companies polluting out waterways, our beaches, our lovely fishing streams. Our chalk streams that are very rare and precious. And yet, we still can't stop them doing it. They are still doing it. They are still polluting. Up until a week ago, they were definitely still polluting Lake Windermere, for example. A most amazing place. Nature gets destroyed and sometimes it can't be replaced. It won't grow back. Some things will, but a lot of the ecology we have here just won't. It's too rare and it's too precious. I do get quite angry about that, water companies.

Lord Speaker:

Okay. Your valedictory message on Lord Speaker's Podcast, what is it?

Baroness Jones:

I would say that politics is absolutely crucial for us all. People try not to get involved in politics, but actually, politics is about absolutely everything. It's about who spends the money and who gets the money.

Lord Speaker:

Baroness Jones, thank you very much. It's been a great interview. Can I say that you add life, experience, knowledge to the House of Lords?

Baroness Jones:

That's very kind of you.

 

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