A Labour peer has demanded a Tory government whip apologise to Parliament for wrongly claiming he was “fast asleep” in a Lords debate.
Lord Young of Norwood Green hit out after he was blocked from taking part in a debate due to the accusation.
He stood up just after 10pm on Monday to speak in the catchily-titled Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022.
But Tory whip Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist claimed he had been snoozing earlier on - and had to be woken by a member of Lords staff.
It was not the first time someone has been accused of being asleep in Parliament, and previously some of those accused have insisted they were awake.
MPs with hearing problems, for example, have been seen listening to speakers that are embedded in seats, while shutting their eyes to concentrate.
Today, 79-year-old Lord Young, who has hearing difficulties, said that was exactly the case in his situation.
He slammed the “appalling and discourteous” behaviour of the whip who “discourteously dismissed” him.
Standing up today to “set the record straight”, he told the Lords: “That wasn’t true. In fact what I was doing was listening as we do with my ear against the speaker.
“Today my hearing aid batteries are now in and I’m not reliant on that.”
He added: “Not only did it give some damage to my reputation, hopefully passing, but also in my view damaged the reputation of the House, unnecessarily in my view.
“I received what purported to be a letter of apology from Baroness Bloomfield and it started with the line ‘Whatever the rights or wrongs’.
“It seemed to me that wasn’t really an apology - that was more, shall we say, an equivocation at its best and I don’t accept that was an apology”.
He added “we should set the record straight in this house” and “she should be here to hear that, and in my view to have apologised to the House.”
After the accusation, the former postal workers’ union leader protested he was “not now” asleep, according to PA. According to Hansard, he protested: “I was not…”.
Baroness Bloomfield had claimed: "I am sorry, but the noble lord was fast asleep for the entire duration of the minister's speech.”
The Draft Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 debated by peers would allow the UK to deviate from EU law on genetic modification of crops.
The regulations would allow greater freedom for the practice of gene editing of plants in the UK.
Environment minister Lord Benyon said the regulations would allow the UK to "remain at the forefront" of research into GM crops.
