Mouse in the House

I'm delighted to report that I feel much better today, although still a fair bit from being back to my normal self (and no, that's not a good thing - thanks very much).

But I am back to work and have been trying to catch up on what's been going on. Did you know that the House of Lords now has its own mouse helpline?

No? You missed it too?

My stretch based in Parliament afforded me the privilege of doing a lot of work in their Lordships' House and, by the time I left, I had developed a deep affection for the place and many of the individuals who sit there.

The reasons for this are many, but one in particular stands out - a significant number of peers are mad, pure and simple. If you don't believe me, read this genuine report which I received by e-mail this morning:

Peer admits Parliament has 'mouse helpline'

Peers called for more to be done to tackle the problem of mice on the parliamentary estate yesterday afternoon, and revealed the existence of a so called 'mouse helpline'.

During a debate in the House of Lords, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, vice chair of the parliamentary allergy group, called for the introduction of "hypoallergenic cats" to deal with the problem of mice in the Palace of Westminster."

Miss Wilson, when she was a resident superintendent in this Palace, had a cat that apparently caught up to 60 mice a night," she told peers.

"The corpses were then swept up in the morning."

And she warned that the rodents posed a fire safety threat as they chewed through cables.

"It would be a tragedy for this beautiful Palace to burn down for lack of a cat," she said.

The cross bench peer also wanted to know how many calls there had been to the "mouse helpline" – presumably used by people to report sightings, rather than by mice experiencing emotional issues.

Speaking for the parliamentary authorities, Lord Brabazon of Tara said he was not able to give the number of calls made to the helpline.

"I suspect that it would not be a good use of resources to count them up," he said.

But he said there were a "number of reasons" why it was not a good idea to have cat.

"First, they would ingest mouse poison when eating poisoned mice, which would not be very nice for them, and there would be nothing to keep them where they are needed or stop them walking around the House on desks in offices or on tables in restaurants and bars—and maybe even in the Chamber itself.

"Therefore, we have ruled out at this stage the possibility of acquiring a cat, or cats," he said.

But he assured the Lords that he was conscious of the problem.

"I am well aware that there are still mice around," he said.

"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."

He added: "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."

But Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean said she was not even aware there was a helpline for mice.

"I was in total ignorance that there was anything of the nature of a mouse helpline until this question time," she said.

"Can the chairman of committees [Lord Brabazon] tell us what helplines there are for members of the House on other issues that we do not know about?"

Lord Brabazon said he had tried to keep the existence of the helpline under wraps, although it had been advertised some time ago.

"I invited Members of the House to telephone when they saw mice," he said.

"The trouble is that when the person at the other end of the helpline goes to check this out, very often the mouse has gone elsewhere."

Don't you just love them?!