Evan Harris speaks after settling his phone-hacking claim against Murdoch newspapers

Evan Harris didn't just make a statement to court as his claim against The Sun and the News of the World was settled, he made one outside court too.

And here it is.

In settling Evan Harris's claim, the owner of the papers, News Group Newspapers, made no admission of liability.

Evan Harris settles hacking claim against Murdoch newspapers

Yahoo! News reports that the former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris has settled his claim for unlawful information gathering against News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun and the now-closed News of the World.

Dr Harris told the High Court that he believes some of his close friends and associates, including Vince Cable and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, received calls from NGN journalists which cannot be "explained by anything other than voicemail interception".

Representing Dr Harris, barrister David Sherborne read a statement to the court, as the claim was formally settled:

Mr Sherborne said Dr Harris "believes that disclosed documents show that private investigator activity – which he considers to be unlawful – was directed against Hugh Grant … a few days prior to Mr Grant giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry in November 2011".

He also said NGN had disclosed other documents which Dr Harris believes reveal that fellow former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes was "outed" by The Sun as bisexual based on an itemised phone bill said to have shown Sir Simon calling a gay chat line.

In settling the claim, NGN made no admission of liability in relation to The Sun or The News of the World

Famous men behaving badly

Today the Supreme Court overturned a decision by Court of Appeal and ruled that an injunction banning the naming of a celebrity involved in an alleged extra-marital relationship should stay in place.

Over to John Hemming, the former Liberal Democrat MP:

The logical conclusion of this is that gossip about anyone with children will become a criminal offence subject to a potential penalty of 2 years' imprisonment. 

It is important to note that the injunction covers people talking in pubs, gossiping over the garden fence, or twittering on the internet. All of these could potentially see an application for committal for contempt of court. That comes with large amounts of legal costs and up to 2 years imprisonment. One would assume that it would not be assumed that this would only apply to claimants who have a large amount of money, but also everyone else.

And all this despite the fact that anyone who wants to find the identity of the celebrity, or of the married actor who slept with a prostitute and has taken out a similar injunction against the British press, can easily do so.

Delivering the court's judgment, Lord Mance did at least say:

“It is different if the story has some bearing on the performance of a public office or the correction of a misleading public impression cultivated by the person involved."

But there are those who question even that.

Over on Liberal Democrat Voice, Caron Lindsay has argued that there is "nothing of public interest in lurid headlines about SNP MPs".

I find this creeping doctrine that everything printed in a newspaper must be "in the public interest" rather sinister.

Who decides what is in the public interest? Somewhere in the shadows I detect the presence of a committee of the great and good - a retired cabinet minister, the headmistress of a leading public school, a celebrity chef and Dr Evan Harris - deciding what we should and should not be allowed to know.

At its lowest, the argument against the spread of this public interest argument is that laughing at the follies of rich and powerful has always been one of the consolations of the poor and weak.

At its highest it is that character matters immensely in politics. To many voters it is more important than the parties' detailed policy platforms, and I am not sure those voters are mistaken.

The spread of privacy law in recent years has been very much a judge-led initiative with little involvement from parliament. As John Hemmings says, it is time the politicians stepped in and set sensible limits on it.

Six of the Best 589

"Liberalism is dead. Or at least it is on the ropes. Triumphant a quarter-century ago, when liberal democracy appeared to have prevailed definitively over the totalitarian utopias that exacted such a toll in blood, it is now under siege from without and within." Read Roger Cohen in the New York Times.

Evan Harris claims Hacked Off are not hypocrites for their stance on John Whittingdale.

You can never have enough takedowns of Seumas "Christopher Robin" Milne. This one by Peter Wilby is particularly good.

Felicity Cloake asks why eating has become so complicated.

Backwatersman pays tribute to the England batsman James Taylor, who has been forced to retire because of a heart condition: "When he took on ... great lummoxes like Andre Nel and Tremlett he might have been Chaplin outwitting Eric Campbell with a deft swish of his walking cane. In fact, one of the many things I remain hugely grateful to him for is allowing me to recapture (quite late in life) that childlike pleasure of having a favourite player, one whom I liked more than I could ever quite rationally account for."

"The locks known as Caen Hill ... rise 237 feet over two miles – with 16 of them virtually back to back.Each trip up and down takes five hours." David Hencke and friends take on one of the inland waterways' greatest challenges.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Armed with pitchforks and flaming brands

Lord Bonkers continues his survey of Liberal Democrat prospects at the next general election.

Oxford West and Abingdon

All this talk of holding seats is a little dull: why should we not gain a few?

Take OXWAB, as my younger friends are given to calling it. Whilst I bow to no one in my admiration for Dr Evan Harris, it has to be admitted that his habit of grafting the heads of rabbits on to humans to form an army of Focus deliverers proved controversial, efficient as they were (at least in my experience).

So much so, indeed, that on election night the locals, armed with pitchforks and flaming brands, drove him from his laboratory in the surprisingly mountainous country between Oxford and Abingdon and elected a Conservative.

I trust the more emollient Layla Moran will recapture the seat for the forces of progress, even if she does not own a Bunsen burner.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

"Top Secret: Burn Before Reading"

The mint cake workers of Kendal

There can be no doubt that he was Terribly Sorry

The Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey Railway

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Dr Harris on Dr Crippen

Saturday

Noticing that our own Evan Harris had fallen out with the press, and reasoning that this was an unfortunate state of affairs for someone who still has political ambitions, I decided to take action. Last week I offered him the chance to write for my own newspaper, the High Leicestershire Radical. “Why not write about famous murders cases?” I advised. “People always like reading about That Sort of Thing.”

This morning his first contribution arrived at the rag’s offices. It begins: “A doctor always acts on his or her judgement of the clinical best interests of the patient. Therefore it is impossible for Crippen to have committed murder.” After a hurried conference with the editor, I drop Harris a line politely declining his offer of a piece on Bodkin Adams for next week.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• I am the Lib Dems' new pastoral care office
• David Grace vs the drones
• Oh, those Russians!
• “Free-ee Me-ee-ee-ee-ee”
• The ALDE Congress at Canary Wharf

Round 12 at the London Candidates tournament

I went down to London today to spectate at the London Candidates tournament. The winner will challenge the current world chess champion Viswanathan Anand and, given his poor form recently, have a good change to take the title.

The tournament is being held at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Savoy Place - just off The Strand in London. The picture shows the statue of Michael Faraday that stands outside.

Because of regular scandals involving players apparently receiving outside help from a computer, spectators had to leave our phones and tables in the cloakroom, pass through an airport-style metal detector and submit to being passed over front and back by wand-style detectors too.

With players tiring and the tension rising, today's round (the 12th) turned out to be the most dramatic so far.

Before the tournament started, Norway's Magnus Carlsen was a firm favourite, with Lev Aronian seen today as his only realistic challenger. Today both of them lost. Aronian is out of contention and Carlsen has lost the lead of Vladimir Kramnik of Russia.

Kramnik was a protege of Garry Kasparov and took his world title in 2000, holding it until 2007 (though like the world heavyweight boxing title the picture has got complicated in recent years). In many ways he is the last great representative of the Soviet school of chess that dominated the game for most of the 20th century.

Perhaps I am getting old, but I cannot help feeling that the young and motivated Kasparov would have had little trouble winning this tournament. Certainly, Magnus Carlsen's approach of nursing small advantages for hours until his opponent crumbles, effective though it is, lacks the crowd appeal of Kasparov, Fischer, Spassky and Tal.

The English grandmaster Nigel Short, who lost a world tile match to Kasparov himself in 1993, was holding court in the commentary room and was hugely impressive. Every now and then he said something that made it clear how infinitely greater his grasp of the game is than that of a former club and county player like me. Other past English greats in attendance included Bill Harston and Jon Speelman.

And who did I spy in the corner of the refreshment room but Evan Harris and Simon Hughes?

I am worried about Evan Harris

You may recall that Dr Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, recently took part in the Channel Four programme Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial. As part of the programme he took ecstasy in what was presented as a piece of research into the drug's effects.

In today's Daily Telegraph there was a letter from the psychologist Professor Andy Parrott saying that he had taken part in the programme with the proviso that he would be given time to summarise the scientific evidence on the damaging effects of the drug on the human brain. In the event, this time was not given.

Professor Parrott went on to list some of the evidence he would have quoted:

Professor Leslie Iversen ... was correct in noting more than 60 previous studies on the effects of MDMA on brain activity. At Swansea University we have found reduced brain activity in MDMA users now free from drugs. Memory continues to be impaired for months and years afterwards. In very heavy users, “word recall” can be reduced to 50 per cent of normal levels. 

Researchers at Northumbria University have found reduced social intelligence, along with other mental or cognitive deficits. Other groups have found reduced “problem solving” abilities. 

At the University of East London and Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, its recreational use during pregnancy has been found to impair the development of the emergent babies. 

The mood gains of MDMA are short-lived, and followed by a longer period of negative moods – such as irritability, paranoia and depression. Hence the average weekly moods of MDMA users are significantly worse than non-users. 

At Swansea University we have been researching the damaging effects of recreational MDMA on the stress hormone cortisol. This neurohormone is increased by 800 per cent in dance clubbers, and is also markedly raised in abstinent users, helping to explain why recreational users suffer from impaired sleep and can develop clinical sleep apnoea. 

Finally, MDMA has weak hallucinogenic properties and can cause mental confusion. Hence it is unlikely that it could help resolve complex mental health problems.

I find all this interesting, because ecstasy is often presented as a benign drug. The evidence suggests that this is not so, though that does not prove that prohibition is necessarily the right way to go. Certainly, people had no difficulty of getting hold of ecstasy when it was in vogue, even though it was illegal to possess it.

I wrote a news story about this letter at work today. I wanted to use the headline "Parrott: I wish to register a complaint". However, as the good professor is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, I was dissuaded.

Meanwhile, if you see Evan Harris do make sure he is OK.

I am fed up with being preached at by atheists

My religious position is clear enough: I am a High Church atheist. I like church music and church architecture, but that doesn’t mean God exists. You could say I was Anglican by temperament but not by belief.

I had many good friends when I was doing my first degree, but in those days I was something of a professional atheist. I saw it as part of my job as a Philosophy student. In particular, I found the arguments of the Christian Union (CU) simplistic and its habit of appealing to the emotions of lonely or immature young people unattractive. Interestingly, in view of what follows, my impression is that the majority of keen CU types were studying science subjects.

Over the years, though I find the Evangelical style of Christianity that the CU represented distasteful to this day, I have lost my enthusiasm for arguing with religious people. As you get older you come to realise that we all live by beliefs that we cannot possibly prove – in politics quite as much as religion.

And even when I was at university and sending for humanist publications, I resented the idea that if you were an atheist then you automatically embraced a whole range of predetermined positions on social issues – what you might call today ‘the full Evan Harris’. Then and now I had more doubts about the morality of abortion than are fashionable amongst Liberal atheists, though today I am a stronger support of assisted dying than I used to be.

Times moves on and I find the modern proselytising atheist movement unattractive – unattractive in the way that I used to find the CU unattractive, and often for the same reasons.

The version of atheism that attracted me as a student had Bertrand Russell and David Hume as its leading figure and it shared its best qualities: it was wise, witty and sceptical. This philosophical atheism gently but firmly pointed out that Christians were making claims about the universe that they could not begin to prove.
Russell was certainly an atheist, whereas Hume probably believed that there was a deity of some sort, but that there was little we could sensibly say about him. This philosophical form of atheism, you will see, was a broad church.

Today’s atheism is different. It does not deal in scepticism but in certainties.

I do not underestimate the brilliance of Darwin: everyone should read The Origin of Species, if only for the quality of the prose. Why isn’t scientific writing like that now? I suggest it is because of the emphasis on ‘publication’: papers are written to be published, not read.

And Darwin was a wonderful liberator of human thinking. If you read William Cobbett, an intelligent but not conventionally academic writer from the early 19th century, you will see that he cannot make sense of nature without God. (I remember using a quotation from Rural Rides in an essay on miracles to make just this point. Some linguistic philosophers would see the cry “it’s a miracle”” as an expression of joy but to Cobbett – I was rather proud of this phrase – it was an explanation, not an exclamation.) But after Darwin we could explain nature without God. The world looked different.

Yet somewhere this modern scientific atheism has hardened into a dogma. Just take a look at Twitter, where the stars of the movement spend their time mocking those who do not share their views and their acolytes send them links giving new names to laugh at. It does feel remarkably like a religious movement.
Such an approach does not accord with the view of science I learnt from the works of Karl Popper, where what characterises it is precisely a willingness to see its hypotheses refuted. The modern atheist does not entertain the possibility that he or she may be wrong.

Take the recent court case involving prayers before meetings of Bideford town council. Our modern atheists have rejoiced over this: to me it looks like an unreasonable demand that everyone else must share their views.

The strongest argument against prayers at such meetings is that they may discourage people from standing for the council in the first place. But I am not convinced.

I became a member of Harborough District Council at the age of 26 and a year later found myself part of a sizeable Liberal Alliance group with two member who were younger than I was.

Not surprisingly, we found many of the council’s ways of doing things stuffy and old fashioned. Some we tried to change (successfully or not), some we put up with, some we ignored and some we came to see the wisdom of.

In all of this, the existence of prayers at the start of full council meetings was the least of our concerns. But if they had worried us we would have sought to change things in Harborough, not looked for outside help to fight a court case in London.

And that is at the heart of my distaste for modern atheism. My Liberalism is sceptical and thus is happy to tolerate local difference: philosophical atheism could live with that, but I am not sure this new scientific atheism can.

How will Nick Clegg's call for more tax cuts be received by his fellow Liberal Demcrats?

At the last election my party promised to raise the personal allowance to £10,000 for ordinary taxpayers. And I am extremely proud that the Coalition is on track to do so over the course of this Parliament. We’ll make sure that anyone earning £10,000 or less will pay no income tax at all and for those on middle incomes, the first £10,000 they earn will be tax free. 

For millions of basic rate taxpayers – ordinary, hardworking people – that means paying £700 less in income tax each year, around £60 a month. 

In the 2010 Budget we increased the tax allowance from £6,475 to £7,475. This year we have already announced a planned rise of an additional £630 - meaning that a total of 1.1 million more people will no longer pay income tax at all. 

But today I want to make clear that I want the Coalition to go further and faster in delivering the full £10,000. Because, bluntly, the pressure on family finances is reaching boiling point.

Nick Clegg's speech to the Resolution Foundation today has been well received by the press and Liberal Democrat bloggers.

"Nick Clegg's call for tax cuts may save the Lib Dems from annihilation" suggests Daniel Knowles on the Daily Telegraph site (a trifle melodramatically, but then - judging by his photograph - he is only 14). While Prateek Buch for the Social Liberal Forum is enthusiastic, seeing the proposed changes as part of the Liberal Democrats' fairness agenda.

For what it is worth, I am enthusiastic too. One of the problems Labour regularly runs into is that, despite its rhetoric, it is difficult to make the rich pay more. Of course, there are things you can do, such as taxing property rather than income, but the result is that increased public spending tends to increase the burden on lower earners until they become unwilling to bear it.

Certainly, I found this argument easy to make during one of my rare television appearances.

But not all my Liberal Democrats will agree with me. Because this is very much the debate we had at our Bournemouth autumn conference in 2008. There the party agreed to fight the following general election promising tax cuts, but as a Daily Telegraph report from the time shows, there was a significant minority in the party that did not agree with this strategy:

Opposition to the programme was led by Evan Harris, the party's science spokesman, and fellow MP Paul Holmes, who argued that those in most of need of help were too poor to receive any benefit from tax cuts. 

Their amendment sought to bind the party to tax cuts only after other priorities had been met, including tackling child poverty and climate change. 

Telling delegates about the plight of hard-up families in his constituencies, Mr Harris added: "Most are so poor that they will never pay taxes."

The vote in Bournemouth was clear enough - conference voted three to one to approve the new policy - but no debate can settle such a question for all time.

And it is notable that those in the party who have been less enthusiastic about the Coalition have emphasised their opposition to cuts in public spending.

If money has been found to cut tax, won't they (whether they have called themselves "Progressives", "Social Liberals" or use some other slightly vaguely defined category) now be calling for a reduction in those cuts?

Or will they keep their heads down because Nick Clegg's speech has gone down well and it is good to see the party pursuing a clear strategy at last?

Small row in Europe, not many hurt

During the August riots I was on holiday in Shropshire. I didn't buy a newspaper and spent my evenings planning days out in places like Ironbridge and Bishop's Castle rather than watching the television news.

What contact I did have with the world of telegrams and anger was via Twitter, and because I was on holiday in a quiet part of England it was hard to relate to the picture it painted. Evan Harris, for instance, didn't like it when I poked gentle fun at his call for the Army to be deployed.

Four months on, and my reaction does not seem so silly, because the riots have been largely forgotten. Yes, there have been inquests - Iain Duncan Smith blames The X Factor, the Guardian blames the police - but all those claims that the riots showed that British society was going to have to change fundamentally now seem a little silly.

Well, I have been on holiday again this week and, perhaps as a result, I have the same feeling about events in Europe. I just don't see that Britain's failure to agree to a new economic treaty is as important as is being claimed.

This is for a variety of reasons.

The first is that I think that the attempt to shore up the Euro is probably doomed in its current form. However strict the new rules about reducing public sector deficits, I do not think that they will be enough to keep the likes of Greece on board. (Besides, the problem in the past was not these rules, it was the fact that everyone ignored them when it suited them.) So this week's events are likely to no more than a footnote to this more important story.

The second is that the agreement the European Community comes to without Britain will make little difference to Britain. We will not be bound by it, but whatever government is in power here will have to adopt an austerity programme for the foreseeable future, EC or no EC.

 

The third is I simply do not feel a sense of outrage that the British government has failed to agree a treaty that would pass over significant control over the British economy. You may think it would be a good idea to do this, but no party advocated such a move at the last general election. I think there is debate to won here first.

I am not happy that David Cameron exercised his veto to help the City of London. Even among Conservatives there is agreement that the economy needs to be rebalanced, with manufacturing having a greater role and finance a lesser one.

And I am also attracted by the idea of a Robin Hood tax. But it does rather depend what you are going to use the money for. When I went to New York with Oxfam last year everyone I met was sure that it should be use to fund development in poorer nations. Then I went to a training event with Save the Children and there was a widespread feeling that the proceeds of the tax should be used to reduce the cuts to public services in Britain.

I find both those ideas attractive. But the idea now seems to be that the EU should tax the financial sector and use the proceeds to ensure that its less well-governed members don't have to pay for their folly in borrowing or spending more they can afford. I find that a far less attractive prospect.

Finally, I note that the new proposals would effectively make Keynesian reflationary measures illegal. Such measures are unlikely to be possible for years to come (we are suffering because we forgot the bit in Keynes about the government running a surplus in the good times), but I am enough of a Liberal to find that upsetting.

The social liberalism and social democracy debate

On Saturday morning, before I caught the bus to Northampton, I wrote a brief post about that day's first Social Liberal Forum (SLF) conference. As well as wishing it well, I asked how social liberalism differed from a social democracy.

That post elicited a remarkable response, both in the comments and in posts on other blogs.

Some attempted to answer the question, but those answers varied widely. In the comments on the post Simon Titley assured me that social liberalism and social democracy are two very different things, as I need only read David Howarth’s chapter in Reinventing the State (a book I briefly reviewed when it came out) to discover.

Meanwhile on Twitter (I am never comfortable linking to tweets on this blog - it feels like telling tales out of school - but I suppose it is best to give a link if you are quoting someone directly), Evan Harris told me:

Well SLF = Social Democrats plus social justice minded liberals. no?

A question that can receive such different answers was probably worth asking.

The person who got the gently teasing tone of my post, and realised that it was my friends on the radical wing of the party who were being teased, was Decline of the Logos. But other replies took it far more seriously.

Evan Harris, again on Twitter, thought I was finding argument where none exists, when I wasn't aware that I was arguing at all.

Meanwhile James Graham devoted a whole, rather bad-tempered post, to replying to me:

the implication of Jonathan’s post is of course that social liberals are merely atavistic social democrats.

No, I was merely asking how they are different. And the implication is that the SLF would do well to devote a little time to making this clear.

There are good things in James post. His characterisation of people who:

tend to think that labelling something as “fundamentally illiberal” in thunderous tones tends to make a good substitute for actual argument

will be familiar to anyone who has spent much time in Liberal or Liberal Democrat circles.

However, though James declares himself dissatisfied by political labels, the SLF must have had its reason for adopting the "social liberal" label and it must be legitimate for others to ask what they were.

And I cannot decide whether James’s suggestion that we should call ourselves “socialist liberals” is a philosophical own goal or a very subtle joke.

So let me try to make my own position clear.

For as long as I can remember, radical Liberals and Liberal Democrats have, when asked, said that distinguishes their views (and often what distinguishes them from socialists in particular) is that they believe in something like freedom, localism, co-operation and individuality.

At the same time, they get very nervous when this philosophy threatens to lead them to positions that do not fall within what one may term the Guardian orthodoxy. This holds that political progress lies, not only in more and more spending on public services, but in more and more areas of our life falling under the stewardship of government.

To me there is a clear contradiction here, and it is not one that can be solved by making reference to long-unread theorists like T.H. Green or L.T. Hobhouse.

The work of developing this nebulous modern Liberal philosophy of freedom, localism, co-operation and individuality, and of showing that it will be of benefit to the poorer half of society, is daunting. But it seems to me that it is the task to which the philosophical labours of the Liberal Democrats should be directed.

Maybe the SLF will set itself to do this. I hope it will.

But when people are writing articles with titles like This is the Social Liberal moment, others are bound to want to know more about what this social liberalism is. And one good way of understanding a concept is to ask how it differs from other, similar concepts.

What is the difference between a social liberal and a social democrat?

Long ago,when I was a young activist, I fell in with the radical wing of the old Liberal Party. This was the time of the Alliance, and we were most like to use "social democrat" (or "soggy") as a term of abuse.

Time moves on and many of the same types (even some of the same people) now call themselves "social liberals". Fair enough, until you read in the Guardian today that Evan Harris (a former soggy, as it happens):

is speaking about the health reforms to 250 Liberal Democrat activists at the Social Liberal Forum (SLF) conference "Liberalism, Equality and the State" – a group that represents social democrats within the Lib Dems that have increasingly been concerned at the direction the coalition is taking.

I wish the SLF conference well today, but if the group is to have a worthwhile future they will have to provide an answer to the question I pose in the headline here.

Later. Thanks for the comments. The Independent has a (rather snide) report on yesterday's conference. It also sees the SLF as "social democratic". If nothing else, it has some work to do on its image.

Lord Bonkers Diary: Evan Harris on the island

The penultimate day of our week with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

Saturday

That unexpected sojourn on the island did at least solve the mystery of how Evan Harris has been getting on. After his sad defeat at the last election, he asked me if I knew of somewhere quiet where he could conduct his experiments. As the triumphal arch I had erected on the Bonkers Hall Estate built to commemorate Mark Bonham-Carter’s victory in the Great Torrington by-election is currently undergoing renovation, I pointed him towards Rutland Water.

While there with my fellow Liberal Democrat parliamentarians, I came across the Good Doctor and he proudly showed us the tower he had built in which to conduct his experiments in search of the “Liberal gene”. I did not like the sound of this so, after we had been rescued, I had a word with the villagers of the shore. I expect they rowed out with pitchforks and flaming brands the very next day.

Previously at Bonkers Hall...

Monday: Lembit in the jungle
Tuesday: Not Terribly Bright middle-class children
Wednesday: Oh, those Russians!
Thursday: Desert Island Discs
Friday: Phoning for Lembit

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Evan Harris on a trampoline

In London yesterday I was astounded to bump into our own Dr Evan Harris. I had assumed that he perished when the locals, armed with pitchforks and flaming torches, finally succeeded in breaking into his laboratory in the surprisingly mountainous country between Oxford and Abingdon and flung his experiments into a passing mountain stream.

While in rude health, he turns out to be at something of a loose end and I am pleased to be able to offer him work on the British mission to Mars – albeit as a trampoline coach.

Earlier this week

Autumn has come to Rutland
At the first hint of an asteroid
My new friends, the Conservatives

Evan Harris: You won't catch me in ermine

Yesterday I blogged a Mail on Sunday report that Evan Harris would be among the new Liberal Democrat peers soon to be nominated by Nick Clegg.

Today Evan tweeted to say this is "rubbish".

Liberal England: Spreading and scotching unfounded rumours since 2004.

Later. There is more speculation - well founded or not - from Michael Crick.

Peerages for Brian Paddick and Evan Harris?

Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday says "it was claimed last night" that 44 new peers are to be created by the Coalition "to stop Labour sabotaging their policies in the Upper House". He doesn't say who made the claim though.

He goes on:

Mr Cameron reportedly intends to award 29 peerages to Tory donors and other political allies, with 15 for Mr Clegg's Liberal Democrats. By contrast, Ed Miliband will get just ten new Labour peers.

It is the biggest influx from a governing party since Tony Blair handed out a record 47 peerages when Labour won power in 1997, giving his party a majority in the Lords for the first time.

Who will those 15 new Liberal Democrat peers be? Walters speculates:

Lords insiders say Liberal Democrat candidates include Brian Paddick, the former Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner, who stood as the party's London mayoral candidate in 2008, and qualified doctor and anti-abortion campaigner Evan Harris, who lost his seat as Lib Dem MP for Oxford at the Election.

Three Liberal Democrat donors who each paid up to £250 a month into Mr Clegg's private bank account before he became party leader are also said to be under consideration.

They are Ian Wright, a senior executive at drinks firm Diageo; Neil Sherlock, head of public affairs at accountants KPMG; and Michael Young, a former gold-mining executive.

Election night at Bonkers Hall

Please join me on Twitter.

03:35 I am now over my Twitter limit, so I will continue here.

Conservatives hold Ludlow - damn. My Shropshire hills remain in enemy hands.

John Thurso holds his seat and John Pugh holds Southport.

And Michael Moore has held his seat too.

Labour hold Rochdale.

Lib Dems hold Bristol West.

Labour think they have held Islington South.

03:40 I didn't know there was a limit on Twitter.

Recount for Evan Harris in Oxford West & Abingdon.

Labour hold Ashfield after recount (I think).

There are fewer than 20 votes in it at Birmingham Edgbaston.

03:45 Blaydon and Newcastle upon Tyne North held by Labour. More Lib Dem targets missed.

Ed Balls said to be safe.

Lib Dems gain Redcar!

03:50 Conservatives gain Corby - despite the best efforts of the Labour candidate in Harborough, who spent much of his time there.

Sandra Gidley loses in Romsey.

Lib Dems needed at least 15.6 per cent swing to gain Redcar - and they did.

Recount at Hull North.

Tories win Meon Valley - a Lib Dem hope.

03:55 Swing in Redcar was 21.8 per cent.

Labour hold Leicester West.

Conservatives hold St Albans.

Labour hold Derby North.

Harborough Mail says: "Tory supporters at the harborough count predicting Edward Garnier will increase his majority."

04:00 Bob Russell holds Colchester.

Labour forecast to win back Norwich North.

Conservatives gain Wyre Forest from Dr Richard Taylor.

04:05 Lib Dems had a 5,000 majority in Redcar!

Labour hold Luton South.

Apparently Sky are foreceasting a Lib Dem gain in Derby South, which sounds odd.

Sir Robert Smith HOLDS Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine and Tom Brake wins too.

04:10 York Outer goes to the Conservatives.

Labour holds Bristol East - well, the postal votes looked good for them.

Lib Dems lose Hereford.

Now back on Twitter.

House Points: Horses and ecstasy

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. I wrote a little more on horses and drugs earlier in the week.

Horse sense

On Monday MPs had the chance to question Jacqui Smith. Unfortunately, none asked the home secretary how she could justify nominating her sister’s spare bedroom as her main residence and claiming £116,000 (and counting) in second home allowance on the house in her Redditch constituency where her husband and children live.

Instead they were angered by someone else. Professor David Nutt had published an article in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that said: “Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse riding and ecstasy.” It also pointed out that riding accounts for more than 100 deaths a year in Britain.

Outrage. Lobbed a prepared question by the creepy Keith Vaz, Jacqui Smith said she was “surprised and profoundly disappointed by the article” and had asked him to apologise to the families of the victims of ecstasy.

For the Tories, Laurence Robertson announced that “the sport of horse riding provides discipline”. Surely the first time anyone has claimed the Turf sets a moral example for the rest of us? He went on, to his own amusement though possibly no one else’s, to tell Jacqui Smith she should inform Professor Nutt that “although he might be appropriately named” he is in the wrong job.

It was left to a Liberal Democrat – Evan Harris – to stand up for science and academic freedom.

Because this incident tells us something important about the government. New Labour came to power claiming it was interested in “what works” and not hamstrung by ideology.

The truth, as Jacqui Smith demonstrated, is that to get on today you have to stick to a narrow range of acceptable views. Step outside it and you will be attacked. It happened to another academic who, in the early days of Tony Blair’s premiership, pointed out there was no evidence to support his enthusiasm for loading homework on to young children.

Out in the real world people know that riding a horse can be dangerous. Competitive three-day eventing has had a terrible run of deaths – 37 fatal falls between 1997 and 2008.

Of course, we should not underestimate the dangers posed by drugs either. If the horse has been taking ecstasy it can only make things more hazardous.

Lib Dem MPs do well in Private Members' Bills ballot

The Private Members' Bills ballot for the 2008-9 session took place today, and the Lib Dems did well. Two of our MPs are in the top 5 and four are in the top 20.

David Heath came out of the hat (or how ever they do it) in second place, Evan Harris was fifth, Jeremy Browne 13th and and Charles Kennedy 17th.

Thanks to Jennie Rigg.