From Speaker to Sri Lanka, yesterday in Parliament

spent yesterday afternoon in the environs of the House of Commons. An extraordinary experience.

Normally, ostentatiously crawling with MPs and peers anxious to be recognised, stopped and interviewed – yesterday the place was completely deserted.

The tawdry goings-on have sent many of our legislators running for cover.

What I could not avoid was a huge demonstration on the lawn of Parliament Square – one of the biggest I have ever seen there.

For a moment I thought that the citizenry had come to the barricades to shout ‘enough’ at their MPs.

But no, this was a very unusual demonstration, and one that has been continuing for weeks.

Made up of only one ethnicity and with few others coming to their aid. They are Tamils desperately concerned about the fate of their families and friends in Sri Lanka.

I moved among them and met many. They are in many cases professionals. I met two sisters, consultants at London hospitals. I met engineers, teachers, and shop keepers.

But I also met a terrible sense of despair that we in Britain have neglected their plight and that of the one million displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka.

And I wondered, as MPs tried to wrestle the Speaker from his chair in nineteenth century scenes across the road – how fit for purpose is Parliament? What are its priorities? How far DO we respond to the foreign policy implications and sensitivities of this very sizeable minority in our midst?