The Right Honourable The Lord Walney (formerly Mr John Woodcock)

Members of the House of Commons generally have a personal website where constituents can contact them and get an overview of their representative’s work. These websites are variable in quality and effort. If you look through a large number of them in a short time, you’ll notice that a lot of them are practically identical, having presumably been created en masse from the same template (though different templates are favoured by different parties).

Members of the House of Lords generally lack any websites at all. There are some who were famous for other things prior to their ennoblement and who have websites about those (Dobbs for his novels, Lloyd-Webber for his operas) but few have sites that are specifically about their roles as peers.

Particularly interesting is that a large proportion (too large, by many reckonings) of the upper house’s membership comes from recent emeriti of the lower. Quite a lot of these ex-MPs have at some point used personal websites for that role, but these are nearly always abandoned once their owners move upstairs, sitting stagnant for months and then disappearing altogether when the domain registrations lapse (they might still be around having reverted to their subdomains, but I can’t find them). My best guess at the reason for this phenomenon is that MPs’ personal websites are maintained by constituency staff rather than the politicians themselves, and thus are not sustainable once those staff are no longer in service – or the peers just think that nobody will be interested in reading them.

Here is a summary of the personal websites of those ex-MPs whose life peerages have already been gazetted this year, omitting those who don’t appear to have had a website in the first place.

2020 Special Honours

• Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Richmond Park 2010-16 and 17-19) – site zacgoldsmith.com, still up and adapted to reflect new role.
• Lady Morgan of Cotes (Loughborough 2010-2019) – site at nickymorgan.org, now just redirects back to her parliamentary profile page.

2019 Dissolution Honours

• Lord Austin of Dudley (Dudley North 2005-2019) – site at ianaustin.co.uk, now blank.
• Lady Clarke of Kilwinning (North Ayrshire & Arran 2005-2015) – site at katyclark.org.uk, which lately has also gone blank.
• Lord Dodds of Duncairn (Belfast North 2001-2019) – site at nigeldodds.co.uk, now apparently gone.
• Lord Field of Birkenhead (Birkenhead 1979-2019) – site at frankfield.co.uk, still up, apparently last updated in February.
• Lord Herbert of South Downs (Arundel & South Downs 2005-2019) – site at nickherbert.com, still up and with his new career included.
• Lady Hoey (Vauxhall 1989-2019) – site at katehoey.com, apparently closed by the end of last year.
• Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Milton Keynes North 2005-2019) – site at lancaster4mk.com, which by 25th March just redirected back to his parliamentary profile page.
• Lady Stuart of Edgbaston (Birmingham Edgbaston 1997-2017) – site at giselastuartmp.co.uk, hosting account suspended by 28th March 2018 and expired by 8th August.
• Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Wantage 2005-2019) – site at vaizey.com, now completely redesigned, but the new version seems to be about everything except his role in the upper house.
• Lord Walney (Barrow & Furness 2010-2019) – old site at johnwoodcock.org.uk, closed at unknown date. New site established at lordwalney.uk, though not much content yet beyond template filler.

2020 Political Honours

• Lady Fullbrook of Dogmersfield (South Ribble 2010-2015) – early site at telllorraine.com, later site at lorrainefullbrook.com. Abandoned at unknown date.
• Lady Hayman of Ullock (Workington 2015-2019) – site at suehayman.org.uk, lapsed by 20th February 2020 and now just redirects to a site called Compass Design, whose page is just an empty WordPress Twenty Seventeen template.
• Lord Wharton of Yarm (Stockton South 2010-2017) – site at jameswharton.co.uk. Domain expired by 6th February 2018.