This scheme enables hospital staff and patients, working together, to refurbish wards, corridors and waiting areas, and generally improve the hospital environment. It’s still going strong today, not just in London but around the country. It was a tough few years for me. My mother, living on her own, was becoming increasingly frail and physically dependent.

My life was divided between the demands of work and the needs of my mother. I had said that I would do the job for six or seven years, and that’s what I did. I then wanted to think and write about wider issues. That resulted in The Moral State We’re In.

LH: From 2001–04 you were a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. In the past 12 years it has made almost 400 recommendations to improve the procedures and behaviour of various public bodies. Isn’t that a depressing comment on our morals?
JN: As societies go, this is not a particularly corrupt one. But there are always temptations. Where you don’t have clear rules you need a committee to say, “Hang on, this doesn’t look right to us.” We desperately need legislation to guarantee the independence of the civil service.

We need to take a hard look at the honours system. I say that as someone who is a party appointee. I don’t think this is a particularly corrupt administration. But quite often administrations that have been in power for some time can’t see the difference between their own interests and the country’s interests.

There are issues surrounding the use of Special Advisers, and about people going into private industry after they’ve been ministers or senior civil servants. A committee with a watching brief can prevent people with the best of motives from doing things that could be wrong or that look wrong. What I found so interesting was that once we’d talked things through, the committee members were always in complete agreement, despite our different backgrounds and political affiliations.

LH: It’s interesting that after not getting into Parliament in 1983, you ended up in Parliament in 2004 – though by a very different route. Are you sorry you weren’t an MP? And how are you finding the House of Lords?
JN: I’m glad I didn’t become an MP. I wouldn’t have been good at it. MPs are too busy doing things to have much time for thinking. I’ve only been a member of the House of Lords since June 2004, but I feel sure it’s a more thoughtful place than the Commons. I’m a front bench spokesperson on health issues. You can make a difference as a peer when there’s legislation in your area of expertise. By pressing quite hard, you can sometimes get the Government to give way.

Or you can persuade your own party to take up a particular issue. At the moment I am working on a bill to improve the way the NHS deals with clinical negligence claims. I sit on the Lords EU Sub-Committee on Social Policy and Consumer Affairs, which recently published a report on proposed EU-wide procedures for testing and approving medicines for children.

We found that too many drugs for children – prescription and over-the-counter – are not properly tested on children prior to launch. We concluded that there is an urgent need to take action at a European level to promote and govern clinical trials of medicines on children. My expertise here was helpful, but to persuade people that your ideas are worthwhile you must do lots of talking behind the scenes. And that means spending a lot of time in the House.

Julia Neuberger DBE is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords. As an ordained rabbi she was in charge of the South London Liberal Synagogue for 12 years. During this time she had two children and was a candidate for Parliament in the 1983 General Election.

After a career change she did research into medical ethics, and chaired the Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust. From 1997 to 2004 she was Chief Executive of the King’s Fund. She has served on many important bodies, including the Medical Research Council and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and has honorary doctorates from over a dozen universities.