Baroness Young of Old Scone has been over-sharing in the Lords, revealing that it was being provided the contraceptive pill aged 16 by Harold Wilson’s government that led her to support the Labour Party. Poor old Lord Blencathra didn’t know where to look when she started talking about how she “had a good Scottish diet and was very precocious for my age”:

Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab): I was born in Scotland and I was brought up in a Scottish Conservative household. When I was 16 I thought that the election result, when a Labour Government was returned after 13 years of what is now known as Tory misrule, was the end of the world. I had been taught to believe that. Two years later I was canvassing for Labour in the election.

What changed me was that at the age of 16 I could get pregnant. At that time I could not get birth control in this country at that age. During that period, when I was aged 16 or 17, the first Brook Advisory Centre opened in Edinburgh. I could then go on the pill. Quite frankly, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The knowledge that I could not get proper support for being sexually active—I had had a good Scottish diet and was very precocious for my age—was what politicised me. I have no qualms about announcing that here tonight. 

Not the first person to get into politics for the sex…