Anyone wondering whether those in government are hep to modern technology should be in no doubt after justice minister Lord McNally’s performance at a conference last week.

Responding to a question on whether the forthcoming defamation bill would be compatible with the EU directive on e-commerce with regard to the responsibilities of internet intermediaries, McNally could not resist sharing his newly found skills. ‘I know what biscuits are and where clouds are,’ he boasted, leading the audience to suggest he might mean ‘cookies’.

Readers hoping to engage in the twittersphere with the cyber-savvy peer will be disappointed however. McNally said it had been suggested that he and the justice secretary Ken Clarke could ‘lift the profile of the Ministry of Justice’ if they started tweeting.McNally said he’d responded that the one person less likely to tweet than himself was Clarke.

McNally’s attendance at the event, organised by the Westminster Legal Policy Forum, came a day after he had suffered a mauling in the House of Lords over the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. One of the amendments accepted by peers had been laid by Paralympic gold medalist Lady Grey- Thompson. Reeling from the defeat, McNally described arguing against the noble baroness as ‘a bit like taking on Mother Teresa’.

Following his session at the conference McNally retreated to engage in the more traditional pursuit of preparing a message of humble support to celebrate his sovereign’s diamond jubilee - handwritten, no doubt, using a quill pen.