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Having stepped out from the shadows of Downing Street, Lord Adonis, the new Education Minister, was due to make his parliamentary debut as The Times Higher went to press. As one might expect, the House of Lords is famously genteel as political debating chambers go. Peers are certain to extend him a warm welcome to the dispatch box - even if, in his previous life, as plain Andrew Adonis, he described the Upper House as "an ancient, indefensible relic... waiting to be blown away by new Labour" in a Times Higher article in 1997.