My Lords, there are those in the other place who are spreading misinformation about the nature of the checks that were undertaken for those coming from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. It is in the Statement, but it would be helpful for the House—and the public—if the Minister could reassure us fr…
My Lords, I have some points to make on these amendments and some questions, which the Minister or the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, may be able to deal with at the end.
Amendment 100 proposes a requirement to produce an annual report. I am broadly not in favour of these. They seem to just dump a l…
Forgive me, but I just want to be clear, because I think the noble Baroness may have, I am sure inadvertently, misunderstood me. I am very supportive of us co-operating with Europol. We did when I was in government as Immigration Minister, we do now, and I want us to continue to. I also want us to c…
My Lords, I will speak briefly on a couple of the amendments in this group.
I was listening very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said on the information-sharing provisions in Clauses 27 and 28, which her amendment refers to. It would be helpful, certainly for me, if the Minister …
Can I probe the Minister on the point he made in response to my noble friend’s amendment on data sharing and the GDPR? The Minister said—and I understand why he said it—that he felt my noble friend’s amendment was unnecessary. Is he able, either today, in writing or on a future day, to reassure the …
My Lords, the OBR will produce a new forecast in the autumn before the annual Budget, and the Chancellor will take decisions based on that forecast. We will set out our fiscal plans at the Budget in the usual way.
The noble Lord is absolutely correct that there are financial consequences to the decisions that have been taken, but he will not be surprised to know that I will not speculate on the next Budget now. We will do things in the usual way. The Chancellor will ask the OBR to produce a new forecast in th…
My Lords, I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and have a great deal of respect for the side of the argument he is coming from. But the piece missing from his argument, and from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is the concept of deterrence.
What the Government are trying…
I shall address both the points the noble Baroness has made. On the first, in one sense I am very much looking at it from the point of view of the participants. I want them to be clear that carrying out that particular set of actions would indeed be an offence with a significant penalty, because I w…
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for the committee’s work and for his clear and comprehensive introduction today. I thank the committee for taking on the difficult—indeed, impossible—task of trying to find ways, within the limits of its mandate, to prop up a tottering, failing system. I…
The noble Lord is absolutely right and probably just saved me from myself—I would have got in trouble. This is very clearly an executive document, as he was party to, but this Government will want to consult as widely as possible, which is why I also want to meet the noble Baroness on other issues, …
LordsStatutory Instrument3 July 20256 contributions
I may have a helpful interjection. The charges brought against the four are all criminal charges, not terrorism charges, which is an important distinction that points exactly to what the noble Lord is saying. Protests can be unlawful but not necessarily terrorism.
My Lords, in his Statement, the Prime Minister linked economic security, national security and what he called social security. He said that welfare reform was urgent and that the system was failing people every single day. Is not what has happened at the other end of the building a demonstration tha…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his informed and expert introduction to these timely regulations. When he and I were serving in another place, we were contiguous neighbours; I saw how he was ubiquitous, conscientious, much liked and very successful as an elected Member.
Like the Minister, I spen…
The noble Lord puts his finger on the point that, originally, all ambulance trusts were included in the schedule. As part of their general reflection, the six English ambulance trusts that are being removed by the regulations today specifically said they do not need those powers anymore. That left S…
When I was appointed to lead the Department for Transport, HS2 was already not in great shape, as is well known. I immediately implemented some changes to get a grip of the project by focusing the company on cost control, starting work to renegotiate those big civil contracts that the Minister refer…
There must have been a shadow of a question in there somewhere, but I agree with the noble Lord that it is an exciting prospect. He is right that the potential here is to increase mobility for the community and for people with disabilities, if we get it right. I have great sympathy with the noble Ba…
One thing that was ill-thought-through was the Liz Truss mini-Budget and the £22 billion black hole in the public finances, which is why we had to take the action that we did. It might be nice if the noble Lord took some responsibility for what we inherited. As I said already, when we came into offi…
My Lords, I greatly respect the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in reviewing terrorism legislation, but I think that on this particular issue he is wrong. I come to that judgment from having had some responsibility in the past, both as a Home Office Minister and most recently as Secretar…
I have been listening very carefully to the Minister, and I completely accept what he is saying about his and the Government’s position on what he wants the learning centre to do, but can he address the question raised by several of my noble friends: what happens if there is a different Government a…
My Lords, I will briefly speak to this amendment. As a former Secretary of State for Transport, I have some knowledge of construction projects, the time they take and the reasons why costs may escalate. There is a decision for people to make, and I strongly agree with what my noble friend Lady Hardi…
My Lords, when the Chancellor was doing her various media interviews setting out the retreat on this policy, she rather unbelievably tried to suggest that it was done not because it was incredibly unpopular but because somehow the economy has got rather better since last year. Given that we have see…
I welcome another former Secretary of State for Transport to the House, and I look forward to my interactions with him. Looking back at the numbers of tests booked, in fact he is right: there was a modest change from 2023 to 2024. The 2023 figure was 548,000 tests and the 2024 figure was 532,000. Th…
My Lords, I will speak briefly. I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Moynihan said about the complexity of the economic opportunities here. I was involved in some of those negotiations when I was the Secretary of State for Transport. They are complex and overlap on both English and Welsh int…
Yes, I am very happy to make that point, but it is still a significant sum of money. If you do what is normally done in these circumstances, which is to look at the cost versus the benefit, I would argue that that is not a good return. Of course, that is one reason—alongside the enormous unpopularit…
What happened to Israel on 7 October was a devastating attack of terrorism. Israel has every right to defend itself, and we have said this consistently. Israel is a friend and an ally. We have close links with the people of Israel and they should grow in the coming months and years. But what is happ…
I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on a very deft, excellent and accomplished maiden speech. It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow him. My noble friend was introduced to this House as recently as 13 May, so in speaking so soon he has helped to prove an important point, which is t…