My Lords, I am one of the two survivors of the Committee on Medical Ethics that reported in 1994, consequent on the case of Anthony Bland. Since then, my views have changed, assisted by the report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. While some arguments for and against the Bill are finely balanc…
My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has come up with an elegant formulation—as he did several years ago in the committee he chaired—for a way out of the conundrum that we have. However good our provisions in terms…
I am rightly castigated by the Leader of the House. I did not mean what I said about being a part-time House; I meant a House that does not have Members who are expected to be full-time in performing their parliamentary duties.
I very much believe that the elegant solution that the noble Lord, Lord…
My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but I have to do so because this is a concept that, like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I have proposed in your Lordships’ House on many occasions. I have not heard that support for it from the Conservative Benches in the past, but I have put it forward becau…
Perhaps I was not clear enough. The proposition to which I have always given support is that there should be a complete separation of honours and titles from membership of your Lordships’ House. For that, I have not had support from the noble Lord’s Benches.
My Lords, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House was very specific about the issues she wants the Select Committee to focus on, but, as she knows, one of the major issues that has been discussed for decades in this House is the size of the House. It was mentioned in the Labour Party manifesto, a…
I did not follow the noble Lord’s argument that the ability to change the composition of the House of Lords by legislation, which has been brought forward after a manifesto was provided to the electorate, is the same as the ability of a Prime Minister at the moment to nominate and bring into the Hou…
The noble Baroness raises excellent points about why we are having to have these conversations in the first place. It is clear that the chance of 40-degree days in the UK is now 20 times higher than it was in the 1960s, and we have a 50:50 chance of a 40-degree day within the next 12 years. This is …
We will hear from the REMA review in due course. We take this issue very seriously and we will be looking at all the factors the noble Baroness has mentioned. When we have reached a conclusion, we will come back to the House.
I could not agree more with the noble Baroness. Another important element of this is not only to ensure that a range of communities are properly represented in the future but to focus on our women, peace, and security agenda. Women can play an important role there too, and I am committed to that. We…
I thank the noble Baroness. Of course, it is not right that people should be paying a premium for something that is a public service. Since July 2024, 287 recruits have been taken on board and started a training course, of which 170 have completed training successfully, 74 failed to complete the cou…
We have made it clear that the drive in the National Planning Policy Framework, which we have just reviewed, is towards renewable energy. The noble Baroness points to just one of the reasons, which is the cheaper energy supply for householders and businesses, but we need to focus on energy security …
My Lords, I declare my interests as a previous chair of Peers for the Planet and a director of that organisation. I will speak to my Amendment 274, which is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, who cannot be in the Chamber this evening. It continues the theme of energy efficiency that the nob…
My Lords, we on these Benches support the aims of this statutory instrument but welcome the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in her regret amendment.
The Liberal Democrats have always made it clear from these Benches that we are not anti-science and support the …
My Lords, I repeat my declaration of interests. Spending the morning with my newly born grandson has left me in the mood to emphasise the positive, so I can say that I did actually agree with one thing that the noble Lord, Lord Offord, said, and that was that we need to be transparent with the publi…
My Lords, I pay tribute to the persistence of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on this subject and to how she has carried this end of Parliament on a number of occasions.
I normally agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on an awful lot of things but I do not quite agree with her here. I spe…
My Lords, the Minister was absolutely clear that these are not easy decisions, and I think we all understand that. But the high price of electricity affects not only industries but consumers, so they are decisions, however difficult, that have to be taken. We have been tremendously damaged by the sy…
The noble Baroness will be aware that the committee’s report refers to heat-related deaths rising in the UK as a result of what is happening to our climate. Since publication of the national adaptation plan 3 in July 2023, we have taken on board that point. The last Government published the fourth H…
The noble Baroness raises the most important of points. I assure her that the Cabinet Office is working closely with sponsoring departments to make sure that, while we recognise and want to eliminate duplication, we are not doing so by deleting both functions in one go. We will be very sensitive abo…