My Lords, I can see what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is saying about Third Reading, but it would be wiser to vote for this amendment now—if noble Lords have any conscience at all, they have to vote for it—and if it is slightly defective it can be amended at Third Reading. If we do not do it now,…
My Lords, I will be very brief. I am worried not about whether it is right or wrong to try to stop smoking but about whether this would work. There is no point in passing laws that do not work, as they are not respected. I think back to the amount of pot that was smoked when I was at university, to …
Well, I am from the Government, and I am here to help. I am here to help those businesses that do well and behave themselves; for them, nothing will happen. If employers abuse the system, the Government will step in and take action.
As this is my last time at the Dispatch Box for 2025, I take this …
My Lords, I will briefly speak to something that has always puzzled me. Article 8 has two paragraphs. The first is about
“the right to … private and family life”.
The second states that you can ignore that if it is
“in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the intere…
My Lords, I want to make a quick point. If you are trying to build a lot of houses, you have to sell them. The rate of sale determines the rate of building: if you do not sell the houses, the builder goes bankrupt because houses are very expensive to build. As a result, it would open up the market m…
My Lords, I have seen two of these instances happen before. On legal advice given to a Minister not being revealed to this House, I can remember a huge row about it, and the House adjourned for 10 or 20 minutes while everyone recovered their composure because the row got so bad. It has been longstan…
Just to help the noble Lord’s confusion, there are the courtesy titles of the younger sons of certain levels of the peerage.
My Lords, it may be worth thinking about where this power for the Prime Minister to appoint Lords came from—I am thinking of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It derives from the fact that King John had his power to raise taxes taken away from him by the Magna Carta. He was left with the …
My Lords, I shall say just a few words about Amendment 4, which I support wholeheartedly. It is a move in the right direction. The problem is that if this House does not have some democratic authority, it will lose the powers that it has left. In this modern day and age, we must have some democratic…
I am grateful to the noble Earl for that intervention. The decision that the Home Office has taken is that it is for organisations to apply. With the ambulance trusts, once we have determined that we will remove the general exemption—because organisations have requested removal—we are then in a posi…
My Lords, I am grateful to be able to make a short contribution in the gap. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and the members and staff of her committee on producing such an excellent report. I thought her opening remarks well encapsulated the issue we face. I also congratulate the tw…
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Caithness on bringing this debate forward. I also congratulate my noble friends Lord Jack and Lord Gove on their excellent maiden speeches. It was a particular joy to serve alongside them in Cabinet—I actually mean that—and I am sure that they will add e…
My Lords, I address my comments to the Government Benches, particularly the Government Front Bench.
If one looks at Commons Hansard from yesterday, from the last round of ping-pong, several things stand out. First, although we have been through many rounds of ping-pong, yesterday was the first time…
Very briefly, because we are talking about the time periods here, you have to be very careful because accrued holiday goes into that, and if you do not give people notice before the holiday is up, you cannot get rid of them. So be careful: it should be three months or less, and actually you have to …
I would like to take the noble Lord up on this, because I have had experience with this. When an employee has been behaving very difficultly and sometimes they want to go anyway, but you want to dismiss them, they say, “Right, we’re going to take you to a tribunal”, and the answer is they will settl…
The noble Earl made an important point. I highlight that the responsibility for land management policies sits with my colleagues in Defra. I understand there are a number of methods that land managers may use to mitigate wildfire risk. Defra recognises that, in certain circumstances, prescribed burn…
My Lords, I will say a few words, particularly in response to the comments of my noble friend Lord Cromwell about loading costs on to the landlords. The problem is that, if you are in the countryside, they want to charge a huge amount to get it to you. We have one or two cottages and, to get a fibre…
The Minister said, significantly, that the Government are going to connect 99% of premises. That is not enough, looking forwards, because a lot of people sometimes move around, travelling. Nowadays, when you are not in a premises, you rely on broadband connections for satnavs and perhaps doing somet…