My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 170 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett, Lady Griffin and Lady Hayman. I am grateful for their support and look forward to hearing their contributions. I have reflected carefully on the helpful feedback I received from the Minister in Commit…
I thank the Minister for that response, but that probably means in practice that I thank her for the last sentence. Some of the other stuff I found difficult to agree with. I point out that our proposal was to collect data or produce estimates only for the larger schemes and funds in order to get a …
LordsCommittee Stage23 February 20264 contributions
My Lords, Amendment 212 is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman, Lady Griffin of Princethorpe and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I thank them for their support and look forward to their contributions. I also thank the Better Pensions Coalition for its input and advice—I should pr…
My Lords, I will speak briefly but enthusiastically in support of Amendment 205. The case for a review was eloquently put by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and its merits are surely obvious. I hope the Minister will be able to agree with that.
In particular, I hope the review will take a close l…
My Lords, I will speak briefly under the auspices of Amendments 146 and 147 when we resume some of the discussions the Minister promised last week to continue, notably on mandation and statutory guidance. In our debate last week, I tried to establish the evidence base for the Minister’s assertion th…
LordsCommittee Stage22 January 20262 contributions
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow—and I did—my noble friend discussing the reserved mandatory powers in the Bill. I will speak to my Amendments 111, 161 and 162. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for adding his name to all three and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for adding his name to the first.
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Can the Minister respond to the point I made about statutory guidance?
LordsCommittee Stage12 January 20264 contributions
My Lords, in moving Amendment 3, I will speak also to Amendments 221 and 222. These amendments would enable meaningful scrutiny of any of the Bill’s nearly 130 delegated parts when it seemed appropriate to Parliament.
The Bill before us is a skeleton Bill. The DPRRC says that the test for a skeleto…
I am grateful to all those who have contributed to this brief debate. The complexity described by the Minister is obviously real and clearly important, but one of the ways of dealing with complexity is to have the instruments to simplify it and discuss it. My response to the scenario painted by the …
My Lords, it is about five years since we last saw a Pension Schemes Bill in this House, and it is good to see so many familiar faces, albeit sitting in different places in the Chamber. It is also good to be welcoming some new faces to our small band of pension enthusiasts, and I am particularly loo…
I cannot give the detailed answer on the numbers that the noble Lord is after, but I am very happy to write to him. We have this experience in a whole range of other medicines, but I appreciate the noble Lord’s particular interest in this. This is a very difficult area. It is for NICE to look at the…
My Lords, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported the Bill and the wider effort to bring justice to mortgage prisoners. In particular, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, and the r…
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for his tireless work on proactively raising awareness of this issue and continuing to maintain that dialogue. The nearly 200,000 individuals trapped as mortgage prisoners will be thanking him as he keeps up the momentum. People who are unable to secur…
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. On this Government’s proposals for improving BIDs, the English Devolution White Paper, which I mentioned, set out our intention to strengthen BIDs. We will come forward with further proposals to do so in due course.
My Lords, according to the Commons Library, in 2024 there were 5.5 million small and medium-sized businesses in the UK, which was 97% of the total business population. These companies accounted for 60% of all UK jobs and 48% of all business turnover. These small businesses are the engines of job cre…
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, not only for securing this debate but for an interesting and informative introduction setting out a number of important matters. I declare my interests: until two weeks ago, I was president of the Rural Coalition, which is relevant to this speech; I am…