My Lords, I too welcome the unethical research awards, but I want to raise something that has been raised with some of us here by the infected and affected. I recognise the uplift, but there are concerns about how those final figures were arrived at. One of the concerns is that this sets a legal pre…
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her introduction and give my strong support to this Bill. I join noble Lords from across the House in thanking my noble friend Lord Roe and his team for their service that night. As others have already said, the Grenfell Tower fire was not only a pr…
I will write, and I apologise for missing the noble Baroness’s point on that issue.
On the matter of cladding, a number of noble Lords mentioned failures caused by deregulation and a failure to listen to local voices. I reassure the House that for both me and the Minister and the other place, speed…
It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I agree with all that she had to say in relation to the issues in the report.
I am delighted to speak to this report as a member of the scrutiny committee. I declare my interests, in particular as chair of InterTrade UK and of Boyce Precision Eng…
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I recognise, of course, her ongoing interest in the Independent Public Advocate, which is very welcome. I do not know the answer, so I shall write to her.
LordsOral Questions13 November 20252 contributions
My Lords, I do not wish to be insensitive or difficult, but this is a time-limited debate, and the time limit for speeches is seven minutes. The effect of going over that time will be to curtail the time available to the Minister.
My Lords, the Minister said that the Government are in the late stages of choosing a chair. If the reports are to be believed—that the two preferred candidates have walked away from the inquiry—it means the Government may yet have some time to go. The position of being in such an inquiry without a c…
My Lords, I support the Bill wholeheartedly and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on introducing this excellent legislation to this House. On many occasions, this subject has been raised in Private Members’ Bills. I hope that this time we will get it through.
This is about raising concerns o…
My Lords, when the Government first announced the national inquiry, they said that it would be an innovative—and, I thought, very interesting—new model, which would enable individual local investigations to be overseen by a national commission with statutory powers. However, this Statement, which I …
My Lords, quite rightly, the focus today is on the compensation scheme, but, as briefly discussed in his initial report, Sir Brian made a number of other recommendations. I will just say that I really welcome the dashboard. It is a brilliant thing, and I congratulate the Government on doing it. Peop…
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. We are trying to do that as quickly as possible. I cannot give a definitive date, but if I say to her that we want to get this started as quickly as possible, I hope she will understand that I am trying to do that. I will report back to this House in due course w…
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 134A, in my name, which is in one sense a fairly limited amendment compared to some of the other proposals in this group. I understand all that, because what we are trying to deal with in this group is one of the most controversial realities in children’s socia…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response, and I thank all noble Lords for a really interesting debate. We said it would be controversial, and so it proved. I will not speak for long as we are getting late again, as usual, but I say very quickly to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Cas…
My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendment 134B in my name and to support a number of amendments in this group. I make it clear that this is a probing amendment. I appreciate that the Government have a wider agenda in relation to planning—so it may be that this Bill is not the right vehicle—but I …
My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendments 69B, 70, 71 and 72 in this group. It is terrific that kinship care will be defined in legislation for the first time. It is a significant step, and one that we should admit is long overdue. I could never understand why kinship care was always so overlook…
My Lords, I will also speak incredibly briefly to the amendments in this group. Obviously, we need protections in place, but I think that across the Chamber we are all agreed that we want to make kinship care a viable option for as many people as possible. These amendments help to do just that by re…
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 32 and 35, which relate to children with disabilities, because these children are, sadly, more at risk and so need our protection. Also, before I begin, could I just say that my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie is sorry that she cannot be here today—fra…
My Lords, the Minister may mention this in her response to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s question about the data task force, but I just wanted to mention the Cabinet Office Evaluation Task Force, which is tasked with improving and addressing data across every area of government. Obviously, it…