My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend. When I was chair of the Delegated Powers Committee under the last Government, we published a report regretting the trend that over the last 30 years, more and more regulations have bypassed Parliament—not just by using the negative procedure rathe…
My Lords, I speak on these amendments not with any great authority on them but because I had some experience of a heritage village being destroyed to create a reservoir when I was Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, a huge constituency in the north of Cumbria including the beautiful lak…
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 294, submitted by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. I apologise that I was not in the Chamber this morning to participate: I had to attend my Select Committee, especially as it was on a subject that I demanded that we investigate. Way back last June, we fi…
My Lords, I rise to address Amendments 319 and 320, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Caithness—I thank him for that. These important amendments seek to ensure that future environmental delivery plans are delivered by people or bodies that have the appropriate capabilities necessary for conserva…
My Lords, I congratulated the noble Baroness in Grand Committee last week and I am delighted to be able to repeat my congratulations today. It is lovely to see her in her place.
I have considerable sympathy for Amendment 212, moved by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I saw in the press las…
My Lords, I address Amendments 227C and 227E in the names of my noble friends Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lord Banner respectively. I thank both my noble friends for bringing these thoughtful and important proposals to the attention of the Committee.
Amendment 227C from my noble friend Lady Hodgson…
My Lords, I support the Bill. Much has changed in the many years that your Lordships’ House has been debating assisted dying for the terminally ill, but public support for it has been constant. The British Social Attitudes survey has found around 80% in favour and 20% against consistently for the pa…
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 146 and speak to Amendment 354 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Roborough. Amendment 146 would require spatial development strategies to list any rivers and streams within their areas, to outline specific measures to protect them from environmental harm, and to im…
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken today with such clarity, conviction and genuine concern for the future of our environment. All their speeches were thoughtful, constructive and rooted in a shared desire to see our planning system deliver not only growth but lasting stewards…
As I said, we are looking at all options, but we want to have a treaty that is going to make the biggest difference. The noble Lord is absolutely right in saying that we have a fantastic negotiating team. We have made progress and we want to continue to make progress. It is very frustrating that pro…
I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I know it has not been a very long debate, but I thank noble Lords for their support, because this is an important instrument.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked whether or not animal welfare would be diluted by it. The answer is: absolut…
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who identified so many of the problems in the courts system that impact on the interpreting service. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, for chairing our inquiry so effectively and for having explained clearly the …
My Lords, I thank the honourable Member for Chester South and Eddisbury for introducing this important Bill in the other place and for taking it through so eloquently. I express my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for assuming responsibility for the Bill in this House, and I recognise her …
My Lords, I thank the honourable Member for Winchester, Dr Danny Chambers, as others have, for introducing this important Bill in the other place, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, for sponsoring it in this House. I know as well as everyone here that the noble Lord is a great advocate for animal welfa…
My Lords, first, I congratulate Sir Jon Cunliffe and his team on this thoroughly detailed review of the water industry. There are many of his 88 recommendations we support, including the replacement of Ofwat.
In the other place and on the airwaves last weekend, the Secretary of State for Defra trie…
My Lords, despite the late hour, I make no apologies for returning to the subject of implementing any conclusions reached by the new House of Lords Select Committee in considering possible retirement ages, attendance thresholds and participation rates. The excellent announcement of this Select Commi…
I hope I made it clear in my speech that the House would consider the options. The House would then come up with a firm vote on what they may be, and not give the Government a range of options to legislate on. It would be the decision of the House on the retirement age, the participation rates or th…
My Lords, my support for this concept is not new. Indeed, this was one of my recommendations to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his report. If Prime Ministers had created fewer Peers so that we were not so numerous, I would continue to resist this concept of creating Peers with no right to sit in th…
My Lords, I signed the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and I rise briefly to support him. The House may recall that in Committee I presented three options for the removal of Peers who attended infrequently, and the mood of the House seemed to coalesce around the 10% one. I say to my no…
The noble Lord asked me quite a few specific questions as to exactly what the legislation is going to look like when the Government bring it forward. I am afraid I am not in a position to give the detail of what that legislation would look like at the moment, but I can only reiterate that we want to…
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 20, which was ably proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Let me remind the House again of the commitment in the Labour Party manifesto:
“Labour will … introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age…
My Lords, in theory, my Amendment 14 ought not to be in this group because it would do something quite different. I did not ask for it to be degrouped because I did not want these Benches to be accused of trying to have separate groups of amendments to pad it out.
I say to the Leader that I listene…
My Lords, I hope my words did not provoke last night. I was reminiscing with Northern Ireland Members about those days in the 1980s and 1990s in the Commons when we used to speak all night on Northern Ireland business and then my late colleague Eric Forth and I pulled the stunt of having a renegade …
My Lords, I think my feet have gone to sleep—it is very cold on the Front Bench.
I start by thanking all noble Lords who have contributed to this evening’s debate with such passion and energy. I thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Empey, for considering my welfare so carefully.
Obviously, much…
My Lords, first, I join everybody else in congratulating both the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, and her kinsman—or father, whichever term she would rather have—on their speeches, because I think it is a great occasion. We shall miss the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for whom I have even spok…
I think the noble Lord would agree that it is important that we have a comprehensive, fair and equitable approach to the way that we protect our marine environment. The noble Lord mentioned discard rates; at present, it is the case that the Cefas observer programme wants to provide estimates of the …
My Lords, I too have learnt some new acronyms this week and ADV is one of them, so I join the noble Lord in gaining that knowledge, and in understanding the importance of the fact that, as I continue to repeat to this House, navigational authorities are independent of government but are also respons…
The noble Lord makes a very good point. I mentioned walking my dog at Ennerdale Water, where there are signs saying, “No fires”. Yet, I regularly walk along the lake and see clear evidence of people lighting fires and even chopping down saplings to try to light those fires. We need better understand…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and, indeed, thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I apologise to those who said it would not take more than an hour—I am sorry about that.
First of all, I thank the Minister for saying that the issues around the organic sector nee…