My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness. Her points are a helpful segue to the amendments that I will speak to, which are very much about the first formal conversation that takes place between a medical practitioner and a patient who is interested in exploring the potential of an assisted death.
I wil…
My Lords, I declare an interest as a father of two young adults—an interest I have in common with people across these Houses and homes across the country, as well as a desire to see them get into work. First, will this offer arise only for those already on benefits? Secondly, while we all hope that …
My Lords, Amendments 154, 210 and 211 are in my name. I also support my noble friend Lady Goudie’s Amendments 202, 208 and 209; she is unable to be in her place today. I will endeavour to be brief. Together, these amendments address two questions that I believe unite noble Lords across the House: ho…
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 99, 102 and 105 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who cannot be in his place today. For reasons that will become apparent, I have also added my name to the amendments. I declare an interest as the carer for a family member with long-term de…
My Lords, it is a pleasure to hear the very personal stories of today’s maiden speakers, and we look forward very much to the fourth one coming. I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest on securing this crucial and timely debate. I declare my interest as a board member o…
My Lords, I am very grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this important debate. Truly, he is the greatest parliamentary champion for human rights that this country has had since William Wilberforce. If you want to know just how good he is, he is the only Member of Parliame…
LordsOral Questions17 December 20252 contributions
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the work he has done to get us to this place. The office’s impact and progress will be measured against its remit, including an increase in the Government’s capacity and capability to partner with the impact economy, an increase in the number of partnerships acr…
My Lords, the office is already building partnerships to benefit people in exactly the way my noble friend has outlined. We are working with MHCLG to secure match funding for the £5 billion Pride in Place programme, and with DHSC on the neighbourhood health implementation programme. In the early yea…
My Lords, my Amendment 19 would add a modest but important safeguard to Clause 1 by ensuring that a person seeking an assisted death has been registered with a GP practice in England or Wales for at least 12 months and has had at least two contacts with that practice in that period, whether in perso…
With the greatest respect, that is not the conversation I am trying to have here. The conversation is about the necessity that someone who is going through the process has continuity of care and a relationship with that GP. We are suggesting that someone who is after a state-assisted end-of-life pro…
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has done the Committee a service in tabling this amendment. It has enabled us to think in advance of the debate that we will have when we get to Clause 3 on the existing wording in the Bill about the Mental Capacity …
My Lords, schools are required to promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of their pupils. They can do this within lessons on religious education and in other teaching. Schools are required to promote fundamental British values, including encouraging mutual understanding, respe…
I thank the noble Lord for his enormous interest in this important subject. I reassure him that the Government note the findings of the Ofsted subject report and are committed to ensuring high-quality provision of religious education. To support teachers and help ensure high standards and consistenc…
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd of Effra, on her excellent maiden speech and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, who has the difficult task of pulling together the various strands of this debate into a coherent strategy. I declare my interests as having …
My Lords, I have agonised, as we all have, about the Bill. I will make three brief points. First, I support the principle of the Bill. I say that as a religious person. I seek to live by a Christian narrative and I share with many Jewish and Muslim friends, among many others, a belief in the givenne…
My noble friend raises an important point, and I just highlight my personal experience of working with the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, which goes back over a couple of decades to when she first started the work on introducing ASBOs—I am sure that everyone will remember that—and then went on to troub…
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. The retirement of the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan of Partick, is a loss to the House and a loss to me personally. On behalf of her adopted home in Scotland, she has made a significant contribution to devolution and constitutional …
I very much welcome that report and am pleased that the Government have been responsive to identifying what we need to do. I never tire of saying that, to support the workforce in the way that my noble friend said, we are introducing a new fair pay agreement for adult social care and implementing th…
My Lords, I am sympathetic to the Government’s aspirations to tackle fraud and to reclaim money, in effect, ripped off from the public purse. Whether it is those grants for fake community schemes mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, at the beginning or the more mundane b…
My Lords, 80 years ago, my grandparents, Bert and Winnie Firmin, were at the theatre when the show was interrupted with the announcement that the war was over. Bert, stationed for the duration of the war on Malta as an RAF electrician working on Spitfires, had managed to get a few days’ leave to com…