Results 1-20 of 562 for in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates' speaker:the Earl of Erroll

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill — Third Reading (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I support both amendments, which were spoken to most ably by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, also made comments that were absolutely right on the nail. A review is only sensible. An awful lot of the figures should be obtainable from the licensing authorities, whoever is going to be appointed, on the financial stuff, how much is done, and so...

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill — Third Reading (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I add a slight note of dissent. I entirely agree with Amendment 9, which gives greater flexibility to, "make different provision for different purposes". However, Amendment 8 paints the regulation-makers into a corner. I quite see the point of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the commercial stuff. This is his word as a commercial lawyer among the large rights holders and the...

Growth and Infrastructure Bill: Report (3rd Day) (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: Excuse me, but I cannot let the noble Lord get away with that. It is the same as any other employee shareholding scheme; to suggest that it will create new tax avoidance, when the Government are trying to introduce tax-efficient schemes for investment purposes, is hammering people ridiculously.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill: Report (3rd Day) (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I will make a couple of quick points on this. I keep hearing this tale about how power lies with the employers. Noble Lords talk about large companies that have expensive and well staffed HR departments and lawyers who work on this full time. I am afraid that the SME world that I live in a lot of the time is not like that. There, you cannot afford it. When you employ one, two,...

Growth and Infrastructure Bill: Report (3rd Day) (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: Even better. Passing it does not matter then, but at least it would send the right signal and some people may relax. If, as the noble Lord says, it will not change the unfair dismissals process, we can all proceed happy that that continues. Why object? At the moment, I know that the law is biased in favour of the employee, not the other way round. With that, I will sit down. I would love to...

Growth and Infrastructure Bill: Report (3rd Day) (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I will speak only to this amendment. We will have the debate on whether employees should give up rights for shares when we deal with the next amendment. I restrict myself purely to the tax issue here. It is a serious point, because I have hit this when I have been offered share options. Because you receive the benefit, theoretically, you are meant to pay income tax on it in that...

Legislation: Data Retention — Question (20 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, as the Government are going to keep the address of every single website that someone visits, and where they are from, should the assessment not be talking about exabytes or yottabytes of data, not just the smaller amounts that the Minister is talking about, as I understand that they will have to be retained in such a way that they can be accessed by various services?

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (4th Day) (Continued) (11 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, we need to move somewhere in this direction, so I support this amendment. The unfairness of copyright law recently came home to me. Someone wanted to publish a book involving some of my ancestors, and asked whether they could use some material that I had at home. I replied, "Certainly, I would be delighted". Then they said, "We need a release document". They put a contract in front...

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (4th Day) (Continued) (11 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: Will the Minister clarify something? It sounded as though this amendment would cover the situation in which I found myself. If a creator is a sole trader, would he be covered as a business to consumer rather than business to business? Would that help?

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (4th Day) (Continued) (11 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in this amendment. It is extremely sensible, very simple and allows for flexibility, which is what we want. The concept of licensing for orphan works and for extended collective licensing is important if we are to disseminate things that we want to do and see. More and more programmes, books and so forth now dwell on our recent past. In this...

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (3rd Day) (6 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: I am not arguing that one should not have health and safety regulations and that one should not do one's best. However, it is just wrong when someone has done everything they can but something is done behind their back that they have no knowledge of or power over and they are made liable and possibly locked up. I object to the strict liability part.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (3rd Day) (6 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: As a quick correction, it was nothing to do with unfair dismissal, it was about the health and safety issues which come up the whole time in certain industries, particularly agriculture and things like that. That is what I was thinking about mostly.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill: Report (3rd Day) (6 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I rise to put the opposite opinion. I live in the world of small and medium-sized businesses. The SMEs and the micros employ half the workforce out there. As one of them, I feel it is totally unfair that, even if you took all the precautions you could, if something happened that you could not foresee and could not know about, you are held to be guilty. This is wrong in natural...

Armed Forces: Army Basing Plan — Statement (5 March 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: Perhaps I might ask the Minister, in a slightly light-hearted way: if Scotland becomes independent will those troops stationed north of the border become part of the "Scottish Army"? If it does not, what does that do to his pronouncements about long-term stability and how they will not all get moved around?

Succession to the Crown Bill: Committee (Continued) (28 February 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: On that subject, I may be able to assist. It depends on whether they passed Acts in the parliaments to say that they would agree to whatever we do or whether they try to enact the particular provisions. It would be worth the Minister looking at how they implemented it in Canada or Australia. Did they say, "We will assent to whatever", or did they say, "This is what we are going to do"? For...

Succession to the Crown Bill: Committee (Continued) (28 February 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, pointed out that families tend to be smaller, but we live longer. For instance, the reigning monarch is about to become a great-grandmother. Taking an average of two to four children, which is three, when there are three children in the first generation and three sets of three children in the second generation, we have already reached our figure of...

Succession to the Crown Bill: Committee (Continued) (28 February 2013)

The Earl of Erroll: Before the Minister sits down, perhaps I could help him on the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Every year, at the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the monarch promises to defend the Presbyterian Church Government in Scotland-I will not get the words exactly right. I think that she does that in a personal capacity, not as head of the Anglican Church. She promises to...

Arrangement of Business — Announcement (18 December 2012)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, this Third Reading underlines the importance of returning to our previous custom of pressing amendments to a Division at the Committee stage as a matter of principle and then tidying up on Report. The practice of withdrawing amendments in Committee and then pressing them on Report is leading to this problem of tidying up at Third Reading. I think that we should return to our old...

Financial Services Bill — Report (5th Day) (28 November 2012)

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, this is a very sensible amendment and it should be accepted. I also agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that it ought to be applied to all accounts. We have had to leave some family accounts open just to receive some old shares and such things coming in because we cannot really get around to changing them. If we could change them at the bank end, it would make a...

Future Reserves 2020 — Statement (8 November 2012)

The Earl of Erroll: Will the Minister please have some sort of exemption for small and micro-businesses about the recruitment of people? When an employer hires someone it is because there is a job to be done. If the employer suddenly loses that person for several months, it can bust them. It is very difficult to backfill or infill quickly enough. I had a small business go bust a few years ago because someone was...