Lord Maples: My Lords-
Lord Maples: My Lords-
Lord Maples: My Lords, consumer price inflation is only one measure of inflation. May I suggest that if in the run-up to the crash the Monetary Policy Committee had been looking at asset price inflation-
Lord Maples: I have a couple of quick points on the ring-fencing proposal. Does what the Chancellor said last night mean that we have finally ruled out the idea of a complete split between investment banking and commercial banking? Secondly, does the Minister agree that for ring-fencing to work, the ring-fenced commercial or high-street bank will need a strong degree of independence on its board of...
Lord Maples: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Department of Energy and Climate Change received any representations from Tata Steel about the costs of European Union and United Kingdom carbon legislation, before it announced the partial closure of its Scunthorpe steel plant; and whether they will publish any such representations from the company.
Lord Maples: My Lords, I am one of the growing group of people inside and outside Parliament who think that this whole policy is completely misconceived. Even if you believe and accept the link that the Climate Change Act makes between carbon emissions and world temperatures, surely the way that this policy is operating at present is curious economic masochism. At a time of falling real incomes for...
Lord Maples: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that our aid programme and friendly relationship with Pakistan must continue. However, these events will alter that relationship and that of the United States with Pakistan, which is perhaps more important. First, I suspect there will be turmoil in Pakistan over what has happened and the death of Osama bin Laden, which may well lead to the fall of the...
Lord Maples: My Lords, may I suggest to my noble friend that the central issue here is the rate of growth of credit, which is at the bottom of all banking crises? It does not matter what system of regulation is in place if it does not bring the rate of growth of credit back in line with the rate of growth of the economy. There has been a considerably faster rate of growth in credit. If that continues, we...
Lord Maples: My Lords, I, too, hope that the House will reject this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, moved it in extremely reasonable and persuasive terms, but it is a bit of a split-the-difference amendment. There has been a call for a 20 per cent spread-10 per cent either way-in the debates in Committee, and 7.5 per cent seems to be a nice compromise between 5 per cent and 10 per cent. However,...
Lord Maples: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asks why it should fall to Parliament to make this decision. It seems to me that it must, and that ultimately the will of the House of Commons should prevail but that obviously our views should be sought too. The nature of the rules that the Boundary Commission operates at present involves an inevitable escalation of the number of Members of...
Lord Maples: That is not correct. The boundary commissions legislation states the number of seats in Scotland and Wales. In fact, the legislation says that there will be a minimum of 35 seats for Wales, whereas there are actually 40, and it also gives minimum numbers for Northern Ireland and Scotland. Therefore, I do not think that it is right to say that the matter has been left entirely to the boundary...
Lord Maples: I should like to progress. This is like making a speech in the House of Commons, where people intervene the whole time. The noble Lord can make his own speech in his own time about the number of seats in Wales. Following on from my Amendment 63ZA, I have tabled another-Amendment 66B-which would reduce the denominator and the fraction for deciding the electorate for each seat. There are...
Lord Maples: My Lords, could my noble friend help me with my memory of the Maastricht treaty, which set up the euro? I seem to remember that two of the conditions were that: first, no Government should run a budget deficit of more than 3 per cent of GDP; and, secondly, that there should be no bailouts? Is not the reason that the European Union-or the eurozone at least-is now having to breach the...
Lord Maples: My Lords, if the noble Lord was speaking on medical matters, I would be very reluctant to tangle with him in argument, but I think that some of the doubts he expressed about the Bill are simply not right. The new boundaries will not be set by central diktat but by the Boundary Commission that has a long history of independence from political parties and will have to take account of what...
Lord Maples: The average size of a constituency at that time was 68,000 voters, but 440 of them were more than 5 per cent away from that average and 240 were more than 10 per cent away. This is massively unfair, and it is demonstrated in the majorities that the two main parties have to get to win an election. If Labour got 32 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives 29 per cent, there would be a Labour...
Lord Maples: I prefer to make my own speech, and that is not a subject that I want to deal with. This Bill is about boundaries, not about increasing turnouts. A large part of the cause is the difference in the size of constituencies. It is not, I agree, the only cause. Differential turnout and the stacking up of votes in safe seats is certainly part of it, but the differential size of constituencies is...
Lord Maples: I think that it is undoubtedly a problem, and it is particularly so with young people, but it is much easier now to register than it has been for a very long time. When I first got involved in elected politics, the registers were changed, I think, only once a year in the spring before local government elections. They are now updated every month, so it is perhaps up to all elected politicians...
Lord Maples: I have given way to the noble Lord once and I do not think that I will do so again. They do not have many of the problems the others seats have, such as a large seat like I had. The case for those to be so far below the quota-I think that in the case of one of them there are 22,000 voters and in the other 33,000-is very difficult to justify. If they are to have special representation for...
Lord Maples: I am grateful to my noble friend. Does he agree that an electoral system which, at the general election in 2010, required the Conservative Party to get 40 per cent of the vote to get an overall majority but Labour to get only 34 per cent cannot possibly be considered fair?
Lord Maples: My Lords, I wholly welcome the Statement. If the European arm of NATO is to mean anything, enhanced co-operation between France and the United Kingdom is very important, but the big problem that we both have is over procurement. We cannot afford the equipment that we want and neither of us has a good system for managing procurement projects. The history of this is not very encouraging. The...