🗣️ Speeches and Debates
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My Lords, first we should ask, what are the universities doing? Amid the deeply concerning increase in incidents of antisemitism on university campuses, what I have found perhaps most shocking are the reports of antisemitic behaviour by academics. The Community Security Trust reports academics as well as students with “limited” understanding of what constitutes antisemitism. How can this...
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My Lords, yet again the western world allows itself to drift in ignorance and indifference as a vast human tragedy unfolds in Africa. There is intense interest and emotional absorption among the peoples of the West in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, in Ukraine. If such can be measured, the scale of human suffering in Sudan dwarfs even the monstrous suffering in Gaza, yet we mostly avert our...
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My Lords, the Government are readying us for grim times ahead, though my noble friend the Minister remains genial and I am so glad to see her in her place. I gently submit that we cannot afford not to refund our universities. It was an extraordinary dereliction on the part of the previous Government, by freezing fees for years on end, to allow the present crisis in the funding of higher...
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My Lords, the planning committee of Westminster City Council had good reasons for rejecting the then Government’s application to site a Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. Among its concerns were the damaging impact on the amenity and beauty of the park, so precious for local residents and workers, the implications for congestion and pollution of the additional...
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My Lords, there is both the need and the opportunity for the new Government to be radical. We have to address poor productivity, low growth, regional and social inequality, shocking levels of poverty, collapsing public services and environmental degradation. We are told that the fiscal vice is so tight that the Government cannot spend any more money but also that there is a wall of money...
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My Lords, this is a wretched affair and, I will argue, an unnecessary one. A mass of our businesses are unable to plan because they simply do not know what the compliance requirements or timescale of the new system of import controls will be. They know only that the bureaucratic burdens and costs will be onerous, especially for SMEs, to the point that not a few will go out of business. I was...
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My Lords, Britain’s universities remain a jewel in our crown. It is enormously to the credit of academics that it is so, considering the headwinds against which they are struggling. They have been casualties of the Government’s chronic mismanagement of the economy, as well as their peculiar unwillingness to invest in education. When you have such precious assets as 25 universities in the...
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My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of the National Centre for Creative Health—a charity independent of government —and as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing. Since the APPG published its report, Creative Health, in 2017, the term “creative health” has become increasingly familiar in the worlds of healthcare, social care and culture. It denotes...
More of Lord Howarth of Newport's speeches and debates
✍️ Written Questions and Answers
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what considerations will determine when they will lift the present restrictions on the number of people who are permitted to sing in an amateur choir.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 18 February (HL1480), whether an Act of Parliament established Norfolk Island as a Territory of the Commonwealth of Australia; and if not, (1) how it was established as such a territory, and (2) how Parliament was consulted.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Norfolk Island (1) was within the geographical boundaries of the Commonwealth of Australia or any State thereof when the power to make laws for Norfolk Island was given to the Commonwealth of Australia in 1914, or (2) has since become within those boundaries.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government on what basis they appointed the consultancy Big Ideas to increase public engagement with the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre planning application; what specific remit they gave Big Ideas in undertaking that work; and how much they expect to pay Big Ideas for those services.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the exact wording of the questions asked by Big Ideas when seeking the views of members of the public about the proposed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what methodology was used by Big Ideas to select participants in their consultation on the proposed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of respondents to Big Ideas' consultation on the proposed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre were (1) resident, and (2) working in Westminster; and, in assessing public views on the planning application for that Centre, what assessment they have made of the relative weight that should be given to the views of (a) local people, and (b)...
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their response to the accusation of the Save Victoria Tower Gardens Campaign that they employed Big Ideas to "rig" their own planning application for a UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.
More of Lord Howarth of Newport's written questions
