Results 4141–4160 of 5303 for speaker:George Howarth

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Electoral Procedures (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: I am aware that the police are investigating a number of allegations of proxy voting abuse and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on any of them specifically. The final report of the working party on electoral procedures, which I chair, is likely to include a number of recommendations on absent voting. However, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made clear in an earlier...

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Electoral Procedures (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: My hon. Friend is right. This country has a long and proud tradition of free and fair elections without any form of corruption. Any changes that we make must uphold both the spirit and the letter of that tradition.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Electoral Procedures (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has worked for a number of years to raise awareness of the problem of the number of people who do not appear on electoral registers. I assure him that we have studied the matter very carefully. An announcement will be made about it later this week.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, we are actively considering how to take this issue forward. The House voted overwhelmingly in favour of a ban on hunting in a free vote in 1997. Since then, we have been discussing ways of bringing this issue to a conclusion. We hope to make an announcement of our specific proposals soon.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: My hon. Friend will be aware of the words of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week. Obviously, we will bring forward our proposals in due course, and I am sure that my hon. Friend and many others will welcome them very warmly when they appear.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: If the opportunity permits, that is exactly what we hope to achieve. Of course, my hon. Friend is right. A large proportion of the public have repeatedly shown in polls that they favour legislation of that sort. Indeed, a majority of hon. Members have shown that they favour such legislation. For Labour Members, there will be a free vote and I hope that all the other parties will take a...

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: I can speak only for the Government when I say that the intention is that we will have a free vote. There are certainly compelling reasons why the Opposition may be persuaded that a free vote would be appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: The right hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that I will not comment on leaked documents—

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Speaker. To answer the question asked by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), there are three options, all of which are under consideration. The first is a Government Bill, the second the possibility of a private Member's Bill and the third the possibility of an amendment to a Government Bill. At this stage, we have not adopted a...

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will probably not be surprised to learn that I did not attend that particular agricultural affair, but I acknowledge that there are strong feelings on both sides of the argument. Indeed, there are strong feelings on both sides of the House and they are not universally shared by members of particular parties. The truth of the matter is that the House...

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: I have to point out that the Opposition supported the principles behind the Good Friday agreement, and it is, frankly, wrong for the hon. Gentleman to condense both that issue and hunting. I am sure that he, like the rest of us, wants to see peace in Northern Ireland, and I should not have expected the hon. Gentleman to raise this issue along with that of Northern Ireland.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour makes his own point. I simply repeat what I said a few moments ago: there are strong feelings on both sides of the argument, but I hope that those who want to express strong views will do so in a non-violent and civilised way. The House is eager to debate the issue and, if we do so on those terms, we will not exercise ourselves wrongly.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Hunting With Dogs (12 Jul 1999)

George Howarth: The hon. Gentleman raises the question of a sum of money that was paid to the Labour party before the previous general election. Perhaps he and his hon. Friends would like to explain why a large sum from the same organisation was paid to the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats. In his remarks last week, the Prime Minister was reflecting the will of the House and the view of the...

Opposition Day: Proportional Representation (23 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: This has been a good debate, despite the partisan remarks of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). I congratulate the Opposition on giving us the opportunity to debate an important issue which exercises us all. I join all those who have sincerely congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Benn) on his maiden speech. A few of us—my right hon. Friend...

Opposition Day: Proportional Representation (23 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: I shall come to that. One person has been missing from the debate, but frequently referred to—Lord Jenkins. It is a little unfair to those who sat on his commission that it is constantly referred to as though he alone did the work. Some worthy people worked long and hard to come up with the proposals.

Opposition Day: Proportional Representation (23 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: I am glad to have given the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to get that off his chest. The terms of reference of the commission were as follows: The Commission shall be free to consider and recommend any appropriate system or combination of systems in recommending an alternative to the present system for parliamentary elections to be put before the people in the Government's referendum.The...

Opposition Day: Proportional Representation (23 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: I cannot give way as there are only two minutes left. The answer to when the referendum will be has been so often given today that I need not repeat it. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary has handed me a note saying "one minute", but I do not think that he means that it will be held then. We need a wider debate that goes beyond the House. The House alone cannot decide how we elect Members of...

Opposition Day: Proportional Representation (23 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: I cannot wait.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Crimestoppers (14 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: We greatly appreciate the work of Crimestoppers, especially the way in which it allows the anonymous reporting of crime. Ministers attend Crimestoppers events to support its work whenever possible—indeed, I attended a national conference in Birmingham in November. We are holding discussions with Crimestoppers about ways in which we might work together and support it in its work.

Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department: Crimestoppers (14 Jun 1999)

George Howarth: I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the Greater Manchester police on the work that they do in co-operation with Crimestoppers. That kind of partnership between different agencies and the police is important if we are to combat crime successfully. I understand that Crimestoppers has not yet made any specific formal request to the Home Office for direct funding, but obviously any such...


Create an alert

Advanced search

Find this exact word or phrase

You can also do this from the main search box by putting exact words in quotes: like "cycling" or "hutton report"

By default, we show words related to your search term, like “cycle” and “cycles” in a search for cycling. Putting the word in quotes, like "cycling", will stop this.

Excluding these words

You can also do this from the main search box by putting a minus sign before words you don’t want: like hunting -fox

We also support a bunch of boolean search modifiers, like AND and NEAR, for precise searching.

Date range

to

You can give a start date, an end date, or both to restrict results to a particular date range. A missing end date implies the current date, and a missing start date implies the oldest date we have in the system. Dates can be entered in any format you wish, e.g. 3rd March 2007 or 17/10/1989

Person

Enter a name here to restrict results to contributions only by that person.

Section

Restrict results to a particular parliament or assembly that we cover (e.g. the Scottish Parliament), or a particular type of data within an institution, such as Commons Written Answers.

Column

If you know the actual Hansard column number of the information you are interested in (perhaps you’re looking up a paper reference), you can restrict results to that; you can also use column:123 in the main search box.