Results 21–40 of 7000 for speaker:Lord Willetts

Prayers: Workfare (20 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the strength of Japanese manufacturing industry. Sadly, we cannot say that Britain's industrial performance in the post-war period matches that of Japan. If, however, we wish to learn lessons from the Japanese industrial performance, we must recognise the importance of having a large and vital small-business sector, and of the Government...

Oral Answers to Questions — Social Security: Delayed Payments (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: How long, on average, does it take from first applying for income support until the receipt of an income support payment, and how does that compare with past performances?

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) referred to the fact that the Labour party commission struck the right balance between universal and selective benefits. In the light of that statement, how can the hon. Gentleman rule out the option of means-testing the pension?

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: Having studied the National Audit Office report on the cost of the incentive for people to contract out from SERPS, the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the savings figure of £3·4 billion—which, as he rightly points out, is considerably below the cost of the rebating incentive—is so small only because it assumes that everyone who takes out a personal pension will go back into SERPS in...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: Thank you for calling me to speak in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which is especially apposite as it takes place on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Beveridge report. I congratulate whichever powers in Mr. Speaker's Office or the usual channels managed to arrange for the debate to take place at such an apposite time—[Laughter.] Labour Members have a surprisingly cynical view of the...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: I do not have time to identify the source of the hon. Gentleman's figure of 67 per cent. but I am happy to bow to the experience and knowledge of the hon. Gentleman, on whose Select Committee I am honoured to serve. The structure of national insurance as envisaged by Beveridge had two consequences. A hefty Treasury contribution was necessary. We must debate its exact size, but it was...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: The National Audit Office set out calculations on a basis that I find difficult to accept, and I will return to that point later. The contract-out rebate of 5·8 per cent. is available to all who contract out of SERPS—it does not matter whether they are new to a personal pension, have subscribed to a personal pension for some time, or are members of an occupational pension scheme. Over the...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: I asked the Institute of Fiscal Studies but it has not made any calculations on its own basis. The National Audit Office appears to be the only body in a position to make such calculations, because it has access to information on 1 per cent. of all those who opted out of SERPS. The NAO is the only organisation that has the hard, empirical data on which to draw, because it knows the...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: If, in the future, we have groups of poorer pensioners, who are not just old pensioners, and if we have a greater diversity of income between pensioners, does not it follow that an uprating, an increase in the real value of the basic pension, above inflation, would be a particularly inefficient way in which to help the very people to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred? Has not he made the...

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: We are heading for an epic speech. It is helpful to have the structure laid out so clearly before we move to the substance of my hon. Friend's speech. Will she refer to European comparisons in respect of pensioners' incomes? Many of our figures on British pension provision are not properly compared with their continental counterparts.

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill (30 Nov 1992)

David Willetts: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's explanation of the Government's position on COMPs. Is the regime for COMPs part of the review of age-related rebates that is taking place in the Department with a view to a new structure being in place by 1996?

Oral Answers to Questions — Trade and Industry: Assisted Areas ( 2 Dec 1992)

David Willetts: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will now announce the conclusions of his review of the assisted areas map.

Oral Answers to Questions — Trade and Industry: Assisted Areas ( 2 Dec 1992)

David Willetts: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. Will he confirm that the shrinkage of the defence industry is a factor which will be taken into account in his review? In that context, may I draw his attention to the compelling case for assisted area status put forward by Havant and Portsmouth councils?

Orders of the Day — Social Security Bill: Payments into National Insurance Fund Out of Money Provided by Parliament ( 7 Dec 1992)

David Willetts: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's account of how the National Audit Office set about its calculations. If I gave the impression in my speech a week ago that I thought sharp practice was involved in the calculations, I welcome the opportunity to correct that impression. I do not think that there was any sharp practice. However, it is unfortunate that the assumptions on which the...

Oral Answers to Questions — Transport: Motorway Noise (11 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what further steps he will take to reduce the levels of noise from motorways.

Oral Answers to Questions — Transport: Motorway Noise (11 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: I welcome the steps that the Department is taking to reduce the level of noise from motorways. However, may I draw to my hon. Friend's attention the notorious roar produced by the experimental concrete surface on the A27 at Havant? Does not that make it a prime candidate for a new experiment, with a quiet noise-absorbent surface?

Opposition Day: National Health Service (26 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate because the motion put forward by the Labour party reveals that it fails to understand the basic objective of the Government's health reforms and how they work for the benefit of patients. Hon. Members talk about commercialisation of the health service and fragmentation of health care, but what the Labour party...

Opposition Day: National Health Service (26 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: I agree with my hon. Friend. He reveals the cynicism with which Labour Members speak of privatisation. They use it in the sense of people having to pay for their health care. That is not, and never has been, Conservative party policy and what we are discussing is not in any way privatisation in that sense. Completely different is the concept of a patient enjoying health care free at the...

Opposition Day: National Health Service (26 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: The hon. Gentleman has raised an important question. The reply is twofold. First, the Government have always made it clear that becoming a GP fund holder is a voluntary option. Nobody is being dragooned into becoming a fund holder. I welcome the enormous number of GPs who have already exercised that option and I expect that many more will do so in future, but it is not compulsory. Secondly,...

Opposition Day: National Health Service (26 Jan 1993)

David Willetts: My hon. Friend describes it as a brilliant speech—[Interruption.] Opposition Front—Bench Members say that they were deeply impressed. I am pleased to have such confirmation of its quality. That speech included figures on the record number of patients treated and the record activity in the new style NHS which have been achieved by a combination of high-grade management and the freedom at...


<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>

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.