Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I also welcome my noble friend the Minister to the Dispatch Box and wish him all the best with his new responsibilities. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, on securing this debate. The issue of carers is very important. The Prime Minister set out his plans for health and social care reform in his excellent policy document last month. On the one hand, he said, it...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I welcome the Armed Forces Bill 2021 and support the principle of strengthening the Armed Forces covenant in law. As the Lords Defence Minister at the time, I was responsible for the passage through this House of the Armed Forces Bill 2011, which received Royal Assent in November 2011. It amended the 2006 Act, most notably by requiring an annual Armed Forces covenant report to be...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, it is a real honour to follow the noble Baroness, who does so much for carers. I declare an interest as the father of a profoundly autistic daughter. My experience with our daughter, whose residential care was disrupted during the pandemic, was a real eye-opener. It is an exhausting business looking after a disabled adult, tending to their well-being 24/7. I have nothing but...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I congratulate the Government on navigating so bravely and doggedly through the hellish coronavirus storm that we have experienced. Control of the virus has been achieved through teamwork and co-operation at local and national level between the National Health Service, Public Health England, academia and private and not-for-profit sectors of the community. Since the start of the...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, the police have been brutal in beating up protesters. Can the Minister confirm that the Government have not authorised the sale of any equipment to Belarus that could be used against protesters?
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of woodlands. What effective guidance will the Government give to ensure that these trees are not subsequently destroyed by grey squirrels?
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I join my noble friend the Minister in paying tribute to our Armed Forces and their families. I welcome the intent of the Bill and believe that it will provide greater certainty for service personnel and veterans in respect of vexatious claims concerning the prosecution of historical events that occurred in armed conflict overseas. I am only too aware that many claims were made...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I declare an interest as the father of an autistic daughter. Can the Minister say when clear guidance will be provided to day centres for the disabled, and when we can expect they will reopen?
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I welcome my noble friend the Minister to the Dispatch Box for his first Bill and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I agree with him that trade is the best route to prosperity. I wish him well with the Bill and will support him when I can. I declare an interest as president of the Thai-UK Business Council and as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Oman. In that role, I am...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, this pandemic has shone—
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, this pandemic has shone a bright spotlight on the critical work carried out by charity and volunteer groups in the UK—life-saving work, prompted by compassion, across many sectors. It has taken a tragedy of this magnitude to reveal the extent of the exposure of the most vulnerable in society to suffering, be it through physical or mental fragility, abuse at the hands of others,...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, the Coronavirus Act 2020 has relaxed the duties and responsibilities of local authorities to provide care and support to a revised minimum level which would solely meet a person’s needs measured according to their human rights—a very low bar indeed in this context. In the immediate short term, local authorities have other priorities. Even in better times, it is a struggle to...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I have seen at first hand the devastating effect on a family whose lives have been turned upside down as they see a loved one being exploited and isolated from them by a bogus therapist, so I am delighted to support the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. She has said everything that I would wish to have said and asked the questions that I would have asked. I will make one further point:...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, as the right reverend Prelate said, early intervention in education is essential to any child with special educational needs or any learning disability. Numerous studies in the past decade show that early intervention increases a child’s potential for greater all-round development, that a child learns as much in the first three years of its life as it will throughout its remaining...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former honorary colonel of a Royal Engineers reserve regiment. My comments are focused on the effect on the costs of what is proposed in the draft report. Her Majesty’s Treasury’s publication Managing Public Money says in chapter 3, under “Accounting Officers” that “the accounting officer should ensure that the organisation, and any ALBs it...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I begin by expressing my support for our Prime Minister, who is facing the Herculean task of ensuring that we leave the EU with a deal. The sooner we can draw a line under this and move forward, the sooner we can return to addressing other important domestic issues that have had to be neglected in the wake of the Brexit debate. I very much welcomed this sentence in the Queen’s...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, my noble friend the Minister briefly mentioned Operation Bodyguard and the deception carried out surrounding the D-day landings. I want to say something of the small number of courageous and imaginative MI5 case officers whose work underpinned the success of D-day. My late uncle, Hugh Astor, was one of the British MI5 operators who ran a group of double agents feeding false...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, my interest in Bahrain is as vice-chair of CMEC, and goes back to when I was a Defence Minister and had some responsibility for defence co-operation between our two countries. We have vital national security and economic interests in maintaining and developing our relationship with Bahrain. I was involved in the early stages of setting up our strategically vital naval support...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate. I congratulate him on the excellent work he does as patron of the Tavistock team of Dartmoor Search and Rescue. My first experience of Dartmoor goes back to the spring of 1966 when, as a young Army officer cadet on our final training exercise, I spent a fortnight on the moor and...
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, it is hard to imagine the mood of the country 100 years ago, when the hellish cacophony of gunfire gradually ceased on the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, to be replaced by an almost equally deafening silence—not a peaceful silence, but the suffocating, overwhelming sense of emptiness that comes with grief. Over 6 million men in Britain served during the war and...
