Lord Rennard: My Lords, I support Amendments 109 and 226 in this group, both of which are in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I will address them from the perspective of people with diabetes and with the support of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Diabetes UK. It is just over 100 years since insulin was discovered. Before 1921, a type 1 diabetic would live for no...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to my registered interests in healthcare equipment. I have added my name to Amendment 50, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, demonstrated clearly, as have others, that it simply cannot be said that the amendment is unnecessary. The recent report on fracture liaison services from the APPG on...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I rise in support of these amendments, in particular Amendment 66 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Faulkner of Worcester. This amendment would expand the duties of integrated care boards. We want them to exercise their functions with respect to reducing inequalities relating to “modifiable risk factors, such as smoking.” Our aim is to help...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, last Friday, we had an excellent Second Reading debate on the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, on cigarette stick health warnings. As the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said then, we have made progress over the past two decades, with a range of measures to help smokers quit and to prevent future generations using tobacco. But there is much more to be done....
Lord Rennard: My Lords, almost exactly 20 years ago, I described in this place how 300 lives were being lost each day in this country because of smoking tobacco. I asked then what the scale of public outcry demanding action would be if a similar number of lives were lost as, say, the result of a plane crash occurring every single day. My speech was in support of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones’s...
Lord Rennard: If the noble Lord is so convinced by the principle that agreements, once made, are binding and can never be changed, should he not then accept that the European Communities Act 1972 was a binding agreement in which we joined the European Union which could therefore never be changed by a future Parliament?
Lord Rennard: My Lords, in 1909, Lloyd George put forward the People’s Budget, proposing measures such as the introduction of the first ever old-age pensions in this country. The then Liberal Government planned to finance them by increasing taxes, including the basic rate of income tax, which would rise from the equivalent of 5p in the pound to 6p in the pound, and a tax on the wealthiest landowners....
Lord Rennard: My Lords, the Bill gives more power to Boris Johnson and less to Parliament. It is therefore in my view a Bill that Parliament should oppose, and I remain surprised that it has so much support from the Labour Benches. When Labour left government in 2010, the Labour Party manifesto of that year was committed to the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. Labour’s opposition to the 2011...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, e-cigarettes are undoubtedly part of the way forward to achieving a smoke-free Britain. But why has it taken so long to get to this point and to begin fulfilling what was in the 2017 tobacco control plan and to adopt the recommendations of the 2018 Select Committee, chaired by Sir Norman Lamb, which highlighted the significant benefits of having medicinally licensed e-cigarettes...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, it is of course always a great pleasure for me to follow my noble friend Lord Tyler, and it is with considerable sadness that I now do so for the last time. It was in 1964, 58 years ago, that my noble friend was first elected to the Devon County Council and became the youngest councillor in the country. In February 1974, he was elected as the Liberal MP for the Bodmin constituency....
Lord Rennard: My Lords, one in three deaths during the first period of the pandemic were among people with diabetes. Obesity accounts for most of the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and, even without the problems of the pandemic, a type 2 diabetic, such as me, at my age, is expected to put on one or two kilos every year. Will the Minister now look to reverse what the King’s Fund says is, in real...
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in ensuring that details on how to join the electoral register are included with the notices informing young people of their National Insurance numbers.
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I am delighted if progress is being made, but I remind the Minister that, on 8 October last year, the House voted overwhelmingly for the Government to consider further action to get more young people registered to vote. On 26 November last year, he said that this was happening, but it has taken eight months since then. Why has it taken so long for the Government to consider...
Lord Rennard: My Lords, further to his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, the Minister will be aware that the reason the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, put forward by Lord Steel, did not include the abolition of by-elections for hereditary Peers was the threat of filibuster and of the tabling of hundreds of irrelevant and repetitive amendments to avoid this House being able to express its wish on the...
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the need to provide a greater police presence at polling stations for different types of elections or votes.
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord True on 14 December 2020 (HL10908), what progress has been made on discussions between the Cabinet Office and HMRC about how to better inform people about how to register to vote; and in particular on providing (1) an electronic link, or (2) specific written reference, to the electoral registration website in the National...
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of people aged under 25 and living in London who have neither a passport nor a photographic driving licence.
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the cost of printing and distributing polling cards to voters in the 2019 general election.
Lord Rennard: To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the Electoral Commission's publication of electoral data from the 2019 United Kingdom Parliamentary general election, what assessment they have made of (1) the reasons for tendered ballot papers having to be issued, and (2) how the number of tendered ballots compares to the total votes cast; and what plans they have to work with the Electoral...