Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his answer to my amendment. I take much comfort in what he said about new build and planning permission and so on, and I can see how that all might work, but I do not see any sign of proposals that will work in persuading people to retrofit, and there is huge potential there. I very much hope that in due time the Government will turn their...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I very much support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. My amendment is directed at commercial premises. When I stand on the top of the Downs above Eastbourne and look down, I see several hundred acres of white commercial roofs and associated car parks, and there is, I think, one building in that lot which has solar panels on. The reasons for this are...
Lord Lucas: Perhaps the noble Baronesses have the old version of the Marshalled List, which listed Amendment 476 several groups later.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I support everything the noble Baroness just said. From long experience of canvassing and getting bloody knuckles as you try to withdraw your hand from the letterbox but the spring bites them, shortly before the dog’s teeth just miss your retreating hand, I think there would be support across the House and general congratulations if the Government were able to do something along...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am fascinated by the possibility of using this same mechanism on the chartered accountants, of whom I am a fellow and whom government often wishes would conduct themselves otherwise when looking after and examining the health of companies on behalf of shareholders; and on bodies such as psychiatrists’, which are currently adopting some very strange policies that seem to run...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their 30 by 30 target. It is an enormous and ambitious thing to take on. In that context, I urge them to support my noble friend Lord Randall’s amendment. We have large areas of national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, a lot of which does not sensibly qualify for 30 by 30 at the moment. We have structures within them which could help...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend has just said, having grown up in that part of the country and spending many happy decades fishing there. I just ask my noble friend the Minister, if he is going to give special consideration to chalk streams, to end the discrimination against Sussex. In particular, my local chalk stream should be included in the list, which it is not at the...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I cede everything to my noble friend Lord Young when it comes to experience and wisdom in this matter, but I am very attracted by the idea of running the pilot proposed by the Bill. It has long seemed to me deeply inequitable that when it comes to property development, the landowner gets so much for the uplift and the community gets so little. We very much need to explore and try...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am very uncertain how the wording of this amendment works. Is a regulation the whole package of regulations that is submitted to this House or each individual regulation? If a regulation makes changes so that an old provision is swept away and the new one replaces it, that sweeping away of an old provision is a diminution, but there does not appear to be a mechanism for balancing...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I have Amendment 41A in this group. We discussed this issue in Committee. I said, “If the Government want to go down the route of keeping in Clause 16(5), why don’t they promise the same about the environment?” After all, the Government made the same set of promises regarding environmental legislation—that they would not do anything to damage the protection that the current...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for replying to my amendments and for his offer of a meeting, which I will certainly accept when issued. The Government are missing some opportunities here. I do not know whether he has tried reporting something to Action Fraud, but if you have not lost money you cannot do it; you need to have been gulled and lost money for any of the government...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I also have a pair of amendments in this group. I am patron of a charity called JobsAware, which specialises in dealing with fraudulent job advertisements. It is an excellent example of collaboration between government and industry in dealing with a problem such as this. Going forward, though, they will be much more effective if there is a decent flow of information and if this Bill...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I have two short questions for my noble friend the Minister. First, will he really support what my noble friend Lord Caithness said and up the hand-holding? When I decided, 50 years ago, not to go into farming but to go into the City, I chose the less intellectually challenging option. Secondly, does he share my astonishment at how paper-thin the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend will reflect. As he started his remarks, I was buoyed with confidence that the Government had taken on board the sheer difficulty of turning what throughout my lifetime has been a process of depleting nature into a process of augmenting nature. It requires difficult internal decisions in all sorts of processes to get this right. Unless we give...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I have not heard Amendments 191A and 191B extensively discussed; it is possible that I zoned out earlier. I have two points. First, proposed new subsection (5) in Amendment 191A says that a national development management policy must contain “explanations of the reasons for the policy, and … in particular… an explanation of how it takes account of Government policy relating to...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has just said emphasises the main point I wish to make: that this applies to students just as much as to academics. The whole idea of freedom of thought is really important. We are bringing up our children to think that they must curtail their thought. I have a daughter at university at the moment and that is certainly her experience....
Lord Lucas: My Lords, the Government are taking huge powers in the Bill to abolish EU legislation and are asking us to believe the promises they have made; for instance, on environmental law, that they will not decrease environmental protection. I entirely accept those promises. This is a well-run Government who are capable of controlling what they do and living up to their promises. In that case, what...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am much more a supporter of this bit of Bill than some, but even I am astonished by Clause 15(5), which seems to introduce uncertainty and immense delays in the process without offering any great benefit. After all, what we are talking about here is essentially declaratory legislation. It is the Government saying, “We are not going to increase the burden of regulation by what...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am sad that the Government have chosen not to address the points made by this Committee concerning democracy and the proper role of this House in reviewing legislation, and are stepping away from the conversation that has been offered by the Opposition. I see this as a Bill which is headed for the Parliament Act—I cannot see any other option being offered by the Government. I...
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I will give my noble friend the Minister a couple of thoughts to take away.
