Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I declare an interest as a director of ICE Clear Europe, and I warmly welcome this extremely valuable amendment. It seems to go wider; noble Lords may think that it is a narrow amendment, but they have no idea what a sense of confidence it has given to the City at this time. I regard that as very important. During the 1970s, we generally regarded the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will be pleased to know that I intend to speak only briefly to Clause 1 in this extraordinarily large, extensive Bill-but that does not mean that I think that Clause 2 should be rejected. If I may say so, with the exception of its prescription charges decision, it seems to me that the Welsh Assembly has not been terribly bright in thinking this one...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: Just watch them. Last night was not a great night for either of us, but that is by the bye. We should get rid of all these petty things. In a perfect world, time zones should logically be divided into 24 segments, like a chocolate orange, so that lines are drawn. But the Channel Islands, for example, are to the west of France but an hour behind it. We are clearly not looking at it in terms of...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I did not say that, and I do not say that. My understanding is that time zones originally were introduced to exactly reflect the position before the introduction of railway timetables-so that if you had left London at 8 o'clock in the morning, you might arrive in Oxford at 7.30 am. It had to be rationalised, and that is what needs to be done now. We need to understand that there is a...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, some considerable time ago, I was invited by the trading company Trafigura to conduct an independent inquiry into the alleged dumping of slops in Côte d'Ivoire by it. That followed an invitation to which I responded positively to conduct an inquiry led and asked for by the Labour Administration in the Scottish Executive into the cost overrun of the Scottish Parliament. I am...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: Last week the noble Lord, Lord Patel, was made a Knight of the Thistle, for which I am afraid that modesty is not part and parcel of the requirement, as my noble and learned friend will understand particularly clearly. On listening to the debate and on reading the report, I have to say that the scientific community in Scotland is particularly pleased that such a brilliant report should have...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, it is something of a commonplace to compliment the chairman of a commission but, as the statutory Tory on the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, I compliment Blair Jenkins on an excellent task undertaken. It was not easy—predicting the future is never easy for anyone, particularly in the face of people who have diametrically opposed political views. Prior to the setting up of the...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: There are three distinguished Lord Advocates in this Committee as well as myself. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in some respects but would like to question some points of detail. I would be grateful if the Government could indicate the principles. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is absolutely correct when he says that this clause introduces into our law a universality of...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, a parallel has repeatedly been drawn with the tsunami crisis of a couple of years ago. I recall when I went to the Maldives for a holiday that my friends in Scotland said that I was under a moral obligation to stuff my pockets full of dollars and distribute them in the Maldives, because that was the only way in which they could be confident that the money would get to the people who...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I hope that today, or at some future date the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats will combine to defeat this amendment because then neither I nor the British people will ever have to read their manifestos again. I am not going to engage in some philological discussion about whether the Labour Party manifesto was a lie, but the British people—and we are an unelected Chamber—were told...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, notwithstanding the gratuitous slash at lawyers by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, it is clear to me that the lawyers are having some difficulty understanding this proposal. My noble friend Lady Noakes is absolutely correct. Both last night and this morning, long before any Statement was made to either House of Parliament, this had been widely leaked across the media. It is outrageous...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I regard this as the greatest civil liberties outrage in modern times. It is quite outrageous. Whatever conciliatory noises my own Front Bench makes, I shall be a renegade on this. There is absolutely no way that I regard even 28 days as appropriate. Seven days is, in its own way, far too long. What is wrong with hours rather than days? I cannot believe that this will lead to...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: asked Her Majesty's Government: On how many occasions in the last three years the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence exercised its power to refer a disciplinary case to the courts on the basis that the outcome is too lenient in contrast to the number of references in respect of lenient sentencing made by the Attorney-General.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I have considerable sympathy with the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, because I thought that the original Scotland Act contained some serious errors. Trying to list what were going to be the powers of the Scottish assembly was so confusing that those of us who are lawyers thoroughly enjoyed ourselves working out which bits were still within the remit of Westminster and which were to...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if I had been asked a few weeks ago whether I subscribed to the doctrine advanced by the noble Baroness, I would have had absolutely no hesitation in agreeing with her. It is an intolerable idea that an unelected Chamber should hold up the will of an elected Chamber. However, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, the noble Baroness has a skilled ability to move from being...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, looking at the parliamentary dobbins, and the unelected on the other side, I am not surprised that the noble Baroness takes that attitude. My view is: roll on the day that we are elected. I will tell the noble Baroness that if she likes to wait until that time, the constitutional crisis between this House and the other House will have been nothing compared to what happened before...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I am implacably opposed to this amendment, not because I wish to deliver one black eye or two black eyes to the Prime Minister or cover his body with bruises, but because I believe that if we are going to surrender any part of our civil liberties we need to be absolutely sure that there is a proper justification for that change. In my view, what is happening here is that, without any serious...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I would suggest that the Metropolitan Police might employ a few more 10 year-olds. As far as I am concerned, they are very much more capable of doing the encryption work which seems to be desirable. I agree that there has to be some encryption work and I am very familiar with what encryption skills are needed. I simply do not believe that 90 days is an appropriate period. The only...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: All I will say to the noble Baroness is that it was 90 days. That is what I remember it as being. That is what my contemporaries went to prison for—it was for 90 days. I am sorry, but I really do not buy into the argument. I can well recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, says, that the police may not want 90 days' detention. But the fact is that we will be allowing for the first time...
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: The eloquent argument put by my noble friend Lady Miller and the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, as I understand it, is that if this measure were passed, it would be an unprecedented granting of powers to a quango by Parliament. I certainly understand where she is coming from and the argument that she has advanced, but all we wish to know at this stage, before we reflect on it at later stages,...