encouraging NHS Trusts to use British-made washable PPE garments with RFID tags that can be laundered multiple times, instead of single use garments which go to landfill – Lord Young of Norwood Green.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for enabling this debate. We should pause for a moment to think of our noble friend Lord Dubs, who is ill in hospital at the moment. He was part of the Kindertransport, a gift that kept on giving—maybe not as much as we would have liked, but it made an important contribution. When I was about 13, I was quite a precocious reader. I...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, does the Minister agree that some of the best examples of care are provided by charities and faith-based organisations which pay more than the minimum wage? Is that not an example to be encouraged if we really want to improve the recognition of carers in the care sector?
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I rise to congratulate the Government on taking a decision that was evidence-based and will benefit Cumbria and the country as a whole. I am absolutely puzzled at some of the alleged evidence we have heard. The statement refutes many of the things that were alleged but not proven: “European metallurgical coal demand is forecast to remain between 50 and 55 million tonnes per annum...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I too welcome the opportunity to pay tribute to Her Majesty. My first memory is from when I was about five years old. There was no television in our house but a radio, and I can remember—probably on the Home Service, because I think there was nothing else—that there was silence and, every now and then, a rather sombre message: “The King has died”. My next memory of the Queen...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, one of the disincentives for both men and women GPs is the quality of accommodation. They are in overcrowded buildings. There is a good example from a care commissioning group in my area which spent £1 million planning a new centralised health centre, which would have provided top-of-the-range facilities and would have encouraged general practitioners to remain in practice. Will...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: I want to return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, about children, even in primary schools, being subjected to scams and fraud, including money laundering. The list that the Minister read out made no reference to that. I think there is a gap and I ask the Minister to take this away and think about the risks and the value of advising young people of these risks.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to prevent avoidable deaths caused by delays to the arrival of paramedic services.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, it is difficult to thank the Minister for the Answer because it is a totally unsatisfactory one. I have been raising this question for about the last six months. The reality is that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, told me when her son had a stroke and 999 was called, it took nearly six hours. He suffered serious consequences as a result of that. People are dying as we sit in...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I support the principle of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that there should be a right of appeal, but some of the language was not helpful. He constantly used the word “punitive” if any local authority intervenes in any way. As my noble friend Lord Soley said, this is a difficult balancing act to get right, and we have to be careful of the language that...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I am inclined to support this on the grounds of the report in the Times on Monday on what schools are facing in early years. Children are coming to school who have not been potty-trained; they cannot even use a knife and fork and are still feeding out of a bottle. Those children have suffered during the pandemic. The one thing that gave them some influence and that made a...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the vast majority of hospitals are using single-use PPE garments which go straight to landfill after one use? There is available on the market a product with RFI tags, which enables it to be simply laundered for 70 different uses. Should we not be investigating that if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions?
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I echo the point made by my noble friend Lady Merron about the health service and the people who have done such sterling work within it. After all, they saved my life twice so I certainly recognise that. However, I have to say that, like the report, the NHS is a bit of a curate’s egg, and we know it; it is good in parts. When it is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad,...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: I will, but hardly anyone has contributed to this debate. I have posed one question and I will pose a few more—I do not see why I should not take the opportunity. I would see why if the Chamber were full of people participating, but it is a bit rich that there is hardly anyone—
Lord Young of Norwood Green: I have posed one question, and I will pose a couple more. I will move to further questions and my criticism of the report. First, I agree with a lot that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said. On diversity, we recently had a situation, on which I would welcome a comment from the Minister, where the NHS could not bring itself to define a woman in gynaecological circumstances—I find that...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I regret missing Second Reading, which, according to some noble Lords we heard today, was the DfE version of “Apocalypse Now”. Even the noble Lord, Lord Baker —I am an admirer of UTCs—joined the doomsayers then, as he reminded us again today. I am an admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose advice is that “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and my noble friend Lord Jones, who gave me quite a lot to think about. I wish I could find as many good quotes as he did. Five minutes is quite a challenge without hesitation, repetition or deviation—as one of my favourite radio programmes says—so I will focus on just a few issues. On welfare and universal...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Speaker for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight about what happened on Monday night. I endeavoured to make a contribution—your Lordships were denied my pearls of wisdom on the difference between genetic modification and gene editing, but that is for another time—but was discourteously dismissed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, on...
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I state my position as a remainer, but there are two things I welcome in coming out of the Common Market. One is the CAP, and this particular—