Lord Lipsey: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the calculations used in Box 8 of the BBC Charter Review public consultation, what is the cost per viewer hour of S4C.
Lord Lipsey: That took up a few minutes, didn’t it? No director-general of the BBC should ever again be put in the position that the good Tony Hall has been placed in over the past few weeks but, sadly, the form book suggests that it will happen again. In 2010, the licence fee was used to pay for British foreign policy by paying for the World Service. Now, in 2015, the same licence fee payer is being...
Lord Lipsey: The noble Earl said we had three minutes.
Lord Lipsey: If the noble Earl made an error, perhaps he will let me finish my speech.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords—
Lord Lipsey: The Culture Secretary would be thus incentivised to fight for the corporation within government, rather than screwing it as John Whittingdale has comprehensively done.
Lord Lipsey: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have commissioned any research from ComRes in the past 12 months.
Lord Lipsey: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Earl Howe on 24 February (HL Deb, col 1621), whether they plan to commission any research from ComRes in the future.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, two constitutional dogs did not bark in the Queen’s Speech, although they should have done—parliamentary boundaries and the voting system. I shall say a word or two on each. On parliamentary boundaries, under the Bill passed in the last Parliament, constituencies will have to have electorates within 5% of the average. An associated proposal would reduce the size of the House of...
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I am one of those whom the noble Lord identified who now claim to have got something right during the general election when the polls were getting it wrong, but in my case I can document the fact. I did not get the result right—I had a substantial bet on a Labour-minority Government, though I did get it at 5:1 before it went back down to 11:8—but I recovered my money from a...
Lord Lipsey: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remark by Lord Newby on 5 February that for deferred payments, the "lump sum is income in the year taken" (HL Deb col 791), whether they will set out the accurate position with regard to the effect of taking a lump sum in excess of £23,250 instead of an annuity on a person’s eligibility to take a direct payment.
Lord Lipsey: I do not think that the noble Baroness has answered the question about the long delay raised by the House’s committee on secondary legislation.
Lord Lipsey: Too little, too late. Really, those four words say all that is perhaps needed tonight in the face of these regulations, but I will crave the indulgence of the House to speak a little longer. I will start with “too late”. I really have nothing to add to the slightly tongue-in-cheek findings of the House’s Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which wrote in its report, which is...
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I am slightly surprised by the “extremely unusual”. The House will recall that at the end of the Brown Government both Houses passed a Bill to make care of elderly people in their own homes free. Following discussion between both Houses, it was agreed that, given that the Bill was passed on the eve of the general election, it should require a resolution before it was put into...
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate. I am sure that the political history of the Brooke family will be required reading whenever experts assemble to discuss aid issues for many years to come. This debate has established one thing, which is that there is no UN resolution requiring annual aid targets, and the fact that it happened to be mentioned in the Pearson...
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I very much regret that I was not able to be here to move this amendment in Committee, but I am delighted to say that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—as I would have expected—did that job much better than I could have done. I certainly do not intend to detain the House for longer than I need, as it would be a better use of its time to read his magnificent speech. The amendment is...
Lord Lipsey: Perhaps the Minister will also point out that the survey was carried out among the 10% of users of properties who have loyalty cards. By definition, you are far more likely to have a loyalty card if you are putting a lot of money into a machine than if you are putting in the odd pound or two.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I was for many years a happy constituent of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in Battersea South but in my many perambulations around the betting shops of the area I very rarely bumped into him, although he was a most assiduous MP. I suspect that like many of the participants in this debate, he probably does not go into them very much.
Lord Lipsey: I will give the noble Lord a tip for next year’s Grand National and tell him which shop to place it in. We have had a slightly testing afternoon, so I may risk a rather racy analogy which gives my view of FOBTs. I am not very fond of them. If betting on a horse race is the full sexual intercourse of betting and gambling, with foreplay when you select your horse and mounting excitement as...
