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Donate to our crowdfunderBaroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, I am today reminded of a very dear but late departed friend of mine, Pam Blandford, who as I was growing up taught me the difference between a house and a home. Her hospitality, warmth, concern and openness transformed her house into a home. These past few weeks have done much the same for me, because this impressive, perhaps slightly intimidating, building known as a House has,...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: That is the end of his political career! The noble Lord, Lord McNally, will answer on behalf of the Government, and I trust that he will take the wise counsel of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and give this Bill a fair wind. I have known a bit about libel from the time that I received the first ever writ on almost my first day at the Fabian Society, having succeeded the late Lord Ponsonby of...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, it is a privilege but also a personal pleasure to be able to follow my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark. It was not simply because he made such a sensitive and thoughtful speech, nor simply because it is so good to hear from a man on something that I know the women in this House already believe, nor even because he has a long and distinguished record in championing diversity...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: Given the importance of this area and the seriousness of the allegations made, will the Minister explain why the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, is not in the House to answer the Question standing today?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: I congratulate my noble friend Lord Beecham on his maiden speech. We heard of the Geordie element that runs through his life. I thought it ran through the whole of his life, but I discovered that, rather like Moses, who was discovered in a basket at the age of two, he was two when he entered the city that has so benefited from his talents. He is also learned in the law, a great family man...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, I welcome this debate and congratulate my noble friend on having made it available for us today. I also pay tribute to his work. I had the great privilege of serving under his chairmanship of the National Consumer Council, and since then I have watched him develop that organisation into what has become the very successful Consumer Focus-a body which, as he said, works in this and a...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the Citizens' Advice Bureau's 2009 report Unreasonable demands? Threatened civil recovery against those accused of shoplifting or employee theft; and whether they will send the CAB a response to the report.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the practice by major retailers and their agents of threatened "civil recovery" against those accused of low-value theft does not breach the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: I declare an interest as the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. We had no advance notice of this; there was an e-mail at 9.36 this morning to one of my staff-not to me-alerting us, not in the published list but in the question and answers that Ministers were given as their brief, that the Government were minded to merge the panel in with Citizens Advice. Is that the normal courtesy...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the opportunity to debate this vital Question today. In the report, Learning Through Life, to which the noble Baroness referred, Tom Schuller and David Watson start from a premise that we should all endorse-that the right to learn throughout life is a human right. Yet our current system of lifelong learning has failed to respond to the major...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, given the importance of this issue, particularly for those with small pots of money, can the Minister assure the House that nothing in the spending review will undermine the plans for a generic financial advice service to help those with small pots, for whom the choice of a good annuity is so important.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, I first declare an interest as a member of the Campaign Against Drinking and Driving. My mother was killed by a drunk driver-our neighbour at that stage-who was not a long-standing overdrinker in the way that the noble Earl said but a normal drinker. When the Minister looks at the North report, I ask him to remember that we could reduce drink-driving deaths by about 150 a year from...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: Given his attack on Dame Deirdre Hutton, does the noble Lord accept that her advice when she chaired the Food Standards Agency was better than the Minister of Agriculture's advice to his daughter about what she should eat?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, reticent as I am to depart from the conclusions of the Constitution Select Committee of your Lordships' House, which first considered this Bill akin to Henry VIII powers, I respectfully suggest that at least the dissolution of the monasteries brought much needed finance to the Crown's coffers, whereas this Bill fails lamentably to achieve even that. In all other respects, I concur...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: Since the noble Lord is, quite rightly, interested in young people, would he support a change to the Bill to enable voting in the referendum at 16?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, it is late so I will make just four points. First, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who sat through most of the debate, is not here. I want to take up something that he mentioned-a threshold for the referendum. That has also been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport. This, as has been said, is an implementing, not an advisory, referendum. However, it will...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: At that stage I would also have argued for a threshold. George Cunningham remains a friend of mine; he reminds me frequently of the importance of a threshold. However, there is a difference in that this is an implementing referendum, rather than what they would have been. I ask another question. There is the threshold issue, but is a majority of one across the whole nation enough? In a way, I...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: My Lords, I endorse the words of both noble Lords, Lord Lester of Herne Hill and Lord Pannick. I urge the Minister and the Committee to do the same. Amendments 14 and 107 seek to ensure that, in any move to abolish, merge or alter the various organisations listed in the various schedules, the Minister must have regard to the original powers or objectives laid down in law for those bodies. It...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: The idea is that they should have regard to those objectives. If the objectives are no longer required, or if they could be dealt with in a different way by a different body, that would be one thing. My concern is that if we look only at the issue of independence-which I spoke about, and stressed the importance of, at Second Reading-this will not be sufficient if the power given by the Bill...
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town: Can the noble Lord explain the difference between the strength of feeling at Second Reading-which we agreed was very strong and very united, but not tested because of the protocols of this House-and the strength of feeling today? If I understand him, he feels that he has not yet been heard properly by the Government. Why does he think that the strength of feeling today is different from that...