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Donate to our crowdfunderBaroness 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 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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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...