Lord Howe of Aberavon: ..., the sincerity of our attempt to bring the Cold War to an end. I want to close, if I may, with a minute on the problems of British Somaliland, which are very serious because of its subsequent merger in the greater state of Somalia, where it has now suffered adversely as a result of corruption and worse in that country. A very valuable comment on the whole situation was made in the debate...
Lord Howe of Aberavon: ...made in 1997? Does that not underline the unwisdom of aggregating in giant authorities the functions and purposes of purpose-built organisations? I refer, for example, to the health industry and mergers among the equality bodies. Throwing purposeful bodies together into giant organisations does not promote better supervision.
Lord Howe of Aberavon: ...Lawson of the Board of Banking Supervision, and then its disappearance. Alongside that, there was the abolition of 10 separate institutions for the oversight of the financial industries and their merger into one body, the FSA; and the disappearance of the Building Societies Commission, a body with which the industry was familiar and whose oversight was constant by people who knew what they...
Lord Howe of Aberavon: ...by trying to analyse the current rules because, with my distance from the agenda, I no longer fully understand them, but the double-majority approach is broadly right. Above all, we need a merger of the jobs currently done by the Commissioner for External Affairs and the Council's high representative for foreign policy—so well done, incidentally, by Javier Solana, as he has performed so...
Lord Howe of Aberavon: ...and undoubtedly serious resultant erosion, of the office and standing of their historic constitutional champion, the Lord Chancellor. Now, further dilution of that championship, as a result of the merger of what was once the Lord Chancellor's Department with prisons and other divisions of the Home Office, threatens that independence in at least three ways. First, within that framework,...
Lord Howe of Aberavon: ..., no appointments of general commissioners have been made for some time. That means that some divisions are in difficulty, which will grow as time goes by. Secondly, it is rather odd to have seen a merger of the two revenue departments, with a continued separation of the two appeal structures. It is the type of tax that determines whether the taxpayer can elect a lay or professional...