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Donate to our crowdfunderBaroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, does the noble Earl not think that having all these extra police officers will require management? Does he know whether police superintendents will be included in that number and, following on from that, whether any other police resources will be given to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which desperately needs more officers?
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument. As we have seen, with the lack of any operational Executive in Northern Ireland for the last two years, it is now necessary for Ministers here to make those key appointments to offices in Stormont and to make strategic legislative interventions to ensure good governance once again in Northern Ireland; this should have...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, to take on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about cathedrals and places of worship, I declare my interest as high steward of Ripon Cathedral, where we have just lost an essential part of a planning development because we have no money from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, in spite of producing a very good plan. Will the Minister look at how the lottery heritage fund...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: But Parliament is sovereign and so it will make that decision itself.
Baroness Harris of Richmond: What would the noble Lord say to the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives, which all agree that this legislation should go through?
Baroness Harris of Richmond: The noble Lord questioned me about statistics, more or less, and the number of people in Northern Ireland. It is some time since 2016 when the Government decided that they did not want to change the law. But statistics from the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey in 2018, just last year, found that 82% of the population polled agreed that abortion should be a matter for medical regulation...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, at Second Reading on 10 July in this House, the Minister opening the debate said, “your Lordships will be aware that, in addition to reporting requirements, the Bill was amended to oblige the Government to introduce regulations to provide for same-sex marriage and abortion. Those votes demonstrated the strength of feeling of the Members of Parliament. However, these are”, as we...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I support my noble friend on this amendment. When we were discussing this issue on 27 February last year, we made it clear that we wanted any loans and donations to be published as from 1 January 2014, not at the later date of 2017, as we have already heard. We were very pleased to support the Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland Political Parties) Order 2018...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I regret to tell the Committee that the Liberal Democrats cannot support these amendments. Northern Ireland has already been without an Assembly, a devolved Executive and effective decision-making for far too long. We are only reluctantly supporting 21 October, as I have said, and our hope is very much that the Bill will not be needed at all. As we have heard, there have already...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I hope not to sound too priggish, but I warmly welcome Clauses 8 and 9 of the Bill, both of which, as we know, were added by MPs in free votes yesterday. When it comes to individuals’ rights, Northern Ireland has, sadly, been years behind the rest of the UK and Ireland. Yesterday, the women of Northern Ireland, who have been ignored and abandoned by successive Governments, have...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for repeating the Statement, but I have to tell him that the Liberal Democrats have long campaigned to make the Prompt Payment Code mandatory. Given that, we welcome the new powers that the Government will give to the Small Business Commissioner to tackle late payments through fines and binding payment plans. There are also plans to make company boards...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and his passionate pleading for the people of Northern Ireland. We thank him for that. I shall speak about the devolution of policing in Northern Ireland. The devolution of policing and justice in Northern Ireland did not take place until 2010. It was called the final piece of the devolution jigsaw. The Good Friday...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: While the Minister is looking at that for Third Reading, can he also indicate how much will probably need to be put aside for this independent review?
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Empey, for his powerfully persuasive speech, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, described it. This is a very complicated matter, as we all know. We are very happy to support his amendments. We have been asked to pass the Bill virtually blind, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said. There has been no scrutiny whatever in the other place, and we know that...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, which companies in this country fly this aircraft?
Baroness Harris of Richmond: Does the Minister know about the spoon campaign—that is what I call it—where young girls are told about putting a small spoon inside their underwear when they go through checks at airports? This alerts the security officers to the fact that these young girls are frightened and need to be taken care of, so that their parents cannot take them out of the country to be cut.
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, these Benches welcome the order. We support Articles 2 and 3, which will bring local election rules into line with those for other elections in Northern Ireland, as we heard from the Minister. We especially welcome and support Article 4, to exempt disability-related expenses from the definition of “election expenses”. This is an important move to help to close the gap between...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order. We on these Benches of course recognise that the proposed change is needed and is a matter of both patient and public safety. It is certainly in the public interest for this change to be made. We also recognise that the political parties in Northern Ireland have been briefed on the proposed changes. However, we are again deeply...
Baroness Harris of Richmond: Certainly, when I chaired my police authority, we went all around the county and everybody was welcome; we had lots of people there. So what is happening now?
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, my contribution to this regret Motion will necessarily be rather more targeted, as the area in question is my area of North Yorkshire, the largest single rural county in England. I was a county councillor there for 20 years and chaired its police authority for a number of those. The Minister certainly knows my firm opposition to the introduction of police and crime commissioners....