Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Lexden

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has withdrawn from the debate so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who will once again speak in place of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who introduced these amendments in her customarily thorough and diligent way; I thank her for taking the time to do that. I also thank her for bringing to the Committee information about the sources from which she brings forward these amendments. They not just represent the aspirations of politicians who wish to pursue their own green agenda; they present the thinking on the part of clinicians and people in the health services about the impact of medicines and medical devices and what they do.

It is no bad thing to remind ourselves that, in the NHS long-term plan, there is a specific commitment to the sustainability of the NHS. It is perhaps no wonder that, when the NHS Sustainable Development Unit reports that the NHS is responsible for 25% of public sector CO₂ emissions, there is a recognition that large entities such as the NHS and the British Army will be crucial if the Government are to reach our carbon reduction targets within the timetables set.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said, the NHS is an organisation that British people value very highly. It is an institution that British people do their best not to demand much of—indeed, to minimise their demands on it. It is an ongoing source of frustration for many people that it is difficult for patients to assist with recycling medicines and devices. I know that I am not alone in saying this: when I came to empty the house of my mother, who not only depended on medical devices—hearing aids—but had multiple conditions for which she took medication, I could not dispose of things such as batteries or medicines in an acceptable way. I could not take them to pharmacies and get them recycled for people who needed them. I know that many people have found themselves in that position; it is a source of great frustration for people who do not want to waste precious NHS resources and for whom being in that position is offensive.

I rather suspect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, suggested, that the NHS is, at a corporate level, beginning to make some progress in looking at its use of single-use plastics, its disposal mechanisms and, in particular, its use of water. I also suspect that Covid has had a huge and damaging impact on all of that. I do not expect that we will see the NHS able to prioritise this subject for the whole of next year. That is all more the reason for us to do what the noble Baroness said we should do: make sure that this remains an aspiration towards which the NHS should work and should have an obligation to work. With that in mind, I would be very pleased to support the noble Baroness’s amendments.

Covid-19: South Yorkshire

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Lexden

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

Both the noble Lords, Lord Robathan and Lord Desai, who are next on the list, have withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Barker.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

Will the Minister explain to the person in Sheffield who, having registered themselves as being positive for Covid, was contacted four times a day for four days on the trot, and managed to stop it only when they got the nurse to explain that they were so ill that they were in hospital, how their statistics will be recorded by Serco? Can he explain to the people of Sheffield why the Government continue to spend so much money on a system that is so bad?

Civil Partnership (Opposite-sex Couples) Regulations 2019

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Lexden

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to important comments from the noble Lords, Lord Collins, Lord Cashman and Lord Scriven, with whom I agree so much on matters relating to civil partnerships and same-sex marriage. However, I would like to return briefly to a deep injustice which the extension of civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples has made even more glaring.

Civil partnerships were introduced for the express purpose of conferring legal rights on couples who were ineligible to marry. Through these regulations, civil partnerships will be extended to all couples who now possess the right to marry. They will be withheld from people who cannot marry—in defiance of the very principle on which they were established in the first place.

I have brought up on a number of occasions in this House the question of why the Government feel it is acceptable to continue to withhold from long-term cohabiting siblings who choose to live together for companionship and mutual support all the legal rights and fiscal safeguards they offer, through civil partnerships, to couples they presume to be in sexual relationships.

Do the Government think that two siblings who live together in mutually supportive and financially independent relationships are less in need of the legal protection and fiscal safeguards afforded by civil partnerships than sexual couples? If not, why do they continue to reject both the argument that they should extend civil partnerships to long-term cohabiting couples and the suggestion that they should address that discrimination through other means—for a start, by reforming the rules governing inheritance tax so that bereaved survivors of a sibling couple are at least spared losing the joint home to inheritance tax on the death of the first sibling? I am in touch with a large number of elderly siblings who have lived together, often all their lives, in committed and caring relationships. They simply cannot understand why the Government refuse to recognise them as a single legal unit or give them any help whatever by other means.

Take Beatrice and Mary, sisters whose mother was widowed in their teens and whom they looked after throughout their adult lives in their jointly owned home until her death at the age of 100. The sisters are now 91 and 87. When one of them dies, the survivor will face an inheritance tax bill so hefty on her sister’s share of the estate that there will be nothing left of their joint savings for her own care. If they were civil partners who had known each other for just a few weeks, they would be spared.

A responsible Conservative Government must recognise the value of arrangements such as that of Beatrice and Mary, bring an end to this injustice and finally put the family, in all its manifestations, back where it belongs: at the heart of Conservative social policy. The regulations advance the principle of equality in human affairs—although perhaps not as fully as many would wish—and that is very important, but Conservatives should be no less concerned with the welfare of families in all their forms.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased that, on the last day of this Session, we are returning to this business. Like other noble Lords including the noble Lords, Lord Cashman and Lord Collins, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, for all the work she did to get us to this point.

I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for so long that I can remember all the rather tortuous path that we have been down, from when we started off, back in 2004, with a Civil Partnership Bill that was wrecked in this House and very nearly fell, but was then rescued and came back, through to where we are today. It is a tortuous path for two reasons. One is that, at every step of the way, the Government have felt that they have to pick their way round strong religious sensitivities. The second is that there is a fundamental flaw in all the reasoning as a result. We were told, way back when we were looking at civil partnerships, in definite terms by evangelical Christians and all the rest, that civil partnerships would undermine marriage. They do not.

In this House, from listening to officials at the time, I understand that at every stage we had to give in to the idea that civil partnerships were somehow a threat. I have never thought that they were for a very simple reason. My father married a lot of people. On Saturday afternoons, my dad would go out, perform a wedding, come back and we would say, “And what was the bride wearing?” Dad would say, “A white dress”. Because my dad was a nonconformist minister long before the Church of England saw the light on matters such as divorce, he was marrying a lot of people. He always had the right not to agree to marry someone. It was a right that he exercised very rarely—only in one or two instances when people came before him and he believed that one of them was under duress to do something that they did not want to. However, he quietly confided that he often officiated at marriage ceremonies where he felt that the people were getting married because that was all there was, and that if there had been an opportunity for them to have their relationship recognised in a different way, that would have been a more honest thing to do. If the Church had recognised that a long time ago, we would not have had to go through much of the difficulty that we now do.

Many people have shouted out their congratulations; mine go to Lynne Featherstone—my noble friend Lady Featherstone. No matter what anybody says, we would not have same-sex marriage were it not for her determination. For these regulations, I also want to give a shout-out to somebody else: Peter Tatchell. As one would expect, he has always single-mindedly stood up for full equality. Therefore, he has always been in favour of opposite-sex civil partnerships. So, we have got to where we are today. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, is right: the Government know that we on this side of the House do not want to stop the regulations. We are keen for people who have waited for such a long time to have their opportunity.

I want to ask about the territorial extent of this issue. I see that we are legislating for England and Wales. Speaking as a Scot, I feel that it might have other things to do on Hogmanay, but perhaps the Minister can explain the likely timetable for the Scottish Parliament to consider this matter.

I also want to talk about Northern Ireland. It is important that we get legislation of this type in Northern Ireland as quickly as possible, for the reason alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Collins. I know several people in committed relationships who have been brought up in a faith that means so much to them that they cannot bring themselves to offend their families and that faith, but want to secure their relationship in legal terms. For others, civil partnership is about equality; as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, said, other people have experienced difficult and violent marriages and want never to return to that situation, but are in partnerships to which they are committed. What is the envisaged timetable for introducing this in Northern Ireland?

My understanding of this legislation is that, just as happened with the abortion legislation for Northern Ireland, there will be a read-across from existing legislation. Therefore, I think I am right that the aspects of the regulations that deal with the GRA are a read-across from the GRA as it relates to same-sex marriage. The Minister will know that I and other people think that that legislation is flawed, and that the same flaw therefore appears in these regulations. I accept that this issue should be addressed through primary legislation and amendment to the same-sex marriage Act in so far as it affects the GRA but, when the time comes, this issue should be addressed for both same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnership, for example through my Private Member’s Bill or perhaps through some forthcoming government legislation. I wish that she would understand that.