Community Pharmacy

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Certainly everybody was consulted during the process and that is why we were very disappointed with the attitude that has been taken. We took particular care to endeavour to work collaboratively and we listened to their suggestions and proposals over quite a long period.

I have just been passed something by my inspiration, who is not far from my left-hand side. As I am on my feet, I hope that noble Lords will not mind if I answer the question put by my noble friend Lord Lansley. Roughly 50% of local areas currently commission community pharmacies to provide minor-ailment services. As the Minister announced last week, we are committed to increasing the coverage to all areas by April 2018. This shows how valuable a resource pharmacies are for patient care.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

I apologise to my noble friend but the 10 minutes for questions have now passed.

Deregulation Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly in support of Amendment 53. I am holding in my hand a piece of paper received by somebody very close to me regarding a parking contravention on 30 December 2014. It was received for the first time this morning. It says that the notice was issued on 15 January and that the penalty needs to be paid. However, it had been sent in the post and was not received, and neither was the first notice received. As a result, the fine is now £200.

It would be quite wrong for me to use the Floor of your Lordships’ House to make a complaint on my own behalf were it not for the fact that so many people have complained about this sort of thing happening and because I happen to know, and have heard the Secretary of State say, that this is an important issue of human rights as far as photography of people or cars in relation to parking contraventions is concerned. It is already the law, certainly in the state of California in the United States, that such photography is a breach of human rights. I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure me on this point. Incidentally, the person concerned was me.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, as regards the use of CCTV generally in parking enforcement, it is clear that the operational guidance on parking issued by the previous Government in 2004—that is, that CCTV should be used only where parking warden enforcement is impractical—has been largely ignored. It is now used on an industrial scale. For people such as my noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes to be issued with a penalty charge way after the event is simply unfair. Independent parking adjudicators have also agreed that it is unfair. Such practices also undermine the revitalisation of high streets and shops and cross the line of public acceptability. If parking is too expensive or prohibitive, shoppers will drive to out-of-town supermarkets or simply shop online, leading to ghost-town high streets.

The point was raised about exempting the zig-zag lines on a pedestrian crossing as opposed to those outside a school. High streets, where pedestrian crossings are generally situated, are well patrolled by both police and enforcement officers. In any event, parking on a zig-zag line is not just a breach of parking regulations but incurs three points on your licence. That is why, in terms of differentiating between schools and high streets, the safety issue outside schools led the Government to think that the latter case was a suitable exception.

The first amendment in this group concerns the serving of parking tickets. There may be occasions where it is impossible for a civil enforcement officer to physically stick a ticket on to a vehicle or serve a notice at the scene of the incident. The Government are aware of this and have made provision in draft regulations to ensure that service by post is possible in such circumstances. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord is content to withdraw that amendment.

Noble Lords are also seeking to increase the number of areas where local authorities can continue to use CCTV to enable the issuing of tickets by post. I have given a couple of examples of where the Government have made exemptions, or indeed where they have not. I think that noble Lords and all interested parties will have their own views on where CCTV should or should not be used. The Government accept that sole reliance on CCTV evidence to enforce on-street parking regulations is suitable in certain circumstances. However, if we accepted every argument for increasing the exemptions, we would be back where we started. We have given careful consideration to the list of exemptions and based our decisions on the views of those who responded to the consultation, one being on the issue of the safety of children outside schools.

The noble Lord also offers a new definition of the term “around schools”. This definition would be neither appropriate nor practical. The 100 metres specified in the amendment, or any specified distance, would be arbitrary. Within that distance, it is likely that roads will bend or side roads will branch off the school road. It is unclear how this will be dealt with. Any definition needs to be practical as well as reflect policy concerns.

Amendment 56 would make these powers subject to impact assessments before they were brought into force, which is both unnecessary and undesirable. The Government are proud of the stance they have taken to reduce the impact of rules and regulations on businesses and policymakers. Government guidance published in 2013 clearly states that impact assessments are required only for measures that regulate or deregulate business or concern the regulation of business. This clause applies only to local authorities that carry out parking enforcement, and no impact assessments are therefore required.

This whole issue is a matter of principle for the Government, not of balancing impacts. Drivers often receive a parking ticket through the post several weeks after the alleged contravention. They are given no opportunity to examine the parking location at the time the incident is alleged to have taken place, thereby making it difficult to challenge the alleged contravention. That is fundamentally unfair, and the Government strongly believe it should be remedied. I urge noble Lords to withdraw or not move their amendments.

Recall of MPs Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment, which is milder than the one we considered in Committee. It is a reasonable, moderate and sensible amendment, and therefore I tend to fear that the Government may not look at it very favourably.

The principle seems crystal clear. One of the few good things in the Bill, which otherwise I dislike intensely, is that it gives the final word to the electorate, which is where it should be. That is what I think is at fault with so much of the rest of the Bill: it has all sorts of complicated procedures that intervene between an MP and his or her constituents. Quite properly, a judgment is made every five years at a general election and, in my view, that is the way it should have rested. There are numerous other mechanisms within parties’ own disciplinary procedures which could enable most of the evils that it is alleged are identified by the Bill to be addressed.

However, as I said, the one good thing in the Bill is that it allows a Member of Parliament, even after a recall petition has been carried, to at least stand in his or her own defence in a by-election. That option does not exist following decisions of the election court. The MP—all too easily, it seems to me—is not only thrown out of Parliament but prevented from asking the electorate to give their judgment on the merits or otherwise of their having been thrown out of Parliament. It may well be that the electorate will endorse the decision of the court—in this case, the election court—and say, “Yes, you are right. It is wrong for this person to continue as the Member of Parliament”, but at least they should be given the option. When you introduce, as the Bill effectively does, a new sanction on Members of Parliament who misbehave, or are deemed to have misbehaved—that is, the recall system and the recall petition—then it seems to be a matter of common sense, if not common fairness, that we should consider whether this new mechanism is applicable to existing disciplinary offences or other existing offences. That is the point.

Therefore, this very moderate amendment simply says that, in future, within a period of two years a Secretary of State should be able to consider and report to Parliament whether this new recall petition procedure should be available to the election court as part of its machinery of penalties. If not, all sorts of anomalies might arise. If you bring in a new penalty for a similar category of offence, clearly consideration should be given to whether it should be introduced for older offences and older penalty mechanisms.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

Does the noble Lord agree that the power of the electorate has already been pre-empted in the first place? What he said is perfectly right, in my view, but it has happened too late to bring constituents back in again with a vote or with an opinion, because their power has been pre-empted.

[Lord Grocott]

What the noble Baroness said is right to the extent that the whole mechanism of this Bill is doing as she said. But I suppose I am looking for some mechanism whereby it could be made a little fairer and across the board. I am not even doing that; I am saying that the Secretary of State should report to Parliament so that it can judge whether these offences, as determined by the electoral court, should have available to them the penalty of a recall system, which Parliament appears determined to impose. That is all that is being asked by this amendment, and my noble friend put it very well. I rest my case.

Recall of MPs Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

Oh yes, I know all about that, because they tried to get rid of me on two or three occasions. I know all about reselection. But that, in a sense, is not the point. It is for the electors, at the end of the day, to make the decision, and they have to take into account the record, and the assiduity, of the Member of Parliament.

When I was canvassing I used to say, “No Member of Parliament is ever a mirror of all your beliefs and prejudices—and everybody has both. You have to decide which candidate is better able—or best able, if there are more than two candidates—to represent you. You have to decide which is the one with whom you can identify on more fronts than not”. Constituents will take into account not only the record of the Member, but his attendance record.

In one sense I sympathise with the motive behind the six-month provision. But if a Member has not attended for six months, why is that the case? Somebody has already cited the Sinn Fein Members of the other place. They have been legitimately elected, and they should not be illegitimately ejected because they have done neither more nor less than they promised to do.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

In that precise context, does my noble friend not recall the occasion when Bernadette Devlin crossed the Floor and hit Reginald Maudling, and was not expelled from the House but was defeated at the next election?

[Lord Cormack]

I well remember that: I was sitting just behind when Reginald Maudling made his Statement. It was after Bloody Sunday, and it was a moment of high drama and great tragedy. A diminutive figure came dashing across the House and started to belabour the Home Secretary. As she did so, one of his Front-Bench colleagues grabbed at that slight figure, and Lord Home—Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he was in the House of Commons—said, “Just you be careful what you do with a lady”. I shall never forget that. It is one of the vignettes I often recall. She was motivated by high emotion and did something that truly she should not have done. I remember a Labour Member punching Jeremy Thorpe when the result of the vote to go into the Common Market was declared. The Member was restrained, but was anything done? Of course not. At moments of high drama, things that should not be done sometimes are done; but subjecting such MPs to the sort of quasi-judicial process that this series of amendments propose—in good faith, I know—is just not on. Although it is, as I say yet again, for the House of Commons to determine its rules, we—particularly those of us with long experience in that place—have the right not to throw this measure out but to say, “Hold on a minute”. I hope that in the next Parliament there will be—to use the awful American jargon—a revisiting of this Bill.