United Kingdom–European Union Parliamentary Partnership Assembly

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord McFall of Alcluith

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend’s last remark, but I can assure her that there is no inaction in this instance. I understand that a letter addressed jointly to the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker was received last month from the President of the European Parliament, David Maria Sassoli, confirming the recent decision of the Conference of Presidents to establish the standing inter-parliamentary delegation of the European Parliament, so the process is moving forwards at the European end as well.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

War Pensions: Uprating

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord McFall of Alcluith

Monday 11th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I know that the Royal British Legion has come up with its own calculation. To answer the noble Baroness’s question, I am not aware that the Treasury has done so. However, the principles should be clear here. Under the Armed Forces compensation scheme and the war pensions scheme which preceded it, an injured service man or woman is assessed on their level of disability, and based on that assessment they are compensated for their deemed loss of earnings in civilian employment. After that, the guiding principle is that the real-terms purchasing power of the annual payment should be maintained, and it is therefore indexed to the consumer prices index, which, as I said, is the index applied by the DWP to all disability benefits.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, the Royal British Legion is very clear in saying that war pensions are losing value compared with military and civilian salaries. It is inexplicable that our injured and disabled comrades cannot have the same as others in society—the triple lock. Is it not a sad commentary that the Royal British Legion and others are correct in saying that, in this case, we are not all in this together?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the triple lock applies only to the basic state pension. Members of the Armed Forces will therefore benefit from the triple lock once they reach state pension age, but there are broader issues to be considered here. One is that maintaining parity with social security disability benefits is in principle the right thing to do, but secondly, there is the affordability issue. As a Government and, I believe, as a nation, we have to stick with the long-term economic plan and we have to continue to live within our means.

NHS: Clinical Negligence

Debate between Earl Howe and Lord McFall of Alcluith

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, potentially, independent sector providers may elect to be members of the negligence scheme, although only in respect of their NHS services. Therefore, only NHS-related liabilities would be covered in those circumstances. It is a pay-as-you-go pooled scheme, and I do not therefore have the figure that my noble friend requested. If I can get the figure disaggregated for him, I would be happy to write. In answer to his last question, I take it that he is asking whether the provider would be allowed to continue treatment, having been found to be negligent or having admitted negligence. That decision would be clinically led, with the patient exercising choice in each individual case.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, may I suggest an examination of the area of clinical governance? I and my family are not alone in having a negative experience of a disjointed, rather than an integrated, clinical governance network, where communication between departments and individuals was virtually non-existent. The admirable Reith lecturer, Dr Atul Gawande, examined the concept regarding why doctors fail, and one of the main reasons he came up with was that policies that fragment a unified system rather than cohere the system were in the interests of neither patients nor the NHS, as can be seen with these claims.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord makes a series of good points. He may be interested to know that part of the series of pledges that form the Sign up to Safety campaign, which hospitals can apply for, can include the principles of being transparent with people—including about any mistakes that have been made and what is being done to tackle safety issues—and collaboration, by taking a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that the system genuinely can work together and learn together.