Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight

Lords Hansard - Part 3 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but was asked at short notice by my noble friend Lord Suri to present his contribution. He makes the point that we humans look after animals and other living creatures with the highest levels of care—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

The normal convention in this House is that if a Member is not present at the beginning and end of a debate, they should not speak. It is not right to read out someone else’s speech.

Covid-19: Dental Services

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there are three big factors that are causing these problems. First, there is the potential patient’s caution and the worry of contracting Covid-19, which leads them to put off treatment and save the money until normal times return. Secondly, dental sessions are taking much longer, partly because of the fall in the number of patients per session and lower throughput. The principal barrier to resuming services is the issue of the fallow time required following aerosol-generating procedures. The solution is greater ventilation. The key need is to increase the patient throughput and to reduce—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

Could the noble Lord put the question please?

[Lord Flight (Con) [V]]

Will the Government be willing to put up any funding to deal with the issue of fallow time between treatments?

Digital Technology: Skilled Workforce

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right. Actually 17% of people who work in the tech sector and 9.5% of students taking computer science A-levels are female, yet women make up almost half the workforce. We are taking forward plans. There are a number of programmes already in place to do that: CyberFirst Girls Competition, the TechFuture Girls programme, Code First: Girls, techmums, Mums in Technology, Microsoft’s DigiGirlz events and a number of others. It is absolutely on the radar screen.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the importance of the enterprise investment scheme in stimulating equity investment in a lot of these new digital companies? It is one of the reasons why so many have got off the ground.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am aware of the enterprise investment scheme. It is one of the ways that we can promote start-up companies. It is more risky, but there are advantages to it, so I take my noble friend’s point.

Banks: Internet Banking

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course, the point of setting up the regulatory system is that it is for the regulators to deal with consumer detriment, which is exactly what the Financial Conduct Authority has done. I believe that the banks involved in this have said that they would not allow consumers to suffer detriment.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that part of the problem is that the long-standing banks have computer systems that go back a long way and which are often very difficult to modernise? They cannot suddenly turn off the whole of their system for a fortnight and put in a brand new one, so existing systems keep getting added to until the scope for mistake and failure if anything gets greater.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I accept that old IT systems are more difficult to modernise than starting from scratch. That is why many challenger banks are now in the pipeline, ready to compete with the older banks. The Government support challenger banks and encourage customers who wish to change their banks to do so, and 2.1 million customers have done so under the CASS system.

Tax Credits: Impact of Cuts

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Flight

Monday 14th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, would the Minister agree with the fact that wages have risen faster in the past six months than since before 2007? Has that anything to do with the tax credit reforms?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I did not know that they had risen that fast. The former Chancellor, Alistair Darling, said that tax credits were never intended to subsidise lower wages. However, the current Chancellor has been very careful not to claim that tax credits have depressed wages. The fact is that we want to increase people’s wages. We introduced the national living wage and we want people to keep more of what they earn, rather than subsidising people through the benefits system.