Engineered Stone and Silicosis

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is participating remotely.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as someone with former downstream involvement in the industry, I welcome this important Question. I suggest that we confine any debate on further restriction to the dry cut of granite, cement and quartz and not to other products. Engineered stone is primarily quartz; if cut wet, there is little problem but, if cut dry, it can lead to dust and lung problems and may well require further regulation. This is a problem primarily in Europe, as there is now very little dry-cut activity in the United Kingdom.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord makes some very helpful comments. He is right that individuals are most at risk when dry cutting and polishing are being performed. In Great Britain, as I think he alluded to, engineered stone is mostly imported. He makes an interesting point about the amount of silica content found in engineered stone: yes, it is high, but sandstone also contains 70% to 90% and granite 25% to 60%. The Health and Safety Executive and COSHH have taken good measures on that over many years.

GovCoin

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I said, we have not yet decided to move on to a fuller and larger trial, but if we did, no doubt that would have the appropriate checks and balances and be examined by the noble Baroness and others in due course. This is a simple, small-scale trial involving some 20 or 30 people. I am assured that they all gave full and proper consent to it, and that some of them found it very useful indeed. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for not asking me to explain the more technical matters, which are probably beyond her—and me. As she knows, it is a very simple app designed in the form of jam jars into which one can put one’s money and then take it out for specific tasks. As I said earlier—and the assurance I gave on this would apply to any further trials—the department and the Government will have no access to that information; that is, what has come out of the jam jars and gone into housing or whatever.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

Will traders who sign up to and agree to trade under this scheme be able to offer discounts to benefit recipients? By the way, I thought the next trial was for 1,000 people.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, there is no next trial planned at this stage. We are considering that. It is not a question of discounts but of the fact that those who have to deal purely in cash can find life very much more expensive than those who are able to pay by other, more advanced means. That is the point behind it.

Motability

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

The Government are absolutely committed to halving the disability employment gap and we understand that being reassessed for any benefit can be a challenging time. That is why, after discussions with my department, Motability announced a £175 million package of transitional support. Those who lose their cars can get £2,000 for a new one or can buy their old car, and are given time to adjust. But the idea of the reassessment is that the DLA was inconsistent—many people had lifetime awards—whereas PIP offers a more consistent and fairer approach.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, should not the mileage on the clock of one of these vehicles determine how long the vehicle is held for, as against the age of the vehicle?

[Baroness Altmann]

The current rules we use for assessment allow people to buy their used Motability car if they so wish—but the rules of the scheme have been carefully set and assessed.

Pensions: Draw-down Charges

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a marketplace and it is fair to give it a chance to develop. At the moment, according to the FT and Which?, the annual charges applied to decumulation pots are somewhere between 0.25% and, for high-end performers, 1%. For the set-up, the charge is somewhere between £70 and £300. As we start to gather this evidence and assess it, we will know whether we need to intervene.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

Is the noble Lord’s ministerial colleague, sitting at his side, equally in favour of this watching approach?

[Lord Freud]

I think the noble Lord will be able to see a quote saying exactly that: she is monitoring this very closely.

Universal Credit

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

It is very important that local areas look after the more vulnerable people, and one of the most important elements that we are introducing alongside universal credit and supplementing it is universal support delivered locally. That produces a partnership where we can get all the resources that people need to become independent and take responsibility for their own lives and get them into a place where that can be done. We have 11 formal trials of universal support going on now.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister was asked by my noble friend Lady Lister about what the Government were going to do about housing costs. Does he believe that housing rents in the United Kingdom are now too high?

[Lord Freud]

Excuse me, I just missed that. The housing what were too high?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Rents.

[Lord Freud]

Thank you. We have borne down on rents in the local housing allowance rates and have seen rents come down—I do not know if that was as a direct result, but they have come down at the same time. I have some statistics that I will send to the noble Lord.

Housing: Inherited Social Housing Tenancies

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

The Minister says that he is seeing a large number of local authorities. Is he actually meeting people who have been affected by this tax? If he has, where has he met them—in what part of the country, in what boroughs? Perhaps he might tell us when. Also, he refers to 400,000 houses built since the last election in 2010—he mentioned 400,000 in his brief, which he read to the House. How many of those were started under the previous Labour Government? It was the Minister who was playing politics with the stats.

[Lord Freud]

I do not have to hand the number of starts. All I can say is that the number of completions in that last year—the handover year—was the lowest level of building in peacetime since the 1920s, which is a pretty shameful performance from a Government who saw a very long boom. I would like to be able to answer the question, but if I am not allowed to I will not.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

One of the fundamental objectives of providing discretionary housing payments is to make sure that where there are significant adaptations in homes for disabled people there will be discretionary housing payments for those people.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

Has the Minister ever stopped to consider the personal distress caused to families who are forced to move because they cannot afford higher rents?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we naturally look at these policies with a view to their impact. At a time of very scarce housing, we are under huge pressure to find appropriate homes for people. Everyone takes decisions to move to reflect their circumstances. It is no different in the social sector than elsewhere.

Social Mobility: Public Schools

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, the brief says that there are no damn silly questions in your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister and, indeed, the House and the whole country know that public schools are not charities. Their existence and treatment as charities brings charity law into disrepute. Why do we not end that arrangement, and if we need to subsidise private education—many might well want that; I do not know—transfer responsibility for subsidy from charity law to the Finance Act? Then we can have a full debate in Parliament, in the House of Commons when it is dealing with Finance Act issues, on what that level of subsidy should be.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord raises an interesting point which begs the question of why, if that was the key issue to be addressed, his Government did not tackle that over their 13 years. The point is that this is intergenerational; it stretches over a long time and the solutions will take a long time coming. The problems have been a long time coming, too, and this Government are focusing particularly on the work of people such as Graham Allen on early intervention in specialising and targeting the help at the poorer families to redress that balance.

Police: Neighbourhood Policing

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend highlights an important example of how police chiefs are now in a position to prioritise and make decisions in the way that they see best in order to meet the Home Secretary’s strategic goal of cutting crime. The survey shows that the public support some PCSOs patrolling on their own because it leads them to think that they are more approachable than when they are in pairs.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Minister said that satisfaction is up. Who is saying that?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The HMIC report includes a survey of the public, and victim satisfaction is up from 82% in 2010 to 85% in March of this year.

Food: Food Banks

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lord, as I said, it is difficult to make causal connections. The Trussell Trust has said that one reason why people have come to it is benefit delays. I checked through the figures and in the period of that increase the number of delays that we had had reduced. It went up by four percentage points over the past three years, and our delays now stand at 90%. It is difficult to know which came first, the supply or the demand.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, what is a supply-led food bank?

[Lord Freud]

If that sounded like jargon, I apologise. I meant that food from a food bank—the supply—is a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good.