Blood Safety and Quality (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

With the leave of the House—perhaps more in hope than expectation—I would like to move the three Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper en bloc.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Object.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

Then we will take the first Motion on the blood safety regulations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, this is yet another one. I will take up the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and look forward to attendance at Grand Committee in future, where I will do as I did on the aviation statutory instrument yesterday and seek to have it negatived so that we can have a proper debate on the Floor of the House. The Government are sneaking through Grand Committee very important matters which affect this country and there is no proper debate on many of them, which is unfortunate. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, if the House of Commons had had an opportunity to vote, we could have eliminated the possibility of no deal and freed up civil servants to get on with productive work, which is what they should be doing and what they would like to do.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

Perhaps the noble Lord should consider attending some of these debates. We had a very good debate, attended by Front-Benchers of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party as well as Cross-Benchers, about these incredibly important regulations which are designed to provide continuity to people who rely on such things as blood and organs and the ability to exchange information for surrogacy purposes—which we want to encourage. While I respect the noble Lord’s right to do what he is doing, it is not a good use of time. It would have been better spent if he had engaged in our debate last week.