Health: Cancer

Debate between Lord Mawhinney and Lord Strathclyde

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, there has been no question from the Conservative Benches so perhaps on this occasion we can hear from my noble friend.

[Lord Mawhinney]

My noble friend, in his original Answer, talked about the importance of early diagnosis. Is he not concerned at the cascade of cases reported in the media of GPs sending patients home with flu symptoms and indigestion and not detecting the cancer until it is too late? What does my noble friend intend to do to improve GP training to assist the earlier diagnosis on which he rightly lays so much emphasis?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Mawhinney and Lord Strathclyde

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, we are talking about a referendum on whether people wish to have AV. During the course of the campaigns people will no doubt make that point—as the noble Lord will and perhaps even as I will—but that is not what we are discussing today. We are discussing today whether there should be a referendum and whether it should be done by clean majority. I support the idea of a referendum; I am happy to trust the people on this. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, talked about this earlier. Was he not the architect of the CRaG Bill before the last election, which proposed an AV referendum with no thresholds anywhere across the United Kingdom—no voter thresholds, turnout thresholds, outcome thresholds or any kind of threshold you could possibly imagine. There has been a change of mind.

[Lord Mawhinney]

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. He just said that we are talking today about a clean referendum with a clean majority at the end. Does it remain the Government’s view that any size of majority, no matter how small, would be legitimate, given that this a constitutional measure?

Coalition Policies

Debate between Lord Mawhinney and Lord Strathclyde

Monday 8th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, when the noble Lord said that manifestos have become a mockery, he must have been talking about the Labour Party’s manifesto.

[Lord Mawhinney]

My Lords, bearing in mind the welcome initiative by the coalition, does my noble friend envisage that after future general elections each Government will publish their programme for the forthcoming Parliament?

[Lord Strathclyde]

Of course we do that already, vis-à-vis the Queen’s Speech, but we would not have needed to publish this document if there had been a clear majority by the Conservative Party. It was needed because we got together with our Liberal Democrat allies to create the coalition.