Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Shinkwin and Baroness Altmann

Report stage
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for tabling what seems to be an eminently sensible amendment. My noble friend mentioned visibility, and with visibility comes transparency. This would seem to be entirely consistent with His Majesty’s Government’s laudable commitment to transparency. I join with others in hoping very much that my noble friend the Minister will look kindly upon it.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, in principle I do not have an objection to the amendment that has been tabled by my noble friend Lady Noakes, supported by my other noble friends. The problem I have is in practice rather than in principle. How should Parliament and civil servants be spending their time, and do we trust that what is happening in terms of reviewing retained EU law will be done in the interests of parliamentary sovereignty and the interests of the public? There just seems to be underlying this whole Bill an ideological aversion to any EU-derived regulations. They are automatically considered to be harmful to the public, and that cannot be the case when we are potentially talking about legislation, regulations, public protections and legal rulings which have been relied on by the public and business since 1973.

I congratulate my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and my noble friend’s department for the common-sense change of approach involved in the amendments to this Bill. If I could be assured that Amendment 51A would not divert parliamentary and Civil Service time away from the important changes that are needed in the post-Brexit environment, then in principle I understand the logic and can accept it.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Lord Shinkwin and Baroness Altmann

Monday 6th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

The noble Baroness obviously makes a very well-informed point. I can assure the House that the Minister for Disabled People is actively working on this; we want to get it right. We are trying to improve the original assessment. Obviously it is in everyone’s interest to get the correct decision as early as possible, so we are now giving assessors an extra 10 working days to help applicants gather their information. Many appeals succeed because they produce new evidence that was not available at the time of the original assessment.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that the Government recently facilitated a meeting between Atos, Capita and the Royal British Legion, where I was privileged to work as its head of public affairs. Will my noble friend join me in congratulating Charles Byrne on his appointment as the new director-general of the legion? Will she undertake to explore how more disabled people, such as injured veterans, might be encouraged to apply to be PIP assessors?

[Baroness Altmann]

I certainly join my noble friend in congratulating the new director-general. I have already been working on his excellent suggestion and have made inquiries about how many of our assessors are disabled. I am assured that applications for assessors are open to people regardless of disability. Indeed, we would welcome disabled people applying to be assessors as they would be very well placed to make these assessments, but we do not have the figures at the moment to be able to report to the House how many of our assessors are disabled.