"My Lords, I rise briefly to add my support to the first two amendments in this group. While I agree with removing the discretion of the Secretary of State, Amendment 99A does not say what the period of the review should be. I suggest that it should be the same …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 102 and 122, which would require the Secretary of State to apply to the court for a direct deduction order—a DDO. I confess that I am struggling a bit to understand the circumstances in which the Secretary of State would be able …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"The noble Baroness has not answered one question that I had. My understanding from Clause 89 is that these DDO rights—or however one describes them—can be used only where a person is convicted of an offence under this Act or any other enactment, or agrees to pay a penalty under …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 91A and 91B in my name in the group, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her support in this.
As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, just said, these two amendments are designed to expand the scope of the independent review …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"My Lords, one of the main reasons why electricity prices are so high is the bizarre way the wholesale market works. If I need to buy 10 pints of milk, so I go to my supermarket, where they are 95p each but it has only nine, and then buy the …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"My Lords, my Amendment 77 is, as the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has just said, slightly different from the others. I thought about degrouping it, but I decided that life was too short.
Amendment 77 would introduce a reasonableness test—a discussion we have had before—so that an authorised officer must …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"I understand the noble Baroness’s point. It was because it said “reasonable grounds” in the first half that the fact that it was missing in the second half—paragraph (b)—stuck out: you have to have reasonable grounds, but then you just have to consider. But my point is more than that. …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 79B and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her support for it. It is a very simple amendment that would make the giving of an eligibility verification notice subject to the same safeguard that already applies to all the other information-gathering powers …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"I will jump in quickly before the Minister continues. She has been very helpful in explaining how this is going to work. I should say, as I have before, that I think this is infinitely better than it was when we saw it a year or so ago—I just put …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech
"I am still not convinced that that is correct. I think that what happens is that there is an indicator that goes with the payment of the benefit, and we are then asking the banks, first, to identify all accounts where that indicator exists—so they have to look at all …..." Lord Vaux of Harrowden - View Speech