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

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

There is a schedule, which is set out in the Act, and we have good debates, as we did on these regulations. It is about making sure that we do everything that a responsible Government should do. If the noble Lord was in this position, would he be doing anything different? Of course he would not.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Many of us now doubt that it is possible to get through the mass of legislation, including subordinate legislation, required for an orderly Brexit between when we return in January and the end of March. We fear that the Government will attempt to push it through by one emergency procedure or another. This will not be an emergency; it will be the result of the constant postponement of decisions by Her Majesty’s Government. The only way out seems to be for the Government to ask for a postponement or extension of the Article 50 procedure.

Childhood Obesity: Yoga

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord is quite right: it is not just sugar that is eaten but sugar that is drunk as well. The sugar levy has been a significant success. Half the drinks it applied to have been reformulated to reduce their sugar, saving 45 million kilograms of sugar being consumed each year. We have more to do on sugar reduction beyond fizzy drinks. We did not hit our target in the first year but we will take further action to make sure that we do so.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of recent research by the Institute of Education of University College London that shows that communal singing in primary and secondary schools has a strong calming effect and improves concentration, discipline and everything else, yet many schools are losing their music teachers, leaving no one in the school with any music qualification? I declare an interest as a trustee of the VCM Foundation.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I understand that the noble Lord is a member of the parliamentary choir, so he is a living example of the benefits of communal singing, or maybe not. I am sure he is very tuneful. The noble Lord is quite right: singing and, indeed, all arts are good for the soul and should be part of the school day.

Smoking: Vaping

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend is quite right to point out that vaping is a British success story as an anti-smoking aid, and it has made a huge contribution not just to noble Lords but to around 2.5 million e-cigarette users, half of whom used to smoke. There is, of course, as he will no doubt be aware, a court challenge going on at the moment. It is under consideration by the CJEU, and we expect a judgment in the summer of 2018, so I am unfortunately not in a position to comment until we have that judgment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Could the Minister possibly encourage his colleagues to consider publishing a list of EU regulations which are there primarily because British lobbies with the support of British Ministers have pushed them on to the EU? I am thinking in particular of animal welfare, as well as a lot of health and smoking regulations. It would help to educate opinion in this country as to what sort of regulations might be likely to diverge after we leave, and which will not.

NHS: EEA Doctors

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble and learned Lord will know that a variety of reports have been published. I am sure that he has taken the opportunity to sign in and read them, which is very welcome, and I encourage all noble Lords to do that. One of the greatest things that we have to do is look at workforce issues. I come back to the point about being able to provide reassurance to people who are thinking of leaving but have not yet done so. I stress that we have more EU and EEA people working in the NHS, which is a very welcome thing and I hope they take comfort from that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, over the weekend a number of Ministers, including the Secretary of State for DExEU, said that these agreements are fine but that nothing is settled until everything is settled. That seems to be not quite the reassurance that everyone would want. Is it possible for the Government to go further and say that they will offer a guarantee to all EU citizens working in the National Health Service that, whatever else happens, they will continue to be welcome? I am conscious that the figures on nurses and midwives are not as good as those for doctors at present and that we are in severe danger of having a short-term gap in the number of nurses and midwives, which would be very serious.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I point the noble Lord to the Prime Minister’s letter, in which she talks about the fact that the rights will be written into law as we leave the EU. He is right to point out the position of nurses and midwives; that is the only category where fewer EU staff are working in the National Health Service year on year. However, as we have talked about many times in the House, new language tests may have had a critical role in that and that is something we are reviewing it to make sure that we can continue to welcome nurses from abroad.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord O'Shaughnessy

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th November 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and pleased to put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and to Amendment 17 with those of my noble friends Lady Finn and Lord Maude. I thoroughly endorse the comments both of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and of my noble friend Lord Maude and their passionate defence of the purpose of the NCS programme and of its independence.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, asked whether this is a unique programme—which I think gets to the heart of it. It is true that some of the activities that take place in NCS may be found in a range of other volunteering social action organisations, but there are things that are unique about NCS. The first is the idea of a rite of passage and the ambition that it should be something that every 15 year-old, 16 year-old or 17 year-old goes through as a binding experience that builds into a sense of social cohesion and social mixing, which are inherent to the whole programme. That is not to say that every activity in the programme is unique, but its ambition, its potential scale and the idea that is something that everyone goes through, with an opportunity to mix with others, are unique.

The NCS is not a threat to the sector. Rather, as others have said, it is an enabler of the sector. It is delivered by others. It is a beacon—a sense that the Government take incredibly seriously the idea of social action and are providing a centre of momentum that can push this agenda forwards. The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, not just in this group but in others, seem to face in different directions. They give a lower status to the NCS Trust by keeping it as a community interest company but they also add more control, which seems to be the precise opposite of what one would want for it to be a success. It needs to be more independent of government and to have a higher status. That is ultimately what the Bill attempts to do.

Two principles are at stake here: the actual independence of the body and its perceived independence —of course, one feeds the other. The royal charter seems to be a neat way through this. It provides independence as a well as a sense of permanence and, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, puts the operation of the NCS Trust effectively beyond politics to become something that is seen as a public good and to be supported.

The royal charter sends a strong signal to all stakeholders that NCS is a permanent part of our national landscape, a new British institution that takes that most British of virtues—service to others—and elevates it to the appropriate position. Just as the National Trust might be seen as the protector of historic spaces, NCS can perform a similar role in the development of the nation’s young people.

That is why I absolutely support the amendments on not just the independence of the board but also the appointments process, which my noble friend Lady Finn will talk more about. It relates to this point about the public body, and it is quite right that given the level of state funding involved there is a new regime and greater accountability for the money spent. The clauses that deal with audit and accounts—and indeed appointments, subject, I hope, to some movement from the Minister—would provide the correct level of scrutiny, and of course it will continue to be audited by the National Audit Office and so on.

It is, however, incredibly important that the independence provided by the royal charter is not undermined by the NCS becoming classified, as my noble friend has said, as an NDPB—a quango—which could be a back route into the reassertion of government control. As we have discussed, that is the sure way to kill this thing in the eyes of the people we want to use it. For that reason, the right device is a royal charter. This is not my area of expertise by any means, but the Cabinet Office guidance on the classification of public bodies of various kinds provides for unclassified ALBs—arm’s-length bodies—when they are genuinely unique and unclassifiable, and I think this is genuinely unique. There is, therefore, a spot in the existing landscape that this body could land on. Another organisation with a similar classification is the Churches Conservation Trust—in receipt of public money but clearly carrying out a public good which is beyond the political realm.

In closing, those of us who have put our names to this amendment look to the Minister for his reassurance that the independence that he clearly wants to pursue through the royal charter will not be compromised by bureaucratic consequences of the classification process. It is so important that the fact that it should not be an NDPB is on the face of the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, should declare an interest. I have done most of my politics in places like Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds and Manchester, particularly in areas where the people who we would now call the left-behind are clustered. That is where I have come across the National Citizen Service and been impressed by what it does. However, I also recognise that it is one useful initiative in places where government funding has been cut by 40% in the last 10 years, and where the state is not at all evident.

My worry—and the reason for all these probing amendments—is that we have here something that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, rightly called one part of a bigger jigsaw, and that can only be part of a bigger jigsaw. It needs not to be set too permanently in cement. It needs to have the flexibility to become part of a wider strategy, because we desperately need a wider strategy towards those who no longer feel that they are really citizens and part of our society. Other voluntary bodies are working in the same area. Just in the past six months I have visited the York schools partnership between independent schools and local state schools. It is excellent: Saturday extra curriculum throughout the year—including a week in the Lake District—funded by contributions and other sources. In the middle of August I visited a summer school run by local volunteers in north Bradford for children between primary school and secondary school, some of whom are still struggling to read or count. That point, at which children are moving from one area to another, is crucial. The local Tesco provided the food and we managed, with contributions from people like me, to take the children to the Lake District for a week to work together. Some of them had never been that far from their homes.

There is a range of activities run by the Scouts and others; they need to work together. If the National Citizen Service is to expand at speed, as is proposed, it also needs to be locally linked and networked, and not have yet more national organisation imposed on it. The choice of local partners and local providers is important.

We will need to develop a wider strategy and look at how one works the volunteer dimension and how far it can fit into the things that desperately need doing for younger people—not just the 15 to 17 year-olds but all the way through from when children enter nursery school. That needs to be discussed further. I worry a little. The reason why some of us are testing this royal charter is that, when one hears about permanence and cement, one wonders whether this is being put down as a great lump, when there is a huge amount that we need to do. Whatever we think about the outcome of the referendum, the scale of the vote that we saw not just against Brussels but against London, the elite and all the outsiders in these areas shows us that we have a major, long-term underlying problem, to which this is one useful response, but as part of a wider strategy—it is only part of a bigger jigsaw.

I have just a few hesitations from my limited experience in the coalition Government about the total independence of royal charter bodies if appointed by the Prime Minister on the advice of the Cabinet Office. There are occasional, small political interventions at that level. Perhaps I had better not say any more than that, but I have watched it with a degree of interest.

One should not overstate the contribution that NCS alone can make. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, talked about giving it a higher status. If this is to be a rite of passage—almost the rite of passage—we need to do a lot more. We need to do a great deal for those in secondary schools. This is a useful contribution to that, but there is a great deal more that this House might usefully debate—we might even have a sessional committee to investigate it further—because we know that we face a much wider problem.