"My Lords, I thank all speakers from your Lordships’ House for what has been an excellent debate. It is a genuine pleasure for me to participate, hopefully quite briefly.
The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, gave a moving speech, which was made more moving by the knowledge that Sarah Owen is …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"With all due respect, this Bill is full of situations in which the consultation for its implementation is yet to be completed. Having adopted a principle in primary legislation, one more consultation would hardly stain the integrity of this Bill. If the Government wanted to, they could very well take …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"My Lords, we could hardly have expected two more expert speakers to propose this amendment. This is another case where society is getting something on the cheap and, even though it is a different argument from the one about unpaid carers, it is another way where, in fact, we are …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"I am excited by the noble Lord’s anecdote, as I was by other noble Lords’ anecdotes, but would he perhaps concede that that was several years ago and the employment market, and indeed the student body, might have changed somewhat since then?..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"My Lords, in the main, this is a reasonable debate—or, rather, a debate about “reasonable”. We have yet to hear the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, on Amendments 22 and 24, which sit outside the theme of the other amendments in this group, which I expect to be …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"I apologise for intervening again. That is a really helpful response, because it confirms my fears. The less specific the supporting documentation is around what is reasonable, the more likely it is that this is going to go to a tribunal in order to define what is reasonable. We all …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"These are probing amendments; they are designed not for us to tell the Government what we think, but for them to tell us what they think. Simply knocking our argument down does not really achieve that objective. Secondly, as I predicted in a sense, the Government have set up a …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"On a number of occasions, the Minister set out that the Government are consulting. What is the timetable for that consultation, and when can we expect the results from it?..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"My Lords, this is another one of those divided-off groups. I am going to speak to impact assessments and reserve what I say on tribunals for the next group. There is a danger when talking about the existence of and the need for impact assessments that we start providing our …..." Lord Fox - View Speech
"When I talked about taking the Bill on a holiday, I was not joking; I was serious, and it would be quite nice if the Minister would take it seriously and respond...." Lord Fox - View Speech