"My Lords, I am afraid I am going to break the melancholy mood that we have heard from previous speakers. I thought that this day, when this Bill do now pass, would never come. It is a Bill that removes the hereditary principle as a basis for membership of this …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, I was very taken with my noble friend Lord Hunt’s forensic analysis of the coalition Government’s performance on health. He mentioned the £3.5 billion figure. I know that my noble friend the Minister is not able to respond to that now, but would it not be very useful …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, I will risk the possibility of being called risible by the noble Lord, Lord True, for disagreeing with him, but I think he has failed to spell out precisely one point that he should have done. He prayed in aid various people, including my noble friend Lord Foulkes …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"If the noble Lord, Lord True, cannot see the difference in category between a life Peer who can sit in here and legislate and a life Peer who cannot, then we are going to have considerable difficulty in having a sensible discussion. They are obviously fundamentally different, just as there …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"I have a question for the Minister; I am pretty sure that the answer will be that he has no idea, and that will not be any reflection on him because I do not have any idea either. What has been the total cost to the public purse of the …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"As far as I know, although I do not know the intricacies of the mechanism that brought me here, there were probably more than three people who thought that it was okay.
I would be dishonest to the House if I did not admit to being flattered that it seems …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, I am finding it difficult to compute exactly what is going on today, because Friday after Friday, Bill after Bill, to a three-quarters empty House, which is characteristic on a Friday, I have been faced with substantial opposition, not just from individual Members—not exclusively from the Tory party …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, this is such an absurd, fanciful and imaginative suggestion. By way of evidence, can the noble Lord explain to us how 667 hereditaries being removed overnight in 1999 raised the spectre that he is trying to put before us—that it enabled subsequent Governments to act in the completely …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, I have been here quite a long time, but it is a first for me to find myself following both a maiden speech and a valedictory speech by father and daughter. If I were to do justice to the two speeches, I would use up most of the …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech