Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Report stage
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I have received two requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Russell of Liverpool. I will call them in that order.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I warmly thank my noble friend Lady Kennedy and the Minister for her response. Can the Minister confirm that the Nottinghamshire Police official definition is the following:

“Incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman”?


I take it that there is no question of introducing the sex or gender terminology used in this amendment, which is different from the amendment moved in Committee, and has certainly not been endorsed by the Law Commission.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I hope I am not cut off like that, my Lords.

I certainly welcome the opportunity to debate these regulations, which show up the inadequacy of our procedures to scrutinise such instruments. Last night, the Minister, in the Second Reading of the medicines Bill, extolled the virtues of regulations. He said they come to Parliament and we can scrutinise them effectively, but this afternoon we can see how scanty that scrutiny actually is. These regulations came into force on 18 July. It has taken until today to have a debate on it. There are many more Covid regulations that we still have to debate, which are in power. As Big Brother Watch has pointed out, the regulations have a major impact on how people live their lives and they deserve much tougher parliamentary scrutiny. I would also remind the Minister that very few SIs have been defeated and, the last time the House defeated an SI, we were threatened with abolition by his own Government. Coming back to the medicines Bill, the idea that regulations provide a degree of parliamentary oversight and scrutiny is, I am afraid, very much mistaken.

The noble Lord who got cut off was talking about the importance of local authority leadership—I agree. The trouble is that Regulation 3 gives the Secretary of State power to override local councils. That might be justified if the intervention was based on science or some other rational explanation, whereas we have seen, in the north-west, that the decision of the Government was based on lobbying by Conservative MPs, which had to be reversed when the data came to light.

The noble Lord quoted Regulation 3. Can he explain to the House—so far today he has had two opportunities—what representations his department has received, in the last few weeks, from Conservative MPs in the north-west, to ease the lockdown? Did the Minister take account of the advice of the Chief Medical Officer or Deputy Chief Medical Officer?

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The House will be pleased to know that we have managed to recover the noble Lord, Lord McCrea.

Horizon 2020

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, one reason for our strong science base is our life sciences. The Minister will know that part of that depends on the interrelationship with the pharmaceutical industry and the investment that it puts into R&D. If we are to be non-aligned with the EU, many new drug developments in the UK will be at risk, because no company will want a licence in the UK before obtaining a European licence. Is that being factored into the discussions in relation to the European Medicines Agency and our own MHRA?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

Yes.