Speeches by Burghart.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Hon. Members will be disappointed to hear that I do not intend to detain them for long. We support this order. As my noble friend Lord Caine said in Grand Committee in the other place, this is essentially Conservative legacy legislation. We drafted it, we …”

“My point is more that the Government are seeking to remove highly experienced people without offering another way out. We would have been happy to debate that, but we are instead seeing an attempt to deliberately cut out a group of peers from the constitution.”

“I will give way one more time and then I will endeavour to conclude my remarks.”

“I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman has married so well. Of course, life peers do a fantastic job of scrutiny—they do so every day, and I enjoy reading their lordships’ Hansard. What we are talking about is a group of 88 hereditary peers, who have done a very good job in scrutinising Government legislation, …”

“It is very generous of the hon. Gentleman to say that the Prime Minister will create 40 peers at his command—I had no idea that the hon. Gentleman’s career was progressing at such a rate. We all know that that is not what is happening here; we all know that, in the coded words of the Minister, it is goodbye to the 88 h…”

“As ever, wisdom from the Deepings. The truth is that this will not make the upper House a better Chamber for scrutiny. All it will do is remove some of the Labour party’s opponents from that House. The Labour party promised in its manifesto that “The next Labour government will…bring about an immediate modernisation” o…”

“The point that we are making through our amendments is that the Labour party is undermining a key facet of the upper House: scrutiny. We are talking about a body of 88 hereditary peers who have already been performing that job, and have done nothing wrong, but are losing that job because of the measures introduced by t…”

“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He strikes at the critical failure of the legislation, which is that really the Government are seeking to remove Members of the upper House who happen not to take the Labour Whip. What we all agree on—or what I hope we all agree on—is that the role of the Lords is that of a cha…”

“As ever, my right hon. Friend is one step ahead of me. It is not that we seek a comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. It is that the Labour party promised that this would come. The Government promised that they would leave the remaining hereditary peers there until they had a plan for comprehensive reform, but th…”

“It is an honour to speak to the Bill in Committee. When we last discussed it, on Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden)—a very great man—set out why the Opposition do not approve of the way in which the Government are going about this change. We believe that this nervous littl…”

“What would you give him?”

“I echo the words of the Paymaster General in thanking everyone who has spoken this afternoon. It has been a good natured and interesting debate. I want to echo some words of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in praise of the House of Lords. When I first came to this place, I bumped …”

“It has been a long day, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope you will forgive me. But enough of such pleasantries. This is a bad Budget. It is as bad as bad can be. At its heart is a decision to tax businesses hard—very hard—and through them to tax workers until the pips scream. It is a Budget that sees the total effective tax…”

“Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to play a part in bringing today’s interesting debate to a close. I take this opportunity to welcome the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to his post—I know he has been in post for a few months, but we have not had the chance to get to know each other. I …”

“Does the Minister not think that it is important that hon. Members see those figures, to see how much the services I mentioned will be taxed, before they vote on this Budget? Would that not be transparent?”

“I was intending to ask a supplementary to Question 4.”

“The Executive’s draft programme for government acknowledges that policing numbers in Northern Ireland are at an all-time low, a situation that Chief Constable Boutcher has described as dangerous. The draft programme commits to increasing numbers in line with New Decade, New Approach. Is the Secretary of State convinced…”

“The Secretary of State is of course right that policing in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter, but national security is not. If we look at policing numbers right now, which are at an all-time low, we are reminded that his party’s manifesto made explicit commitments to improving public services in Northern Ireland. W…”

“It is very generous of you to call me again, Mr Speaker. The Executive’s draft programme for government acknowledges that policing numbers in Northern Ireland are at an all-time low, a situation that the chief constable has described as dangerous. The draft programme commits to increasing numbers in line with New Decad…”

“As the House will know, on the evening of Friday 13 September—the day after we went into recess—the Government took it upon themselves to make a number of announcements affecting Northern Ireland: the cancellation of the Casement Park project; the decision that Sean Brown’s family will not be given a public inquiry int…”