Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)

Briefly, I make a plea to the Minister that she takes personal oversight of all those councils where the delays may have an impact on staff’s ability to step up and do the right things for the electio

I commend the Government on getting on with doing something on this agenda. I am a massive fan of mayoral authorities. If that is the price to pay to take power away from Whitehall and Westminster, it

The current Secretary of State was held in quite high regard across the whole of the sector before we started this. Let us not allow him to take the blame for this. It was not the department’s idea to

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group either, but my noble friend Lord Lansley raised some points. I need to declare a set of interests. I am a non-executive director of Norse Group, the pa

My Lords, I am slightly reluctant to follow such a position on the basis that I believe that the Government—if they stick to what they say in the Title of the Bill—are doing the right thing. Unfortuna

My Lords, in response to the previous question from the Benches opposite, I refer the noble Lord, Lord Watts, to a programme on Radio 4 this morning, which made it clear that, since 2015, junior docto