"I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. How long does he think that the whole of this process would take? What is the minimum amount of time that realistically would be involved if an independent report were required in writing? Does he not recognise that we are …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"My Lords, I will make three points, which are important at this stage of the debate.
First, I very much deprecate the frivolity with which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, answered my question about the time involved in producing an independent expert’s report. It is quite wrong to be frivolous …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I must intervene on him. I said nothing designed to impugn the good faith and sincerity of anyone in this House, let alone people who have gone to the trouble of producing these amendments. What I said was that, …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"My Lords, it was a pleasure once again to combine with colleagues in producing this report. It is fair to say that all possible perspectives on the issues were represented round the table in our committee and our debates were extremely stimulating and very instructive.
"Does the noble Lord agree that in a crisis—this is true whether supervision and regulation are done on a national basis or on the basis of the Union as a whole—the need to prevent the crisis and deal with it must override market rules? That has always been the case …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"My Lords, I shall start with three introductory comments. First, like other noble Lords, I pay tribute to our excellent chairman who managed to guide us all, although we came from very different vantage points, to clear and decisive conclusions. There is not much point in having a parliamentary report …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"I am sorry, I take a different view. It seems very contradictory to me. Either you should not have fiscal integration or you should. It is very important that politicians are coherent about these things and I do not think that the Eurosceptics are coherent, not least on the matter …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"I repeat that you cannot at the same time complain about something when it is absent and then complain when it is present; that does not make any sense to me at all. Equally, I do not think that I have heard any response to my points about democratic accountability. …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech
"As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, as I shall say myself and, indeed, as the report states, we are not just out of EMU. We could not join EMU if we wanted to because we do not qualify under the fiscal provisions. Our fiscal deficit is excessively high—more than …..." Lord Davies of Stamford - View Speech