"My Lords, I am very grateful to everybody who has spoken and certainly to all who have expressed support for the principle of what I was trying to achieve in putting this amendment forward.
"I completely understand that the noble Lord is not in a position to give a solid undertaking that he will introduce an amendment that changes the signing period. But I take it from what he has just said that he is willing to enter into a discussion with his ministerial …..." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside and his wide-ranging speech. I am very glad that my noble friends on the Front Bench have tabled Amendments 21, 22 and 23.
"The noble Lord mentioned a situation in which a Member of Parliament might have been campaigning against certain practices by Hoffman-LaRoche—or indeed by a subsidiary of HSBC. There might be international interest in disposing of that Member of Parliament...." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"If it were accepted that there could be more than one accredited campaigner on each side, would there be any objection on the Minister’s part to aggregating the expenditure of the campaign’s pro and con, for and against the Member of Parliament, so that the totality of the funding available …..." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"I hope—I think—that I understand him as saying that it is something he will be prepared to look at so that we could consider it again at Third Reading...." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"My Lords, I agree that the sunset clause would have been preferable; but this could be helpful, although it may well be that there is insufficient experience after a period of five to six years to enable a satisfactory review. It might possibly have been preferable if the amendment had …..." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was probably wrong to suggest that such a small number of constituencies—perhaps a couple of dozen—would find it impossible to cope if there were only one to four signing places. The constituency that I had the honour to represent for a number of …..." Lord Howarth of Newport - View Speech
"Will the Minister write to us before Report with a detailed analysis of the costings that led the Government to come to the conclusion that they expressed in the impact assessment? It was: