"My Lords, I should take the noble Baroness’s prompt and declare my interest as an honorary fellow at Balliol. I was prompted to speak by what has just been said in respect of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. He makes a very important point but, were this …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"My Lords, picking up that last point, I support the amendments in this group that expand the definition of what constitutes an academic, but I wonder whether the Minister in his response can provide reassurance on the interaction between the academic freedom requirements of the Bill and the ability of …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"The noble Baroness is making precisely the point I was seeking to draw out. As we discussed at Second Reading, freedom of speech is not the same as academic freedom. We need to make sure that, in protecting both appropriately, we do not stand in the way of the kind …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, sends his apologies for an unforeseen family emergency, so I will formally move Amendment 5 and speak to Amendments 7, 8 and 38 to 41.
Given that these originate with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, noble Lords can be assured that they are pragmatic and …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"My Lords, I declare my interest as an honorary fellow of Balliol, my former interest as head of the largest employer of graduates in this country, and perhaps even my future interest as the parent of an 18 year-old, hopefully heading off to university next year.
"My Lords, I want to make just a small factual supplement to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. In fact, it was a Conservative Government in 1957 who introduced the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme or PPRS, and that scheme has been sustained ever since by Conservative, Labour and …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"My Lords, perhaps channelling the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, from this morning, I congratulate the Government on including in the Bill these measures to tackle childhood obesity. As we have heard, with one in four children not just overweight but clinically obese, we are storing up huge problems for the …..." Lord Stevens of Birmingham - View Speech
"As the noble Lord will know, the genuine problem that we have in this country is that unfortunately we are a world leader in childhood obesity. It therefore falls to us to take world-leading action to respond to that.