"With £2.8 billion spent on temporary accommodation in the last year by local authorities, forcing many of them towards bankruptcy, the £2.5 billion the Government have allocated, even if you look upon it as trying to cover the costs, is 28% short of the actual cost of temporary accommodation for …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether new funding allocations to local authorities are sufficient to deliver the prevention commitments in the National Plan to End Homelessness...." Lord Bird - View Speech
"I am not here to congratulate the Government, nor to commiserate with the Opposition. I am here to talk about what the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, has called for, which is: not more of the same. I think that is what he asked for.
"Is the Minister actually asking for reluctant subscribers to stay with a service just because it is a charity? I find that really difficult to understand. We have to think of that person who goes in, looks at something, says, “I don’t really want to be a part of this”, …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"My Lords, would the Government agree that, because we have a low-wage economy, we also have a low-investment economy? That is shown in the fact that 80% of all the transactions carried out by our banks, which were formerly owned by us, are in buying and selling private property, not …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"Will the Minister say whether it is possible for the Government to buy my ex-wife’s house, which is right near the runway? It is absolutely appalling when you go down there. If the Government are going to make billions and billions of pounds for the UK, then perhaps they should …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"My Lords, is it not possible to accept that what we have got is a situation, which nobody seems to want to address, where we have a class divide in the police force? We have a situation where people from the working classes join the police force and, unless we …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"Amendment 163 in my name would place a duty on the Secretary of State to set binding child poverty reduction targets and report on them annually to Parliament. This amendment will hold the Government to their promise to reduce child poverty and enable them to measure their progress. This amendment …..." Lord Bird - View Speech
"I agree with the Minister 100%. We should never, ever abandon people who are in an emergency. But, if that is what we are doing, and if that is what most of our efforts go into, we will never come to the day when we dismantle poverty.