"My Lords, I thank noble Lords for contributing to this very brief debate; it is about time we hurried up a bit on the Bill.
I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, about local authorities. I decided, earlier in my career, that I would eventually become …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, the problem with these amendments is that they want to impose a London-based solution on different parts of the country but they are not imposing a London executive mayor model. The GLA works to hold the elected mayor to account. How well it does that is open to …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, I start by declaring my interests. As you can probably tell, I am from the north too, but my main interest is that I am still leader of Wigan Council, which is a shareholder of Manchester Airport. It is clear that there has been a cross-party welcome for …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, first, I declare my interests as the leader of Wigan Council and chairman of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. I am also a vice-president of the LGA and vice-chairman of SIGOMA. I congratulate the two maiden speakers on their contributions. The right reverend Prelate showed his experience of …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, first, I declare an interest in that I am chair of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. While I welcome the deal that we have with the Government on devolution, can the Minister confirm that the mayoral offer in Manchester is not like the Mayor of London? It is …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, this has been a very wide-ranging debate on all aspects of devolution. I shall start by saying that I am not the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who is struggling to get together by Burns Night the promises made before the referendum—I am sure that he has a very …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, in some ways the north-west is ahead of the game in handing over land to the HCA. When the NWDA was abolished by the Government, we had quite a large landholding for that agency, and the question was: what to do with the land? Rather than try to …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, before I start, I need to declare my interest as leader of a council, chairman of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and a vice-president of LGA. I commend the Minister for the competent way in which she introduced the regulations today. I am sure we all agree that …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech
"My Lords, I, too, want to comment on the bits missing from the gracious Speech. I shall speak to the welfare aspects of this debate from my perspective as the recently re-elected leader of Wigan Council and as chair of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The four aspects I wish …..." Lord Smith of Leigh - View Speech