"I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on securing the debate and on her speech. As she said, the Work and Pensions Committee published a report on asbestos management on 30 March last year. Ministers unfortunately rejected our recommendations but, for reasons that we have heard today, …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"The assumption in the current regulations, as the hon. Member for Loughborough said, is that if the asbestos is in reasonable condition and not disturbed, it should not harm anybody, but that assumption looks increasingly unsafe. We have heard from others about the extent of the problem of asbestos in …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"I do not think the Minister would suggest that we should scrap all asbestos regulations for the first time since 1930, so that does imply that there will be some secondary legislation. Can she give us any indication of when that will be forthcoming?..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"I am grateful for early sight of the statement. I understand why the Secretary of State has chosen to defer the key decision. Like John Cridland’s independent review six years ago, Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s report should have been published soon after the Department received it six months ago, rather than kept …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), whose pensions expertise we benefit from greatly on the Work and Pensions Committee.
I want to comment fairly briefly on two aspects of the Bill: first, the decision, at a time when the pension burden on …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. The current proposal in the Bill is that unaccompanied minors coming here to claim asylum will spend the balance of their childhood here knowing that the day they become 18, the Home Secretary will have an obligation to remove them …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"I am pleased that the White Paper says the Department will keep a focus on the disability employment gap, which is the really telling indicator. Will the new target that the Secretary of State sets relate to that gap, rather than a rather arbitrary number of increased jobs?..." Stephen Timms - View Speech
"Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I apologise for my late arrival in the debate.
It is striking how hard it is for Conservative Chancellors to resist the temptation to hand out big tax cuts to the wealthiest while raising tax for ordinary people. We can sympathise with the Chancellor …..." Stephen Timms - View Speech