house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1139 Organophosphates
[LORDS] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1140
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I understand
that point entirely and I value the strength with which
the noble Countess presents that position. The committee,
and the Department of Health in its contributions to
the committee, are in a position to address themselves
to exactly those kinds of concerns. But I emphasise
again that the committee is bound to be able to act
effectively only when the research is sufficiently conclusive
to guide how we can act.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I am sorry to
interrupt again. My own medical practitioners, when
they knew what had happened, found the research.
The scientific research is there—even on the internet.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, as far as the
committee is concerned, which together with the
noble Countess’s concern is what this debate is about,
the issues which it has had to address, and which have
been part of its brief, are within the framework of the
research it has commissioned and all the other
research which it is evaluating across the world,
including the American research which is due fairly
shortly. I give the House the assurance that the
committee will of course address these issues at
that time.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, asked me some specific
questions, one of which was on the question of alternatives
to the use of OPs in farming. There is work on
developing alternative sheep dips. That work is continuing
with regard to the possibility of vaccine development
and we have also been looking at the use of a hormone
to disrupt the metamorphosis of the sheep scab mite.
Progress on both projects is going to be reviewed by
Defra in the very near future. It is not known whether
any of these projects will lead to product development.
The research after all has to be translated into a viable
product that a company can market for the industry.
Work on the biological control of the sheep scab mite
has been stopped, because it was shown to have no
effect when it was used on sheep. Although in the
laboratory encouraging progress was made, when it
was applied in the field, I am afraid the results were
negative. Alternative treatments to sheep scab are available
but are not effective against the same range of external
parasites as OP sheep dips. That is why we continue
with that position.
I want to assure the House—I have inadequate time
to respond to a debate of such significance and such
importance and I value very much this opportunity of
responding—that the reason why my noble Lord, Lord
Rooker, with all his persistence, was not able to come
up with a straightforward answer in a short period of
time, after all his work with the department, is because
we are genuinely facing some very difficult issues
which relate to essential research. I know the noble
Lord, Lord Greaves, tried to suborn me by introducing
research and lobbying from Saddleworth Moor, because
he knew that I would be instinctively responsive to
that, because of its closeness to Oldham. I do have to
say to him that the basis of the Government’s position
is bound to be scientific research and advance. I want
to give this hope and expectation to the House that
this committee will be meeting in the not too distant
future, with additional research to hand, some of
which may be extremely significant in terms of producing
solutions to these problems, which we all recognise are
very acute and very important to the people for whom
we have responsibility.
8.26 pm
Sitting suspended.
8.30 pm
Political Parties and Elections Bill
Report (2nd Day) (Continued)
Amendment 81
Moved by Lord Henley
81: After Clause 24, insert the following new Clause—
“Absent voting: personal identifiers verification in England
and Wales
(1) The Representation of the People (England and Wales)
(Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2006 (S.I. 2006/2910) are amended
as follows.
(2) In regulation 37 (amendment of regulation 84) leave out
“not less than 20%” and insert “not less than 100%”.”
Lord Henley: My Lords, I shall also speak to
Amendment 82. We put forward similar amendments
in Committee, as a way of probing; it will only be a
further bit of probing this evening. As I am sure the
Minister will remember, the amendments are designed
to make sure that all postal votes are checked. Given
the amount of fraud in the system, it seems only
sensible that that should happen wherever possible.
When I moved the similar amendment in Grand
Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said in response:
“We agree in principle that all postal votes should be checked,
and will wish to require 100 per cent to be checked when it is
practicable to do so. A key factor in determining when it will be
appropriate to move to 100 per cent checking is when there is
deemed to be sufficient capacity within postal voting software
systems to support 100 per cent checking”.—[Official Report,
13/5/09; col. GC 435.]
He went on to talk about the then forthcoming elections
for the European Parliament on 4 June. As his noble
friend Lord Campbell-Savours mentioned earlier, we
have had the European elections between Committee
and Report. Therefore, while I appreciate that on
17 June it is relatively few days since those elections, it
might be useful if the Minister were able to say a little
about what the Government learnt from them. I do
not mean from a political point of view, as I imagine
that they have been feeling fairly sore about them ever
since, with a mere 15 per cent of the vote. That is the
lowest percentage of the vote that the Labour Party
has had in modern history, if we take modern history
back to 1919; I see my noble friend Lord Bates nodding.
Even in those couple of weeks, the Government
might have learnt something about the need for checking,
so I wonder whether the Minister can say what level of
checking there was in the different regions. He said
that we required at least 20 per cent at the moment; I
imagine therefore that 20 per cent were checked, and I
look forward to confirmation of that. Can he say