In Kirklees, a Green councillor, Andrew Cooper, was one of the driving forces behind a street-by-street insulation programme. Reports on how that worked out afterwards highlighted how much people are concerned about cowboy builders but that they trust their local authorities. That street-by-street process works well, but to make that happen you need the data. That is what this amendment is designed to achieve. Continue reading “My amendment on Day 6 of Renters’ Rights Bill Committee Stage”
Natalie moved my amendment for me on Monday saying ‘All the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Members of the House who are still here at 12.47 am will note that I am not Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. My friend is the Green lark, and I am the Green owl, so you get me after midnight’ Continue reading “My amendment on Day 5 of the Renters’ Rights Bill Committee Stage”
Maternity leave is already a very hard-fought and essential right, but the imbalance between maternity and paternity leave is structurally embedding gender differences that do not benefit society Continue reading “Employment Rights Bill Committee Stage Day 3”
We have a two-tier economy. The rich have been getting richer much faster, while the rest of us are stuck or going backwards. These two facts are obviously linked. Last year, the collective wealth of the UK’s small band of billionaires increased by about £35 million a day. Meanwhile, according to the IFS, the past 15 years have been the worst for income growth in generations Continue reading “Employment Rights Bill Second Reading”
On Monday I brought a Fatal Motion in an attempt to kill the government’s Statutory Instrument ‘Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025’. I didn’t in the end put it to a vote as the Lib Dems refused to support it having seen mine and then tabled their own. Instead I voted for the lib Dem Fatal Motion but the Tories sat on their hands and the vote was lost. Continue reading “Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025”
It is very hard to convey the anger felt by not just hundreds of thousands but millions of people at the mess the water companies have made over the past 30 years. I say “mess”, because that is what the public have had had to deal with – this is about sewage-filled seawater, dirty beaches, polluted rivers, chalk stream ecosystems destroyed and sometimes even E. coli in our water supply – while water companies have been amazingly efficient at siphoning off money for shareholders and employees Continue reading “Water Companies: Fines”
Yesterday I asked the Government: What are the main factors that have led to decades of low levels of rape cases being prosecuted, and continue to prevent such prosecutions, and what steps are they taking to resolve this? Continue reading “My Debate on Rape Prosecutions”
Do this Government see that, as a massive consumer still driving climate change, we have a duty to people who are fleeing drought and floods, as well as to refugees from war zones? Continue reading “Immigration: Human Rights”
We know the climate is changing; we know that the weather is changing; we know there are more floods and more droughts; so it is very short-sighted not to include environmental sustainability when you are worried about the future of clubs and their financial sustainability Continue reading “Football Governance Bill Committee Stage”
If we were talking about benefit claimants who had behaved in the way that water companies have, we would not just slap them on the wrist in the way that we have the water companies; we would crack down on them, claw back the money and take them to court. The water companies have got off so lightly in this whole process. That really does not seem fair to bill payers or to taxpayers. The water companies have been saying that they invest all the bill payers’ money in infrastructure, but they then take out loans and pay themselves dividends. With this legislation—even with the amendments—the Government are missing the opportunity to crack down on predatory capitalism. Continue reading “Water (Special Measures) Bill Report Stage”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 