END FLAG FIASCO – TYLER

Liberal Democrat Peer, Lord (Paul) Tyler, today (Friday) called on Planning Minister, Yvette Cooper to honour the pledges and position of her predecessor, Keith Hill, to keep St Piran’s flag flying across the Cornwall.

During his time as MP for North Cornwall, Paul Tyler led a successful campaign, backed by the local media, to gain reassurances from the Planning Minister that rules which prevent the St Piran’s flag flying without specific permission could be ignored by local Councils.  The Minister further undertook to have the rules revised when the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 came under review.  While the review has taken place this year, the rules have not been scrapped.

Commenting. Lord Tyler said:

“It was some eighteen months ago I branded these regulations a ‘mind-boggling absurdity’.  It is beyond belief that the Government could undergo a thoroughgoing review of the rules on flag flying and still come up with an answer which is so patently outrageous.

“It is a reprehensible betrayal of the former Minister’s commitment to fairness that exemptions are still made for St David of Wales, St Andrew of Scotland and St George of England – and for every other national flag in the alphabet, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe – but not for St Piran of Cornwall.

“Ministers seem to expect the Cornish people to endure this discrimination, first dreamt up by the long-since departed Conservative Government.  We will not accept it.

“The present Government must end this fiasco once and for all by amending rules which are as unfair as they are irrational.”

ENDS

BETTER LAWS NOT QUICKER LAWS - TYLER

Lord (Paul) Tyler today (Tuesday) warmly welcomed positive suggestions from the Liberal Democrats to improve the way new laws are examined by both Houses of Parliament.

Lord Tyler is a member of the Joint Committee on Conventions, to which the Liberal Democrats submitted written and oral evidence today.

“The Government seems to be obsessed with speeding up the process, simply to make life easier for themselves.  The evidence we are receiving on the Joint Committee makes it clear that nobody else shares this objective.  Far from wishing to ‘codify’ some of the out-of-date conventions, our witnesses seem to be sensibly concerned to modernise them and improve the overall effectiveness of Parliament.  That means better laws rather than quicker laws.”

“Jack Straw and his merry men obviously thought they could browbeat everybody into turning the Lords into a talking shop.  Instead, they seem to have taken a tin opener to a can of worms.”

ENDS

‘TRUST THE PEOPLE’ – TYLER

Liberal Democrat Peer, Lord (Paul) Tyler, today (Thursday) called on Ministers to “trust the people” with a refreshed, responsive political system.

Speaking in a House of Lords debate called by the Liberal Democrats, Lord Tyler said the recent Power Inquiry report had “shown that the citizens of this country believe that the representative Parliamentary system we have has become dysfunctional”.

The former MP for North Cornwall told fellow Peers of the decline in the two-party system over his 50-year political life.  “In the first General Election which attracted my interest,” he said, “96.1% of the national vote went to the Conservative or Labour Parties, the winning party gained a fraction less than 50%, every vote seemed to matter and the turnout was 76.8%.”