Lord Carlile of Berriew — Hansard

Lords Proceedings 6 July 2026

Imprisonment for Public Protection Prisoners

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Does he agree that the fact that there are nearly 900 unreleased IPP prisoners still in custody, of whom 99% are over-tariff, is wholly unacceptable? How much will that shameful statistic be reduced in the next 12 months? What steps will be taken to reform the wa…

Lords Proceedings 8 June 2026

Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

My Lords, most children who appear before the criminal courts display evidence of serious educational needs and an alarming number of those children show signs of florid psychiatric illness. In the sunshine of very welcome reform, can the Minister assure us that we will not lose sight of the great c…

Lords Proceedings 1 June 2026

For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers

My Lords, will the Minister tell the House what the Government propose to do to restore the legitimate expectation of those who obtain gender recognition certificates? Section 9 of the 2004 Act says that a person’s gender “becomes for all purposes the acquired gender” in law, an expectation which …

Lords Proceedings 20 May 2026

Youth Justice

My Lords, can my noble kinswoman the Minister confirm that the Government reject the miserably pessimistic and defeatist view of the youth justice system expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen? Will she confirm that a key aim of the plan with which she is dealing today must be to provide…

Lords Debate 24 April 2026

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

I understand what the noble and learned Baroness is saying, but the police have decided very clearly what their position is. Between 2009 and 2025, 199 cases were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the police for assisted suicide. Of those 199 cases, 131 were not proceeded with by th…

Lords Proceedings 21 April 2026

House of Lords: Legislative Procedures

I suspect that that is not a generic question but one about a specific Bill. I do not think that it would be a standard procedure to have it in place for every Bill. I share the disappointment of many noble Lords that we have not concluded, or are unlikely now to conclude, the passage of that partic…

Lords Debate 27 March 2026 3 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I speak as a signatory of Amendment 189 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. I am strongly in favour of it for reasons that I will explain briefly. I am not a doctor, but I am a patient when I cannot avoid it. Let us take, for example, a situation that many of your Lordships ei…

I am the son of a general practitioner who, by the way, was not any old general practitioner. Even the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, knows that the skills of general practitioners are not uniform and vary a good deal—as I say that I see that her surprise is falling, after what I said before. It is no…

+1 more contribution in this session

Lords Oral Questions 25 March 2026

Fuel Supplies: War in Iran

The issue of fuel supply through the Strait of Hormuz is relative to world supply and world prices; that is, because the UK obtains only a very small proportion of its supplies from the Middle East, the effect is more likely to be on prices across the world as other people seek to make up their supp…

Lords Committee Stage 25 March 2026 6 contributions

Northern Ireland After Brexit (Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee Report)

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has pulled out of the debate because she has a Motion in the Chamber. It is a great privilege to chair the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, which was appointed in January 2025. In October 2025 we produced our first report—the one we are dealing with to…

I was just dealing with some points about the one-stop shop that our colleague the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, had raised. First, the one-stop shop really must emphasise its services to traders in Great Britain who wish to trade with Northern Ireland. It is important that they should know w…

+4 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 20 March 2026 3 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, as a former member of another place who represented 2,900 square miles of Wales, I have the feeling that we are getting into a horrible conceptual muddle in this debate. I feel the phrase “horses and carts” applies to several sentences around what is being debated here. I was one of the ad…

Has the noble Lord noted that Clause 42(1) and (3) have identical wording? Both the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers “may by regulations make provision about voluntary assisted dying services in Wales”. Maybe there is a conundrum that needs to be resolved there.

+1 more contribution in this session

Lords Proceedings 4 March 2026

Security Update

My Lords, some years ago, while in China with a British university, somebody happened to mention to our hosts that I had been the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation for the UK. The following morning, the audience had increased from a desultory dozen to about 150. The point I wish to make…

Lords Debate 27 February 2026

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

I have listened to two and a quarter hours of debate on this group. I was not really intending to speak, but I am afraid I cannot resist an “I told you so” moment. I am speaking not because I was name-checked by a number of noble Lords in various parts of the House, but because I think it important …

Lords Proceedings 26 February 2026

Diego Garcia and British Indian Ocean Territory

Does the Minister agree that the imperative about what happens to the base is the national security of our country, not only for those of us in our generation but for the generations to come in the next hundred years or so? Does she agree that noises off can be distracting and misleading and, at the…

Lords Oral Questions 26 February 2026 2 contributions

Equality and Human Rights Commission

We will hear from the Cross Benches next.

The noble Lord makes a valid point. The EHRC submitted its draft code to Ministers, and we are reviewing it, as I said before, with the care that it deserves. It is crucial that providers have legally robust guidance on how to apply the Equality Act, which is why we are considering the draft code pr…

Lords Debate 6 February 2026 4 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I signed the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, and I thank him very much for introducing it. In my view, it is a very important amendment. Noble Lords who have seen a serious eating disorder at close quarters will know that it not only disturbs the person who suffers from that eating dis…

My Lords, I will raise a practical problem, which I urge the noble and learned Lord to address, in connection with care homes and nursing homes. The problem has been drawn to my attention—and, I think, that of other noble Lords—by a letter received today from the charity Mission Care, which has 300 …

+2 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 30 January 2026 5 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I want to make two points about whether these consultations should be face to face. First, I remind the Committee of the General Medical Council’s remote consultation diagram, which is in the GMC guidance. It is not absolutist about whether doctors should see patients remotely or face to f…

My Lords, I will add only a very short sentence to my noble friend’s excellent speech, and it is what AI says about AI. It says: “AI is technically capable of providing advice or information relating to suicide, but it is critically dangerous to rely on it for this purpose”. Enough said.

+3 more contributions in this session

Lords Proceedings 30 January 2026

Arrangement of Business

My Lords, will the Chief Whip protect the House from what I see as double standards? Yesterday we received the in terrorem declaration from the noble and learned Lord the sponsor that he would do something that he has no power to do: invoke the Parliament Act. At the same time, in credit to the nobl…

Lords Debate 23 January 2026 9 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords—

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Birt was, of course, perfectly entitled to refuse my attempt to intervene in his speech. I am, however, disappointed that he chose to defy the determination of this House that we should not have repeated Second Reading speeches. Every one of us here can stand up and ma…

+7 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 21 January 2026

Holocaust Memorial Bill

My Lords, I draw attention to the fact that I am, along with Mr Ed Balls, the joint chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation. I do not want to make the Minister blush, but I add my tribute to the way he has conducted the negotiations—I think we have arrived at a situation where we can see some…

Lords Debate 16 January 2026 2 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

I apologise for interrupting the Minister, who is being extremely helpful, but one point needs to be clarified as a result of what she just said. I understood the Government to say that, if an amendment is passed on Report, assistance will then be available of the same kind that was available to the…

I will intervene only once more. It seems to be fundamentally necessary that, if an amendment is passed on Report that changes something put in the Bill by the sponsor, who has had the advantage of the consultation process we have discussed at length in these proceedings, the same attention should b…

Lords Debate 9 January 2026 5 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I welcome what the noble and learned Lord has just said, which I am sure will be welcome to most Members of the Committee. Amendment 25 stands in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Hollins and my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth. As is obvious, Amendment …

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. If he just looks again at paragraph 5 of Schedule 2, it may be that there is a wholesale ambiguity. Sub-paragraph (2) says: “Decisions of a panel may be taken by a majority vote; but this is subject to sub-paragraph (3)”, which the noble Lord has read out. Do …

+3 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 8 January 2026

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I was one of the signatories to the email that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, referred to. I was very happy to do that, because although I of course support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, in his Motion, I additionally think that it is worth reflecting tonigh…

Lords Oral Questions 7 January 2026 2 contributions

Computer-generated Child Sexual Abuse Material

Under the Online Safety Act, all regulated services must implement proportionate safety measures across all spaces. Platform design cannot be used as an excuse to avoid detection and reporting obligations. The Crime and Policing Bill will further strengthen protections for children against computer-…

The simple answer to the noble Lord is yes. The Government expect Ofcom to exercise its powers under Section 121 of the Online Safety Act where needed. A consultation ran to March 2025. We expect advice to the Home Secretary by April this year, and we will act when that advice comes forward.

Lords Proceedings 17 December 2025

Jimmy Lai Conviction

Returning to the question of the judges, will the Minister be a little bolder in the light of the clear death of the rule of law in Hong Kong? The continued membership of six Commonwealth senior retired judges on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal—four Australian and two British—is used as support …

Lords Oral Questions 15 December 2025

Sydney Terrorist Attack

I can give the noble Lord a definitive yes to that. There is clear legislation for police monitoring in relation to hatred and crimes of harassment that, while not leading to the type of activity that we saw yesterday—which is self-evidently a higher level of crime—should none the less be monitored …