Lords
Proceedings
9 July 2026
The Space Economy (UK Engagement with Space Committee Report)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and to participate in this debate, as indeed it was a pleasure to be part of the committee under the superb chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. We are able to say that, for a sessional committee, we produced something of grea…
Lords
Proceedings
7 July 2026
Historical Forced Adoption
In 1997 and 1998, I served on the Health Select Committee, along with Ann Keen, under the chairmanship of David Hinchliffe, on the inquiry into child migration. That report led the way, not least in the sense that it promoted the responsibility of the state for what had happened. I thought that was …
Lords
Committee Stage
23 June 2026
Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I wonder if I might intervene at this stage. The Committee will recall—pretty much everybody in the Committee was present during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill’s passage—that, going back to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, I have been very supportive of strategic spatial planni…
Lords
Debate
15 June 2026
Social Housing Bill [HL]
My Lords, I support my noble friend in her amendment. I should declare this first time in Committee my interests, as recorded in the register, as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and adviser to other development forums, although all the views I will express will be entirely my own and n…
Lords
Proceedings
10 June 2026
New Towns: Laying the Foundations (Built Environment Committee Report)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. I pay credit to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for the work that they did in this committee and continue to do. It is very helpful. I share the view of my nob…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
EU-UK SPS Agreement: Food-related Standards
I declare an interest, as my wife’s company in Brussels works on the new genomic techniques that have been filed with the European Commission. The Minister might like, in the negotiations, to treat the question of alignment between our precision-breeding regulations and new genomic techniques from t…
Lords
Proceedings
28 April 2026
UK Biobank Data
My Lords, I declare an interest as a participant in UK Biobank. It is not the first time I have said that: when I was Secretary of State, I said it in the context of encouraging people to support UK Biobank. Does the Minister agree that, notwithstanding this lamentable abuse of the data, those of us…
Lords
Proceedings
28 April 2026
Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response Update
My Lords, in addition to the redactions the Minister referred to in her Statement for reasons of national security, international relations, names of junior officials, email addresses and legal privilege, are there any other reasons for redaction? There was a report in the press about some redaction…
Lords
Debate
24 April 2026
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Markham, I am one of the members of your Lordships’ Select Committee. We came to the Bill from different perspectives. As noble Lords know, I am not in favour of the principle of assisted dying. However, my view has always been that the role of your Lordships’ Hou…
Lords
Proceedings
22 April 2026
British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme
My Lords, the alleviation of the high policy costs imposed on energy-intensive and internationally competitive manufacturing in this country is to be welcomed. I will ask a question about the manufacturing sectors that will benefit from the BICS. These are the industrial strategy’s eight sectors and…
Lords
Statutory Instrument
21 April 2026
3 contributions
Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) (Revocation) Order 2026
You mean 2021. You said 2001.
I want to remind the House of a contribution I made during the passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I listened with interest to the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, but with a large degree of scepticism, because I personally experienced exactl…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
15 April 2026
2 contributions
Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I will also ask a few questions. I declare my interests as the senior steward—namely, the chairman—of the Jockey Club and as the mother of an elite athlete.
I spent last weekend at two quite different sporting events, juggling my time between the Grand National and the Home Internationals…
I can add to that. What is the process for notifying those who will come under this regulation? That would be helpful to know as well.
Lords
Debate
27 March 2026
2 contributions
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, just said. We just heard from the Minister that one of the possible implications of the Bill is that, because of Clause 41(4), the NHS Act 2006 would need to be amended in order to bring this service into the scope of what the NH…
In Amendment 189, the lead amendment in this group, my noble friend is looking for who one goes to in order to provide the necessary assistance to a person if the original conversation is not something the doctor wants to pursue. All doctors are supposed to have training, and they opt in to the trai…
Lords
Debate
24 March 2026
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I remind the House that I am chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I provide advice to the Norfolk and Suffolk, Thames Valley and greater Cheshire development forums as well. I apologise to the House in advance, as I know that I c…
Lords
Debate
3 March 2026
6 contributions
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
My Lords, I am very glad to follow my noble friend, although I fear that, after his poetry, I will be much more prosaic. I will speak to Amendment 21A, moved by my noble friend Lord Lindsay. I want to talk in particular about the implementation of the enforcement and licensing scheme in relation to …
I say a big thank you to the Minister for listening; as she rightly said, she has listened and taken on board the comments made in Committee. Amendment 78, which I tabled in Committee, is in fact in the same terms as the Minister’s Amendment 64, which she introduced earlier this afternoon. My purpos…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
27 February 2026
Arrangement of Business
My Lords, I have listened to many hours of debate, but I have only spoken to one group so far. I have other amendments in one group later, which I think are very important, but they are 30 groups ahead. I have not taken a position for or against the Bill in principle. We should do our job, which is …
Lords
Committee Stage
11 February 2026
4 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group and will speak to them in turn, but I just begin by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. His Amendment 206 and my Amendment 207 are complementary, and in a sense, ask the same question: if one is creating effective neighbourhood …
I am sure the noble Lord is absolutely right about that. The interesting thing is that, just because an area is urban, it does not mean that it does not have parishes. London, one of the biggest cities in Europe, is very often called a city of villages. That they are called parishes is normal in urb…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
9 February 2026
5 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, we turn now to a group of amendments that all relate to the exercise of delegated powers to amend future legislation—Henry VIII powers. They are powers by way of statutory instrument to amend primary legislation in the future. The relevant document—if noble Lords are interested to read it …
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, not only for her supportive comments on all these amendments but for her participation in the Committee’s scrutiny. We are grateful to the Delegated Powers Committee for the time and trouble that it takes in drawing these t…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
4 February 2026
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 131. There is an interesting pot-pourri of subjects in this group. Amendment 131 would require the appointment of a statutory chief planner for local planning authorities and strategic authorities. Noble Lords who participated in the debates on the Planning and In…
Forgive me, but I wish to speak before the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, responds to the debate. Her Amendment 127 raises an interesting question on Schedule 16. When mayoral combined authorities and combined county authorities are compulsorily acquiring land, they do not require the consent of cons…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
2 February 2026
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the opportunity to contribute on this. I fear that those of us who participated during the passage of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, such as the Minister and my noble friend Lord Moylan, will be having our Groundhog Day moment on this gro…
I am grateful to my noble friend. What I am describing and think is now legal is not the arrangement that he describes as applying to TfL as it stands. TfL cannot be made the franchising authority, because that has to be the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can procure passenger railway se…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
27 January 2026
6 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend and speak to these amendments to Clause 6. The clause relates to decision-making in combined county authorities and combined authorities and its purpose is to provide for a default structure of voting in both kinds of strategic authorities. In par…
Clause 6 provides, right at the end, that Schedule 2 makes further provision, including in relation to the spatial development strategy that strategic authorities are required to produce under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, as inserted by Section 58 of the Planning and Infrastructure…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
20 January 2026
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 8 in my name, which would have the effect of adding to the list of areas of competence in Clause 2 an additional paragraph (h), “community engagement and empowerment”. Noble Lords would not be surprised by the suggestion that this should be designated as one of th…
My Lords, while the Bill clearly allows for additional functions and powers to be given to mayoral strategic authorities, the specific question was whether the Bill has a power to enable the areas of competence list to be amended.
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
12 January 2026
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I want to say a big thank you to the Minister for her engagement following Report and for tabling this amendment by way of, as she says, what I hope is very much an agreeable compromise.
While the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee made the good point that Henry VIII powers …
Lords
Debate
5 January 2026
2 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, there are four amendments in this group, and they are all my amendments, so I hope I will not need to detain the House for a very long time. However, it is rather important, as this group relates to the scrutiny that is to be attached to the powers which are used in the continuing jurisdic…
I am grateful for that response, and in order not to delay the House, if I may, I will leave it at that point. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 34 and to return to this, if necessary, at Third Reading.
Lords
Debate
10 December 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, all through the debates on the Bill, we on these Benches have agreed with the principle of what the Government are seeking to do, but had concerns about the balance being created between the necessity to improve construction times, especially with infrastructure, and bearing in mind the ne…