Lords
Committee Stage
26 November 2025
2 contributions
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to the last group of amendments in Committee. I hope that the smiles evident on the faces of Members, because we have reached this point, will encourage a positive response to this final amendment to be debated.
This amendment is rather neat in the way it fits in…
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who contributed to the debate. It is both helpful and timely at the conclusion of Committee to have exactly this debate. In a funny way, perhaps we should have had it at the beginning, because it helped to fill out some of the details of the ways in which the evi…
Lords
Debate
25 November 2025
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, noble Lords have not had the opportunity to hear from me on the Bill previously. I apologise for not having intruded on previous debates, but I have listened to many of them.
I tabled Amendments 51A, 51B and 51C in pursuance of my continuing interest, over a number of years, in the exerci…
Lords
Debate
24 November 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I support Motion E1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. In particular, I agree with her about the level of urgency and the slow progress that has been made on this, and about the de minimis rules, which need thoroughly updating to make it more possible to avoid d…
My Lords, I am grateful for the strong support that my earlier Amendment 38 gained on Report. Chalk streams are globally rare habitats of which we have 85% in England. We simply must protect them and other irreplaceable habitats, because we have lost so much of this nation’s nature already.
Lords
Oral Questions
24 November 2025
Fair Funding Review
I cannot give the noble Lord the exact answer to his question now. We have said that creating this multi-year funding settlement will help local authorities to plan for the future. We will keep in constant contact with our local government community to make sure that the changes we are making are ma…
Lords
Committee Stage
17 November 2025
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Forgive me for interrupting, but I did not quite follow. Where in the Bill is the reference to the ability to place an advertisement for a product that is authorised as a medicinal product, where it also happens to be a vaping product? I do not know where that is to be found in legislation.
Lords
Committee Stage
13 November 2025
9 contributions
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
I wanted to intervene just to say one or two words in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendment. In a sense, it challenges the Government to explain what they are trying to achieve, and if that is to regulate flavour descriptors, that is exactly what we should put into the Bill. I think the…
Can the Minister tell me exactly where in the Bill the power to regulate flavour descriptors is to be found?
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
11 November 2025
3 contributions
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
My Lords, I will speak to the four amendments in this group that are in my name—Amendments 78, 86, 88 and 89. Particularly perceptive Members of our Grand Committee will remember that, when they looked at the third Marshalled List, the Minister had signed my Amendment 89. I understood at the time th…
My Lords—ah.
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
10 November 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I have a question about the amendment that the Minister has just moved to Clause 65. She will recall from the debates on Report that there is a whole structure in Clause 63 that is designed to allow Natural England, when making an environmental delivery plan, to focus on one environmental …
Lords
Committee Stage
10 November 2025
2 contributions
Trade Act 2021 (Power to Implement International Trade Agreements) (Extension to Expiry) Regulations 2025
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in thanking the Minister for the introduction and repeat his welcome. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who led us so skilfully and bravely through some truly obtuse bits of the Trade Act in 2021, including questioning his F…
We could extend the same question to the situation with Korea, where my understanding is that the current continuity agreement is being rolled over again prior to the negotiation of a new deal. Were a new Korea deal to be negotiated, the question would be the same as the one put by the noble Lord, L…
Lords
Debate
3 November 2025
5 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, Amendment 232 relates to mayoral development corporations. Noble Lords will recall a debate in Committee about this precise point. To remind noble Lords, in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, presently in the other place, the Government have proposed that the powers ava…
I am grateful to noble Lords for contributing to this short debate, and particularly grateful to my noble friend for his kind remarks. I heartily endorse what he said about the importance of trying to resolve the relationship between the processes of local government reorganisation and the rapid pro…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
29 October 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, this group consists of amendments relating to the circumstances under which the levy for the nature restoration fund should be made mandatory. The Minister may recall that, in Committee, this was not the subject of an amendment or substantive debate but of an exchange to try to better defi…
I am grateful to the noble Lords for their contributions to this debate; it is a really important one. What the Minister said certainly added something new in terms of the operation of the viability test as a way of mitigating the risk that the mandatory levy would put developers in a disadvantageou…
Lords
Debate
29 October 2025
7 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
I am afraid that the Minister has failed to understand that the amendments I have proposed, following the debate in Committee, are directed towards only the environmental feature, and the negative effects associated with that environmental feature, which is the subject of the EDP. She is suggesting …
I have left Clause 55(1)(a) where the Government left it, which means that we are concerned only with the environmental feature which is the subject of the EDP. Her entire argument against my amendments is around the proposition that I am trying to widen it out to other things; I am not. I am simply…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
29 October 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 128 and 129 in this group, which are in my name. I suggest to noble Lords that, if they want to follow the purposes of these two amendments, it is best to have a look at Clause 55(1), since they are, in essence, about understanding how the drafting is intended t…
Lords
Debate
27 October 2025
9 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, Amendment 90 relates to the content of the spatial development strategy and seeks to insert into the Bill the requirement that the strategy should include
“an amount or distribution of development for employment, industrial, logistic or commercial purposes, the provision of which the stra…
My Lords, I apologise: I should when I first rose, as it was the first time I spoke on Report today, have drawn attention to my registered interests relating to the chairmanship of development forums in both Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. I thank noble Lords for their support for the amendment. I a…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
27 October 2025
2 contributions
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moylan for introducing this group of amendments, and I agree with his proposals relating to the mechanism by which the House looks at statutory instruments. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham about the desirability of further const…
Is the Minister aware of the retailers—some 3,000 of them—which have written to Ministers to make the point, which emerged in a number of noble Lords’ speeches, about how concerned retailers are about the emphasis upon them denying access to vapes? The use of age-gating technology would substantiall…
Lords
Debate
22 October 2025
6 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will confine my remarks to Amendment 63 in my name. Noble Lords will recall that in Committee we had quite a substantial discussion about the national scheme of delegation and the extent to which decisions should automatically be delegated to planning officers rather than going to a comm…
I beg to move.
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
22 October 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, Amendment 61 in this group is in my name. I will talk to that in a moment, but first I want to say one or two things about the helpful amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I think it points in the right direction, but we need to understand where we would end up if we were to …
Lords
Debate
20 October 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, in moving Amendment 5, I will speak to Amendments 6 and 7 in my name. They are all designed to achieve the same purpose, which I will go on to explain, but happily I do not have to explain at any length because of the admirable way in which the Minister introduced Amendment 4 and explained…
I am grateful to the Minister. I beg to move Amendment 5.
Lords
Debate
17 September 2025
3 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 306, which is in this group in my name, but I want to make a number of other points. First, I want to note that we have just agreed Clause 65. I remember that my noble friend Lord Caithness did ask a question in a previous group at an earlier time about the opport…
I am grateful to the Minister. I note that, in Clause 69, there is a provision that the regulations may require or permit Natural England to integrate the process—that is the levy process—
“to the extent and in the manner specified by the regulations, with processes undertaken for other statutory p…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
17 September 2025
3 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
On the assumption that the Minister is not going to speak to her amendments in the group at this point, I would like to speak to my Amendment 344.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was talking about Clause 58 as it is in the Bill at present, but the effect of two amendments in this group—government Am…
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 289. Before I do so, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, as he came to what I think is the nub of this group and what the question really is. In my mind, it is this: are we content with the Government’s amendment, which changes the overall im…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
15 September 2025
8 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 206A, 351ZA and 362 in this group, which also relate to mayoral development corporations. I am supportive of what the Minister is proposing in Amendment 186 and the related amendments. It is helpful to see that there is an established hierarchy between develo…
Since we have in this Bill Part 4 relating to development corporations, I fail to see why it is not the appropriate place to legislate for mayoral development corporations, rather than the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I think the evidence points to completely the opposite concl…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
11 September 2025
8 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will make just one point. While I very much agree on the necessity of accurate and supportive assessments of the needs of Gypsy and Traveller communities, alongside that, and as part of that, I hope that the needs of show people will not be forgotten. As a Member of Parliament, I had the…
I make one suggestion to the Minister, if I may. One way of achieving the objective that many of us seek for chalk streams would be to include specific reference to them in footnote 7 to the National Planning Policy Framework. That would carry through very successfully into many other decisions.
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
11 September 2025
Merck Research Site
I reiterate my point about VPAG: it ended up in an unexpected place. It was negotiated in good faith by the previous Government and the industry, and the result was not the one that anyone expected. We are negotiating to try to get that in the right place. We got very close to a deal. That is clearl…
Lords
Debate
9 September 2025
8 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Can the Minister explain? I do not understand why he has not referred to the intended provisions of new Clause 12D(10) describing the content of a spatial development strategy. The Government are proposing that:
“A spatial development strategy must be designed to secure that the use and development…
My Lords, I want to say a word or two about self-build and custom housebuilding, in support of my noble friend Lady Coffey—although I also want to ask a question about the precise terms in which her amendment is phrased.
I declare an interest, in that my nephew is seeking to build his own family ho…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
9 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
I want to add a few points to what I think has been a good and interesting debate. I remind the Committee of my registered interests as chair of development forums in Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. Much as I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, I will not follow his track. I will r…