Viscount Thurso — Hansard — Westminster Brief

Lords Debate 28 April 2026

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. I pay tribute to him. He will be much missed by this House. His work on this Bill and in many other areas has been most welcome and helpful and his demeanour and the manner in which he has co-operated with us and with Ministers ha…

Lords Statutory Instrument 21 April 2026

Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements (Amendment) Regulations 2026

My Lords, I follow the noble Viscount in agreeing that the consultation needs to be ongoing, and I will come back to that theme in a second. It is important that the Government reduce the administrative burden as well as protecting consumers, and this legislation attempts to do so. The Government sa…

Lords Debate 20 April 2026

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. As I said, I will not press Motion D1 to a Division. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Lords Oral Questions 13 April 2026

Rail Freight

It was a privilege for me to open the ninth Maritime Transport rail freight hub in Northampton about six weeks ago. I had a long discussion with John Williams, the chief executive, and we discussed precisely that. We were discussing how we should measure this, because tonnage is maybe not the best w…

Lords Debate 26 March 2026

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 6 is entirely consequential on the amendment your Lordships agreed to. I am very grateful to the Public Bill Office for its advice in helping me to correct this, and I will move it formally when the moment comes.

Lords Debate 23 March 2026 7 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I support Amendment 155 from the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and will speak briefly to my Amendment 162, which seeks to achieve exactly the same effect. Since the noble Baroness has explained it so well, I do not have to repeat the arguments in favour of it. Amendment 162 was tabled shor…

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Baroness in her amendments, to which I have added my name. As usual, she has done a splendid technical exposition of the amendments. More importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, she outlined the immense emotional damage that was done to so many people.…

+5 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 16 March 2026 4 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

My Lords, as the Minister indicated earlier, we left much of the meat for this debate around pre-1997 indexation to this group, not anticipating the events that happened outside, which I know we all regret. Knowing who was involved, who was a friend, I very much hope that the outcome is the best it …

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Lords Debate 16 March 2026

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 14, 16, 17 and 18, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Palmer. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, and I thank her for her support, which I am happy to reciprocate. As it is the first time that I have spoken on Report, I reiterate my…

Lords Committee Stage 23 February 2026 3 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend, particularly in respect of Amendment 218, to which I have added my name. I do so because I have something of an interest: for most of its existence and until quite recently, the superannuation fund of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was based i…

The noble Baroness has answered the broad point in my noble friend’s first amendment, but there is the narrow point in AEA Technology, which seems to meet exactly what she said: namely, that there is a specific gap that members have fallen through, where Ministers in this place and the other place a…

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Lords Oral Questions 9 February 2026

Public Transport: Remote Communities

The noble Viscount is certainly right to say that the railway to Wick and Thurso is a lifeline. In answer to his question, we have had a lot of cordial discussion with the Scottish Government, which is resulting in a methodology of operation proposed as a consequence of establishing Great British Ra…

Lords Committee Stage 5 February 2026

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I have one quick question to obtain reassurance, I hope, from the Minister in relation to Amendment 199 on taxation. I imagine that it is consequent on some of the problems that we had with the McCloud remedy, which required tax changes and the Treasury to intervene. The amendment uses the…

Lords Oral Questions 27 January 2026

Hospitality Businesses

There are a number of difficult choices that we are trying to make. The visitor economy is clearly a huge part of who we are and what we should be proud of in this country. The industrial strategy we have set out is around eight key sectors that have comparative advantage to us, but, again, all thos…

Lords Committee Stage 19 January 2026 4 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, we come to three groups of amendments. The next two deal with what you might do with the surplus, and I have amendments in those. This group deals with the principle of what a surplus is. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for giving us the chance to consider that.

My Lords, I rise principally to speak to my Amendment 38 in this group and to support my noble friend’s Amendment 44, to which I added my name. I am in broad sympathy with the mover of Amendment 26. I think we can all agree that we would like to deal, if possible, with inflation eroding the purchas…

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Lords Committee Stage 14 January 2026 2 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench will give our view on the generality of these amendments. I have one small question that I want to put to the noble Viscount in respect of Amendment 16. Broadly, I am in favour of clarity of investment function, and I suggest that any well…

May I ask one point of clarification from the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, when he comes to wind up at the end of this debate, again on risk? I read this amendment as being about the risk register—the list of risks faced by the organisation and how they are dealt with—rather than the level of risk …

Lords Committee Stage 12 January 2026 3 contributions

Pension Schemes Bill

My Lords, I am not entirely certain that I am wholly in favour of the concept of a clause at the beginning of a Bill that sets out its purpose in the way that the noble Viscount has set down, but I appreciate the opportunity to speak to one of the points that it makes. First, I am not sure whether …

My Lords, I will briefly give my support to the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I believe that many schemes would absolutely like to put money into social housing. The scheme of which I am a trustee, and which I mentioned earlier, has recently put 5% into social housing—it is entitled to do that, and it di…

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Lords Oral Questions 14 July 2025

Tourism Levy

I cannot give the noble Viscount assurances on something we are not actually considering doing, so I am afraid I cannot give him what he wants. As he says, different places in different countries choose to raise revenue from overnight visitors in different ways, depending on whether they are seeking…

Lords Debate 9 July 2025

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Lord, Lord Burns, having added my name to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, expressed perfectly my views, therefore I will not rehearse them again. On an earlier amendment I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who expresse…

Lords Debate 9 July 2025 3 contributions

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

My Lords, Amendment 21 is substantially the same amendment that I tabled in Committee and seeks to achieve the same purpose but with one substantive difference, which is in timing. The amendment I tabled in Committee would have come into effect during this Parliament, whereas this amendment would co…

My Lords, one of the great joys of being a chalk stream trout fisherman is to land a fly on top of the fish and watch it take with such vigour. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for having done so. I am not going to engage with him in this debate on my amendment, because it is not part of it, as …

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Lords Debate 2 July 2025

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friends on the Front Bench in Amendment 5, to which I have added my name. I say in passing to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that the theory of good chaps in government was a wonderful theory of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, whom we do not see now as much as we used to, w…

Lords Debate 2 July 2025

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend on the Front Bench and I very much echo the noble Earl’s thoughts. I have spent 30-something years, between this House’s first incarnation, the other place and this House’s second incarnation, arguing for a democratically elected upper Chamber. …