Lords
Debate
13 October 2025
2 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I oppose Amendment 165, although I will not detain the Committee with my views on it, and Amendments 173 and 203K. I will speak to the substantive amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, Amendment 166, and, naturally, to my Amendments 167 to 171 and Amendment 174.
The no…
My noble friend is making a very compelling case. Does she agree with me, in response to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the context, to be fair, is that the last Government took an outward-looking, internationalist approach and their safe routes to citizenship for Syrians, U…
Lords
Debate
18 September 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 485, 487, 488 and 489. Before I do, I warmly concur with and support Amendment 502YM in the name of my noble friend Lady Spielman, which I believe is clear, sensible and complementary to my amendments. The principle behind my amendments is simple, and it goes…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her well thought through and considered response. It ranged wider than I expected, but just for the avoidance of doubt, of course I deprecate any unreasonable or vexatious complaints against teachers from parents that might veer into anti-social behaviour of the ty…
Lords
Debate
16 September 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I oppose this amendment. Time does not permit me to properly debate and discuss Amendment 471, so I will confine my comments to Amendment 465. I thought that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, were very apposite, and I more or less wholly agree with him.
I want to specifically t…
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s commendable Amendment 466. He is right about the misuse of the concept of commercially confidential contractual relationships between the education provider and the company providing the material. We need to go back to an accountability that we had with the old-…
Lords
Debate
12 September 2025
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, when this question was last before your Lordships, I opposed any alteration to the present law, but I have changed my mind because I have come to believe that our present arrangements are discriminatory and hypocritical. These arrangements benefit one group by conferring upon them effectiv…
Lords
Debate
11 September 2025
3 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords—
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the Committee’s deliberations. I say at the outset that Amendment 184 from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and my noble friend Lord Banner is eminently sensible, and there appears to be a strong consensus in its favour. I therefor…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
8 September 2025
6 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak to Amendment 203A in my name and to contribute to the wider deliberations of the Committee. It almost feels as if this Bill is from a different era. The speed of change of government policy on immigration following the publication of the immigration Whit…
I will respond, with all due respect, to the noble Lord’s comments about minors. We should bear in mind that this amendment would apply to people who would be subject to the provision as adults, not children, when sent into the prison estate. They would be subject, for instance, to pre-sentence repo…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
4 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I contribute briefly to this debate to strongly support my noble friend on the Front Bench in her excellent amendments, both in respect of houses in multiple occupation and of hotels being converted to hostels.
I mention the specific case, in my own former constituency of Peterborough, of…
Lords
Debate
3 September 2025
4 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I support the amendments on age assessments moved by my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower.
When we ventilated these issues in 2023, when we were looking at the then Illegal Migration Bill, we had a very good debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was very voluble and passionate about t…
Before the noble and learned Baroness sits down, if I may, for the avoidance of doubt, I was not arguing that it would be merely a subjective assessment or value judgment of appearance: it would be complementary to a robust scientific method, which would be tested both in this House and by other sci…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
3 September 2025
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I emphatically support the excellent Amendment 203J, to insert a new clause after Clause 48, moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth.
It is important at this juncture to put this into some context, because there is a fast-moving debate on our involvement with the 1951 re…
Lords
Debate
23 July 2025
2 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 149A—and Amendment 149, spoken to very ably by my noble friend Lord Evans of Rainow. He is absolutely right about the qualifying percentage. Not long ago, I was thumbing through my copy of the Labour Party rules, as you do; the template rules of the L…
My Lords, I oppose the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. In doing so, I accept that he is very sincere in the arguments that he makes. I would not necessarily wish to dispute his interpretation of ILO regulations or policies, but we are nevertheless being asked to accept the centr…
Lords
Proceedings
17 July 2025
UK-France Migration: Co-operation
My Lords, I remind the Minister very gently that his Government have a duty and responsibility to the tax-paying, law-abiding citizens of this country, not just to supranational legal entities such as the European Court of Human Rights.
On the specific issues, other jurisdictions consider this to b…
Lords
Debate
14 July 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 25 in the name of my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom. I reiterate his key point that the imperative is to make it clear that the closed shop is not coming back and that the Government are committed to free but fair bargaining.
Let us remember that …
Lords
Debate
10 July 2025
10 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I echo the concerns of my noble friend Lord Harper.
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I have the pleasure of serving with her on the European Affairs Committee, she has great expertise and knowledge of these issues from her experience in the European Parliament, and she i…
I am listening very carefully to the noble Baroness. She knows that there has been cross-party support on, for instance, information-sharing in respect of the Schengen Information System’s second iteration, which we were members of in 2015, and it is incumbent upon this Government and the European U…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
9 July 2025
European Union Entry/Exit System
I thank the noble Lord for his suggestion. The juxtaposed portals work by having designated areas which are under the control of other sovereign nations. That would always require a lot of attention. The site in the Dover Western Docks was chosen after the Government took action to enable it to happ…
Lords
Debate
8 July 2025
10 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I oppose these amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was gracious in absolving me of my stupidity in jumping ahead. I misread the amendments last week, but we are now in group 2, so we can discuss mens rea.
It is quite in order for noble Lords in this House to test the efficacy and…
Will the noble Lord give way? I am listening with great care. If I can direct him back to the issue of reverse burden of proof, he will know that this is not unusual—it is not common, but it is not unprecedented. Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 states that, if someone is found with a bl…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
2 July 2025
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
My Lords, I oppose Amendments 5, 6 and 31. Noble Lords will probably realise that we are reprising the very excellent debate we had on 14 March about my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth’s Private Member’s Bill, which essentially sought to put HOLAC on a statutory footing.
This debate prompts us to…
Lords
Debate
26 June 2025
4 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. It is a pleasure to participate in your Lordships’ Committee on this very important Bill.
Noble Lords will be aware that voter salience on the issue of immigration and border control is extremely high, and it is probably the…
My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of amendments and, with the exception of the amendments in the name of my noble friends on the Front Bench, to oppose them. It is always a pleasure, of course, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who brings great expertise to our proceedings.
I listened c…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
24 June 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s excellent amendment, as we reach the end of Committee. Before I get into the substance of that, I will offer some praise. Noble Lords know that, last week, I took issue with the Government Front Bench about the potential lack of response to letters from individu…
Lords
Debate
18 June 2025
3 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I will speak very briefly on this amendment. It is quite an ingenious and intelligent amendment that is quite superficially attractive. I know the Minister will give it proper and due consideration.
My only problem is that it draws an analogy that does not really stand up to close scrutin…
Just to come back to the noble Baroness, would she therefore extend the provisions of her amendment to all protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010?
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
18 June 2025
9 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I wish to speak on the issue of the labour market enforcement strategy in support of Amendment 274 to which I have appended my name and to build on the excellent remarks of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and the specific points raised by my noble friend Lady Lawlor. For transparency, …
I will speak to the significant number of amendments in this group in my name. This is quite an interesting cornucopia of amendments, a number of which are, in essence, probing amendments. The very nature of the work we are undertaking is to look at the minutiae of the Bill and to see it through the…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
16 June 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I support the amendment so eloquently moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. There is not much more to add, but I will try. I also put my name to the amendment.
I thought we had gone past the stage where we look back at history and do not learn its lessons on protecting the franchi…
Lords
Debate
12 June 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will speak briefly to the excellent and compelling amendments in this group. In particular, I support Amendments 96 and 107A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, will remember that I spoke at Second Reading of her commendable Private Member’s …
Lords
Debate
10 June 2025
3 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I have tabled a number of probing amendments to Clause 61. As I alluded to earlier, I take the view that the amendments are not unhelpful but should be seen through the prism of fairness, balance, proportionality and reasonableness. There is the possibility that, as drafted, it could plaus…
My Lords, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
10 June 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I shall primarily speak to the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Cash in respect of political funds, but I will say in passing that I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the excellent speeches of my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lady Finn not just erudi…
Lords
Debate
9 June 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and its consequent Amendment 505. I believe it is an egregious interference in family life by the state and an intrusion. It is an attack on family rights and it will encourage a childish disrespect…
I warmly welcome the Minister’s remarks, because at the heart of this debate there seems to be a mischaracterisation and misunderstanding of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 and a conflation of mild admonition with assault by beating, which obviously should be subject to the full force of the law…