Lord in Waiting/Government Whip — Hansard

Lords Proceedings 22 April 2026

Arrangement of Business

My Lords, as advertised in today’s list, we will start proceedings on the Pension Schemes Bill ping-pong once the Statement concludes. The Marshalled List and groupings are available in the Printed Paper Office.

Lords Debate 27 March 2026 2 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, when she is intervening, to keep it short, and people cannot intervene on people who are intervening.

Can the noble Baroness bring her remarks to an end, as she is well over the 10 minutes?

Lords Debate 26 March 2026 4 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendments relating to disqualification for being a mayor of a strategic authority. These amendments seek to prevent an individual from simultaneously being a councillor of a local authority and holding the office of the mayor of a combined county author…

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the right reverend Prelate for their amendments. As drafted, Amendment 87 would be much more burdensome for the Secretary of State and require yearly reporting via the annual report on English devolution, rather than every five years, as the nob…

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Lords Proceedings 26 March 2026

Arrangement of Business

My Lords, I remind the House of the guidance I provided on Tuesday about the conduct of debates on Report. As we enter the second day on this Bill, there are 13 groups to be considered. In providing noble Lords with guidance, I intend to help the whole House to make progress and proceed to votes. Fi…

Lords Debate 24 March 2026

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for the amendments on precepts. The precept reforms which Amendment 77 seeks to prevent will enable mayors to levy a precept across the full range of an authority’s functions, giving them greater freedom in how they resource and deliver their prioriti…

Lords Debate 24 March 2026 4 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for Amendment 6 on further devolution of powers. As your Lordships will know, one of the core aims of the Bill is to create a standardised devolution framework, with a consistent and coherent set of functions held by strategic authorities and their may…

We are basically saying that, where we can do that, we will, but where there are not the structures of a local, parish or town council, we might not be able to do that. The best way forward is therefore to have a system that is flexible and works with and engages the local community.

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Lords Proceedings 24 March 2026

Arrangement of Business

My Lords, we are about to start the first day on Report on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. There are 13 groups to be considered. I will therefore briefly remind the House of some of the key parts of the Companion , with the intention of helping us to make progress and proceed …

Lords Proceedings 16 March 2026 2 contributions

Social Cohesion Action Plan

My Lords, I remind the House that the next 20 minutes are reserved for questions from Back-Benchers only. I know the whole House would appreciate these rules being adhered to, in order to ensure that as many noble Lords as possible get a suitable opportunity to ask questions of the Minister.

We have not heard from the Lib Dems yet.

Lords Statutory Instrument 12 March 2026

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) (Extension to Maritime Activities) Order 2026

I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Russell. Can I ask him two things, from a state of ignorance? First, why is Scotland being omitted and Northern Ireland put in? Secondly, we seem to be dealing with an issue on CBAM that was not referred to in the House of Commons. It seems extraordinary that we…

Lords Committee Stage 11 March 2026

Secondary International Competitiveness and Growth Objective (FSR Committee Report)

My Lords, I start with an apology to the Committee, because I failed to declare my interests at the outset of the debate. I declare shares in listed financial services companies, as on the register and in the report. I apologise for not declaring those interests earlier. I will keep my remarks shor…

Lords Oral Questions 9 March 2026 9 contributions

Crown Estate: Wales

I thank the Minister for that reply. However, the Crown Estate has removed the cap for offshore wind leases and is running uncapped auctions that force wind farm developers to pay extremely high fees simply to access the seabed. Can the Minister confirm that the fourth offshore wind leasing round ge…

Is the Minister not aware of the reply given by a Minister in the other place to the MP for Anglesey, Llinos Medi, when the Government confirmed that they had no assessment of how many jobs would come to Wales from the new offshore wind projects in the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea? Is the Minister a…

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Lords Committee Stage 25 February 2026

Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2026

That the Grand Committee do consider the Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2026.

Lords Committee Stage 25 February 2026 3 contributions

Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2026

These regulations are made each year to uprate child benefit and the guardian’s allowance and set the national insurance contribution rates, limits and thresholds. First, the Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2026 sets the rates for both child benefit and the guardian’s allowan…

My Lords, the Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2026 sets the weekly rates from 6 April 2026. As the Committee will know, this instrument increases the weekly rates of child benefit and guardian’s allowance by 3.8%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices index between Sept…

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Lords Committee Stage 24 February 2026 5 contributions

National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill

Can we just let the Minister reply to that?

There is agreement on my side that we will go on for a little while after that.

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Lords Committee Stage 11 February 2026 4 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for their amendments relating to council meetings. First, on Amendment 218, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for raising this important issue, which she has rightly highlighted on numerous occ…

My Lords, with my other hat on, as the Whip, I just want to say that the next group is pretty long. We may not finish it by 9.15 pm so we may end up having to split the group. We may get to the single amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Banner, but I cannot guarantee that. I am in noble Lo…

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Lords Committee Stage 9 February 2026 5 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for moving Amendment 170, which would require a mayor with fire and rescue authority functions to delegate those functions to a deputy mayor for fire and rescue. Mayors are best placed to determine how to use the people and resources at their disposal to de…

The noble Lord’s point about whole-society resilience in the security review is quite right in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There are resilience plans in all local authorities for such an incident, so these things are taken into consideration and reviewed constantly.

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Lords Debate 6 February 2026 3 contributions

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

The noble Lord is not down as having been present at the beginning of the debate last week.

If it is the will of the Committee to hear the noble Lord speak, then fine.

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Lords Debate 5 February 2026

Crime and Policing Bill

We are straying away from the amendment and strolling into a bigger debate. If we can get back to the amendment, that will be fantastic.

Lords Committee Stage 4 February 2026 3 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his keen interest in and support for the Government’s intentions on mayoral development corporations. I can announce that earlier today, Minister Pennycook announced a consultation on a development corporation for Greater Cambridgeshire. I begin with…

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for Amendments 148, 149, 150 and 153. I will try to clarify the questions that she asked and, if I cannot, I am more than willing to write to her. Some of these pension aspects are very technical. These amendments relate to the important requirement that strategi…

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Lords Committee Stage 2 February 2026 4 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

I think the noble Lord was making an intervention. Interventions have to be short, and his is not.

Can I just say to the noble Lord that interventions are supposed to be short and I think he is taking advantage of the Committee?

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Lords Committee Stage 29 January 2026 5 contributions

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank all of the noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have taken part in this debate. I especially thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Bybrook and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Shipley, for their amendments on the subject of reviews. Taken together, Amend…

There is a duty to provide that kind of governance in the Bill. All I am trying to say is that there are various kinds of capacity in the 10,000 parish councils and they are not all the same. We cannot approach them in the same way. We know some of them have problems. I come from a shire county in t…

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Lords Committee Stage 28 January 2026 5 contributions

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2025

My Lords, financial services are a key driver of growth in the UK. Embracing innovation is essential to sustaining the UK’s position as a leading global financial centre. As noble Lords will be aware, crypto assets’ usage has grown rapidly in recent years, and crypto assets are increasingly intertwi…

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate on these regulations in Grand Committee. In doing so, I declare my interests, as set out in the register: as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI) Inc and the Avalanche Foundation, a layer 1 blockchain protocol; and as adviser to Simmons and…

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Lords Debate 27 January 2026

Crime and Policing Bill

Is the noble Baroness prepared to push this to a vote or withdraw? We have had the debate. There is no need to rehash the argument that we have already had.

Lords Proceedings 26 January 2026

Holocaust Memorial Day

I am sorry. I will endeavour to keep my remarks short. I did not realise that I had to put my name down. Anyway, when I was 15 years old, I came across a book, The Scourge of the Swastika , which, ironically, was written by the grandfather of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. That taught m…

Lords Committee Stage 20 January 2026

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Before we move on, I note that the last group is quite a large one. We are due to finish in half an hour, so I would hate to think that we would have to break off half way through the group. I am in the noble Baroness’s hands—where would she like to go with it?