Lords
Proceedings
9 July 2026
Foreign Interference in UK Politics
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Rycroft report. The Statement says:
“We will also strengthen our response to the wider influencing environment”.
Recommendation 16 specifically talks about think tanks. The other night, in a committee room upstairs, I li…
Lords
Proceedings
7 July 2026
Historical Forced Adoption
My Lords, I declare a painful personal interest. My mother was working as a volunteer for the Church of England Moral Welfare in the 1950s and I did not fully understand what it was about. I now look back at that inhibited and illiberal period in our society, and this is part of what was so inhibite…
Lords
Proceedings
2 July 2026
Political Party Finance and the Electoral Commission
My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Maude, with whom I worked in the coalition many years ago, I am thinking of the 2022 Act, through which the Conservative Government were certainly trying to advantage themselves and disadvantage their competitors. That is one of the reasons why we have thi…
Lords
Proceedings
25 June 2026
Democratic Institutions: Threats
My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful for how cool the Chamber is today. I want to talk about the interconnection between domestic and foreign threats to British democracy.
Philip Rycroft, in his report this spring, warned that
“there is a long-term and worrying loss of trust in our democratic s…
Lords
Proceedings
23 June 2026
Social Media: Use of X by Government Departments
My Lords, on Thursday, this House will be discussing threats to democracy. We are close to the point now where one has to see X—and Elon Musk—as something of a threat to British democracy, deliberately putting out misinformation, using algorithms to promote the most anti-democratic candidate in the …
Lords
Proceedings
22 June 2026
HS2 Ltd: Consultants
My Lords, as someone who has spent most of my life living in the north of England, I strongly agree with the Minister that we need very considerably to improve the capacity of railway lines to the whole of the north of England, north-west Yorkshire and the north-east. That clearly justifies completi…
Lords
Proceedings
17 June 2026
Foreign Interference in UK Democratic Processes
My Lords, the report that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to was by a French government agency about the apparent operations of an Israeli company in exerting influence over campaigns in France, Britain and a number of African countries. The report mentions co-operation between the French govern…
Lords
Proceedings
15 June 2026
Immigration: Eurodac and SIS II
Will the Minister confirm that it has always been very strongly in the interests of the British police and other authorities to promote closer co-operation with our neighbours? I remember when I was a very junior Minister being told in Yorkshire that there was no organised crime in Britain which was…
Lords
Proceedings
8 June 2026
UK Defence Capability
My Lords, the SDR made it clear that the Russian threat is now not simply a threat from abroad in eastern Europe and the North Sea but is also a homeland threat. It suggested a number of measures for mobilising our domestic population and improving homeland defence and public awareness of it. Is tha…
Lords
Proceedings
3 June 2026
Cabinet Manual: Guidelines for Government Formation
My Lords, I welcome this announcement and thank the Minister for alerting me to the Statement yesterday. The coalition Government produced the Cabinet Manual as a guide for future Governments to the conventions of our unwritten constitution. It was intended that successive Governments should update …
Lords
Proceedings
1 June 2026
Donations to Political Parties
My Lords, how are the Government going to get at the increasingly shadowy area of what the Minister has just called political life, where donations are not specifically to political parties but are being used to support particular causes? It is widely reported, for example, that Elon Musk is using T…
Lords
Proceedings
21 May 2026
Higher Earners: Emigration
My Lords, does the Minister remember the argument, at the time of the Brexit referendum, that the divide in Britain was between the intellectual elite, who were people from anywhere, and the real people of Britain, who were people from somewhere? Are we not hearing an argument that it is the rich wh…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
Disadvantaged Pupils: Music Attainment Gap
The Minister mentioned music hubs. The key thing in getting an opportunity for disadvantaged students from schools that do not have good musical education is to put them in touch with music hubs. I declare an interest as I used to be chair of the VOCES8 Foundation. What shocked us when we started ta…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
Local Government Pension Scheme
My Lords, this is about local government pension funds and we are discussing guidance; the Minister has just talked about an instruction. Does she recognise that the autonomy of local government ought to be an important principle that we all hold to and that we need to be very careful about how much…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, like others, I note that the King’s Speech did not mention constitutional or political reform. The Representation of the People Bill addresses many of the external threats to our constitutional democracy but does nothing to address the domestic threats, both from the depth of public disill…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, like others, I note that the King’s Speech did not mention constitutional or political reform. The Representation of the People Bill addresses many of the external threats to our constitutional democracy but does nothing to address the domestic threats, both from the depth of public disill…
Lords
Oral Questions
22 April 2026
World Economic Outlook: UK Growth and Inflation
Clearly, we need a welfare system that works. No one believes that the system that we inherited is working. It abandoned too many people to a life on benefits, wrote off too many people as too sick to work and condemned too many children to be too poor to eat. That is why we are reforming the welfar…
Lords
Oral Questions
20 April 2026
Business Improvement District Ballots: Digital Voting
We absolutely understand the interest in online voting but, when it comes to electing representatives, the integrity and security of the process must come first. At present, serious concerns are shared internationally about the risks of online voting, including cyber threats, fraud and the challenge…
Lords
Oral Questions
20 April 2026
Civil Preparedness for War
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for securing this debate. Like other speakers, I will not just talk about civil preparedness for war but acknowledge that we are in the age of shocks, and that we face not just geopolitical and terrorism threats but threats from climate,…
Lords
Proceedings
16 April 2026
Strategic Defence Review: Funding
My Lords, I say simply from the Liberal Democrat Benches that I cannot think how many times I have spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in the last few months. We are fully engaged with this debate, as the Minister knows well. We are anxious that the defence review should be implemented. We reg…
Lords
Debate
14 April 2026
Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It has gone rather wide of the subject in many ways, but that has not been unhelpful.
We are fortunate in that we have a number of very experienced Ministers in this House. A number of us had ministerial lives before coming t…
Lords
Debate
14 April 2026
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, the Minister says that this is a vital base for Britain as well as for the United States. Just how vital is it for Britain? Nearly 20 years ago, I did some work and published a paper on the special relationship and US and UK bases. I recall that the number of British military personnel in …
Lords
Debate
13 April 2026
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I looked last night at Labour’s 2024 manifesto and would like to quote, extremely briefly, a few phrases from it. It said:
“Labour is committed to strengthening our democracy”.
It attacked the Conservatives for failing to encourage
“full participation in our democracy”
and said that La…
Lords
Debate
26 March 2026
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I rise to talk to Amendment 181, which is grouped with this. Britain has an unwritten constitution, which gives us flexibility but also lacks constraint on changing Prime Ministers or Governments beyond trust in their behaving like good chaps. As we have discovered in recent years, not all…
Before the noble Baroness sits down, can she clarify one point? We are heading towards a model of English governance in which there will be roughly 35 elected mayors. Do the Government envisage that the Council of the Nations and Regions will then have the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, …
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