Lord Londesborough — Hansard — Westminster Brief

Lords Oral Questions 17 December 2025

Fair Work Agency: Small and Micro Businesses

The noble Lord is right to raise that concern, and I will set out the Government’s position. As I said earlier, the agency’s approach is proportionate and risk based. It does not create new obligations, and it consolidates existing rules into a clearer and simpler system. Micro-businesses up and dow…

Lords Debate 10 December 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today. This continues the robust discussion that we have had throughout the passage of the Bill. I come first to some of the constitutional points, or those that go to the way that we do business. As I outlined in my opening speech, the trip…

Lords Oral Questions 10 December 2025

Universal Credit: Two-child Limit

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a really important point, which is that we need as a country to make sure that we prioritise the cost of living and enabling people to earn enough. It should be possible to go out to work and earn enough to support your family, but that is one reason why we think it is…

Lords Oral Questions 10 November 2025

Office for National Statistics

My Lords, Ministers are clear that we expect people to be in the office 60% of the time, at least. The new ONS leadership is working with unions to resolve this dispute. One of the issues that was highlighted in both the Lievesley and Devereux reviews was culture. It is very hard to effect cultural …

Lords Oral Questions 30 October 2025 2 contributions

Public and Private Sector Productivity Trends

My Lords, in the decade from 2010, the UK economy saw the lowest productivity growth since the Napoleonic Wars, which led to the lowest growth in living standards ever recorded. This Government also inherited a situation where public sector productivity was 7.2% below pre-pandemic levels. Reversing …

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question and suggestion. On the progress that has been made, he will know that the drivers of productivity are fundamental and deep-seated challenges that exist in our economy, that they are long-standing, and that obviously we cannot come in, click our finger…

Lords Oral Questions 22 October 2025

International Maritime Organization: Net-Zero Framework

My reaction to that sort of pressure is that we are an important member of the IMO. We need to persuade others to support us. Following last Friday’s decision, we will renew our efforts with those who also support us to persuade people who do not agree with us that this is the right thing for intern…

Lords Oral Questions 20 October 2025

GDP Per Capita

Yes, I can absolutely confirm that that remains our mission. Our growth mission is to have the fastest-growing economy in the G7. We are currently the fastest-growing economy in the G7, and the IMF recently revised up the growth forecast for this year, the second time it has done so. I think both th…

Lords Oral Questions 8 September 2025 2 contributions

Labour Market

My Lords, the labour market is resilient, with high employment and falling inactivity, but we acknowledge that there is more to be done, particularly for young people and those with health conditions. The Get Britain Working strategy is driving forward reforms and helping create a more inclusive lab…

My Lords, I do not want to trade stats with the noble Lord but, hey, why not? If he looks carefully, as I am sure he has, at the most recent set of local labour market data, he will see that employment is up to record levels, economic inactivity is down, wages continue to grow and we have a healthy …

Lords Debate 3 September 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, first, I will respond to my noble friend Lady Warwick about Universities UK’s concerns. Given the stage of the parliamentary passage that the Bill has reached and the fact that the House has agreed that Clause 36 should stand part of the Bill, the clause will not be considered further duri…

Lords Oral Questions 3 September 2025

Football Governance Act 2025: Implementation

This is exactly why we intend to get the regulator up as quickly as possible.

Lords Oral Questions 1 September 2025 2 contributions

Civil Service: Artificial Intelligence Productivity Gains

My Lords—

It was interesting to see the report from MIT last week on the use of AI across companies, which noted that 95% of companies got very little benefit and 5% got massively disproportionate benefit. One of the reasons why you get much greater benefit is training people properly and allowing there to be…

Lords Debate 23 July 2025 2 contributions

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I promise to be very brief. I support all the amendments in this group. The arguments are building for the establishment of an independent freelance commissioner, mainly because the number of freelancers is growing and will continue to do so in the face of increasingly adverse conditions …

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 167 tabled by my noble friend Lord Freyberg, to which I have added my name. It is a thoughtful, pertinent and probing amendment which—dare I suggest at this late hour—the Government should embrace with enthusiasm. I say this because we have often heard du…

Lords Oral Questions 23 July 2025

Jobs Market

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Lord says, but employment in the UK is at a record high—more than 34 million in March to May 2025. The number of jobs in the economy is at a record high; there is a record number of women in employment; and the proportion of 16 to 24 year-old NEETs has fallen in…

Lords Debate 21 July 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group but will speak specifically to Amendments 129, 131 and 145 tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, to which I have put my name. Increasing the right of trade union access, as well as lowering the membership thresh…

Lords Debate 16 July 2025 3 contributions

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I broadly support this group of amendments and, in particular, Amendment 49 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt. My noble friend Lord Vaux’s more straightforward Amendment 50 would reduce the length of the qualifying period from two years to a minimum of six months, …

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 94, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and Amendment 159, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt, both of which I have signed. I also support the amendment in this group tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, which calls for some scientific an…

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Lords Debate 14 July 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this first group, but I shall speak briefly to Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, which, as she explained, is an amendment to the Government’s Amendment 8, and Amendment 22. I want to interrogate the wording of the Government’s Amend…

Lords Oral Questions 9 July 2025

Universal Credit: Two-child Limit

The noble Lord raises a really important point. I am not aware of any evidence connecting those but, if he is, I would be interested in it. I periodically survey the global evidence. If the noble Lord has looked into this, he may know that a declining birth rate is a common problem in many developed…

Lords Oral Questions 7 July 2025

Unpaid Tax

After the measures we took in the Budget and the Spring Statement, no one could possibly say that we are not sufficiently resourcing the fight against the tax gap. As I said in my original Answer to my noble friend, the National Audit Office recognises in its report that this Government are scaling …

Lords Debate 16 June 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to two amendments in this group, 270 and 279, which are both under the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I support and have added my name to both of them. I will start with Amendment 270, which addresses Clause 91 and calls—quite reasonably, in my view—for separate a…

Lords Debate 16 June 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I address Amendment 287 on the creation of an office for a freelance commissioner in the name of my noble friends Lord Clancarty, Lord Freyberg and Lord Colville of Culross, who has managed to beat our limited motorway system but arrived just too late to speak, sadly. I am somewhat confli…

Lords Oral Questions 11 June 2025

Economic Growth

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. He did indeed show his characteristic objectivity. I will simply say that, where GDP per capita fell in the last Parliament, GDP per capita is forecast to rise by 5.6% over the course of this Parliament.

Lords Oral Questions 10 June 2025

Corporate Liquidations

The noble Lord makes an interesting observation that I do not share. First, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that NICs or business rates changes are primary reasons for any of these closures in the UK. I can give examples of businesses that are doing very well. Let us look at the hospitalit…

Lords Debate 21 May 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 102 in the name of my noble friend Lady Wolf of Dulwich and pitched so perfectly by my other noble friend Lord Aberdare—I realise that that sounds as though I only have two friends in this House, which I hope is not the case. This amendment addresses a consequ…

Lords Debate 19 May 2025

Employment Rights Bill

My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 83 to 85, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. Clause 20, on harassment by third parties, although well-intentioned, has triggered this batch of amendments, none of which is perfect. Most seek to damage limit the Bill or bring in exemption…

Lords Proceedings 14 May 2025

Mansion House Accord

My Lords, a number of pension providers have warned that progress will be dependent on “a steady supply of high-quality UK investment opportunities”. That is a big pipeline challenge, because our record of financial returns on infrastructure projects is, as we know, suboptimal. Investing in fast-g…