Lords
Proceedings
10 June 2026
New Autism Strategy (Autism Act 2009 Committee Report)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president, along with my noble friend Lord Touhig, of the National Autistic Society, and I hold lasting power of attorney for autistic adults. I thank the excellent chair of our committee—I genuinely think we would not have got here without her.
When the ri…
Lords
Proceedings
3 June 2026
Alzheimer’s Disease: Diagnosis and Access to Experimental Drugs
My Lords, does the Minister accept that, prior to a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s, many people are diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and sometimes there is a very long gap between that diagnosis and ultimately a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s? Will she look at the way in which the new plan i…
Lords
Proceedings
2 June 2026
Breast Cancer Screening: Women Over 70
Does the Minister agree that, since it is a given fact that women over 70 can self-refer every three years, there is no need for these layers of bureaucracy and administration in the health service? There is no reason why a GP needs to refer a woman in that age group to their local breast screening …
Lords
Proceedings
17 March 2026
GP Contract
Is there any monitoring of when GPs insist on a telephone call rather than a face-to-face meeting, or when things are sent by email to the surgery and they are then triaged by others rather than their normal GP? Is there any identifying of just how many cases they miss of those very serious conditio…
Lords
Oral Questions
12 March 2026
NHS: Heart Valve Disease
I can privately share with the noble Baroness that I suspect that “older people” covers both of us: it is over 65. The point that she makes is important. The option of what is called a TAVI intervention is far less invasive than a surgical intervention, as she referred to. That activity has grown si…
Lords
Oral Questions
5 February 2026
2 contributions
Youth Unemployment
My Lords, I declare—
The noble Baroness raises an important point. This is an opportunity for us to rethink how we can ensure the appropriate support, the appropriate information and understanding of employers about the way in which autistic people can make an enormously important contribution in the workplace, and the …
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. Since coming to this House 16 years ago, I have been fortunate in the ballot for one-year inquiries—in which we are often encouraged to recommend post-legislative scrutiny—to have successfully brought forward one-year inquiries into two piece…
Lords
Debate
16 January 2026
Rare Cancers Bill
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. In so doing, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott of Whitburn Bay, on the very thoughtful way in which she has introduced this important Bill. I must remind noble Lords of my own registered interests as chairman…
Lords
Oral Questions
8 January 2026
AI Systems: Risks
My Lords, like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax. I agree with almost everything he said, bar one aspect that I think was optimistic, which is that we have a five-year window—I fear it might be even less than that. I also agree with the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, about t…
Lords
Proceedings
15 December 2025
Resident Doctors: Industrial Action
My Lords, the Minister was asked what happens next. May I ask her to consider this? Notwithstanding what has already been discussed tonight in this Chamber, the general public out there are going to face a long period with a lot of bank holidays. If we think back to the Covid period, people, for dif…
Lords
Debate
14 November 2025
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I declare that I was a vice-president of Hospiscare in Exeter. I am probably the only person in this Committee who has tried cases of capacity, again and again, both as a High Court judge and in the Court of Appeal. One case was so difficult that the Court of Appeal, where I was presiding,…
Lords
Oral Questions
23 October 2025
Autistic Children: State Schools
I feel that the whole of your Lordships’ House benefits from the commitment and knowledge of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and my noble friend on this topic. She once again makes an important point that to support children with autism, we need to first recognise that there is a range of differe…
Lords
Debate
16 October 2025
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I will talk about one specific issue in the Bill, which has been referred to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hazarika and Lady Royall, which is the limitation period for child sexual abuse claims. Child sexual abuse is abhorrent, and unfortunately it has been shown, over the past 20 or 30 ye…
Lords
Oral Questions
11 September 2025
Merck Research Site
We should not be under any illusion: the US is the major powerhouse in pharmaceutical research and development and will remain that powerhouse. Despite some of the changes, there is enormous investment going into, in particular, private sector R&D in the US. However, the noble Baroness is right …
Lords
Oral Questions
8 September 2025
Suicide Reduction
The noble Baroness is quite right to speak as she has done. The suicide prevention strategy and the seven priority groups it identifies does include autistic people. As the noble Baroness will know, I think that is particularly key and I will certainly be pleased to look out for the report to which …
Lords
Debate
22 July 2025
Universal Credit Bill
My Lords, it is a huge honour to make my maiden speech here in your Lordships’ House, and I am grateful for all the warm wishes that I have received. I want to thank those who have helped me since my introduction, first and foremost Mr Ingram and the doorkeepers, who have been unfailingly kind, alon…
Lords
Proceedings
10 July 2025
Government Resilience Action Plan
I am sorry to take the Minister back to it, but before Covid was officially declared a pandemic in this country, there were several weeks of mixed messaging emanating from the World Health Organization. In preparing for another pandemic, what assessment have the Government made of the role of the WH…
Lords
Debate
9 July 2025
2 contributions
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
Before my noble friend sits down, I fully understand why he is suggesting this and I have a lot of sympathy with it, but, for clarity, I would like to know about a detail in his discussions with the Clerk of the Parliaments. For the attorney to exercise an attorney’s power, they would have to make s…
Forgive me, but within that code of practice is a clear code of conduct for how capacity is assessed and by whom. There should be an assumption of capacity before that process starts.
Lords
Debate
2 July 2025
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
As a former member of HOLAC, I wonder if I might intervene briefly. In the term in which I served on HOLAC, we would have liked to have introduced two or three Cross-Bench Peers a year, which had normally been the case. I am afraid that we were prevented from doing so by the Prime Minister of the da…
Lords
Proceedings
2 July 2025
Welfare Reform
My Lords, I have power of attorney for two adults, close relatives, who are in receipt of PIP. As a carer and a mother, I have had to deal with the DWP for most of my life and most of theirs.
I just say to the noble Baroness that I was as critical of the Conservative Government’s methodology in ref…
Lords
Debate
2 July 2025
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
My Lords, I have been waiting for the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to contribute to this debate. He has not done so, so perhaps I might, as a member of the Burns committee, set up by the former Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler.
We brought before this House a report from the Burns committee with…
Lords
Proceedings
24 June 2025
Middle East
Does the Minister share my concern that the first port of call for the Iranians to be provided with something not immediately available in the world—scientific expertise in nuclear weaponry, to replace the nuclear scientists whom we know have been killed—was Moscow? Is the Minister confident that, a…
Lords
Proceedings
12 June 2025
2 contributions
Parliamentary Commercial Department
To follow up on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and my colleague on this lovely front door, I have good information that it is the first time that such a design has been used. Why should we be guinea pigs? We believe in precedent here for a large number of different things, but not in …
Absolutely; that would be part of what you would normally do if it was a new house—the snagging. Anything that is down to a manufacturer’s fault, such as operability, is down to those who installed the door. We are not at all responsible for any of those extra costs.
Lords
Debate
5 June 2025
2 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, in the middle of all those amendments is Amendment 185, to Clause 38, which would ensure that training and education for social care workers are clearly within the remit of the social care negotiating bodies the Bill makes provision to establish, and that they are therefore considered as p…
Perhaps I can just clarify that we were very much sighted on the fact that in education, people who are on the non-teaching staff are included in the Bill in the pay negotiating bodies. We were not clear why it should be different for social care workers.
Lords
Oral Questions
1 May 2025
NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff
My Lords, I do not know whether I had met many trans people up until maybe two years ago, but, two years ago, our son started his transition journey—at least, that is when we became aware of it. As a result, this afternoon, I speak to your Lordships first as the parent of a trans child. However, I a…