Lords
Committee Stage
1 July 2026
Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today and the previous day. These amendments all relate to the secondary competitive and growth objective. I think that we share the same desire to have an effective secondary competitive and growth objective, which my lead amendment, in particular, …
Lords
Committee Stage
22 June 2026
Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]
My Lords, as this is my first contribution in Committee, I declare my interests as recorded in the register, in particular that I hold listed shares in financial services companies and technology companies that may be affected by the Bill or amendments tabled to it.
I am going to use the opportunit…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, I will focus my brief time on antisemitism. Only around 0.5% of the UK’s population are Jewish. To our very great shame, they are probably the least safe group in our society. Jewish schools and children have to be guarded. Only last week, a group of Jewish children was seen on the London …
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, I will focus my brief time on antisemitism. Only around 0.5% of the UK’s population are Jewish. To our very great shame, they are probably the least safe group in our society. Jewish schools and children have to be guarded. Only last week, a group of Jewish children was seen on the London …
Lords
Debate
22 April 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I will briefly add my support to Motion A1 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, to remove the mandation reserved power. On Monday, the Minister told us:
“On the question on fiduciary duty, nothing in the Bill disapplies trustees’ existing duties of loyalty, prudence and acting in members…
Lords
Debate
20 April 2026
3 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
I beg to move Motion G.
Motion G1 (as an amendment to Motion G)
At end insert “and do propose the following amendment in lieu—
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
23 March 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, and I congratulate her on pursuing this important topic. I will make just three brief points in support of the review that my noble friend’s amendment calls for.
First, we need greater transparency about the curr…
Lords
Debate
20 March 2026
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I want to make a few points following the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. First, she referred to MND and the problem with some people who appear to live quite a lot longer than expected. The real problem with MND is that these patients almost certainly will not qualify to b…
Lords
Debate
19 March 2026
6 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, Amendment 55 is in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I will also speak to Amendments 60 and 94 in this group.
This group of amendments concerns the so-called scale requirement in Clause 40. In practice, t…
I am going to disappoint the Minister. There is just a fundamental disagreement: the Government think that size is the most important thing and most of the rest of us think that the judgment on which schemes should be allowed to survive the initial cull that consolidation will require should be much…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
16 March 2026
2 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I have Amendment 4 in this group. This concerns mandation, which we will debate more extensively later this week in connection with defined contribution schemes. Amendment 4 seeks to ensure that mandation cannot apply to the LGPS. This amendment should be easy for the Government to accept.…
My Lords, I beg to move.
Lords
Committee Stage
11 March 2026
3 contributions
Secondary International Competitiveness and Growth Objective (FSR Committee Report)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this debate on the Financial Services Regulation Committee’s report on the secondary competitiveness and growth objectives. These were set for the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority by the Financial Services and Markets Act 202…
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on an excellent opening to the debate. I am aware that she has recently taken over the chairing of the committee and will no doubt bring to that role her hard-earned reputation for penetrating insight, intellectual rigour and—above all, for a…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
3 February 2026
8 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, in moving Amendment 168, I shall speak also to Amendments 169 to 171 in my name; I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for adding her name to three of those four amendments.
Last week, I promised the Minister that we would return to the issues of new entrants, competition and innovat…
Can the Minister explain why that timescale has not been put in the Bill? I cannot think of another review that has been written into law without a relevant timeframe being attached to it.
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
26 January 2026
6 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 91 and 95. I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for adding her name to them. Having had a little detour into asset mandation in the last group, we now return to scale. My Amendments 91 and 95 relate to master trusts and group personal pension plans, resp…
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this debate, which has demonstrated that there is unanimity on this side of the Committee on scale not being the most important thing—in direct contrast to the Government’s dogged attachment to scale.
We will probably return to innovation next week…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
22 January 2026
6 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, my Amendment 88 proposes to limit the power in Clause 34 to increase the size of the pot classified as small so that it is limited to £10,000. I welcome the fact that the power to make regulations under Clause 34 has to be consulted on and that they will be subject to the affirmative proce…
My Lords, Amendments 134, 137 and 138 in this group are in my name. I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for adding her name to Amendment 137; unfortunately, she needs to be in the Chamber imminently so was unable to stay in the Committee.
I support the other amendments in this group. I am ve…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
19 January 2026
4 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I will say a little more in our debate on the next group about how surpluses should be used, but we must recognise that employers in defined benefit schemes underwrite defined benefit scheme finances; they are the ones who have been putting in very large sums of money to keep these schemes…
My Lords, I understand the motivation behind the amendments in this group, which call, in one way or another, for inflation protection, in particular for pre-1997 pensions that do not benefit from indexation to have a first call on pension scheme surpluses. I do not, however, support these amendment…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
14 January 2026
4 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I apologise for speaking after the Liberal Democrats—the noble Lord got up rather quickly.
I endorse everything that both speakers have said about understanding more about the use of this power. I want to go back to the Explanatory Notes. They say that Clause 6 amends Schedule 3, et cetera,
“to clarify that, in the case of the LGPS, the responsible authority’s powers also include the pow…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
12 January 2026
2 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
I listened carefully to the Minister’s response, but I am not sure that he answered the question about why the Government need to take power to specify the sources of advice that scheme managers must take and whether that would result in a closed list of scheme advisers that had to be used in any ev…
It has nothing to do with conflicts of interest; it is about whether the Government can specify a limited number of sources of advice that can be given to scheme managers, what the purpose of that is and whether that does not in fact work against achieving the best returns for members over time.
Lords
Debate
5 January 2026
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I was tempted to come and do another forensic analysis of the financial aspects of the treaty, but I will restrain myself and just speak briefly in support of all of the amendments in this group.
As we heard from my noble friend Lord Callanan, the Government like to talk about an average …
Lords
Debate
18 December 2025
Pension Schemes Bill
It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes; I still worry on those occasions when I find myself agreeing with what she says. No doubt we will have interesting debates in Committee.
It is a real pleasure to take part in this debate, which is a perfect start to the festive seas…
Lords
Debate
14 November 2025
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I declare my interests as trustee of a children’s hospice. I also talk as a retired doctor with experience of looking after terminally ill adults and children. However, I also talk as somebody who is pretty familiar with conflict and polarisation, having been attacked and undermined on soc…
Lords
Proceedings
13 November 2025
Economic and Taxation Policies: Jobs, Growth and Prosperity
My Lords, this debate got off to a fine start with an excellent speech from my noble friend. It is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Noakes, and I agree with what she said about the complexity of the tax system.
There has been a consensus that we should stick to the fiscal rules. One…
Lords
Debate
4 November 2025
2 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I first mentioned the Chagos Islands back in 2008 in the other place, when we had set up an all-party group on Chagos. I have to say that over the years, when I was at those meetings in the other place, I never once heard a Chagossian say that they were asking to be put under Mauritian rul…
I apologise to the noble Baroness for missing her speech, and I will read it in Hansard ; the bladder is only so strong. What matters here is that there is consistency across government and over time in the way that we do these things. These things are done the same as they would be done for any oth…
Lords
Debate
12 September 2025
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I have been asked by my long-standing friend and TUC colleague, my noble friend Lord Monks, of Blackley, to contribute to this debate. My noble friend Lord Monks is unable to be present today due to family reasons, and what follow are his remarks, which I am pleased to bring to your Lordsh…
Lords
Debate
3 September 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I think we have spent 13 days in this Chamber scrutinising this critical Bill. I salute the Ministers and Front Benches for their stamina and perseverance. The Bill has tested the patience of noble Lords on all sides of this House, so I will not test their patience further by going over th…
Lords
Debate
16 July 2025
2 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, Amendment 94 seeks to give the Secretary of State power to introduce exemptions from Part 1 of this Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, for adding his name to the amendment. In Committee and on Report, noble Lords have warned about the impact that this Bill could have on busi…
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, which has covered quite a lot of ground. I cannot pretend to be anything but disappointed in the Minister’s response. In fact, the first chunk of his response seemed to be some kind of lesson in the socialist view of life and had …