Lords
Debate
27 October 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 107 in this group—I appreciate that I am jumping a little down the line.
I tabled the amendment because, at the moment, we are removing consultation from the planning process—or removing as much of it as possible—for the sake of efficiency. Sports fields are t…
Lords
Debate
24 October 2025
Secure 16 to 19 Academies Bill
My Lords, please let me thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions on this important subject matter. As we have heard, secure 16 to 19 academies are a promising and innovative conceptual approach to improving the youth justice system. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons’ 2016 review…
Lords
Debate
24 October 2025
Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, for giving the House the opportunity to debate this Bill. I regret that we did not manage to pass these measures before, due to the general election last year, but I am glad we are picking up where we left off and following the advic…
Lords
Oral Questions
23 October 2025
Autistic Children: State Schools
The noble Lord is absolutely right about that. It follows the point made by the noble Baroness about the need for a personalised approach. In fact, the approach to all children with special educational needs and disabilities must be personalised, but the point about the different ways in which autis…
Lords
Debate
22 October 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, live music events and things like that improve people’s lives and the quality of life. You are going down there. You may annoy one or two people, but most people will benefit from them. They are an important part of community involvement, and making sure that they remain is something that …
Lords
Proceedings
22 October 2025
Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy
My Lords, the Government have stated, and the Minister has repeated, the concentration on English and maths. They have also talked about special educational needs and I once again declare my interests: I am president of the British Dyslexia Association—whose event in the Commons I am missing at the …
Lords
Proceedings
22 October 2025
Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban
My Lords, can the Minister go a bit further about the Government’s activity? It is quite clear this was not a conventional situation for the local boards that were operating. Is there not some structure by which this intelligence can be brought forward to make sure that local authorities know that t…
Lords
Oral Questions
16 October 2025
Music and Dance Schools: Affordable Access
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blackwell and all noble Lords for their valuable contributions, which are clearly united in their support. Access to high-level music and dance training should be an opportunity for every individual with shining talent. The music and dancing scheme exists to en…
Lords
Debate
18 September 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I shall try to make a few remarks in summing up. Apprenticeships really feel like they should be an answer but are proving to be extremely difficult to get into operation. Employers, especially SMEs, find it difficult to give the work, but they are where you would expect to find most of th…
My Lords, my noble friend has covered what happens in school, but that is just one area of activity. If it is done properly, school is merely part of a greater continuum that goes out into the community. The school sports partnerships were going to save the breakdown in the traditional links between…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
16 September 2025
7 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will briefly speak to my amendment in this group and leave the summing up to my noble friend. I use the term “off-rolling” in this. It may be out of date and unfair, but the fact of the matter is that there has been an increase in the number of children not in school over recent years. A…
My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. When children fail, it is usually the result of a cocktail of inputs. One of those is frequently special educational needs. If you do not believe it, just look at the prison population—a gross overrepresentation of virtually every single special educationa…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
11 September 2025
5 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, we now come to one of those wonderful issues where we have something in place that works, which this Bill will remove, and that is the protection provided by Sport England for playing fields and recreational facilities. I am in danger of making a very short speech or a very long one and am…
Clearly, my noble friend has heard me often enough.
The best playing fields are in nice, urban environments where people can get to them. Effectively, you have a greenfield site, often owned by a cash-strapped local authority or an independent school that has been increasingly under pressure to imp…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
11 September 2025
UK and EU Trade: Arts and Creative Industries
I repeat that this is a high priority. A number of noble Lords asking questions today have highlighted how complex this is in terms of reducing the bureaucracy. I can only reiterate that large parts of the Civil Service are working very hard to ensure that the bureaucracy is reduced. It remains a pr…
Lords
Debate
10 September 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, very briefly, what draws me to say something here is Amendment 446. It is an interesting idea that is inspired by academies, if you like. When you have a successful maintained school and it is close, you take over and you have a nice successful model that is still in the maintained sector.…
Lords
Debate
10 September 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will attempt to sum up this very diverse group—
My Lords, second time lucky. This is a very diverse group of amendments and there are one or two that certainly caught my eye. First, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on change of use; that seems to be something the Government could quite easily make a small change on—I do not know ho…
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
9 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I rise to give a few words of support to my noble friend in sport Lord Moynihan—that is his expression, but I will use it today. Sporting activity is an incredibly important part of building most communities in our country. It brings them together and contributes to health. We have heard a…
Lords
Oral Questions
9 September 2025
Child Houses for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse
One of the important issues that came out of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 was a duty to collaborate on this issue. That duty to collaborate is now law and will incentivise and promote joint working needed to ensure that we achieve that multi-agency model of support. My colleagues in the Minist…
Lords
Oral Questions
3 September 2025
Football Governance Act 2025: Implementation
The Football Governance Act 2025 was put in place exactly to address the issues that the noble Lord identifies. As I said in my initial Answer, to make sure that we do not see any repeat of previous issues, every effort is being made to ensure that the independent football regulator is up and runnin…
Lords
Debate
2 September 2025
4 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, we are doing things in a slightly unconventional way today, but I agree that it is probably in order. These amendments come down to the use of information. I would hope that education policy follows information and knowledge. I am talking here about the groups of home educators who are doi…
My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, this is probably not an interest that I have to declare under the rules of the House, but it is relevant. I am a trustee of the Atlas Foundation, which helps a couple of groups to do with rugby, and which regards itself as benefitting children throu…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
2 September 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, this group is about gathering information, and I am struck by certain things. Are we collecting the right type of information? Are we ignoring other information?
I was particularly struck by the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, which seeks to include on the regi…
Lords
Debate
15 July 2025
Football Governance Bill [HL]
I too start by declaring my interest as a Chelsea season ticket holder, and while I will not speak too long about Chelsea’s Club World Cup success, I will note that three of the four big European and world tournaments were won by English clubs—I can even say that half of them were won by Chelsea. We…
Lords
Proceedings
7 July 2025
Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is good to have the whole thing read out; it gives you some context. As pages 4 and 6 of the Statement mention, we are talking about parents reading to children—and, before that, the Minister spoke about how good an advantage it is if yo…
Lords
Debate
3 July 2025
4 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, very briefly, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, points out that intervention in schools can be a protection. The Government’s thinking about the future of this and the future interaction would be well worth hearing.
My Lords, I will be brief. I can see why my noble friend Lord Storey added his name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young. Any child taking on responsibilities like those described in that amendment is not having a childhood. In reality, they are getting through from day to day—they …
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
3 July 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, perhaps I might just interject here. One of the things about home education is that the education of the child should come first. That education should allow them to function independently as an adult afterwards. If we do not lose sight of that, we stand a chance of some common sense emerg…
Lords
Committee Stage
1 July 2025
2 contributions
Licensing Act 2003 (UEFA Women’s European Football Championship Licensing Hours) Order 2025
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this instrument. In the coming weeks, we will be preparing to support our home nations in what will be a proud moment for Britain. The 2025 UEFA European Women’s Championship will be held in Switzerland. I am delighted that, this year, both the England …
Essentially—this goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, made—the power in the Licensing Act for the Secretary of State was never designed to be a blanket power; it was designed to cover, as has been mentioned,
“exceptional international, national, or local significance”.
The Sec…
Lords
Debate
25 June 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I declare three interests: first, as a practising planning silk with a range of clients affected by planning and infrastructure law in different ways; secondly, as chair of the advisory committee of SAV, a developer, and director of Crossman Special Projects, a land promotion company; thir…