Lords
Proceedings
22 June 2026
HS2 Ltd: Consultants
My Lords, first, I express my condolences to the family of the train driver who died in the accident last Friday, and, of course, to the relatives of those who were injured. I am not going to say any more, because that is for another day.
I am grateful to my noble friend for his Answer, but my figu…
Lords
Proceedings
8 June 2026
South East Water: Disruption of Supply
My Lords, will my noble friend resist the temptation to build more desalination plants in areas of this country that are pretty wet already? In Cornwall, South West Water is trying to build a desal plant when it could perfectly well look at more reservoirs, rather than wasting power—which is in shor…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, I would like to take the debate back to transport: I suppose that is no great surprise. I certainly welcome the introductory speech from my noble friend the Minister, who listed all the different Bills that we are going to be discussing in this current Session. Northern Powerhouse Rail is …
Lords
Oral Questions
28 April 2026
Rail Safety Recommendations: Backlog
My noble friend touches on a subject very dear to my heart. I find it quite extraordinary how we are prepared somehow to tolerate the excessive numbers of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. He makes an interesting proposition and I will endeavour to look into it on his behalf.
Lords
Oral Questions
22 April 2026
Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: Rural Communities
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, on a fine maiden speech, and I recognise his work in the field of AI. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for bringing this debate, and I thank her and others for their contributions.
I have listened to the concerns—th…
Lords
Oral Questions
20 April 2026
Trains: Punctuality
Of course, the irony of my noble friend’s journey to Fowey last week is that it was the private sector train company that failed to supply the sandwiches to him. It is a serious point and his complaint has been well aired, because he wrote to me, he wrote to the managing director of the train compan…
Lords
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
Rail Freight
The Railways Bill is framed to give Great British Railways the authority, for the first time in over 30 years, to control access to the railway and make sure that it is fairly distributed and serves the nation’s economic and social purposes. That is in Clause 60. Clause 63 talks about GBR operating …
Lords
Debate
26 March 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I rise briefly to talk about the south-west, following the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and about how well the greater south-west grouping is working. To give noble Lords an example, they have come together and commissioned a successful system of getting wifi continuou…
My Lords, I join my noble friend in congratulating the Government on this pavement parking issue.
I will speak in a bit more detail to Amendment 100 and focus on insurance, which the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has been speaking about. She was talking about things that she does not …
Lords
Oral Questions
19 March 2026
2 contributions
Rail Infrastructure Resilience: Storms and Floods
My Lords, my department’s climate adaptation strategy for transport embraces detailed work on the railway infrastructure by Network Rail. That organisation has produced weather resilience and climate change adaptation plans by railway region, looking out not only over the five-year control period to…
As an engineer, my noble friend will know that Brunel built the railway around the south Devon coast in 1846 and that it has been under attack by the tides and weather ever since. The most serious closure was of nearly 60 days in 2014, and that was remedied by a large-scale investment project that s…
Lords
Debate
10 February 2026
2 contributions
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, this is a very interesting amendment, because a revenue certainty contract, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, is wonderful for the suppliers. It presumably links in not just the price but the volumes—which may change from year to year —and the sources. The noble Lord opposite mentioned…
My Lords, I support this amendment, which we discussed at some length in Committee. The amendments then, which other noble Lords supported, covered the relationship between the sustainable aviation fuel used for aeroplanes and the same fuel used for home heating. I declare an interest as having a bo…
Lords
Oral Questions
9 February 2026
2 contributions
Public Transport: Remote Communities
My noble friend asked this Question in relation to the Isles of Scilly. At present, there are no plans to introduce a new subsidy, regulatory framework or funding model for the islands’ transport services. Support is therefore a matter for local discretionary schemes, which the Isles of Scilly counc…
My noble friend will recognise the 28 miles of sea between the mainland and the Isles of Scilly and that the road network on the Isles of Scilly is all of 14 miles. So it is hard to see that comparable bus fares and bus practices are applicable. But, recognising the particular challenges with transp…
Lords
Proceedings
5 February 2026
US Department of Justice Release of Files
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for her full explanation of what has been going on. I want to raise again the Cabinet Secretary’s role. About five years ago, I had reason to complain to the Cabinet Secretary about what I thought was a Minister in the Commons misleading Parliament, so…
Lords
Oral Questions
5 February 2026
Construction Industry: Timber
We need to move forward by looking at how we can further support the use of timber in housebuilding and how we can support housebuilders in that process. We have already undertaken action, including through the modern methods of construction sector. We have reformed the planning system, and tried to…
Lords
Debate
20 January 2026
Crown Estate (Wales) Bill [HL]
My Lords, while the Government’s position on this matter has been made clear during earlier stages of both this Bill and the recent Crown Estate Act, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on his Bill. As this House has heard previously, the Government do not support the devolution of the Crown…
Lords
Oral Questions
20 January 2026
Railways: East Coast Main Line
It is very interesting that the east coast main line has three open-access operators. There are lessons to be learned from the experience that we have had. Clearly, they have brought an incredible amount. Some 20% of services on the east coast main line have open-access operators. We need to look an…
Lords
Oral Questions
8 January 2026
Buses: Safety and Security
I refer my noble friend to the Road Safety Strategy that has just been published—the first for many years—which sets out a whole variety of actions to be taken with vehicles, drivers, pedestrians, other road users and infrastructure, which he refers to, in order to reduce deaths and serious injuries…
Lords
Debate
15 December 2025
3 contributions
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I was very interested in the list of different types of wheeled movement produced by the noble Baroness, Lady Mcintosh of Pickering. It is easy to go into great detail—she mentioned monocycles. You could have further definitions depending on the diameter of the wheel, the pressure in the t…
The noble Lord did not mention cars running over pedestrians and killing them—does that not matter?
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
15 December 2025
Crime and Policing Bill
I am sorry that I could not be here at the beginning of this group. My noble friend has given a very encouraging response to the many amendments—
Lords
Oral Questions
11 December 2025
2 contributions
United States: Intelligence Sharing
There are long-standing intelligence and law enforcement frameworks between the UK and its Five Eyes partners: the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Those frameworks continue. It is the long-standing policy of successive Governments to not comment on the detail of intelligence matters, but for …
With regard to the strikes that have recently taken place, the United Kingdom was not involved. We are committed to fighting the scourge of drugs and organised crime with our partners in Latin America in accordance with legal obligations. I repeat that the UK was not involved.
Lords
Debate
10 December 2025
2 contributions
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, I will speak mainly to my noble friend the Minister’s Amendment 20. This is perhaps an odd order in which to speak on these things, but it does enable my noble friend to respond to me after I have spoken rather than before; I am sure that he would welcome that.
I want to talk about the re…
My Lords, following up on the question from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about the £1.50, I may be missing something, but if that is a cost to UK airlines for passengers leaving or arriving at UK airports, do we add that to a similar cost which might be applied by France, Germany or Timbuktu? They m…
Lords
Debate
20 November 2025
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, I welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. I was absolutely delighted to hear him remind the House that there is no spare planet. Quite honestly, the rate at which we humans are trashing our planet suggests that we actually do think we can go to Mars, or something spectacu…
Lords
Debate
5 November 2025
2 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, before the noble Lord finally winds up, I have two points to make. One is in respect of the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, about Written Answers. We have all had many of them, and they have sometimes been useful and sometimes been awful. This is a problem of not just this Gove…
My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment. He has, obviously from personal experience, a great fount of knowledge of the difficulties that people are facing, coming from different parts of the world to this country, or trying to. He has studied over the years the different ways of try…
Lords
Oral Questions
30 October 2025
Heathrow Airport: Third Runway
My noble friend is right that the carbon footprint of building a third runway and operating the airport is significant. The Government have made it clear that any proposed scheme must meet four clear tests, of which aligning with our legal obligations on climate change, including net zero, is one. H…
Lords
Oral Questions
23 October 2025
Chinese Embassy
I really am going to sound like a stuck record this morning, I am afraid. I am very aware of the proximity of the Tower of London to the proposed site for the Chinese Embassy. The documents that were considered in the original planning application by Tower Hamlets Council are all on the Tower Hamlet…