Lords
Debate
13 July 2026
2 contributions
Railways Bill
My Lords, I sat through the Second Reading of this Bill. At the first debate, 30 people spoke and then a whole raft of amendments were put down by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Sharpe of Epsom, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench.
What I want to say is that the numbers towards the end of that Bill were not as big as people suggest. Look in Hansard; the numbers were less.
Lords
Proceedings
8 July 2026
Rochdale Grooming Gang: Offender Deportation
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a country that prides itself on keeping the rule of law and on the fact that nobody is above the law cannot hastily amend legislation which goes back to 1971? Such a country has to look at all the processes. Does he agree that it is time that he and the Attorne…
Lords
Debate
29 June 2026
Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill
My Lords, Amendment 2 would replace
“includes (but is not limited to)”
with the word “means” so that we knew what we were describing. The worry is that leaving it as it is could create a public interest so large that there was a mission creep that I do not think should be in the Bill, which is try…
Lords
Proceedings
17 June 2026
Thames Water
My Lords, if Thames Water was a school, it would already have been put under special measures. You would not wait. As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, the regulation by Ofwat has been woeful. Is it still involved? Is it going to wake up to the fact that under its watch Thames Water has got to where …
Lords
Proceedings
2 June 2026
Windrush Compensation Scheme
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, referred to a worrying thing, if it is true. The Windrush generation are still being referred to as immigrants, not as British citizens. Can the Minister confirm whether that is happening? If it is, we all ought to be concerned.
Lords
Debate
14 April 2026
Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill, a piece of legislation that carries with it profound responsibility, as my noble friend Lord Roe of West Wickham said.
The tragedy at Grenfell Tower in June 2017, in which 72 lives were lost, remains one of the …
Lords
Debate
25 February 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. Nobody doubts or questions that addressing anti-social behaviour is a manifesto commitment; that is taken as read. However, if it is a manifesto commitment, it must be put in words that clearly describe what the Government are trying to say. I find it quite baff…
Lords
Debate
24 February 2026
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
My Lords, I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and he persuaded me that, at the end of the day, we are dealing with a question of health, not choice. I will give an example. Colin Bennetts, Bishop of Coventry from 1998 to 2008, died in July 2013 after a period of illness due to cancer. His lu…
Lords
Proceedings
10 February 2026
Standards in Public Life
My Lords, I want again to thank the Leader of the House for the way she is conducting this conversation. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, for his penetrating questions because only by tough questions do you get the answers, and those answers of course need to be questioned still.
In…
Lords
Debate
5 February 2026
2 contributions
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I am not going to repeat the wonderful presentation by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. There is a sentiment in me which wants to go a long way with some of the things we have said. I listened quite intently to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the arguments were what I call suitable …
My Lords, I support Amendments 472 and 473. On the arguments and all the difficulties and intricacies, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, cannot be doubted, given his involvement and the things he has done. In the end, however, I am a simple person. I know that there are complications and it is difficu…
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, will you allow me to introduce another voice—a voice that is not of this House? On 18 January 2016, Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who took her own life aged 14, said on BBC television that a total ban of smartphones would be wrong. Why? Because he saw that the greatest danger i…
Lords
Proceedings
3 February 2026
Police Reform White Paper
My Lords, Robert Peel talked about policing by consent, emphasising public approval, but his key recommendation was crime prevention, and a primary goal was dealing with disorder. He saw that merely punishing crime after the fact was a failure. All the statistics we get are for the number of arrests…
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will speak on Amendments 198, 199 and 230. I will give some historical background. The word “education” is derived from two Latin root words. The first is “educare”, which means to impart knowledge. For too long, some schools have seen themselves as imparting knowledge. They have emphasi…
My Lords, I am sorry if I sound like a dinosaur, but I will. Hindsight is always a harsh, cruel science. It makes us think, “If only we did not do this”. The evidence is very clear; as the inquiry went on, the lessons to be drawn have not yet been concluded, and the nation needs to take those lesson…
Lords
Debate
27 January 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
I, too, support the shortest of all the amendments. My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe’s Amendment 438A gets to what needs to happen without a lot of description. I have always felt that brevity is the best answer to a problem, because you know what is being asked for. I want to congratulate him on put…
Lords
Debate
22 January 2026
2 contributions
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I find myself persuaded by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. This is a moment when, as legislators, we have to pause and ask where the balance really lies. For me, this is not an either/or. When legislators try to legislate, they must not pass the burden of coming to terms with dif…
My Lords, I do not come from Wales. I am speaking because I have sympathy, and I have friends there. I remember somebody asking me, “Are you evangelical or Anglo-Catholic?” I said, “Catholic, yes; Anglo, no”. Wales may sometimes feel it is singing that song.
The devolution of justice and policing t…
Lords
Debate
20 January 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I agree with the wording as it is in the Bill. The word “serious” is quite important. Stop and search, particularly in the London area, has been abused. You are supposed to stop somebody because of “reasonable” grounds to suspect, but as somebody who was stopped and searched six times, and…
Lords
Debate
19 January 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I feel a strong need to speak on Amendment 61, this wonderful amendment, on
“Amending the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”.
Especially where a child has been put under a deprivation of liberty order, if you then move them a long way away, it means that…
Lords
Debate
14 January 2026
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, anecdotal evidence often does not help, but Margaret and I adopted a brother and sister because their mother had died of cancer. The boy was eight and his sister was three. They came to live with us. After quite a considerable period of time, we consulted their family in Uganda, who were v…
My Lords, I too support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on her amendment. In the Church of England, we had trouble with giving and passing information—having ways of doing certain things. What most people have been looking for is practical outworking of these policies. As the noble Baroness said, p…
Lords
Debate
13 January 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
I happen to support these clauses, but I have the same concern as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that this has been drawn rather too narrowly and there may be areas that may have to be considered.
Secondly, the noble Lord is quite right: the clauses give this power to the police to prevent crimes be…
Lords
Proceedings
12 January 2026
Ukraine and Wider Operational Update
My Lords, may I speak like a fool? I do not have all the facts, so I am speaking like a fool. Ukraine has spent a lot of hours in all those conversations and discussions about peace, attending endless meetings, when everyone knows that Putin is not interested in any of that. By encouraging conversat…
Lords
Debate
16 December 2025
2 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
I have a right to ask questions. What is most concerning, at least for me, is not the limit or the reducing of the compensation package—that is not the question—but the use of ping-pong to produce a new clause that has never been debated in your Lordships’ House or even in the Commons. That is a con…
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this very brief debate. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is of course right—I did not quote that bit of the letter because the Minister did. The House generally does not like needless repetition, so I am following the rules.
I am very grate…
Lords
Proceedings
15 December 2025
Resident Doctors: Industrial Action
My Lords, one of the four priorities named in the Budget delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was reducing waiting lists. If this strike goes ahead, what increase would there be in the waiting lists? Secondly, the Secretary of State in his Statement said that he is putting
“money back in … …
Lords
Debate
12 December 2025
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord about why we are focused on GP practices, because they are the hub of information. Since I arrived in this country, I have had a lot of treatment for all kinds of conditions—I am one of those people—and all the national insurance I have been paying h…
Lords
Proceedings
11 December 2025
Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry
My Lords, the last paragraph of the Statement says that
“the chair and panel of an inquiry … will shine a bright light on this dark moment in our history. They will do so alongside the victims of these awful crimes, who have waited too long to see justice done. This inquiry is theirs, not ours”,
s…