Lord Knight of Weymouth

14 parliamentary sessions on record in this archive

14 sessions
Lords Proceedings 5 June 2026
Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society
My Lords, I am grateful to the most reverend Primate for securing this debate and for the way she has just introduced it. Alongside the Pope’s recent encyclical, moral leadership in this issue is vital. I should declare my interest in Century-Tech, Goodnotes and the Good Future Foundation, and as a…
Lords Committee Stage 16 March 2026
Media Literacy (Communications and Digital Committee Report)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, and her committee for this remarkably informed and necessary report. I say so as a former schoolteacher and teacher of religious studies, a former ITV and BBC political journalist and now chairman of a major London university and a professor of lead…
Lords Oral Questions 26 February 2026
Public Office (Accountability) Bill: Exclusion
My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which may well end up defending people as a result of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, given that it creates a new speech offence. As we have heard, the offence is that of misleading the public. A public authority or p…
Lords Proceedings 24 February 2026
Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving
My Lords, I remind the House of my education interests, in particular as chair of STEM Learning and of the E-ACT multi-academy trust. At some of our E-ACT primary schools in Bristol, we have been investing in speech and language therapy training for all our mainstream teachers in reception and early…
Lords Debate 21 January 2026 3 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I have followed these issues closely through my work on the Online Safety Act, first as a member of the Joint Committee, then on the Opposition Front Bench and now on your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. I added my name to Amendment 91 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady …
The noble Lord and I debate with great respect and friendship. My reading of “regulations made by statutory instruments require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly effective age-assurance measure to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users” is that this is ca…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords Proceedings 22 October 2025
Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy
My Lords, while I associate myself with the comments on the IB from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I want to focus on the issue of NEETs. The White Paper seeks to address the growing problem of NEETs with pre-NEET targeted support in schools, the youth guarantee and short courses funded by the growth …
Lords Debate 10 September 2025 5 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 435 in the name of my noble friends, led by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. In doing so, I remind the House of my interests, in particular as chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust. I have thought for some time that it is important that we bring forward…
I am not suggesting that local authorities appoint the boards; I am suggesting that local authorities appoint the members who, in effect, are the shareholders to whom the boards have to report on an annual basis at the annual general meeting.
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords Statutory Instrument 22 July 2025 2 contributions
Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2025
There is a difference, but the argument the noble Lord is making is that people are seeking to get influence rather than a financial return. If you are taking 5%, you are doing so for a financial return. Why would investors not also be looking for a financial return on 15% in just the same way?
Is it not that there is a difference between 5% being held by a foreign government and 5% being held by a national wealth fund or something of that kind?
Lords Debate 23 June 2025 5 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, as this is my first substantive contribution in Committee, I declare my education interests as chair of E-ACT multi-academy trust, of STEM Learning, of Century-Tech and of COBIS. I also own half of Suklaa Ltd, which has a number of education clients. Amendment 458A in my name is an amendm…
I am interested in what the noble Baroness said—that the laptop and tablet learning devices that schools have would be sufficient for teaching media literacy. Does she suggest, therefore, that they should install social media apps on those devices, and teachers would have to create profiles and pers…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords Proceedings 10 June 2025
Free School Meals
My Lords, I very much welcome this announcement, as others have done, because, in the words of the Statement, it is not just anti poverty but pro learning. As chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust, I see the context of too many children’s lives coming through our school gates every day. I also note…
Lords Debate 4 June 2025
Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]
My Lords, I am an unaffiliated Member of this House, even though I sit on Labour’s Benches—some may say an “unbalanced” Member of this House. I refer to my registered interests. I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, am saddened that we have reached this point. The Bill will not be destroyed shoul…
Lords Debate 20 May 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, whom I respect and enjoy debating with, but does he accept that if all 80 of us who made Second Reading speeches—and I enjoyed his four minutes—speak for nine minutes, as he has done, ranging across the whole of the Bill, it will make a nonsense of the work of…
Lords Debate 19 May 2025
Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]
My Lords, it is probably redundant to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for her tenacity and determination to get to a workable solution on this, because it speaks for itself. It has been equally compelling to hear such strong arguments from all sides of the House and all Benches—inclu…
Lords Debate 1 May 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust and a trustee of the Knowledge Schools Foundation Trust. It is a great privilege to follow the excellent maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and my noble friend Lord Biggar. The education reforms that the Gover…

Parliamentary information from Hansard, licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.