Lords
Oral Questions
18 September 2025
Road Pricing
The noble Baroness asks a hypothetical question that I have already dealt with. The Government have no plans to introduce road pricing. She mentions low-traffic neighbourhoods. We want to support local authorities to deliver streets that work for all road users and enable integrated journeys. Decisi…
Lords
Debate
17 September 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I am honoured to speak, in the last group, to my Amendments 361A and 361B, on encouraging SME builders, and to Amendments 363 and 364, on mechanisms for encouraging the speedy rollout of planning reform. Amendment 275A, which I was unable to speak to this morning, belongs in a family with …
My Lords, I thank those who have spoken from the Front Benches, and I thank the Minister for some of her reassurance. I will look carefully at Hansard . I do not think we are quite there on Natural England. There is the choice of the existing system, which has its problems, or the new system, which …
Lords
Committee Stage
17 September 2025
Financial Services (Overseas Recognition Regime Designations) Regulations 2025
My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Baronesses for their detailed comments and scrutiny, as well as for their support for this secondary legislation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked a number of questions, which I will seek to address. First, she initially expressed her surprise that the Tr…
Lords
Oral Questions
17 September 2025
Making Tax Digital
It may surprise the noble Baroness to hear that I absolutely agree. As part of our regulation action plan, we committed to reducing the regulatory burden on businesses by 25%. We must have a benchmark from which we reduce that burden. We are engaged in doing that, and, as I said, I completely agree …
Lords
Oral Questions
16 September 2025
Economic Growth
The answer to the first of the noble Baroness’s questions is no. As for the second question, she says she is interested in growth but let us look at just one measure that we are taking. Our planning reforms have the largest impact on growth of any non-fiscal measure the OBR has ever scored. Yet her …
Lords
Debate
15 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I support the general thrust of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Roborough.
The focus of Natural England is bureaucratic and precautionary, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Caithness. We need to find a way around the freezing of housing developments by Natural Engla…
Lords
Oral Questions
15 September 2025
Plastic Pollution
I thank the noble Baroness for her support and for continuing to press for this. As she said, it is the thing that will make the biggest difference. As she is aware, the session was adjourned. It was agreed that it would reconvene, but the place and time are yet to be confirmed.
Lords
Debate
11 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, as I have said on several occasions, we need to cut down on the bureaucracy of planning and the excessive application of policy on habitats. Even the Prime Minister has criticised the HS2 £100 million bat tunnel.
In my experience, we have an over-precautionary approach in planning, so I a…
Lords
Oral Questions
11 September 2025
Merck Research Site
The shortage of medicines is always a problem. We cannot have a situation where essential medicines are not available. That speaks to better understanding of supply chain resilience. The noble Baroness will be aware that supply chain resilience came to the fore very much over the past few years, whe…
Lords
Oral Questions
9 September 2025
Pension Funds: Use of UK-listed Investment Companies
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and her broad support for the Government’s agenda. This is an area where, aside from the specific issue that she raises in her question, we are in agreement that we want to see greater investment in UK infrastructure in this way. I do not agree wi…
Lords
Debate
4 September 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I agree that enforcement of legislation is almost as important as legislation itself.
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in her quest for lower fees for SMEs, even if that means that other fees must be a trifle hi…
Lords
Committee Stage
3 September 2025
3 contributions
Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (Capital Buffers and Macro-prudential Measures) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025
I thank the noble Baronesses for their questions and remarks on what are really technical issues. There is no real policy change, but the issues are none the less important. As the noble Baronesses said, one of the key issues is that we want to ensure that the economy grows. As far as our financial …
I do not know exactly where we are with working our way through the EU regulations et cetera and decoupling where we think it is necessary to decouple. I am sure that we can write in some respects. I am sure that we will be doing it diligently in the best interests of the UK and our international st…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
2 September 2025
2 contributions
Gilt Yields
My Lords, as is long-standing convention, the Government do not comment on specific financial market movements. Gilt yields are determined by a wide range of international and domestic factors. The Government are committed to economic stability and sound public finances. The fiscal rules are non-neg…
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. As she will know, recent gilt yield movements have risen in line with global peers, mainly driven by global factors. The recent gilt market moves have also been orderly. As she knows, our commitment to the fiscal rules is non-negotiable and we ha…
Lords
Debate
1 September 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I simply want to agree with Amendment 89 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger. I prefer it to the amendments from my noble friends Lord Fuller, Lord Forsyth and Lady Coffey, although they all have merit. We have heard from my noble friend Lady Coffey that we may already h…
Can the Minister not deal with the problem of patches of best-quality land on a site with a classic de minimis rule of, say, 5%? That would still allow us to protect the best land without needless delay and Defra—or the new framework that the Minister mentioned—could easily provide the data for that…
Lords
Debate
1 September 2025
3 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, connections reform is very important if we are to give the grid capacity. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, is right in wanting to speed things up and to ensure that these connections are not too costly. That matters whether you want more renewable energy in the mix or would prefer—as I would—…
My Lords, to pick up the point of the noble Lord, I remember my uncle getting pylons next to his house and how the compensation saved the day for his small business.
My own view is that it is good to have permitted development rights for minor changes, particularly if energy providers are calling f…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
23 July 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. He has spoken with great eloquence and killer arguments. I agree with him, so none of us needs to speak for very long.
As he has said, this clause was added late in the day in the other place and there …
Lords
Proceedings
23 July 2025
Financial Services Reform
My Lords, the proposed changes outlined by the Government in what they are calling their Leeds reforms are broadly to be welcomed. It is essential to get the balance right between protection and risk. Like the Government, we accept the analysis that while financial prudence is important, we have mov…
Lords
Debate
17 July 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Before the Minister sits down, can I press her on the issue of delays? Saying that the whole package is going to be better and improve things, and therefore growth will come—which we all want—is an ambitious statement, but has any work been done on what the changes will be and what differences they …
My Lords, as it is Committee stage, I have some simple questions about pre-application with a view to trying to move this important conversation forward. First, are the pre-application arrangements different if a use is already in the local plan? On the coal mine example and water extraction, those …
Lords
Debate
17 July 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I thank her for explaining the basis of her approach so clearly. I was not able to speak at Second Reading but I have an interest in planning, going back to the 1980s, both in government and in business, and o…
Lords
Oral Questions
17 July 2025
Tackling Unsustainable Debt
The noble Baroness is correct in saying that debt sustainability is the primary responsibility of borrowing countries, but I think lending countries such as the UK also have an important role to play in supporting these efforts through providing capacity-building support, following best practice in …
Lords
Debate
16 July 2025
Employment Rights Bill
My Lords, I support Amendments 49 and 50 and Amendment 51, to which I have added my name. I agree with the case that my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom has made, and with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden.
I point out that the detail of the arrangements for impro…
Lords
Oral Questions
15 July 2025
Taxes
The noble Baroness has a rather selective memory: she seems to have forgotten about the last 14 years. But she is quite right that the most sustainable way to repair the public finances is through growing the economy. At the last fiscal event, the OBR scored our planning reforms as the biggest incre…
Lords
Oral Questions
14 July 2025
Tourism Levy
The noble Baroness rightly talks about the importance of the visitor economy. The Tourism Minister has set a goal to grow inbound tourism to 50 million visitors annually by 2030. To help achieve this, DCMS has established a new visitor economy advisory council, which is currently helping to co-creat…
Lords
Oral Questions
14 July 2025
Tax on Imports under £135
I agree with almost everything that the noble Baroness said, but she failed to point out that it was her Government that established the existing system and it is this Government who are reviewing it with the intention of changing it. I agree with all the criticisms that she puts forward, but they a…
Lords
Oral Questions
10 July 2025
2 contributions
Primary Stock Exchange Listings
My Lords, the Government want to see high-growth companies start, scale, list and stay in the UK. Current market sentiment is challenging, but the UK remains the top destination for equity capital raising in Europe. The Government are focused on further boosting the competitiveness of UK capital mar…
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. The Government recognise, as she did, that the UK’s equity markets have faced challenges in recent years, but that is not a new phenomenon; there has been a net decline in investment in UK funds for nine consecutive years. That is a matter for co…