Lords
Proceedings
14 July 2026
Business Hiring
My Lords, the Minister’s statistics match mine. There has been a bit of an uptick in employment, but not in one area: graduates. Graduates are facing a terrible time. Entry-level hiring has dropped to a 13-year low, and it dropped by 45% in January this year. There are graduates with excellent degre…
Lords
Proceedings
13 July 2026
Employment: Artificial Intelligence
My Lords, whatever the effect on jobs, the figures set out by the noble Lord, Lord Khan, indicate that there is already a crisis of confidence among our young people as they face the future. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is key. What are the Government doing, alongside trainin…
Lords
Proceedings
8 July 2026
Unpaid Carers
My Lords, when I was piloting the Carer’s Leave Bill 2023 through your Lordships’ House, Centrica was one of the companies I spoke to. Centrica and other companies were already doing phenomenal work, but we all agreed that the Bill was the first step for unpaid carers. The Act has now been in force …
Lords
Debate
8 July 2026
5 contributions
Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will speak to Amendments 7, 9 and 24 in my name.
In Committee, I noted the difficulty of phasing the exercise of the principal transfer powers and the need for scrutiny by Parliament—there is a dichotomy. At the heart of my concerns then was that Parliament would …
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. Before coming to the Minister’s words, I will pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, on health and safety. I turn his attention to Amendment 21, which returns to the issues of health and safety and environmenta…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
1 July 2026
2 contributions
Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill
My Lords, I, too, am confused, because I thought Amendment 20 was in this group.
Unfortunately, the proposer failed to mention it in his speech. I signed it merely because I wanted to indicate that the contingent liabilities are an important part of the Bill as we discuss it. However, the main issues within this group are those that I will discuss later, in group 4. In that resp…
Lords
Proceedings
1 July 2026
Defence Investment Plan
My Lords, this is clearly a very delayed and extremely underfunded plan. As we have heard, at £15 billion it falls well short of the £28 billion requested by the defence chief to keep our country secure. But we know that it actually falls even shorter than that, as nearly £5 billion is unfunded and …
Lords
Debate
29 June 2026
2 contributions
Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill
My Lords, I thank the Minister, his team, the department and the two experts who came all the way from Coventry in 35-degree temperatures to educate the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and me on the technology of steel. It has been very co-operative and I thank them.
I am slightly confused by how narrowi…
My Lords, one of the things that the briefing from the high value catapult team confirmed is the enormous difficulty there will be in creating a viable business from what His Majesty’s Government intend to take control of in Scunthorpe. There is the age of its blast furnace, the potential cost of an…
Lords
Proceedings
23 June 2026
G7 Summit
My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for allowing this Statement to be repeated in your Lordships’ House. Self-evidently, I am standing in for the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and it is a great—and unusual—pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord True. It is, in fact, somewhat appropriate that a stand-i…
Lords
Statutory Instrument
23 June 2026
2 contributions
Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for getting the old team together. I was missing the Employment Rights Bill, which had been such an important part of my life, so it is always good to get a refresh.
On UK employment tribunal waiting times—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt,…
I was planning to write a letter on that very subject, because I felt that it was not necessarily due in this debate, so there is a letter heading in the Minister’s direction on the right to accompany. I appreciate the noble Lord raising that.
Lords
Proceedings
22 June 2026
2 contributions
Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office
My Lords—
My Lords, as the noble Baroness said, Peter Wai was a UK Border Force officer and a special constable, but it has also been reported that he was a director of a private security company. A third defendant, Matthew Trickett, who died before the trial, was an immigration officer and a director of a di…
Lords
Proceedings
18 June 2026
Steel Tariffs
My Lords, in responding to the last point made by the noble Lord, today I forwarded to the Minister a very detailed list of the categorisations of steel that will not be available in the UK but which will be subject to tariffs, and I would appreciate a response on that. Further, he mentioned 1 July.…
Lords
Proceedings
16 June 2026
Defence Investment Plan
One way of achieving the objectives that my noble friend spoke about, to give some certainty, could be for the UK to join the defence, security and resilience bank. In answer to a Question I asked on 19 May, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, said that the Government had “no current plans” to join that…
Lords
Proceedings
15 June 2026
Defence Investment Plan
My Lords, I am sure the Minister will be aware that the nature of war has substantially changed, as we are seeing in Ukraine, and that it is changing with almost every week that passes. For us to meet that challenge, we need innovation. So, coming back to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Beami…
Lords
Proceedings
15 June 2026
Middle East: Iran Conflict
My Lords, the Minister has a busy life but she may remember that, at the beginning of this invasion, I asked her about C-SIPA, the treaty between Bahrain, the United Kingdom and the United States. I followed that up with a letter of detailed questions and I was promised a response, which I have yet …
Lords
Proceedings
2 June 2026
Steel Import Restrictions
My Lords, as the Minister will no doubt realise, tariffs are double-edged. The businesses that use steel that is not being manufactured in this country are in danger of having to pay higher prices for that steel, unless the Government are subtler than seems to be the case to date. Can the Minister u…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
Supermarkets: Voluntary Price Caps
My Lords, I am pleased to hear that the Government are talking to supermarkets about the role they might have in prices, because prices are an important worry for people right across the country—they really are going up. In the course of those discussions, did the Government talk about their role in…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
Self-employed: Paternity Leave
My Lords, we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, for bringing this question up; it is really important. However, it is not just about rights that do not exist; current rights and their take-up is also a really important issue, and I hope the review will look at that. According to the 2025 Unison pa…
Lords
Proceedings
19 May 2026
Defence, Security and Resilience Bank
My Lords, as the Minister knows, financing rearmament is a challenge for all NATO countries, which is why I am a bit puzzled by the Government’s response. A viable defence, security and resilience bank would tick a number of important boxes: it would be multilateral; it would work with a greater num…
Lords
Proceedings
28 April 2026
Middle East: Economic Update
My Lords, returning to defence spending, the Minister referred to the biggest sustained increase in that spending. If it happens, we will welcome it, but it does not happen until the defence investment plan is published. I noted the slight smile on his face when he said, “in due course”, but if that…
Lords
Oral Questions
28 April 2026
RMT Strikes: Impact on Businesses
I did wonder when I saw this Question if it would result in the question that the noble Lord asks. As a former local government leader as well, I am absolutely aware that the problem with high streets is not a recent phenomenon but goes back years, and we have to do everything we can. There are some…
Lords
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
Britain’s Battery Future Report
The noble Lord is right to highlight the importance of the EU as the largest market for UK-manufactured cars. The EU remains the UK automotive sector’s largest trading partner. We are talking closely with the EU on all aspects of regulatory developments in respect of EU battery rules, the EU digital…
Lords
Proceedings
23 March 2026
2 contributions
UK Steel Strategy
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and welcome that there is a strategy here, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, said, we were expecting it for some time. However, given what is happening in the world, reading this document conjures the image of someone trying to put up a tent i…
My Lords, the answer that the Minister gave me on the Trade Remedies Authority was a little confusing—or it confused me, anyway. Can she set out in some detail in writing why the TRA is not involved in this? When you look at the Vietnam case, it is exactly analogous, only much less significant than …
Lords
Oral Questions
23 March 2026
UK Homeland Defence
I was hoping the noble Lord was going to start with the Leonardo announcement, which he pressed me for in terms of spending; we pocketed that one and moved on. Leonardo was a huge investment that the noble Lord was demanding I do something about. I went back, argued with the department and talked to…