Lords
Proceedings
13 July 2026
Farming Practices: Sustainable Farming Incentive
My Lords, will the Government consider looking back at the criteria on which the ELMS payments are made? If you farm regeneratively, you not only improve the soil by cover crops—growing beans and legumes—mob grazing and not tilling, but you improve every single thing in the ELMS. It would be a way o…
Lords
Proceedings
25 June 2026
Waste Management Carriers: Regulation
My Lords, when are the Government going to bring in a proper extended producer responsibility? To go back into the history of waste, in 1970, when the environment movements grew up, Keep America Beautiful, followed by Keep Britain Tidy, were campaigns that came from the industry—Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Col…
Lords
Proceedings
23 June 2026
Legal Protections for Ancient Trees
My Lords, the report out today from the Woodland Trust makes the interesting point that there is a 15-degree reduction when standing under a tree, compared with standing out in the open air or on the pavement, and 11 million people live in the equivalent of tree deserts. I know that the Government h…
Lords
Proceedings
17 June 2026
Thames Water
My Lords, picking up on what the noble Baroness said about reservoirs, at the launch of the CCC adaptation report the other day, many people were saying that we were not going to get the next reservoir for another 10 years and that the schedule of reservoirs was extremely slow. Can the Minister upda…
Lords
Proceedings
10 June 2026
Farming and Food Production
My Lords, will the Government consider extending the SFI payments to cover farmers growing leguminous crops—in other words, beans? This fixes nitrogen in the soil and makes the soil more healthy. They cannot get fertilisers at the moment because of the Strait of Hormuz blockage. Also, this is the wa…
Lords
Proceedings
8 June 2026
UK Defence Capability
My Lords, given that the threats are often cyber threats, which have not been mentioned so far, what investment is going into that? Is it in the Minister’s department or someone else’s, and how joined up is the thinking on all that?
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
Supermarkets: Voluntary Price Caps
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister about several factors that seem to be occurring at once. The first is that floods in Morocco, Spain and Sicily have badly affected salad crops at the beginning of the year. Further, Cambridgeshire had just 5% of its annual rainfall in April and many farmers…
Lords
Proceedings
19 May 2026
VAT Relief: Business Donations
My Lords, I declare my interest: I was partly responsible for founding Feeding Britain and bringing the first social supermarkets to London. People talk about the fact that only 8% of food waste makes its way towards either a food bank or a social supermarket. There is a staggering amount of food hi…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
Miscarriage Care
My Lords, one of the issues that is going to come out this week, through a welcome report on Wednesday, is the effect of heat on pregnancies—on miscarriage and on very small babies being born. It used to be thought that this affected only women in very hot countries, but it now is realised that it a…
Lords
Oral Questions
22 April 2026
2 contributions
Plastic Pollution Reduction
My Lords, this Government have taken decisive action to tackle plastic pollution. We banned single-use vapes from June 2025 and will ban plastic wet wipes from spring 2027. We have introduced extended producer responsibility for packaging, implemented simpler recycling reforms, and our deposit retur…
The noble Baroness makes a really important point. If we are going to bring in such reforms, we have to make sure that they will do what we want them to do, and therefore we have to work very closely with business. The EPR for packaging is now live and, from year 2 of the scheme, packaging disposal …
Lords
Oral Questions
25 March 2026
Media Freedom Coalition
The noble Baroness is absolutely right to draw our attention to that. One of the key themes that we want to use our leadership to do is to address exactly those issues around women journalists: women journalists and the persecution that they face—online as well these days—and also, too often, the ex…
Lords
Debate
18 March 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
I will speak briefly to this group of amendments. I also support what the right reverend Prelate said about not letting loose a car or medicine, and food gets checked by the FSA. I think we could all be forgiven for thinking that maybe the Government care a lot more about the money that comes from S…
Lords
Oral Questions
5 March 2026
PFAS
As I said, we will be taking a precautionary principle approach. The noble Baroness talked about school uniforms; it is important that we make sure that children are protected as much as possible. We recognise the concerns in this area. Her point about mattresses is also important. The textiles indu…
Lords
Oral Questions
3 March 2026
2 contributions
Carbon Budget 6
My Lords—
In terms of the Government’s clean power 2030 plans, pretty much only low-carbon power will be used for operations in the future. As far as data centres are concerned, this is one of the real-world trends that I mentioned has been analysed out in the carbon budget considerations. While AI will certa…
Lords
Oral Questions
23 February 2026
Global Biodiversity Loss and National Security
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that there has been terrible flooding. Much of the change in our weather systems is inevitably caused by climate change. We are working very hard to invest more, not just in flood defences but in natural flood management. Regarding sustainable food and food sec…
Lords
Oral Questions
12 February 2026
Changing Weather Patterns and Floods
First, regarding development on flood plains, MHCLG is consulting on the new National Planning Policy Framework, which will introduce a dedicated chapter on planning for flood risk and coastal change to help ensure that local plans are informed by the latest evidence and that planning decisions supp…
Lords
Committee Stage
11 February 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 239. I support all the amendments that have just been talked about—it is vital that communities can buy land. However, I am, in a way, offering up a “get out of jail free” card to the Government with this amendment.
This time last week, we were standing here aski…
I just want to intervene on what the noble Baroness was saying about the importance of councils being able to take it up, by just making a quick reference to one of our most innovative gardens, which was on the new King’s Cross site. It was in skips. Every time the development there moved around, we…
Lords
Committee Stage
9 February 2026
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
I thank the Minister, but half of the amendment is not about allotments. Having run this scheme in London, I know that allotments are almost impossible to get. It is also about the right to grow on meanwhile lease bases within communities and councils. Meanwhile leases are available online. It is ex…
Lords
Committee Stage
4 February 2026
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman. What I have to add is that my Amendments 160, 161, 163, 164, 165 and 169 would bring a more climate change-related and environmental aspect to the asks of the Government. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Freeman and Lady Bennett, s…
Lords
Debate
3 February 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, my Amendment 243 deals with climate mitigation and adaptation. It would make statutory existing government guidance that new school buildings must be both net zero in operation and adapted to 2 degrees of warming, and would require the Government to produce a safe and resilient schools pla…
Lords
Debate
28 January 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
I very much support all the amendments around trying to make uniforms more affordable, but I want to speak about a health time bomb that we are sitting on, much in the way that we spoke about smoking some years ago, or ultra-processed food. It is the whole question about PFAS in our systems: in ever…
Lords
Oral Questions
28 January 2026
Yorkshire: Sustainable Water Management Solutions
The noble Baroness raises a very important point, and that is why we now have a strategic objective to ensure that at least 4% of flood and coastal erosion risk management investment over the next 10 years is dedicated to natural flood management. This means that we will invest at least £300 million…
Lords
Debate
21 January 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I support both amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in particular Amendment 113 on the school food improvement scheme. I am incredibly glad to see how many steps the Government are taking, but there are still things we need to work on. The noble Baroness referred to Professor…
Lords
Oral Questions
14 January 2026
COP Climate Negotiations: Cities
I am sure the noble Baroness will be aware of what the UK Government have done to support cities in the COP negotiations. There are, as we might say, good COPs and bad COPs. COP 28— a particularly good COP—was the occasion of the UK support for, and promotion of, the CHAMP pledge, the Coalition for …
Lords
Oral Questions
12 January 2026
Sexual Harassment in Educational Settings
As I say, the Technology Secretary has already made it clear that X needs to deal urgently with the issue of Grok. Ofcom has already contacted X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK. If services fail to adhere, Ofcom can impose…