Lords
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
Britain’s Battery Future Report
We have set out in our Clean Power 2030 Action Plan a road to energy security, and to the clean power the country needs, to provide clean energy for the future as well as securing our energy independence. We have seen the importance of that in recent months. We have also taken steps to cut energy co…
Lords
Debate
26 March 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 93, 119 and 183. I thank all noble Lords who supported these amendments across Committee and now on Report, including the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Shipley and Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancart…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response and for the collaborative approach she has taken in response to these amendments and in all the various letters that have been flying back and forth over the past couple of days on this matter. I appreciate the commitments she has made o…
Lords
Committee Stage
5 March 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of Peers for the Planet and as chief engineer at AtkinsRéalis. This is another one of those areas where we have recycled amendments from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. We had a few of those earlier. I worked on a similar amendment on that Bill w…
I thank the Minister for that response. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for all his welcome support for these amendments.
As the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said, all parts of the system must work together. That is what we need to focus on in the energy transition for this to work. In ord…
Lords
Debate
24 February 2026
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, as we reach the final stage of this Bill, I say a huge thank you to the Minister and his team of officials. They have been incredibly open to discussion and have genuinely listened to our concerns throughout this process. I hope the Minister agrees with me that our discussions on reporting…
Lords
Debate
10 February 2026
2 contributions
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. For my Amendment 7 in this group, I have simply retabled my amendment from Committee. As a brief reminder, we have targets in the SAF mandate —coming back to what noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said about power to …
I thank the Minister for making that strong statement from the Dispatch Box on the intention to exclude HEFA technology and feedstocks. That is further than the Government have gone before in their statements. It sets out a clear direction of travel for the legislation and the revenue certainty mech…
Lords
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
Government Website: Registering a Death
Self-evidently that level of delay is not acceptable and should not exist. The Home Office’s responsibility in this area is for the period after the medical examiner has issued the certificate and the death certificate has been given to the registrar. That is the five-day period which we are broadly…
Lords
Committee Stage
2 February 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, for now, I am going to steer us away from transport and on to a no less important topic: social mobility. I thank the noble Lords who have signed these amendments and the Social Mobility Commission, with which I worked to develop them.
Social mobility has been a continued focus over the y…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very detailed response. I should have declared my own interest in the cost of childcare, as a father of twins; it is a subject that is close to my heart too. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for their suppo…
Lords
Committee Stage
29 January 2026
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 101 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for their support. This flows on nicely from what we talked about on smaller-scale collaboration in the previous group. This is all ab…
Lords
Committee Stage
20 January 2026
2 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. My Amendment 3 would make a simple change but it highlights something fundamental to the Bill, so I want to spend a bit more time going through it than that single-word change would imply.
In looking through the areas of …
My Lords, I raised a minor point around paragraph (a) in Clause 2—“areas of competence”—which refers to “transport and local infrastructure”. My point is about the wording. That could perhaps be taken to mean local infrastructure related to transport. That is probably not the intention of the Govern…
Lords
Debate
10 December 2025
9 contributions
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 1, 5 and 6, and Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. I declare my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis and as co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear.
Turning first to Amendment 5, I listened carefully to what the Min…
I thank the noble Lord for his comments on the amendments. I would certainly be open to what he is saying about the wording in that amendment. I will just say that the way we have structured this amendment is to provide 1 million tonnes of oil equivalent figure. We have tried to do it using a floor …
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
10 December 2025
Ajax Armoured Vehicle
My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. We have a difficult history of armoured fighting vehicle procurements in this country. The TRACER programme was a failed procurement, as was the multi-role armoured vehicle, MRAV, and now we have issues with the Ajax progr…
Lords
Debate
20 November 2025
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their warm welcome, although I confess that sustainable aviation fuel was not a subject that I imagined I would be addressing when various noble Lords have given me advice about maiden speeches. I am grateful for their wisdom, warmth and welcome, and especially that…
Lords
Debate
29 October 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 207, 220 and 230, which are all linked. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, for supporting them. I am also grateful for all the constructive engagement I have had with the Minister and her teams between Committee and Report. I am sorry that the no…
Before the Minister sits down, I very much welcome her commitment to address the points raised in the amendment through guidance and her recognition that legislation will be required. I look forward to working with the Minister and her team on that. Nevertheless, I stress the urgency of bringing for…
Lords
Debate
29 October 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I thank my supporters on this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Parminter. I also thank the Minister for all the engagement we have had on this issue between Committee and Report. I feel a slight sense of déjà vu bringing this…
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, provided an excellent sum-up about climate change not being the only game in town. That is an important consideration, which is why I attempted in my Amendment 114 to join things up and include the Environment Act alongside climate change considerations. Th…
Lords
Debate
20 October 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I have just a few brief points to add to what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, stated. For me, this goes back to the governance system. Of course we have made progress in recent years; we have the strategic spatial energy plan, which is being managed by NESO, but we are hearing some feedback …
Lords
Debate
20 October 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I start by declaring my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis.
I was reassured by what the Minister stated in response to this amendment in Committee, but I have a few additional points of clarification, hence bringing this back on Report. I am grateful to the Minister for…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for those remarks. I am reassured by what she said on timescales and the work that is being undertaken on the NSIP process and the guidance that will come out of that. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to work with her and her team on that guidance. There is mo…
Lords
Debate
17 September 2025
3 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I declare my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis, and as co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear. This group of amendments gets to the heart of some of the issues with this Bill. It is important that we get Britain building again, not least to reverse the long stagnation in …
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her summing up and the extra information that she provided, particularly the important clarity around NSIPs and Part 3. However, we have not yet got away from the central issue of how useful Part 3 is going to be for major infrastructure projects. I a…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
10 September 2025
Nuclear Regulatory System
I agree with that and the Government are responding to that request. We are not waiting to legislate through the planning Bill. EN-6, the current framework within which these decisions are made, listed eight sites designated for nuclear applications. EN-7, as I mentioned in my Answer to my noble fri…
Lords
Debate
9 September 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I declare my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis and as a director of Peers for the Planet. I thank my supporters on Amendment 127, the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I am very pleased to bring back this amendment, which I originally raised as part…
I appreciate the Minister’s response and that he has highlighted a number of areas of planning policy where this is mentioned. But the point I was trying to make was that there is no central duty that is tying all those areas of policy together into a framework and having that thread running through…
Lords
Debate
1 September 2025
2 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 177 in my name and declare my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis and as a director of Peers for the Planet. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his support for the amendment.
I start by saying that I completely agree with what the noble Earl, Lo…
I want to complement what the noble Earl just said. A couple of years back, when I raised this as part of the Energy Act 2023, I remember being given a similar response: this was still being considered by the Government as part of how it would fit into the bigger picture. But I think the Government …
Lords
Oral Questions
22 July 2025
Great British Energy: Nuclear Development
The position of the Government is essentially that we want to see homegrown nuclear energy, as well as wind energy and hydrogen energy, so that we do not have to rely on foreign imports. I completely accept what the noble Lord said; I know it is something that the Government are looking at and want …
Lords
Debate
17 July 2025
5 contributions
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I support Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, to which I have added my name. I emphasise the points he made, in that I think the biggest risk with this Bill is that it will not deliver for large infrastructure, in the sense that it will not address the con…
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis, director of Peers for the Planet, and co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear.
We have had a number of discussions already in earlier groups about the tensions that potentially exist between competing objective…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
17 July 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis.
I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have set out around the purposes of the Bill, and in particular what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about putting growth front and centre.
…
Lords
Debate
25 June 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. I hope he will not mind me saying that, through the expertise he has brought to this debate, he has illustrated how the hereditary system brings a comparatively youthful expertise of a non-partisan nature into our midst—one …
Lords
Committee Stage
21 May 2025
National Policy Statement for Nuclear Energy Generation
My Lords, what a huge honour it is to make my maiden speech. My 18 year-old self would be utterly stunned to see herself standing here and, frankly, 40 years on, I am still having to pinch myself every day. My deepest thanks go to the wonderful doorkeepers, Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments an…