Lords
Proceedings
1 July 2026
Counterterrorism: AI and Facial Recognition
My Lords, this is clearly a very useful technology, but given that it has very wide application, can my noble friend say anything about how we monitor the level of possible misrecognition by these systems?
Lords
Proceedings
24 June 2026
Darfur: Atrocities
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for all the answers she has given, as I thank the noble Lord for asking the Question. Only this week it was said in this Chamber that the conflict in Sudan does not have a high enough profile in our own media here and everywhere else. Will she talk to her friends an…
Lords
Proceedings
15 June 2026
Teachers’ Pension Scheme: Automatic Enrolment
My Lords, I heard what my noble friend the Minister said, but given reports of some universities seeking to move staff out of the TPS to reduce employer costs against the background of a likely drop in that figure, will the Government take action to stop employers circumventing the scheme and to pro…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
Disadvantaged Pupils: Music Attainment Gap
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister has already recognised that there is a gap not just in attainment between advantaged and less advantaged students and pupils; there is also a gap in whether they can access any music education in school. That will lead to a significant downward spiral, with few…
Lords
Oral Questions
24 February 2026
Prisons: Education
My noble friend knows we have had a mixed model of education in our prisons for nearly 30 years. What is important is that we support our educators and support staff in prisons by getting prisoners out of their cells into classrooms so they can do the fantastic work that they do. For me, the focus i…
Lords
Oral Questions
29 January 2026
Water Companies: Fines
In March last year, Yorkshire Water agreed to pay an enforcement package of £40 million to address the failures that were found by the investigation at that time. That package is to prioritise work on some of the most problematic storm overflows in environmentally sensitive areas to ensure that they…
Lords
Debate
28 January 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, it was a pleasure to listen to the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, which was about a modest change to the remit of the TRA. However, I support Amendment 190, to which I have added my name, precisely not to extend the TRA’s remit in two particular ways—that the TRA should be all…
Lords
Debate
21 January 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, I urge my noble friend the Minister to look at the amendment and think carefully about what the Government could conceivably do. I honestly think that anyone who has met Ceri, Frances or both of them could do nothing other than to say that we really need this, urgently. I will speak only b…
Lords
Debate
13 January 2026
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hain for having signed them. It will not come as a great surprise to the noble Lord, Lord Walney, that I have differences with his presentation. My amendments represent a compromise rather than the stand…
Lords
Proceedings
8 January 2026
Schools and Universities: Language Learning
My Lords, may I draw to everyone’s attention the fact that the timing in this debate is very tight? Could everyone please either go below five minutes or stick to the five minutes’ advisory time? Otherwise, we will not have time for the Minister to respond in full.
Lords
Oral Questions
17 December 2025
Special Educational Needs: Investment
My noble friend is right, of course, that every teacher needs to be a teacher for children who have special needs. That is why, as part of this Government’s commitment to recruiting 6,500 new teachers, we have already seen over 2,300 new teachers for our secondary and special schools. It is why we a…
Lords
Oral Questions
9 December 2025
Mobile Phone and Broadband Prices
Earlier this year, the Government published the Digital Inclusion Action Plan , which set out a number of the measures that we are taking, on top of the importance of the digital infrastructure being in place. They include measures on access to devices and the skills and confidence to enter the onli…
Lords
Proceedings
13 November 2025
Prisoner Releases in Error
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his characteristic frankness in the way that he is responding to these questions, for his commitment to make sure that the Prison Service works better than it has hitherto, and in particular for his positive remarks about prison staff. My question is about the c…
Lords
Debate
11 November 2025
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
My Lords, I did not intend to speak, but I feel that I must, particularly about those who arrive here as children. Some in this House will know that I was a teacher in my professional life. I dare say that, on some days, some of those I taught showed bad character, but they were all completely redee…
Lords
Oral Questions
5 November 2025
Equality and Human Rights Commission: Draft Updated Code of Practice
I always agree with what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State says, and I certainly do in this case. This just emphasises the point I made earlier: this code will have implications for service providers up and down the country, and, incidentally, it provides guidance across all protecte…
Lords
Oral Questions
5 November 2025
2 contributions
Prison Services: Insourcing
This Government inherited a well-advanced plan to outsource contracts after a 2023 Cabinet Office assessment concluded that in-house capability was not sufficient to make insourcing viable. Insourcing would be reliant on retaining staff from current suppliers, but labour market constraints and publi…
The decision to outsource maintenance contracts was based on a detailed Cabinet Office assessment that concluded that the MoJ did not have the in-house capability to deliver the desired services, and that achieving this in the same timescale would have been costly and would not offer value for money…
Lords
Oral Questions
4 November 2025
Official Development Assistance
I think my noble friend means the Global Partnership for Education. They are both incredibly effective and we have to think how we best support our work on education. I think that the best thing we can do is work with other Governments, strengthening systems and enabling them to take the lead themse…
Lords
Proceedings
29 October 2025
Prisoner Release Checks
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his response to this Statement. He has already said more than once from the Dispatch Box that any release in error is one too many. Can he say whether we have a timeframe for Dame Lynne Owens’s report so that we can think about when we might return to this? I ho…
Lords
Oral Questions
29 October 2025
Water Companies: Private Ownership
I thank my noble friend for that question. I will have to write to her about whether that fine has been paid. We have been very clear through the Water (Special Measures) Act and our response to the Cunliffe review that we are absolutely going to bear down on water company executives who take unjust…
Lords
Debate
18 September 2025
2 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, having worked on these amendments with my noble friend Lady Lister, and in her unavoidable absence from the Chamber today, I shall move Amendment 469, speak to Amendment 470 and also mention Amendment 502F.
Amendment 469 introduces a duty routinely to prepare and make publicly available a…
My Lords, it is both a pleasure and somewhat of a challenge to respond to this extremely good and wide-ranging debate. I am extremely grateful for the mentions of our late noble friend Lady Massey, whose absence from this debate we feel quite deeply. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, even tho…
Lords
Debate
16 September 2025
3 contributions
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
My Lords, given that my noble friend Lady Lister is unable to be here this evening, it is my pleasure, with her permission, to read her speech to move this amendment.
It is an honour to move Amendment 463, which would extend the provision of relationships and sex education to young people aged unde…
I apologise to the Committee. Clearly, I and possibly the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, had misunderstood the rules relating to this.
As has been noted, national organisations backing the Make It Mandatory campaign, in addition to the Children’s Commissioner, all agree that the extension of relation…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
15 September 2025
2 contributions
IPP Sentences
Lib Dems!
The Parole Board are the experts in deciding who is safe to be released. The release tests that it has are robust and fair, but we need to make sure that when people are in front of it, they are in a really good position to be released and released safely.
Lords
Proceedings
4 September 2025
Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement, which is necessarily looking into things that have already happened. To pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—and I know that I shall stray a little from the Home Office’s brief—does my noble friend agree with …
Lords
Proceedings
1 September 2025
Middle East
My Lords, as my noble friend has said, since late May 2025, Israeli forces have reportedly killed some 2,000 Palestinians and injured more than 15,000 at or near aid distribution centres in Gaza, where women, men and children are compelled to seek minimal provisions for their families as a result of…