Lords
Committee Stage
10 September 2026
3 contributions
Railways Bill
I will speak at the end, if I may.
My Lords, before I turn to the substance of this group, I would like to say that I received this morning from the Minister, as I imagine other noble Lords have, a letter setting out certain corrections to statements that he made on Tuesday. I have not had the opportunity to study that, but I hope th…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
8 September 2026
2 contributions
Railways Bill
My Lords, in the course of preparing for this Committee, I have had a number of meetings with the Minister and his officials, and I thank them for making themselves available for those meetings. I say that now because I shall almost certainly forget to say it at more appropriate times later on, but …
Tracks?
Lords
Debate
20 July 2026
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
My Lords, this was a pretty dreadful Bill when it was introduced to your Lordships’ House, in terms of its conception but also its drafting. It leaves it in somewhat better shape, which is very considerably due to the fact that the Minister paid attention in Committee to the many amendments and prop…
Lords
Debate
13 July 2026
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
My Lords, this is what I refer to as, in essence, an administrative Bill, in that it does not make large changes to the way in which civil aviation operates but changes significantly the way in which decisions will be made in future about how civil aviation operates. It does that necessarily because…
Lords
Proceedings
8 July 2026
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
My Lords, the staff survey on which the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has relied in making its case has been reported in the press as having been misrepresented by the agency to Ministers and, consequently, by Ministers to Parliament. In that light, do the Government still have confidence in the ch…
Lords
Proceedings
2 July 2026
Imprisonment for Public Protection
My Lords, there are nearly 1,000 IPP prisoners who have never been released, all of them now way beyond their tariff, and there are another 1,500 or so in the community subject to frequent and capricious recall. What can I say to the mother of the prisoner, whose name I supplied to the Minister in a…
Lords
Proceedings
1 July 2026
Drink-Driving
My Lords, I too welcome the fact that the Government are consulting on how to improve road safety, and I am sure that the noble Lord would agree that any response to that consultation needs to be evidence-based. In that light, how does he take account of the fact that it appears from Scotland, where…
Lords
Proceedings
23 June 2026
DVLA: Staffing Levels
My Lords, I imagine that my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom put his name on his licence application as well, though with slightly different results. The DVLA used to be, not so long ago, one of the more highly regarded agencies, rather like the Passport Office. It was pretty efficient and reliab…
Lords
Proceedings
22 June 2026
HS2 Ltd: Consultants
My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I also express my condolences to the family of the driver who lost his life in the tragedy on Friday—happily, a very rare event on Britain’s railways. On HS2, one of its principal contractors has warned that the Government’s steel tariffs are “ill-timed and unhe…
Lords
Committee Stage
16 June 2026
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
My Lords, this Bill represents and achieves an astonishing transfer of power away from Parliament and away from the scrutiny that your Lordships and Members of the other place have customarily brought to regulation and legislation pertaining to the field of civil aviation. Some of this is a necessar…
Lords
Proceedings
9 June 2026
E-scooters and E-bikes
My Lords, I want to throw my tuppence into this. Building on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, what strikes me is just how shoddy and tawdry our great city streets are looking. They have been turned into great parking lots of bikes for the benefit of private companies. Is the Ministe…
Lords
Statutory Instrument
9 June 2026
Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I start by saying that if the purpose of the recent changes in procedure for dealing with statutory instrument regret amendments and fatal amendments was to limit the scrutiny applied to government instruments, it has already proved very successful. What we see is that there are three spea…
Lords
Proceedings
20 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, it has been a truly interesting and wide-ranging debate. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I confine my remarks to the transport aspects of the debate. There were a number of interesting speeches in respect of transport. I do not propose to respond to them all, but I would like to…
Lords
Oral Questions
28 April 2026
RMT Strikes: Impact on Businesses
Part of the difficulty when we came into government in 2024 was that there was no agreement on the table around productivity between the private owners of TOCs and staff. I assure the noble Lord that work has been done in this area, as he would expect, and all TOCs have productivity ready due to gov…
Lords
Oral Questions
28 April 2026
Rail Safety Recommendations: Backlog
As I have clearly explained—I assume by his question that the noble Lord believes that we should describe it as a “backlog”—the complexity of these accidents and incidents undoubtedly means that they need to go through the process. The process was set up because previous accidents were not dealt wit…
Lords
Committee Stage
27 April 2026
Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for their consideration of these draft regulations. I am grateful for the scrutiny and interest that they have shown in ensuring that the UK’s port state control regime remains relevant and compliant.
The noble Bar…
Lords
Debate
24 April 2026
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
With the greatest respect to a number of noble Lords, I think what we are hearing is, in a sense, what we would have heard had we taken the Bill to Third Reading. We are hearing debates about the principle of the Bill, whereas this debate should be about where we have reached and either how we shoul…
Lords
Oral Questions
20 April 2026
Trains: Punctuality
The previous Network Rail pay settlement, which was carried out but curiously not much publicised by the Government, produced not only a one-off productivity improvement by a substantial amount but continuing productivity, so the staff involved in the pay deal for Network Rail this year are deliveri…
Lords
Committee Stage
15 April 2026
Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2026
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their comments in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, quoted the Minister in the other place in two respects, and because he quoted him, I do not feel I need to add to either of the things that he said in this Committee this afternoon.
On the question…
Lords
Debate
13 April 2026
4 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, in general, we welcome most of these amendments. To deal first with those repetitive amendments that say “leave out ‘minimum’” all the way through, as I say, in general we are supportive of those. The art here is to get the right balance between having standards which are predictable, from…
It is very kind of the noble Lord to give way. I appreciate it is late, but there are not many speakers in this debate so perhaps I can take a little time. The noble Lord said that context is important, and he is absolutely right. The context is that, if the driver is drunk, he is drunk in front of …
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
2 contributions
Rail Freight
My Lords, this Government have a clear ambition for rail freight growth, with a target of 75% by 2050, and we continue to work collaboratively with freight operators and Network Rail. My department’s modal shift revenue support programme and Network Rail’s access charges discount policy have been hu…
The Government have been quite clear that setting a statutory target is in the Bill, and we have also been clear that it is 75%. In practice, that protects those freight paths that have been in the timetable for a long time but are not necessarily used other than at short notice. That is the reason …
Lords
Debate
26 March 2026
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
My Lords, I am beginning to feel slightly left out. I have not been the beneficiary of a large amount of correspondence from the Minister in the way other noble Lords scattered around the Chamber appear to have been. I do not have the advantage of his support and the wording that he might have suppl…
It was not my suggestion that the mayor needed to be supervised: it was the suggestion of the Labour Party drafters of the 1999 GLA Act, which I am simply standing up for. So reject it by all means, but do not cast that upon me.
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
25 March 2026
Small Boat Deaths: Cranston Inquiry Report
The Government are taking strong, decisive action to do something about this issue. In particular, we are removing around 60,000 people who had no right to remain, and the historic deal with the French, which means that those who arrive are now being detained and sent back, is considerable evidence …
Lords
Oral Questions
24 March 2026
Public Transport: Accessibility
I do not think that is what I said, because if I meant to say what the noble Lord said, I would have said it. The point is that the definition of “taxi” is venerable and that taxis, in various forms, have been on our streets for several hundred years. Private vehicle hire, as the noble Lord knows, h…