Lords
Committee Stage
27 April 2026
First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) Fees (Amendment) Order 2026
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Fuller, for their helpful and constructive contributions. A point that they both made, with which I agree, is that this is always a balancing exercise. As I made clear in my opening remarks, there is no question of trying to recoup the entir…
Lords
Debate
23 April 2026
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, it has been a pleasure to bring the Victims and Courts Bill through this House; it is now another step closer to becoming law. The Bill will deliver on our manifesto commitment to support and protect victims, restore confidence in our justice system and implement swifter and fairer justice…
Lords
Oral Questions
22 April 2026
Burial Provision in England and Wales
As with all matters relating to what happens at the end of life, these are sensitive, difficult and complicated matters. The Law Commission identifies that there can be many reasons why ashes remain uncollected, including people who simply cannot face going to pick them up. However, that does not so…
Lords
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
Nitrous Oxide
As the noble Lord has mentioned, there are a number of legitimate uses for nitrous oxide: medical, dental and veterinary uses, food sector uses in cafés and for amateur bakers, as a fuel additive for motor racing and for academic research. The legislation passed under his Government has tried to get…
Lords
Debate
17 March 2026
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, this is a minor and technical amendment following Report, and the Government will not oppose it today.
Lords
Oral Questions
17 March 2026
Plan 2 Student Loans: Repayment Terms
My Lords, a month of us being in power roughly equates to almost a year of the Opposition being in power. As I said at the beginning, we are moving forward in addressing affordability and cost-of-living measures, as well as looking at this very complicated area of student loans.
Lords
Debate
10 March 2026
3 contributions
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her Amendment 1, which addresses the thresholds proposed in the Bill. As she knows, we on these Benches have similarly expressed concern about the proposed threshold. This restricts the effect of Clause 3 to offenders sentenced to four years or…
My Lords, the important amendments in this group address real issues for victims and victim support. Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, seeks to introduce independent victim navigators on a national basis to act as a liaison between the police and victims of modern slavery and …
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
27 February 2026
6 contributions
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, Amendments 430 and 434 in my name go to the practice in operation. I will introduce them by making this point. I was one of the seven people fortunate enough to be identified in the Observer a couple of weeks ago as having tabled a lot of amendments. Contrary to what the Observer —and the …
The noble and learned Lord is right. When I introduced the amendment, I did say that there might be problems with it, but I thought it was something that should be looked at.
+4 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
26 February 2026
Public Office (Accountability) Bill: Exclusion
My Lords, it is customary to begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for securing this debate, but I am sure she would agree that I should start by paying tribute to the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and their families. In doing this, I make it clear that the victims …
Lords
Oral Questions
24 February 2026
Prisons: Education
The noble Lord is correct that it cuts the actual provision: the budget we have has gone up, but you just get less value for money. This comes back to my aeroplane theory: I want the aeroplane—that is, the classrooms—to be full. However, we are doing more than that. We have a working-week trial in f…
Lords
Proceedings
12 February 2026
Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)
My Lords, it is a privilege to close this debate on a topic that is very close to my heart. I was thrilled to see that so many new noble Lords chose this occasion to make their maiden speeches. It was heartening to hear references to the late Lord Ramsbotham, who many of us have so many fond memorie…
Lords
Debate
11 February 2026
14 contributions
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, Amendments 48 to 54, in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, concern the operation of the victim contact scheme and the new helpline provisions introduced by the Bill, and in particular the Government’s decision to structure eligibility around the three-part c…
My Lords, I addressed this at some length in opening. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the Minister for correcting my errors. I shall add nothing more. I am also grateful for the Minister’s explanation of how—she hopes, at least—this will work in practice. On that basis, I shal…
+12 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
9 February 2026
2 contributions
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Goudie, for bringing forward the amendments.
Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, proposes a new clause that seeks to place a duty o…
My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for bringing forward their amendments and helping to shape what has been a valuable debate about the issue of just compensation for victims.
Amendment 40, in …
Lords
Debate
9 February 2026
5 contributions
Victims and Courts Bill
My Lords, the amendments in this group, in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen, seek to ensure that the Bill lives up to its purpose in the name of victims.
Clauses 1 and 2 set out how offenders can in future be compelled to attend their sentencing hearing. But, as currently d…
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who contributed to this short but thoughtful debate, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. This debate has underlined how crucial these provisions are to the overall purpose of the Bill, why they warrant close attention and the balan…
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
6 February 2026
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 581A. It reads:
“In the event that the assisting professional has doubts as to the person’s capacity for the purposes of subsection (5)(a), the assisting professional … must take steps to assess the person’s capacity, including (if they are not a person meeting t…
Lords
Oral Questions
2 February 2026
Prisoners for Palestine: Hunger Strikes
I thank the noble Lord for his question and concern, because we were all concerned about what was happening. I spent an awful lot of time making sure that all the policies and procedures in place were being followed, which they were. Obviously, this is about how the health partners in prisons work t…
Lords
Debate
30 January 2026
4 contributions
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I can be truly short here and it is further to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Many of us are concerned about subtle pressure and coercion. It will not appear in all cases, but it will in some and these are legitimate concerns. If this is online, doctors are unlikel…
My Lords, I will follow my noble friend and, I hope, be reasonably concise.
I asked for my Amendment 829 to be grouped with these amendments as it covers the same substantive ground. It was helpful that, about a fortnight ago, with the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, I met the noble and learned Lord, and w…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
27 January 2026
TikTok: Bereaved British Parents
We have set a regime. This House passed the Online Safety Act. It is a regime supervised by Ofcom. We have given Ofcom the resources it needs to supervise against the Online Safety Act. We have made it clear that we back the use of those powers and, as we have seen recently, the Government are prepa…
Lords
Debate
23 January 2026
2 contributions
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, with his vast experience, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, with hers.
My point is a simple one, which, as a lawyer, has been troubling me for a long time: conflict of interest. There is an internal conflict of interest here within t…
I agree entirely with the noble Lord. That is why at the start, perhaps briefly and elliptically, I talked about bad agencies and people. That is not the health service’s primary role. It will happen from time to time. I know a medical professional —I mentioned this at Second Reading—who has a relat…
Lords
Debate
22 January 2026
9 contributions
Crime and Policing Bill
My Lords, as I think we all agree, this is a profoundly important issue, and one in which there is realistically no perfectly right answer. But let us start with the position that it remains one of the greatest triumphs of British policing that to this day we do not routinely have armed police offic…
He is going to start—assuming that the judge is a he—from the position that, unless there is an application to the contrary, the bar against publication is in force. I am asking the Government to consider, before we return on Report, whether guidance can be developed and something put into the Bill …
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
19 January 2026
Domestic Violence Against Children
The Victims’ Commissioner has a statutory duty to comment on any issues that she wishes. She made representations regarding the Sentencing Bill. This House has completed its proceedings on that Bill, and the Minister for Justice, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, has reflected on the comments that the V…
Lords
Debate
16 January 2026
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
My Lords, I will be very brief. We have heard the most powerful support for these amendments from the distinguished most severely disabled Members of this House—people who really know what their conditions mean and who all support these amendments. We know also that all the major organisations repre…
Lords
Proceedings
15 January 2026
Chinese Embassy
My Lords, we have been told that security is a planning issue—that it is relevant to it. What are the criteria by which security is to be measured in this context?