Lord Weir of Ballyholme — Hansard

Lords Debate 6 January 2026

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill: Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention

My Lords, the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, David Johnstone, has warned in the last few days that the current draft of the proposed legislation treats terrorists better than veterans. We know that terrorists have the protection of weapons having been destroyed with no forensics. The docume…

Lords Debate 25 November 2025 6 contributions

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

My Lords, I will briefly make two points. First, on behalf of my noble friend Lord McCrea, who has had to leave for a family wedding, I will speak to Amendment 57, which principally brings to the Committee’s attention the role of British legal firms in this issue. We have been critical in this Hous…

Absolutely. I have taken the Minister and the Government to task on a range of things, but this may be one issue on which we are in vigorous agreement. I do not question the Government’s bona fides as regards Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands. I know there is a strong commitment to both. I fully ack…

+4 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 25 November 2025 6 contributions

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

My Lords, I rise in relation to this group. Picking up the remarks, first of all, of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, I will say that, yes, there is not, perhaps, a single unified position of every single Chagossian. Perhaps we should not be surprised at that. Can we identify an issue in the United Kingdom…

On the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and I put forward, as was alluded to in a number of speeches, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, the reason why we raised equality issues as regards financial payments is the potential role of Chagossians within the trust fund. There is …

+4 more contributions in this session

Lords Oral Questions 24 November 2025

NHS: Wheelchair Services

This is a very important point, not just for the supply chain but also for the technology, particularly if we are thinking about those with more complex needs; the wheelchair has to support and meet those complex needs. We know that there is a lack of investment in new models and that there has been…

Lords Debate 18 November 2025 4 contributions

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, not least because my Amendment 59 comes from a similar position to her Amendment 23, in that it is a probing amendment. Indeed, looking across the range of amendments in this group, there is a considerable similarity between them; they …

I know the Minister was not attracted by the charms of the Front Bench, so I will try slightly differently. I suppose what we are trying to establish first of all is the percentage breakdown between the FCDO and the MoD. It matters because if this is not additional money, there will be a level of op…

+2 more contributions in this session

Lords Debate 18 November 2025

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

My Lords, I will be brief. I was going to intervene on the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, but we reached a point at which there was a triangulation of interventions such that, for a brief period, perhaps the only person who was unable to contribute to that speech was the noble Lord, Lord H…

Lords Proceedings 18 November 2025

Budget: Press Briefings

My Lords, given the answer that the Minister has given on a number of occasions that he is not prepared to comment or speculate, could he perhaps outline to the House which matters he is prepared to comment on?

Lords Debate 14 November 2025

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendments in this group. As I looked at the title of the Bill, “terminally ill”, and then saw clause after clause talking about the patient and the doctor’s involvement, I was clear that this was a medical Bill. We had the Secretary of State for Hea…

Lords Debate 4 November 2025

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

I thank the Minister for her patience in hosting this debate and welcome the Chagossians who have joined us this evening—they are very welcome in our House. I start by noting that some matters are not obvious because they are not obvious, and this one is really quite a complicated story to explain.…

Lords Statutory Instrument 30 October 2025

Control of Mercury (Enforcement) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

My Lords, I will briefly make a few comments on this regret amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I am grateful to her for tabling it, as it allows a debate on this important issue, which has caused concern in Northern Ireland about access to NHS dentists and not having massive exp…

Lords Oral Questions 22 October 2025

Rules on Duty-Free Goods

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I will clarify this for him. The original Question asked about flights from Belfast to the European Union, so that is what this Question is about. I will be very clear. If we have duty-free, we have to have allowances. If we have allowances, we have …

Lords Oral Questions 20 October 2025

Healthcare Provision: Inequalities

The 10-year health plan has tackling inequalities at its very heart, and that is the big driver throughout. Health inequalities are strongly associated with deprivation, and it cannot be right that healthy life expectancy at birth for a girl born in Wokingham is 70.8 years, but 52.6 years for a girl…

Lords Oral Questions 13 October 2025

Alzheimer’s Disease

In addition to the points that I have already made, I add that our work through the life sciences plan will be of great assistance in ensuring that we remove obstacles and make the route to which the noble Lord refers as quick as possible, so that we can move from development to delivery for the peo…

Lords Debate 16 September 2025 3 contributions

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I start on this group of amendments by declaring an interest as a board member of the Education Authority in Northern Ireland, which is responsible for around 90% of education spend in Northern Ireland and, most pertinently as regards these amendments, has direct responsibility for all spe…

My Lords, at this late hour, I sound a slight note of caution and concern over Amendments 465 and 471. I do not have any particular problem with Amendment 463, which is something all of us should be able to embrace, in terms of ensuring education around prevention of sexual violence and promoting re…

+1 more contribution in this session

Lords Debate 12 September 2025

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

I will not try to match that story. All I will say is that this has been a brilliant debate on an extremely controversial subject. Some people have opposed the Bill on principled grounds. The first point I make is that, in practice, on a number of the areas of principle—and I agree on this point wit…

Lords Proceedings 1 September 2025

Middle East

My Lords, I think we all see the appalling humanitarian crisis. I welcome the Government’s intervention in terms of the medical support they are providing and propose to provide via this Statement. However, I wish to go back to the issue of recognition and an earlier point made about why there are n…

Lords Proceedings 17 July 2025

Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the first stage of this very important report into an appalling scandal which has blighted so many lives and which we know has, sadly, actually cost lives as well. Sometimes we are faced with a scandal, such as we debated yesterday, that has been caused by a sing…

Lords Proceedings 7 July 2025

Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. The Government are right to identify education as being the great life changer for many young people. It is right to place emphasis on the power of development through reading and to focus on early intervention. It is often the case—sometimes Governments can be rel…

Lords Statutory Instrument 3 July 2025

Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

My Lords, the suggestion that Palestine Action is somehow helping the cause of the Palestinians is, I am afraid, rather nonsensical. The sort of damaging activity in which it is engaged serves only to further damage the cause of the Palestinians. I speak here as a Zionist, but as a Zionist who supp…

Lords Statutory Instrument 30 June 2025

Marking of Retail Goods Regulations 2025

My Lords, I first want to congratulate the Minister on her frankness and honesty; we do not always get that from Ministers or government. She has made it quite clear that they going to do Europe’s bidding. They will not be listening to what the politicians of Northern Ireland or anyone else says. It…

Lords Proceedings 30 June 2025

UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago

My Lords, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, which has been a major driving force behind these legal attacks on the British Indian Ocean Territories, was founded in November 1961 and was dedicated to erasing the phenomenon of non-self-governing territories. It had important work…

Lords Debate 23 June 2025

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I support the group of amendments before us, which are well judged. I appreciate that they are essentially probing in nature, but I will make a couple of brief observations. First, the amendments are important because they focus our minds on long-term strategy. It is often the complaint a…

Lords Oral Questions 12 June 2025

Cardiovascular Illnesses

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Booth, on securing the debate. After listening to his story, I am rather glad that we were able to listen to him today. I have also listened to grieving families, passionate campaigners and dedicated cardiologists, each of them urging us to act more…

Lords Oral Questions 11 June 2025

Disorder in Ballymena

The noble Lord is absolutely right that there is a responsibility on the British Government to work with police forces across the United Kingdom. That does not just include money, it is about sharing best practice and about funding that has been made available for public sector transformation works.…

Lords Statutory Instrument 9 June 2025

Official Controls (Plant Health) and Phytosanitary Conditions (Amendment) Regulations 2025

My Lords, we support these regulations as a sensible step to protect our biosecurity and reduce costly and deeply damaging barriers to trade, but we see this as just one stage of a much bigger journey. As my noble friend Lady Suttie has said in previous debates of this nature, these regulations are …