Lords
Proceedings
14 July 2026
State of Climate and Nature
My Lords, the Statement in another place said that reducing emissions would lower bills. This country has reduced emissions by more than any other country, yet our bills are now higher than any other OECD country, nearly all of which rely on gas like us. Can the Minister explain this? If he is going…
Lords
Committee Stage
4 June 2026
UK Electricity Prices
My Lords, it is a great privilege to open this debate, especially with the high calibre of people proposing to participate in it.
The basic science of global warming is rock solid, but we have been told fairy tales about its economics ever since the Climate Change Act 2008. We all love fairy storie…
Lords
Debate
14 April 2026
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, in response to a question from the Liberal Democrat spokesman Al Pinkerton in the other House about what the collapse of the treaty means in practice for the long-promised right of return for Chagossians, the Minister replied,
“we believe that this is the best route, under Mauritius’s gui…
Lords
Committee Stage
25 March 2026
2 contributions
Northern Ireland After Brexit (Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee Report)
My Lords, it is an honour to speak in this debate and to be a member of the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thank our chairman for how he outlined the contents of the report today and, more broadly, for how skilfully he guides and chairs …
I believe my party is quite clear on our position on the EU, not least because I believe in international law and complying with our agreements.
One of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, was on veterinary medicines and the prices going up. She raised a specific case. I should ver…
Lords
Committee Stage
16 March 2026
Treaty Scrutiny in Westminster (International Agreements Committee Report)
My Lords, it is very welcome that we have, in the space of a fortnight, two chances to debate committee reports from one of our most senior committees—I say that as a recent member of it. I find it is often the case that the House does not see the work going on in committees; we should see more of i…
Lords
Committee Stage
11 March 2026
Secondary International Competitiveness and Growth Objective (FSR Committee Report)
My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, I thank him for giving me the opportunity to reflect on the life of Adam Smith. The noble Lord said that Adam Smith wrote that it was not benevolence that ensured that he got his dinner. I point the noble Lord to a book by the Swedish feminist writ…
Lords
Oral Questions
3 March 2026
2 contributions
Carbon Budget 6
We will hear from the Cross Benches and then from the Conservative Benches.
It is certainly not true that the pursuit of a low-carbon economy has led to deindustrialisation. The noble Lord need only look at the £60 billion of investment that is coming into the green economy and all that goes with it. Indeed, the low-carbon economy is growing three times as fast as the gener…
Lords
Proceedings
26 February 2026
Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)
My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate. I have recently been chucked off the European Affairs Committee—due simply to my three years being up, I hasten to add, not for misbehaviour—but I participated fully and keenly in the preparation of this report. Although I am very happy to have f…
Lords
Proceedings
5 February 2026
US Department of Justice Release of Files
My Lords, can the Minister tell us what role Peter Mandelson played as ambassador in convincing the American Government of the merits of the Chagos deal? Did he discuss it personally with the President and the Secretaries of State? In so doing, did he honestly tell them about the Pelindaba treaty, a…
Lords
Proceedings
29 January 2026
2 contributions
UK-EU Customs Union
My Lords, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, in the past, I am sure noble Lords will accept that I do not agree with much of what he said. The context in which we are discussing this is, to me, the obvious failure of the Brexit project. I take the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord L…
Do you know why we won the Uruguay round? It is because we had the strength of the bloc of the European Union behind us. It was not just something that Britain achieved on its own.
Secondly, the noble Lord talks about the stagnation in our export of goods and completely ignores the vast expansion o…
Lords
Oral Questions
22 January 2026
Diego Garcia: Comments by the President of the United States
Any country could help withhold any service relating to the operability of the base at any time because the legal jeopardy in which it stood was sustained, and it would be their right to do that. The reason we are trying to get the base on to a more secure legal footing is to avoid that proposition.…
Lords
Debate
12 January 2026
2 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I have one final question to the Minister, while confessing, quite frankly, that I have taken zero part in the earlier Committee stage—but Third Reading, contrary to what was suggested earlier, is an opportunity to look at the overall aim and underlying strategy of a measure. Some earlier …
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her replies. I do not think she said anything different from the points she made earlier. We had a lot of party-political insults but, yet again, no dealing with the actual issues that we raised. The one concession that I thought I heard from her—I will check…
Lords
Debate
5 January 2026
3 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I apologise to the House for being absent for my amendments in the first group. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hannan for moving them on my behalf with, I am sure, greater elegance than I would have been able to bring. Were I a believer in conspiracy theories, I would imagine that P…
My Lords, I will very briefly talk to my Amendments 10 and 15. When any Administration shift from the original arguments which justified their policy to a new set of arguments, you know that they are moving from evidence-based policy to policy-based evidence. That seems to be what is happening here.…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
25 November 2025
10 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I want primarily—perhaps later—to talk about my Amendments 20Q and 20U, but I will say something about my noble friend Lord Hannan’s Amendment 20L to emphasise one particular precedent he mentioned in passing but seems the most compelling and dangerous. Indeed, in line with the noble Lord,…
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity also to speak to my Amendments 20U and 20Q. Amendment 20U would provide that the Bill shall not come into force until the Secretary of State has published
“a report on how the Treaty may increase any political or legal risks”—
that is what we have been t…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
18 November 2025
9 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, I would like to address Amendments 11 and 12 in my name, which both relate to the terms of the lease. Over the years, I have often heard leaseholders wish they had, or propose to acquire, the freehold. They feel that, as leaseholders, they are in a very inferior position and that the freeh…
Probably to get some more money. Indeed, we should have dealt with that in the previous session on money. How much more money is he asking for? One understands there are debates in Mauritius saying they have done so well that they should now reopen discussions and get a little more.
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
18 November 2025
9 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
My Lords, Amendments 8 and 9 are in my name. Amendment 8 says that the treaty shall not come into force until a binding case in an international court requires us to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. Amendment 9 requires the Government to spell out their legal position on why they believe su…
If the noble Lord wants me to go back further, I think it is a shame that we did not follow the advice of Edmund Burke and reach an agreement with the American colonists to give them independence earlier on.
But we are not talking about giving independence to the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands; …
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
4 November 2025
5 contributions
Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
All the legal considerations that the noble Lord has outlined to the House, including those in the latter part of his remarks, pre-date November 2022, when the previous Government started negotiations to cede sovereignty. They took all his remarks into consideration, so why did they start negotiatio…
It started in 2022.
+3 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
4 September 2025
Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
We will maintain our SPS standards, as I have consistently said. I remind noble Lords that the EU remains the UK’s largest trading partner for agri-food and vice versa, so there are huge benefits in maintaining or re-establishing a lot of those European trading partners, which will benefit our farme…
Lords
Oral Questions
17 July 2025
European Convention on Human Rights
As the noble Lord rightly points out, there has been an immigration White Paper. In it, we have said that we will look to deliver a new framework to consider Article 8—the right to family life—and will bring forward legislation to clarify Article 8 rules so that fewer cases are treated as exceptiona…
Lords
Debate
25 June 2025
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
My Lords, I am the chair of Annington, a housing company that specialises in affordable homes, but I will not talk about that because, for many years now, I have been the honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, which also includes utilisation. Frankly, I never thought the d…
Lords
Statutory Instrument
23 June 2025
Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025
My Lords, I too speak in favour of the amendment tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, against the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield. This SI makes existing large-scale biomass electricity generators eligible for contracts for difference. The Government arg…
Lords
Statutory Instrument
9 June 2025
4 contributions
Official Controls (Plant Health) and Phytosanitary Conditions (Amendment) Regulations 2025
My Lords, to some extent, as previous speakers have said of this set of regulations, it is almost preposterous that we are debating it several months after its implementation. But I would have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that there is nothing as permanent as the temporary; he will, sadly,…
I suspect that the answer will be, “We need them there just in case there’s an outbreak of disease and we have to inspect animals and get back to crawling under tractors to see if there is any Scottish soil underneath”, and so on. There will be an answer. As the noble Lord is aware, there is always …
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
2 June 2025
2 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
The time is up.
My Lords, the diocese in which I serve covers one of the most diverse parts of the country. Indeed, arguably, south London is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world. This diversity is often represented in our churches, which have benefited, as has the rest of the country, from the gr…