House of Lords

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Tuesday 28 April 2026

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Sheffield.

Retirement of a Member: Lord Fellowes of West Stafford

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

14:37

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean)]

My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement with effect from today of the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes of West Stafford, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.

Ballet

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

14:37

Asked by

[Lord John of Southwark]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to provide further support to those institutions which provide classical ballet training at degree level.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare an interest as a member of the president’s circle of the Central School of Ballet.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the important contribution of the performing arts, including classical ballet. We continue to support degree-level provision of these subjects through the student finance system and though direct funding for providers via the strategic priorities grant. That includes per-student funding for performing arts courses, the rates for which were maintained this academic year, and direct funding of £57.4 million for 20 world-leading specialist providers, including 12 creative and performing arts institutions.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her Answer. Whatever Timothée Chalamet may say, people care about ballet. The Central School of Ballet, almost uniquely as a degree-awarding classical ballet school, has faced financial uncertainty in recent years, with funding regimes changed and the gap between tuition fees of £9,250 and the costs of £24,000 per student causing real stress. The school awaits the delayed consultation on the strategic priorities grant this autumn, but is concerned that it may not know until well into 2027 what the new funding landscape will look like for 2027-28. Can my noble friend give any reassurance that there will be a prompt response to the consultation and that funding will more closely reflect the costs of specialist providers such as the Central School of Ballet? Can I invite her to visit the school to see the exceptional work of the students and staff there?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I know that my noble friend, as he has already identified, is a very strong supporter of the Central School of Ballet and the excellent work that it clearly does. The Government recognise the valuable contribution made by the Central School of Ballet, which is why it has benefited from £2.2 million in specialist funding from 2022 to the current academic year. I also recognise the point made by my noble friend about the need for certainty. We remain committed to ensuring that SPG funding supports students and aligns with the industrial strategy, including the creative and performing arts. Reform of the SPG is ongoing ahead of 2027-28, including on specialist funding, but we will ensure that there is an opportunity for providers to feed back on our proposals for reform.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has offered a BA degree course in modern ballet since 2009. However, British students from outwith Scotland are financially disadvantaged as the RCS is not recognised as one of the dance centres for advanced training, CATs, probably because there was no such dance provision at this level in Scotland when the CATs scheme began. In contrast, such students at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh are funded by the UK Government. Will the Minister commit to reviewing the status of the RCS as a dance CAT provider so that talented dancers from England, Wales and Northern Ireland are on a par with Scottish students at this globally recognised institution in performing arts education?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I have to confess to not being an expert on the arrangements for the conservatoire, although it is the case that where a student is studying a degree in dance, they are eligible for student funding in the normal way that a student would be. If the noble Baroness sends me further details about whether she thinks that covers the point she is making, I will be happy to look at it.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord John, for raising the question of classical ballet. As the Minister knows, it is highly specialist, highly intensive and time critical so that a dancer can be internationally job ready at age 18. I take the opportunity to ask her about the music and dance scheme, which—as she knows and as we have heard so often—is a vital talent pipeline that ensures that young talent, whatever their background, can fulfil their potential. I am very grateful to the Minister and to Georgia Gould for repeatedly confirming the Government’s support for the scheme, but is she aware that the lack of clarity on long-term funding is now making it very difficult for schools to convince parents to sign up to a multiyear training programme, which is essential to success? Have there been any conversations on the ongoing questions of VAT, whether the exemption for MDS students will remain and, indeed, multiyear funding agreements for these vital institutions?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is very good to be facing questions today from at least two excellent dancers—that is no slight on my noble friend. The noble Baroness raises, as have other noble Lords, the question of certainty around the music and dance scheme, which, as she says, the Government have consistently committed to as we commit to revitalising and widening access to arts education. We continue to fund that scheme, providing bursaries to more than 2,000 students. This means that means-tested, targeted support for students from lower-income families can continue. Funding for the academic year 2026-27 onward will be announced in due course. Although it has not been the case for some time that there have been multiyear settlements, I understand the noble Baroness’s point about certainty for students who are starting on courses and their families.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I confess that I had to do compulsory ballet when I was a little, round, fat six year-old, so I am not in the elite. As well as the Central School of Ballet, a great number of small, specialist performing arts providers, highly regarded internationally, send their overseas students there. But, of course, providing these courses and keeping a pipeline of high-level tutors is more expensive than for many other subjects, so can the Minister assure us that this will be taken into account when the funding is being considered?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes. That is the reason why, as part of the strategic priorities grant, 12 of the 20 small, specialist providers are the type of high-quality performing arts providers that the noble Baroness was talking about. Those 20 providers are being supported in this financial year by £57.4 million precisely because of the point that she has made: they are small, highly specialised and internationally recognised. They therefore have costs that need to be particularly recognised, which is what has happened through the strategic priorities grant.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, I am here to reset the balance on exceptional ballet talent. I did one term of ballet, aged four, at the end of which I got a report that said, “Diana has no natural talent”. That report, unlike many others, has stayed with me to this day. I want to press the Minister, if I may. She has spoken about the department’s long-term commitment to the music and dance scheme, but can she say a little more about the adequacy of funding levels for the scheme, to ensure access for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is definitely not right that the noble Baroness has no talents. Anybody who saw me on “Strictly” will know the extent of my dance talents. Anyway, I reiterate that the Government have given support to the music and dance scheme. It will provide generous support to help students access specialist music and dance education and training, with £36 million committed for this year. As the noble Baronesses have said, the aim of the scheme is to identify and assist children with exceptional potential, regardless of their personal and financial circumstances, to benefit from world-class specialist training. That is very much in line with the Government’s ambition to support dance and the performing arts, both in education and more widely, and we will endeavour to give certainty about next year’s funding for that as soon as possible.

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot really compete with what has been said about dance specialisation because I ceased my dance classes at three. I want to expand a little on the music and dance scheme in schools, and I have raised this with my noble friend the Minister before. She knows that they are calling for the restoration of three-year settlements and an increase in funding, which has been frozen or increased by under inflation since 2011. It is so difficult for the schools when the budgets are not finalised, or are finalised so late, because schools are having to take a gamble on what their funding will be, and they can lose prospective students who will not gamble on taking up a place with that uncertainty. Can my noble friend give us another assurance about the future of this scheme and the level of its funding?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend gives me the opportunity to say, yet again, that through both the music and dance scheme and the dance and drama awards for students studying specific level 5 performing arts qualifications, the Government have maintained their support for those students to ensure that access is widened. I hear the point that my noble friend and others have made about certainty of funding. It is not an excuse, but there has not been multiyear funding for the music and dance scheme since 2020. I quite understand why schools want that longer-term funding certainty. We will continue to do what we can to provide timely—and, if possible in the future, multiyear—funding arrangements, but at the moment that has not been possible.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

14:49

Asked by

[Baroness Paul of Shepherd’s Bush]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards the implementation of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025.

[Baroness Paul of Shepherd’s Bush (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as an executive of Pool Re, the Government-backed terrorism reinsurer.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

Since Royal Assent, the Government have undertaken a range of implementation activities, including communication and engagement, to prepare those in scope for the commencement of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. Section 27 statutory guidance outlining how to comply with the Act was published on 15 April 2026, and the Home Office and the Security Industry Authority continue to work closely on the design and build of the regulator function.

[Baroness Paul of Shepherd’s Bush (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his Answer. I very much welcome the progress that has been made on the protection of premises Act and the recently published guidance but, sadly, as we know all too well, the threat picture is changing all the time, especially around changing attack methodologies and the changing nature of attacks, their perpetrators and their motivations. Staying ahead of this is particularly difficult for those small and medium-sized businesses that are caught in the standard tier of the legislation, which will be completely reliant on the advice provided by the Government. Can my noble friend the Minister tell me how they will be supported to keep up with this change in reality and helped to stay prepared in a way that feels practical and, most importantly, proportionate for them?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that the threat picture is complex: it is changing and there are evolving and enduring threats appearing at all times. The Government will continue to look at how and where it can support those in scope, especially small and medium-sized enterprises in the standard tier. For example, we are looking at developing some tools and templates, where appropriate, and looking at what we can do to help support training needs. The guidance I mentioned, to which my noble friend referred, was published. It is designed to assist those who are responsible for premises. Obviously, we will continuously get feedback from organisations before implementation at a date to be determined in the future.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that this law is known as Martyn’s law—that is Martyn with a “y”—in tribute to Martyn Hett, who was one of the victims of the terrible Manchester Arena attack in 2017. When this legislation was enacted, the Government announced that it would take two years before its implementation in 2027. Does that remain the Government’s expectation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We were very clear when the legislation was passed that we needed to have a period of implementation for a number of reasons, not least so that small and medium-sized organisations and others could have the guidance. We are on track to deliver this within a timeframe around, we hope, that two-year period. The statutory guidance, which I published on 15 April, is the first step; that came after extensive consultation with businesses and the private sector. The next step is to ensure that organisations have the ability to examine that guidance and look at it. The final implementation date is still to be determined, but it will certainly not be before two years.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Government have widened “nationally significant” infrastructure projects to other organisations and companies. I understand that, now, the Wirral peak cluster, which includes CCS development, will also be included in that category. It is going to cause immense environmental damage. Will that pipeline and project be protected in that way?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Martyn’s law provisions, which were passed by both Houses of Parliament, set two tiers of organisation. The first tier, with around 155,000 premises in scope, is called the “standard tier”. Larger organisations facing potential threats of terrorism—there are some 24,000 of them—must have in place additional plans to ensure that they are prepared for potential terrorist activity. The type of activity that we have included in the guidance is around how individuals prepare for potential attacks, how they exit attacks and what training they give their staff. Therefore, under the terms and conditions of the Act that we passed, which concerns public access, any organisation that fits into those 24,000 premises will have to comply with those regulations.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, for “enhanced tier” premises, the Act requires a senior individual to be responsible for compliance. Although they are not personally liable for wider organisational failures, they may face prosecution if an offence occurs due to their neglect. Can the Minister say what guidance will be given on what “neglect” means in this context, so that senior managers and leaders are not put off taking on these very important roles?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is revisiting areas that we discussed during the passage of the legislation, on which I gave, I hope, clear answers. The statutory guidance—which I do not have with me, but which is quite a significant document—was published to give guidance to those nominated individuals responsible for managing properties for which they have a responsibility. We have also taken on over 100 new operational posts in the Security Industry Authority to assist with that, and there will be further guidance on contact that can be had. We also have a digital system undertaking, which we are issuing the contract for now, to manage this in an effective way. So I hope that those who have concerns will be able to look at the guidance and meet the statutory responsibilities that both Houses of Parliament have passed.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, Direct Action is taking action in the City of London to vandalise buildings and intimidate staff. Have the Government any plans to address this problem, which is costing millions of pounds in the City of London?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Those who commit those types of offences do not fall within the remit of Martyn’s law, but they do fall within the remit of other criminal justice legislation. If individuals committing vandalism or intimidation on buildings or staff can be identified, they will face the potential, through the City of London Police, of being taken to court and put in front of a jury. If the jury decides that they are guilty, they will be sentenced and face a penalty for that. It is absolutely right that we condemn those actions. There are democratic ways that people can make protests without damaging buildings and intimidating people.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Further to the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Paul of Shepherd’s Bush, in her Question, Schedule 1 to the Act specifies that halls and hire venues are included in the scope of the duties in the Act. The Home Office guidance published this month states that this includes village halls and community centres. The Minister will be aware from our debates during the legislative process that many village halls are run by volunteers on very tight budgets. Given that they will already be struggling with the Government’s record tax rises, how will the Government ensure that smaller venues such as these are supported, in compliance with the legislation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, we had full and good exchanges on this when the Bill came before this House and the House of Commons. I explained then, as I will explain now, that the impact assessment assesses that small organisations will face around a £330 charge over a 10-year period to meet the obligations of Martyn’s law and the protection of premises Act. I do not think that a £33 a year cost for potential training or advice is significant when potentially it will help save lives, which is the whole purpose of Martyn’s law.

We had that debate during the passage of the Bill. Both Houses of Parliament agreed it was reasonable. I suggest that the noble Lord accepts that reasonableness and helps us to ensure that the guidance is well understood and implemented across the board.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, judging by the definitions in the Act, the proposed new Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens will come under it. I am not expecting the Minister to give me a detailed reply, because I am sure this is confidential. However, does he have confidence that it can be protected from, for example, firebombing, in the light of the fragility of Victoria Tower, the proximity to the river, the openness of the remainder of the gardens and the buildings along Millbank?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Well, I have to say to the noble Baroness that I cannot give any assurances on potentially what will happen against any site. What I can say is that those who have a responsibility for the site under this Act have a duty to ensure that they take steps to prevent actions as far as possible. That involves training for potential members of staff and looking at the physical environment and at what steps can be taken to prevent those attacks. The Martyn’s law Bill was never about stopping attacks: it was about how we manage an event if an attack takes place. The Home Office and the security services would want to make sure that, if any such attacks were planned, we would know in advance and would stop the perpetrators that way. But Martyn’s law is about what we do in the event of an attack taking place in real time, at that moment.

Rail Safety Recommendations: Backlog

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

14:59

Asked by

[Lord Pack]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the backlog in implementing safety recommendations made as a result of investigations by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is for the Rail Accident Investigation Branch and the Office of Rail and Road to monitor recommendations. We are aware of 117 outstanding recommendations of the more than 1,800 made since RAIB was formed. The vast majority of RAIB recommendations are closed within five years. However, some will require a significant programme of work to be completed across multiple organisations and therefore will be open for longer.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

I thank the Minister. The latest published list of safety recommendations from RAIB shows outstanding items dating all the way back to 2008 which have not yet been implemented. The Department for Transport told me that ensuring action on this list is the responsibility of the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, but the regulator told me otherwise and disclaimed responsibility for managing some of that list. Can the Minister please set out the Government’s plans to resolve what is clearly an unhelpful, and perhaps even worrying, discrepancy between what the department and the regulator think about who is responsible for what?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

We can certainly look into the response that the noble Lord has received. Obviously, we all know, sadly, that accidents happen on the railways, despite Great Britain having one of the safest railways in Europe. It is down to RAIB to identify what happened and issue recommendations that aim to avoid similar incidents happening again. As he quite rightly says, the Office of Rail and Road then assesses the action taken by those to whom RAIB has directed recommendations, using clear criteria and experts, before deciding when or whether they can be closed. Clearly, as I think the noble Lord is highlighting, some of the responses and recommendations that come out of accidents are very complicated and involve different actors to pull them together, but I am very happy to find out, if he can give me the specific detail of the cases he is referring to.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, given RAIB’s success in detecting what went wrong with various different accidents and making the recommendations—some are late but some of the recommendations are responded to very quickly—have the Government thought of extending its remit to the roads? Some 1,600 people die on the roads each year, compared with 14 on the railways. Maybe a similar arrangement for roads would save a great many lives.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My noble friend touches on a subject very dear to my heart. I find it quite extraordinary how we are prepared somehow to tolerate the excessive numbers of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. He makes an interesting proposition and I will endeavour to look into it on his behalf.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, in the latest data published from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, there are 13 different railway incidents that occurred over a decade ago that still have outstanding safety recommendations. When will these safety issues finally be resolved?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My information tells me that only 11 remain overall. Of course, I say “only”, but that is still a number. Five of the recommendations that are open are the responsibility of the DfT, and three are in the process of being closed. Two are of a complex nature and are taking time to resolve. It would be wrong of me to pre-empt the necessary work that needs to happen to make sure that there are no unintended consequences from the actions recommended.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, uses the word “backlog” to describe the situation with the implementation of these recommendations. Does the Minister agree that there is a backlog in implementing these recommendations and will she say unambiguously whose responsibility it is for clearing the backlog? Is it not the department’s?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

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 with effectively, and we had more and more of them. It would be wrong to interrupt that process, as we are seeing good results because of it. We need to make sure that everything is done appropriately and that we reach conclusions as soon as practically possible.

[Baroness Kingsmill (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to the role of the trade unions in improving safety on the railways. I have acted on behalf of ASLEF on a number of occasions, and I commend the trade unions for all their efforts to improve safety not only in the railways but in other industries.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for those comments. Throughout tragic incidents, we need to remember the roles of the people who work on the railways, supported by their trade unions. Their actions are nothing short of heroic in many cases. We need to pay tribute to them and to make sure that safety remains at the heart of everything that we do to progress the railways in this country.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that both the department and the regulator need to focus sharply on the root causes of accidents? They include the fragmentation of safety-critical work on the track.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

Interestingly, we can see the main causes of accidents highlighted in this. We know, for example, that level crossings are a critical point and that the weather is becoming an increasing risk. The work that has been done following different accidents when track workers have been injured and, unfortunately, sometimes killed has led to a focus on trackside safety. I am delighted that the statistics are going in the right direction in that area.

[Lord Glenarthur (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness described what has been done by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch. Over the years, I have had some experience of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which publishes detailed commentary on some incidents almost monthly. Is the Rail Accident Investigation Branch also able to publish documentary evidence when its reports are complete, so that we can all read it?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My understanding is that the reports are published and that it should be possible to look through them in great detail. Otherwise, what is the point? We need to learn from these tragic cases and make sure that, wherever possible, we bring in these recommendations and adhere to them to make sure that they never happen again.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I will just pick up the Minister’s point about level crossings. They are a real point of vulnerability in the rail system, especially when those level crossings are on private land. I understand that, in 2024, statutory instruments were brought in to update the legal requirements on signage and barriers, particularly for those private lands. Does the Minister have any assessment of the follow-up to those statutory instruments and whether they have made a difference?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I will endeavour to write to the noble Baroness about the detail of that, but there is a particular focus on private land and how we can make sure that safety notices are put up and maintained. There is nothing worse than having a safety notice but with trees growing across it, for example. This is absolutely critical and, as she rightly highlights, it is a real weakness. We need to be very vigilant and address it where we can.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the key people in the creation of safety in the railways must be the operators? The operators must own safety on their railways, which has been very difficult under the privatised structure that we, fortunately, are bringing to an end. It is crucial that Great British Railways has safety at the top of it and that we do not simply look at all these recommendations and implement them. They can become infinitely expensive. The key objective for the operator must be to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practicable.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My noble friend, with his particular experience, brings a very important point to this discussion. With the creation of Great British Railways, it is essential that we allow the robust legal framework to continue. Safety is absolutely at the heart of that work. Great British Railways is working with the operators and with everyone in the system for the benefit of the passengers who use the railways.

RMT Strikes: Impact on Businesses

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

15:10

Asked by

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on businesses, particularly high street businesses, of the RMT strikes on London Underground services which took place in April 2026 and are planned again for May and June; and what steps they are taking to mitigate any such impact.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, transport in London is devolved to the mayor and Transport for London, and any impacts of strike action on London’s transport network are for TfL to assess and manage. Nevertheless, the Government understand that this is extremely disappointing for passengers and businesses, and we encourage all sides to work together to resolve disputes as quickly as possible.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the Answer, but yesterday the RMT’s general secretary threatened to maximise strike disruption nationwide. This month’s Tube strikes have already cost small businesses an estimated £760 million. Do the Government now regret removing the 50% strike ballot threshold in the Employment Rights Act, thereby guaranteeing strike action across the country, at immense cost to small businesses?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I wonder if the noble Lord has forgotten how much money and revenue was lost during strike actions under the previous Government. We have to remember that the Secretary of State, when she came in, took swift action to deal with this, and I am pleased to say that the incidences have reduced dramatically. Obviously, there are discussions going on with RMT; it would be completely inappropriate for me to discuss that at the Dispatch Box.

[Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab)]

I, too, thank the Minister for her reply to this Question. I have spent a lot of time in my working life trying to help resolve disputes; in my experience, there are often faults on both sides when disputes arise, but I particularly recognise the impact for businesses and the public when transport disputes arise. Does the Minister agree that, yes, improving industrial relations needs to remain a key objective in that sector, but that in particular a key challenge in developing Great British Railways will be to establish with the relevant unions the right new bargaining structures for the future?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

In answering, I thank my noble friend for all the work he has done in this area; he probably understands more than anyone just how important it is to bring parties together. He raises absolutely critical points. We have to bring benefit from collaboration, and I think we have the right building blocks in place to make sure there is the respect due between different parties to make sure that we can move forward positively.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, part of the noble Lord’s Question alludes to the frailty of British high streets. I am sure that, in her travels as a Minister, she is visiting lots of high streets and seeing shuttered restaurants, empty shops and boarded-up pubs. This kind of hit from the strikes is the final straw for many of these businesses. She may not be able to control the unions, but which of these other policies can she control? There is the huge rise in employer NIC, the huge rise in business rates, the hike in employment costs and the most expensive energy costs in Europe. Does she recognise that there is work to be done, not just on strikes but on preserving and saving our high streets? This Government have to act now to do that.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I did wonder when I saw this Question if it would result in the question that the noble Lord asks. As a former local government leader as well, I am absolutely aware that the problem with high streets is not a recent phenomenon but goes back years, and we have to do everything we can. There are some real innovative schemes coming together to support businesses, but I go back to the point that strikes are not helpful in this scenario, and that is why we are determined to improve industrial relations as we move forward.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, the 20% drop in footfall reported by the hospitality and retail sectors as a result of these strikes suggests that at least 1 million of the capital’s 6 million workforce did not travel into work as planned. Most of them had to work from home, which meant that swathes of meetings were cancelled, ranging from large-scale events and conferences to a mass of those smaller but critical face-to-face meetings on which so much business, particularly in SMEs, depends. Does the Minister agree that, if you add this loss of productivity to the actual cost of lost working days, the true cost of these strikes could run into the billions?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

In the recent dispute in London, the particularly disappointing aspect was that in fact, particularly last Thursday, 88% of journeys in London still took place. I think the problem—well, if it is a problem—is that, because of Covid, many more people are able to work from home, and they decided to take the risk out of their day and stay at home. The noble Lord is right that the impact can be devastating, but the positive thing in the dispute this week is that ASLEF did not go out on strike. I think that holds hope for the future round.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Sharpe referred to the threat made yesterday by the RMT to bring about a total stoppage of the railways nationwide if they did not receive an above-inflation pay rise with no strings attached. Last week, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, whether the Government would insist in future that pay rises on the railways would be linked to productivity improvements, and he managed to avoid answering. Will the Minister answer now for the Government that very simple and straightforward question? What is the Government’s policy about achieving productivity improvements on the railways in connection with increases in pay?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

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 government action recognising that the benefits of this will be to both staff and passengers.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, last week I was not singing the praises of the RMT when I was walking with two prosthetic legs between here and Victoria, and I probably speak for many disabled people who rely on the Tube to get to work. But I speak in this place for the smaller businesses out in Rochester where I live—the taxis even out there recorded less work because people were not at work and were either working from home or, probably more likely in many cases, having a day off unpaid. Will the Minister from the Dispatch Box similarly condemn the actions of the RMT?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

It is a very interesting dispute. ASLEF is on record saying that it finds the dispute bizarre because of its nature in terms of proposing a voluntary scheme that is not going to be enforced. I hope the discussions will get underneath the issues that the noble Lord mentions. Of course, our sympathies go out to people who are particularly affected, as he mentioned, by such action. That is why it is so important that we get industrial relations on the right footing in this country, and I am delighted to say that we are in the process of doing that.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

The immediate mitigation of a tube strike is that people take the bus, or they try to take the bus, but the Mayor of London is going to remove all the buses from the most famous high street of all, namely Oxford Street, to the great detriment of shoppers and tourists with a knock-on effect throughout the London bus network. If it is not too late, can the Government call in this decision? If there is any further attempt to extend it, will the Government call it in to stop further pedestrianisation and the blocking of Oxford Street in the interests of business and visitors?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

To relate a small story to the noble Baroness, when I first became an elected councillor, there were proposals to pedestrianise the centre of Leeds, where I am from, and people were predicting that the sky would fall in and there would be queues right back to the M1. It has led to the city absolutely thriving. People will find other ways of getting where they need to go. I think putting pedestrians first is a very interesting and encouraging step forward, and I am sure, when it is successfully implemented, the shops will be very grateful that he has taken the initiative.

National Emergency Plan for Fuel

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Private Notice Question

15:20

Asked by

[Lord Moynihan]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans, if any, they have to activate the National Emergency Plan for Fuel.

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)]

The UK benefits from a strong and diverse range of energy supplies, and the physical supply of fuel to the UK is stable. The national emergency plan for fuel, which has been in place for over a decade, sets out a number of levers that can be deployed in a fuel emergency depending on the type of issue being faced, and this is summarised on GOV.UK. We would consider intervention, with a preference always for the least invasive measures first, if it appears that there could be a shortfall of fuel nationally; but, to reiterate, we are not in this situation.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, this morning the CEO of Wizz Air, which carried over 30 million passengers last year, warned that European airlines risk collapse by September if jet fuel prices remain at current record levels. We are starting to learn of flight cancellations taking place to save aviation fuel and passengers being compensated so airlines can make savings now. Businesses are saying that the Government are not prepared. We have seen the closure of two refineries here in the UK in two years and the threatened closure of the remaining four due to carbon taxes and electricity prices four times higher than in the US, which makes the UK particularly vulnerable. Given that President Trump has stated that there is no timeframe for ending the Iran war, when will the Government listen to industry, level openly with the public, be transparent and heed the words of the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, who has admitted that shortages are coming? Now, the Government should publish a national emergency plan for fuel to show how we can shore up our domestic supply of all forms of fuel and allow the public to make considered decisions.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Lord conflates a number of different sources of fuel into one in his question. It is certainly the case, as far as petrol, diesel and other similar fuels are concerned, that supplies in the UK are stable. The UK as a refiner of petrol actually exports petrol from the UK, so there is no question of supply problems there. Only 1% of the crude oil that goes into petrol refining comes from the Middle East and only 7% of diesel comes from the Middle East so UK fuel supply is generally stable and secure. Jet fuel is slightly different as a higher percentage of it comes from the Middle East, but the airlines in the UK are clear that they are not currently seeing a shortage of jet fuel. Indeed, aviation fuel is typically bought in advance, and airports and their suppliers keep stocks of bunkered fuel to support their resilience.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, the double blockade of the strait is still in place and shows no signs of easing. The national fuel emergency plan was last updated in April 2024, yet current pressures across aviation fuel, diesel and fertilisers are unique and complex. What consideration is being given to updating and stress-testing the plan? How will the Government balance timely information with avoiding panic? What steps are being taken to support early economy-wide fuel efficiency measures?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Earl is absolutely right to point to the complexity of the situation at the moment, not just in terms of particular kinds of fuel supply but the knock-on effects of, for example, a lack of supply in the Middle East as a result of some refineries being bombed and long-term supply questions across the world about certain other fuels. The national emergency plan for fuel, however, is a plan for shortages of fuels, of which there are none at the moment in the UK.

The wider question is: what will happen as far as prices are concerned as this crisis develops, since we have no means of determining exactly when it will finish? That is not an issue for the national emergency plan for fuel, but it is one for the question of stabilising prices for consumers and ensuring that businesses are not at risk from those prices getting out of control. Indeed, as the noble Earl knows, the Government have already started taking initiatives in this respect. For example, £53 million has been distributed to cushion the effects of price rises in home heating fuel, which are particularly suffered by people who are off grid.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that sufficient consideration is being given to the maintenance of adequate stocks of petrol and jet fuel for the military, for their ongoing military operations and their essential training, and that consideration is also being given to alleviating any pressures from the price rises on the already hard-pressed defence budget?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I cannot speak in any detail for the Ministry of Defence, but the noble and gallant Lord can be assured that the question of bunkering and keeping supplies, particularly of jet fuel, is very much directed in conjunction with both civil aviation and military requirements. The question, as he implies, is a further one of prices. It is a matter of looking at how best a particularly targeted intervention can be undertaken in future to ensure that prices do not undermine various activities in this country. The Government are keeping a close watch on that at the moment.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, the national emergency plan for fuel remains a contingency for crisis. Its objectives include protection of human life and alleviation of suffering. Since 2020, energy companies have made £125 billion in profits and around 120,000 people a year die in fuel poverty. Does the Minister agree that there is a crisis and that lives can be saved by curbing profiteering by energy companies?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Yes, the noble Lord asks me whether there is a crisis and there is one in place at the moment. However, we have considerable difficulty in determining exactly its direction and depth, precisely because we do not know what the position is and will be, particularly concerning the Strait of Hormuz, for the future. The response to that crisis, as far as the Government are concerned, clearly has to be to take every measure possible to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz is open—and open without tolls—for the passage of fuel across the world, but we do not know how long that will last.

The plans that we are therefore undertaking, particularly given the prices that may be an issue in global fuel scarcity, with various people trying to cannibalise everybody else’s fuel supply, are under our control nationally. We can therefore indeed intervene, if necessary, to make sure that those prices remain as stable as possible and, particularly as far as those who are in fuel poverty are concerned, that more people do not fall into fuel poverty as a result of those problems.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

Two of our refineries have shut under this Government and the remaining four are at risk from high costs and very high taxes. What has emerged from government discussions with our refiners to expand our refinery output? That is the way to national security—not relying on product imports from dangerous parts of the world.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I do not quite recognise the noble Lord’s description that the four refineries in this country are at risk. Those are very large and stable refineries. As he knows, they continue to refine the forms of crude coming into the UK into petrol and other fuel products. Those refineries are set up to provide a particular kind of output based on the crude oil coming into them, and that is not necessarily a full spectrum of fuel products. Therefore, part of a strategy, as far as fuel is concerned for the future, is to look at where those refineries can expand and increase their production if possible, and to make sure that, where they are not able to easily refine the things we need, we have secure sources of those for the future.

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, military aid to the civil authorities, or MACA, tasks are a standard provision within national resilience and there is a MACA task for fuel shortages. However, policy is clear that the military should only ever be used in extremis. The challenge is that, in recent years, they have become the default setting for many government departments when, frankly, right now, they should be doing other things. Can the Minister reassure your Lordships’ House that civil contingency is in place and that the military will only ever be used at times of extremis? I declare my interest as director of the Army Reserve.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Yes, indeed I can assure the noble Lord that that is the situation. It is what is set out in the national emergency plan for fuel, particularly in terms of the kinds of interventions that can be deployed in a fuel emergency, ensuring that the least invasive measures are carried out first. As the noble Lord will know, there are circumstances in which the military could be involved in making sure that fuel gets to the right destinations and that it is carried and delivered securely and reliably. That is all in the national emergency plan for fuel—a plan that we are not intending to implement at the moment because the circumstances envisaged by that emergency plan are not in place.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister assure us that steps are being taken to ensure that we have adequate storage for fuel and gas? The situation that the Government inherited was certainly unsatisfactory for gas and, given the unstable international environment, we clearly need much more reserve capacity to provide resilience.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to raise storage and resilience. As far is gas is concerned, we have reliable supplies from a range of sources. Most notably, 43% of our supplies come from UK fields. A further 20% comes from Norwegian fields, some of which can be landed in the UK only when it has come from the fields. Only a small percentage comes in from LPG and other tankered arrangements. The question of supply, therefore, is about supplementing those secure supplies with a reasonable amount of reserve facility. That is indeed in place, in terms of eight reserve supply arrangements, as well as the development of the former Rough field in the UK for gas supply purposes.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, on the Minister’s last point about resilience and the Norwegian fields, does he personally support the early development of Rosebank and Jackdaw?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that those two fields have exploration licences but do not yet have production licences. The general point about those fields, and indeed new fields, particularly in the UK, was made just recently by the director of the International Energy Agency, who said that those and other fields

“would not change much for the UK’s energy security, nor would they change the price of oil and gas. They would not make any significant difference to this crisis”.

Regarding the current crisis, it is right in general to continue to move away from reliance on volatile and possibly unstable sources of fossil fuel and develop the greater security that comes with renewable and low-carbon energy, which is what the Government are doing.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that those fields produce oil and gas that is cheaper and of a better quality than the comparable materials that we import? Surely that is a sensible way forward.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Lord perhaps refers to the relative cost of supplies into the UK, which is a fairly complicated matter, and the carbon content of those supplies, which is also a further complicated matter. Those supplies are lower in carbon content than LPG coming in but are nevertheless much higher in carbon content than renewable supplies, which the Government are working on at the moment. The question of price and value is a very complicated issue, but one which is not necessarily germane to the current crisis.

Arrangement of Business

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

15:36

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I thought it would be useful to update noble Lords on the plan for business for today. After consideration of a number of statutory instrument approval Motions, the House will consider the message from the House of Commons on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We will then move on to four Statements on today’s list. During the afternoon or evening, we will receive messages from the Commons on the Pension Schemes Bill and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

After each message has arrived and the Bill is available in the Printed Paper Office, noble Lords will have 30 minutes to table any Motions. The precise deadlines for tabling will be advertised on the annunciator and via the usual channels in the usual way. I would, however, strongly encourage any noble Lords considering tabling to discuss this in advance with the Public Bill Office. After the tabling deadlines have passed and all the necessary papers are ready, we will consider the pensions Bill and the devolution Bill.

I expect that we will need to adjourn the House after the Statements and resume once we are ready to consider the Bills, but I will update the House via the annunciator and usual channels once the timings are clear. Once the consideration of both Bills is complete this evening, the House will adjourn and not sit to consider further messages from the Commons this evening.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House and before it commences its next business, since this is my swan song, I would like to speak personally. I will be brief—when have we heard that before?

It has been an enormous, and I mean enormous, privilege to have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for 51 years, of which I have had the very real honour of being a Deputy Speaker for 26. With very few exceptions, I can honestly say that I have enjoyed every minute of those years, and I hope that I have pulled my weight—albeit the bathroom scales may not think so. I thank all Members and staff for their friendliness and forbearance, particularly at my not infrequent interjections of “Order” and moments of stony silence when standing in this position at the transgressions of some Members. To paraphrase the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, in 1999: “a huge thank you to you all, and farewell”.

Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2026

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:40

Moved by

[Baroness Blake of Leeds]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 2 March be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 27 April.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill.

Motion agreed.

Warm Home Discount (Scotland) Regulations 2026

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:41

Moved by

[Lord Whitehead]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 17 March be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 27 April.

Motion agreed.

Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Amendment and Revocation) Regulations 2026

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:41

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 19 March be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 27 April.

Motion agreed.

First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) Fees (Amendment) Order 2026

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:42

Moved by

[Baroness Levitt]

That the draft Order laid before the House on 19 March be approved.

Relevant document: 57th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 27 April.

Motion agreed.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Returned from the Commons

15:42

The Bill was returned from the Commons with amendments.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Commons Amendments

15:43

Motion A

Moved by

[Baroness Smith of Malvern]

That this House do not insist on its Amendments 38V to 38X to Commons Amendment 38J, to which the Commons have insisted on their disagreement, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 38Z12 to 38Z21.

38Z12: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (1)(a), leave out “features or functionalities” and insert “functionalities or other features”

38Z13: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (1)(b), leave out “features or functionalities” and insert “functionalities or other features”

38Z14: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (4)(a), leave out “feature or functionality” and insert “functionality or other feature”

38Z15: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (4)(b), leave out “feature or functionality” and insert “functionality or other feature”

38Z16: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (4)(c), leave out “feature or functionality” and insert “functionality or other feature”

38Z17: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), in inserted subsection (6), leave out from “to” to the end and insert “—
(a) the different ways in which an internet service of a particular kind is used, including functionalities or other features of the service that affect how much children use the service, and the impact of such use on the level of risk of harm that might be suffered by children, and
(b) the fact that children of different ages may be affected by an internet service, or a functionality or other feature of an internet service, in different ways.”

38Z18: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38J, in subsection (2), after inserted subsection (8) insert—
“(8A) The Secretary of State—
(a) must exercise the power under subsection (1) so as to make such provision as the Secretary of State considers appropriate following the conclusion of the consultation entitled “Growing up in the online world: a national consultation” launched on 2 March 2026 (command paper numbered CP 1528), and
(b) must, in exercising that power, have regard to the responses to the consultation.”

38Z19: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38K, in subsection (1), leave out “six” and insert “three”

38Z20: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38K, after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) The timeline must provide for the first regulations to be laid before Parliament before the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which the statement is laid under subsection (1).”

38Z21: As an Amendment to Commons Amendment 38K, after subsection (2) insert—
“(3) If the first regulations have not been laid before Parliament before the end of the period mentioned in subsection (1A)—
(a) the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a statement explaining why, and
(b) before the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which the statement under paragraph (a) is laid, the Secretary of State must lay the first regulations before Parliament.
(4) References in this section to the laying before Parliament of the first regulations are to the laying before Parliament of a draft of a statutory instrument containing the first regulations.”

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Motion A, I will also speak to Motion A1. On this group, we will debate amendments made in this House and in the other place relating to restrictions on social media use for children. Once again, before getting into the detail of these Motions and amendments, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Lloyd of Effra and myself I thank all noble Lords who have engaged so constructively, not just throughout the Bill’s passage but on these issues in particular. I am pleased to say that, thanks to the collaborative engagement of noble Lords across the House, I believe we have now reached a landing point that reflects our shared aims and that should command support on all sides.

I begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash. His commitment to the cause of children’s safety and well-being is profound. He has spoken passionately in the interests of children, parents and carers across this country, and I am grateful for his willingness to engage constructively with the Government on this critical issue. I also acknowledge the many noble Lords across the House who have shared their expertise and passion throughout this debate. The sincerity with which noble Lords have advanced their argument has been evident throughout and it has materially shaped the Government’s approach as we look beyond the consultation.

Good legislation is very often the product of exactly this kind of dialogue. The Government’s power now reflects the commitments we have made repeatedly in this House: it is a question of how we act, not if we act. Following the consultation, the Secretary of State now must, rather than may, use this power. To reiterate what my honourable friend Minister Bailey said in the other place yesterday,

“the status quo cannot continue. We are consulting on the mechanism, which is the right thing to do, but we are clear that under any outcome we will impose some form of age or functionality”

restrictions

“for children under 16. I can also confirm that consideration of restrictions such as curfews will be in addition to that, not instead of it. As the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has said, we are focused on addictive features, harmful algorithmically-driven content and features such as stranger pairing, which we know can be most damaging to children’s safety and privacy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/4/26; col. 699.]

Recognising our shared determination for the quickest possible action, the Government have further tightened the timeframe for its delivery: a three-month progress report, followed by a 12-month timeline for making regulations, with the possibility of a single six-month extension, to be used only in exceptional circumstances. In recognition of the concerns about harmful and addictive design, we have further specified that the Secretary of State must have due regard to such features when making future regulations.

This is a serious and responsible approach. It preserves the integrity of the consultation, which has now received more than 55,000 responses from parents, children and those with direct experience of these harms. It also responds, rightly, to the concern that has animated much of the debate in this House: that children cannot wait, and that government must be held to a clear and demanding timetable.

I hope the House will recognise this for what it is: a collective effort from Parliament and government on one of the most important issues facing children today. The House has pressed, rightly, for urgency. The Government have maintained, rightly, that we must do this in a way that allows decisions to be informed by the consultation.

Motion A1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would amend the Government’s regulation-making power by requiring the Secretary of State to have further due regard to Ofcom’s codes of practice and the Information Commissioner’s children’s code, as well as specific risk factors such as “contact from strangers” and “loss of privacy”. It would also require due regard where representations from the general public are received in relation to a child facing

“imminent danger arising from their contact with an internet service”.

The Motion also proposes that the review of Ofcom’s enforcement powers is brought forward and tightens the timelines further, specifically that regulations must be made only six months after the three-month progress report, as well as shortening the potential extension period from six months to three months.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his continued commitment to child safety and rights. The Government share his determination to ensure the robust and urgent protection of children online. The noble Lord highlights many areas on which the Government have sought views through their consultation. While we recognise that these factors are important, prescribing an extensive list of specific “due regard” requirements, as the Motion does, is unnecessary and risks creating too much rigidity, reducing the flexibility the Secretary of State needs to respond to harms.

The consultation also makes it clear that the Online Safety Act will remain the foundation of our work on online safety; it forms a strong baseline from which this Government can build. I can reassure the noble Lord that the Online Safety Act’s statutory review will consider the effectiveness Ofcom’s enforcement powers, which are currently being manifested through 100 enforcement investigations that are currently under way. Introducing a review before all the duties have come into effect would risk being incomplete and ineffective.

On the timeline for action that we have discussed in this House over recent days, this Government have already gone a long way in ensuring that regulations are brought forward as quickly as possible, following the consultation. As I have said throughout, we will act as quickly as possible, and the DSIT Secretary of State has set out an ambition to make real progress on the regulations by the end of the year. Given all of this, I therefore urge the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, not to press his Motion.

This Government have made clear our intention to Act, and I know that many across both Houses will follow the outcomes of the consultation with great interest. It is in all of our interests to agree the Government’s Motion today, so we can start the important work of preparing to act on the consultation and keep children safe online.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

Moved by

[Lord Clement-Jones]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 38Z22 to Commons Amendment 38Z17, Amendment 38Z23 to Commons Amendment 38Z18, Amendment 38Z24 to Commons Amendment 38Z20, and Amendment 38Z25 to Commons Amendment 38Z21—

38Z22: As an amendment to Commons Amendment 38Z17, in inserted paragraph (b), after “ways” insert “, and
(c) compliance with—
(i) any Codes of Practice published by OFCOM pertaining to the safety of children as users of internet services, and
(ii) the Children’s Code published by the Information Commissioner’s Office, and
(d) the risk of exposure of children to—
(i) risks of serious harm, manipulation, sycophancy or exploitation,
(ii) illegal content or primary priority content,
(iii) serious loss of privacy, and
(iv) contact from strangers.”

38Z23: As an amendment to Commons Amendment 38Z18, in inserted subsection (8A)(b), after “consultation” insert “, and to any representations made directly to the Secretary of State’s Department before the first regulations under subsection (1) are laid before Parliament, by members of the public in relation to children in imminent danger arising from their contact with an internet service.
(8B) The Secretary of State, in exercising the power under subsection (1), must have regard to the outcomes of a review of OFCOM’s powers, under Part 7 of this Act, to enforce regulations made under that subsection.
(8C) The review described in subsection (8B) must be completed within six months of the day on which the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is passed.
(8D) In conducting the review described in subsection (8B), the Secretary of State must give consideration to—
(a) OFCOM’s ability to prevent serious harm to children as users of internet services, including with the use of powers set out in sections 144 to 147 (business disruption measures);
(b) the relevant views of—
(i) legal experts,
(ii) online safety experts,
(iii) relevant academics,
(iv) relevant charities including children’s and women’s charities,
(v) OFCOM,
(vi) Parliament, and
(vii) any other persons the Secretary of State deems relevant;
(c) whether OFCOM’s powers under Part 7 are adequately supported by any existing provisions relating to—
(i) injunctive relief, and
(ii) individual redress,
to enable OFCOM to enforce those regulations effectively or whether further such provisions are necessary to enable that enforcement.”

38Z24: As an amendment to Commons Amendment 38Z20, in inserted subsection (1A), leave out “12” and insert “six”

38Z25: As an amendment to Commons Amendment 38Z21, in inserted paragraph (3)(b), leave out “six” and insert “three””

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as we reach these final stages of ping-pong on the Bill, I will first express the profound regret and disappointment of the Liberal Democrat Benches at the posture now being adopted by the Conservative Opposition. I have immense respect for the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the tireless campaign he has waged to protect children from online harms. Yet, last night in the Commons, the Conservative Front Bench effectively laid down their arms, deciding that it is now “reasonable” to give the Government some time. By caving in at the 11th hour, the Conservatives have chosen to accept a compromise that leaves our children waiting far too long for meaningful protection.

We on these Benches acknowledge that the Government have moved their position, and I thank Ministers for their engagement throughout. We welcome the change to a “must” duty and the introduction of a timeline in the Bill. However, when we look at the reality of the Government’s latest proposals, passed in the Commons yesterday, the fatal flaw remains that timeline. The Minister in the Commons outlined a timeline that consists of a progress report in three months, 12 months to lay regulations and a further six-month buffer for so-called “exceptional circumstances”, just as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, has outlined today. As my honourable friend Munira Wilson pointed out in the Commons last night, this adds up to 21 months before we might see any real action. Let us be absolutely clear: giving platforms nearly two years to comply is simply unacceptable and unsellable to the parents whose children are suffering at this moment.

Because the Conservative Opposition have backed down, this is our last opportunity to stand for the robust measures that so many parents, experts and civil society groups have been crying out for. Therefore, we have tabled these short, very clear amendments to do a few vital things.

First, our Amendments 38Z24 and 38Z25 would slash the Government’s bloated timetable down to a strict three plus six plus three-month framework. They demand a progress report in three months, would give the Government just six months to lay regulations and would allow only a tight three-month extension if absolutely necessary. Secondly, our Amendments 38Z22 and 38Z23 would incorporate the principles championed so expertly throughout the Bill by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. We must regulate the product, not just the user. Amendment 38Z22 would mandate strict compliance with Ofcom’s codes of practice and the ICO’s children’s code, which of course was enabled on to the statute book by the noble Baroness. It explicitly demands that regulations protect children from the risk of serious harm, manipulation, sycophancy, exploitation and unsolicited contact from strangers.

Crucially, Amendment 38Z23 would ensure that the Government cannot ignore the voices of parents. It would force the Secretary of State to have regard to representations made by the public regarding children in imminent danger arising from their contact with internet services. Furthermore, it demands a strict six-month review of Ofcom’s enforcement powers, forcing the Government to formally consider whether the regulator needs stronger teeth, specifically evaluating the need for business disruption measures, injunctive relief and individual redress. We cannot allow the tech giants to use this 21-month window to continue business as usual. We must act decisively and we cannot let this moment pass without making the strongest possible point that our children’s safety cannot wait. We must send a clear message to the public that there are still those in this House who will not compromise on a tight, workable timeline to dismantle the addictive architecture of big tech. Because the timeline is the critical issue and because we believe that this House must hold the Government’s feet to the fire, we give notice at this point that, at the conclusion of this debate, it is very likely that we will wish to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his openness, his campaigning and his extraordinary ability to bring different views together. This morning, he and I agreed that, whatever the outcome of this particular conversation, we would work continuously and ferociously for child safety in the future.

I support Motion A1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in its entirety. However, I will draw attention to two particular matters. The first is new subsection (8A)(b) inserted by Amendment 38Z23, which states that, when making regulations, the Secretary of State must give consideration to representations

“by members of the public in relation to children in imminent danger arising from their contact with an internet service”.

For well over a decade, I have responded to requests for help from families of children at risk of serious harm or, in far too many cases, when it is already too late. It is an enormous privilege, but it is also a tragic one, and it is a sad indictment of our current regime that those parents feel compelled to turn to me rather than to government, the regulator or the police.

Yesterday, the Minister said:

“When potential criminal activity is being threatened and there are imminent risks, that is also a matter for the police”.—[Official Report, 27/4/26; col. 946.]


My heart sank when I heard that. I have repeatedly warned, both on this Bill and the Crime and Policing Bill, that the police will not accept complaints where a child is being manipulated, groomed or threatened by a chatbot, because there is no human perpetrator. Equally, in cases of self-harm or threats that do not meet the threshold of a criminal offence, Ofcom has no role.

The Government have resisted every attempt to provide a route for parents in crisis. They have, on several occasions, whipped heavily to prevent the creation of an individual reporting mechanism, a route to the courts or an offence to which the police could respond. New subsection (8) effectively requires DSIT to establish a mechanism through which the public can inform the department directly about children in imminent danger. Of course, I would far prefer a comprehensive regime, but perhaps if cases of individual imminent danger come regularly to the department’s attention, Ministers may yet come to a different conclusion about the need for an individual complaints mechanism.

16:00

The second issue is the enforcement powers. Yesterday, the Minister said that we did not need a review because the Online Safety Act already provides for one; indeed, she repeated that point in her opening remarks. However, Section 178(2) of the Act says:

“The review … must not be carried out before the end of the period of two years beginning with the day on which the last of the provisions of Part 3 comes into force”.

As the matter stands, today, the clock is not even ticking, because not all the provisions of Part 3 have yet been decided; nor have they come into force. Therefore, there will be no review for at least two years, and possibly far longer. Further, when the review eventually confirms what many of us already know—that the Act’s enforcement mechanisms are insufficient—we will then face yet further delay before any actual changes are made.

We could, and should, have placed enforcement at the forefront from the beginning. Instead, the Government have repeatedly blocked attempts even to discuss the issue. This amendment would introduce a clear requirement for a review within six months of the Ofcom enforcement powers that are relevant to the Bill. The parliamentary arithmetic is against the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but I say this to the Government: it is within your gift to create a portal for desperate parents and to bring forward a timely review of Ofcom’s enforcement powers. The continued refusal to do so, while persisting with headline-grabbing announcements about new duties, does not change the lived experience of children.

Only an hour ago, I spoke to a tech insider who described this as “safety theatre”—a term used in Silicon Valley for announcements that generate headlines but fail to deliver the necessary change. Our children deserve better: they deserve swifter, more effective and more principled leadership.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thought that I was walking into a kind of kumbaya, with peace breaking out, but, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, perhaps I got that wrong.

I was going to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nash, with whom I profoundly disagree, on having achieved something of a victory. I was also going to congratulate the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Smith, on reaching some kind of compromise—at this point in ping-pong, we might all be relieved about that—but I do not understand the Government’s position. So I want to ask the Minister a genuine question in good faith.

We have heard a lot about the fact that this measure could not be implemented because we had to wait until the consultation was over. What if those who were consulted on the Government’s plans for a social media ban for under-16s—experts, NGOs, parents—do not agree that age functionality restrictions for under-16s represent the best approach to keeping teens safe? What if they raise worries about the anonymity and privacy of over-16s and adults, as well as a fear of digital ID? Some of the 55,000 people who responded certainly raised the problem of censorship mission creep.

I ask that because, does this not pre-empt the outcome of a consultation that the Minister assured us the Government could not do? Is there not therefore a danger of undermining evidence-based policy in general, to be so pragmatic? Might it imply that public consultations are just going through the motions and that politicians are not really listening to the public at all? What do those of us who have concerns about this under-16 ban do if some of our warnings are ignored before it has even happened, never mind afterwards, when I am sure we will see that some of our fears are actually true? If, by the way, this was only about keeping children safe, or if I thought it was the best way to keep children safe, then fine—but not everybody thinks it is.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her kind words and for the statement. I thank the Government for their active engagement in the matter of social media, albeit rather last-minute, and for making a binding commitment to impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16, to be focused on addictive features, harmful, algorithmic-driven content, and features such as stranger pairing, which we know can be most damaging to children’s safety and privacy and have led to so much harm and a number of deaths.

This is very welcome to the millions of parents, voters, teachers, health professionals and others who have been asking for it, and it is exactly what my amendment would have achieved. I would just ask the Government to get these lines to all Ministers, so that when they are on the airwaves, they stick to them, rather than giving long and rather confusing answers—because it is to this statement that we will be holding the Government to account to deliver on as soon as possible.

I thank all noble Peers from across the House who supported my amendment, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Berger, Lady Benjamin and Lady Cass, who put their names to it originally. I also very much thank my team, Ben and Molly Kingsley of Safe Screens, Bella Skinner and Becky Foljambe of Health Professionals for Safer Screens, Simon Bailey and Ed Oldfield. I also thank Annabelle Eyre and Henry Mitson, who have advised me on the process. Having taken five Acts through your Lordships’ House as a Minister, I have discovered how different the gamekeeper-turned-poacher process is. I also thank Susannah Street and Connie Walsh in the Public Bill Office for being so available to help me navigate the intricacies of the amendment process.

Above all, I thank the 27 bereaved parents who have campaigned so tirelessly alongside me, particularly Ellen Roome. They did not have to do this; they did it so that no other family would have to live through what they have lived through, and they have ensured that, as a result, every child in the country will be safer because of their work, and I thank them for it. I do hope that the Prime Minister will meet with them, as they have requested, very soon.

Turning to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I share the noble Lord’s concern about timescale. I see no reason why the Government cannot act faster than the longstop they have allowed for, and I understand and have heard their statement that they intend to do so. I also share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about Ofcom. Having met recently with Ofcom and heard the long-winded and convoluted process it has to go through before it can stick anything on the social media companies, I was confirmed—if I needed any confirmation—in my view that we have to put the onus on the companies to get their houses in order by restricting children’s access to harmful features, rather than hoping we can regulate our way out of this problem.

However, we need to improve substantially the Online Safety Act and to strengthen Ofcom’s ability—and, if I might say so, its capacity and boldness. It is disappointing that the rumour is there will be nothing in the King’s Speech which would enable us to do this. I hope we can live together to fight this battle another time, but so far as this Bill is concerned, I feel the moment has passed.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for listening to the voices of concern, including those of the bereaved parents, for our children’s safety to be at the forefront of all our minds.

As we move forward to the next steps, it might be a bit late in the day to make this suggestion, but I have an idea to throw into the mix. It may sound radical, but it is for the tech companies and IT platforms to require a licence from Ofcom to operate in this country. It may sound like a crazy idea, but radio and TV companies need a licence, so why not tech companies and social media platforms? If they do not comply then their licence will be taken away from them or they will be fined huge sums. This is one way to get them to be focused. Are we bold or intrepid enough to do this? It could be the answer to keeping them focused and to keeping our children safe. Age assurance is the key which they need to operate to keep our children safe. As we move forward, I hope that everyone will make it their responsibility to do just that, in every way possible. Ofcom is vital to all this. I look forward to working with the Government on this important issue and to us keeping the focus of our minds on our children’s safety, happiness and contentment for the future.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, here we are again. It feels a bit like doomscrolling to keep returning to this subject. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and all those who have supported him for pushing water uphill successfully, defying gravity. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for appropriating, with her permission, the Motion moved yesterday by my noble friend Lady Kidron.

I thank the Minister for having moved. However, I take issue with her description of where we are today as a “landing point”. Rather than us being at a landing point, I hope that we all feel that we are at a launching point, because we need to go a great deal further. One of the things that one has learned throughout this process is that there is a body of knowledge on this issue among some people in both Houses of Parliament that is quite considerable. There is a very high level of knowledge of some of the issues, some of the potential solutions and the faults with some of those potential solutions. There is no perfect answer.

For many of us who have been quite closely involved with the genesis of the Online Safety Act and what has happened thereafter, there has been an apparent lack of interest and engagement from some in the current Government and the departments involved to co-operate and collaborate with those Members of both Houses who have extensive knowledge and to tap into that knowledge. There is a loose collection of those involved in this. We are called the “tech team”—a nice tautology. The members of that team want to help the Government and be behind or alongside them. We do not wish to be constantly harrying the Government and encouraging them to do more. Yesterday I was wearing a tie which had some acrobatic, leaping elephants, because it required a level of noise and drumbeats to get the Government’s attention. Today, I am wearing a tie which has a series of sheep jumping over a hurdle, because those of us on the tech team need to summon our inner sheepdogs to manoeuvre the Government in the right direction.

Motion A1 is not, as the Minister said, about creating restraint on the Government. It is about creating focus. What is contained in Motion A1 is a very clear description of what can and should be done at speed, without restraint, to get the ball rolling. I do not think that anything that comes out of the consultation will tell us anything that we did not know. If anything, it may get slightly more confusing because I suspect that it will be quite unfocused. I appeal to the Government to listen to those involved in this who perhaps have the most history, the most bruises, the most insight and the most knowledge about what is going on internationally, not just in this country, to work together for the benefit of children.

I will support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, if he decides to test the opinion of the House—more in hope than in expectation of a great victory. However, I appeal to the Government to listen and to work with us and not, as it occasionally feels, against us.

16:15

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly add my thanks and congratulations to my noble friend Lord Nash on what is a substantial achievement, and my thanks to the Minister and the Government for having heard the strong voices in this House. But I will also double-click—if your Lordships will forgive the tech jargon—on what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said.

I have now spent 15 years working on child internet safety, and I fear that that entire period has been safety theatre. I worry that today is another one of those days. While we congratulate ourselves on having made some progress, the reality will be that we have not achieved anything at all unless we actually get change in the products that our children are using every hour of every day.

I ask the Minister and the Government to consider how they can look at greater enforcement while the consultation is ongoing. I fear that, despite the best intentions of everyone from all sides of this House and the other place, the reality is that the tech lords are smiling.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and to the tireless campaigning of my colleague and noble friend Lady Benjamin, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, who I do not see in her place at the moment.

This issue has been long in the waiting. For many years, we have heard about the impact that social media is having on our young people, and today I am a bit sad that, having taken us so far, the rug has been pulled from under the feet of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, not by colleagues here but by colleagues down the Corridor. We are almost there, but there are still issues to be resolved. As was said earlier when we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, there may well be industry insiders smiling, thinking that they have dodged it for the time being.

Talking of time, I listened very carefully to the Minister when she said that it is not about whether we take action but about what sort and how quickly. I hope she will address that when she gets up to speak, because I have genuine concerns about those timelines and what will happen if, in the consultation, the public say, “We want this Government to act quicker”. Will they be able, as suggested by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, to go back to the three-six-three timescale and do things more quickly? That is what the public want. If things slip to 21 months, we will almost be in the general election period. I hope the Minister reflects on that.

I would also like the Minister to answer the question that my noble friend Lady Benjamin asked about Ofcom licensing these tech platforms, just as it does for radio and TV. If we are going to involve Ofcom more, we also need to look at giving it more teeth because, at the moment, it is not able to govern as we expect. Clearly, I support my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones’s attempts to test the opinion of the House. I really hope that noble Lords and noble Baronesses from across the Chamber will support him, because we are almost there but not quite. I do not want us all to get so close to achieving what we desire and then to pull away.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I start where the Minister started, by acknowledging the work of my noble friend Lord Nash, who has led an incredibly effective campaign, which has been driven not by any political motives but by three things: first, wanting to do right by all children; secondly, having listened to the pain and the passion, as many of us have, of those parents who have lost their children, those who are worrying about their children and those whose children have been deeply harmed by social media; thirdly, by the weight of evidence from not just those parents but health professionals, police and law enforcement, and teachers.

Parents around the country are celebrating the Government’s decision to commit to act with the focus, as my noble friend said, on harmful and addictive features and algorithms and the ability to meet strangers online. It is my noble friend, his team and his co-signatories who are behind that change, and we are all really grateful to them for that.

But, as we have heard this afternoon, the work to get this right is only just beginning. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, wants to get things a bit more right this afternoon with his Motion A1, but these issues were debated yesterday, and now is not the time to revisit them. But the Government will benefit—whether they want to or not—from the expertise in this House, as we have heard; from my noble friend’s drive and focus; and from the experience and insight of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron; from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones; and, sadly for not much longer, from the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, who will be much missed on these issues.

I also acknowledge the courage of those Labour Peers who have supported my noble friend’s campaign, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, but also the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who have all spoken out. We all know in this House how difficult that is to do. When we think about the impact that this change, if well implemented, will have on our children in future, we are all reminded of the extraordinary privilege that we hold to sit here and be part of shaping that change.

This has been a long Bill. I think there were around 700 amendments in Committee stage and many more thereafter. I could not have played my part in that without the wonderful campaigners, including, of course, the bereaved parents—especially Ellen Roome, who has been extraordinarily generous with her time—the experts and all the charities who have supported me on everything, including children deprived of their liberty, children who are not in school, free school policies, and, of course, social media and smartphones. I cannot thank them all enough. They brought to life the reality of the policy choices that the Government are making.

I would like to pause a moment and remind the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that, when he talks about the Conservatives bailing out at the last minute, it was the Liberal Democrats who bailed out all of 24 hours ago at the very last minute on a situation that would have clarified today the position of smartphones in schools and those schools that have “not seen, not heard” policies. Ironically, we are going to have to wait roughly 21 months as a result of their decision to move from supporting and signing an amendment to, as the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, said yesterday, preparing to vote against us on it. I ask the noble Lord perhaps to reflect on that.

But the Government have made a commitment that children should have no access to smartphones. When I met the Minister in the other place yesterday, she reassured me that the head teacher who spoke on the radio just after our debate last week and said that putting this guidance on a statutory footing would make no difference in her school, because they had had a ban since 2023 and children had phones switched off in their pockets and in their bags, would think again and would understand that was no longer appropriate. Given the evidence from many people at the Education Select Committee this morning, I press the Minister to confirm that she agrees with her colleague in the other place that that school will no longer think that policy is acceptable. The Government have committed to addressing this no later than September 2027, for which I am genuinely grateful, but my guess is we will need to address it sooner than that.

In closing, I am grateful for the steadfast support of the co-signatories to my very many amendments across the Bill, including my noble friends Lady O’Neill, Lady Spielman, Lord Agnew and, of course, Lord Nash. I would particularly like to call out the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who has been the most stalwart of stalwarts and has supported our proceedings with his own charm, expertise and insight from start to finish, which is quite a marathon. I have had fantastic and skilled and long-suffering support from the Public Bill Office and from an amazing team of special advisers and researchers in Annabelle Eyre, Henry Mitson, Dan Cohen and, for part of the Bill, Beatrice Hughes.

I would like to wish the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, a well-earned rest at the end of the Bill. I have some sense of how many hours and how many plates they have been spinning respectively. For my part, I am going to be stepping down from the Front Bench now that the Bill is completing its passage—anyone would think I was sad to go—but I genuinely look forward to working across the House on the special educational needs and disabilities legislation when it comes and more. Our role is making sure that legislation works in practice; I have tried to do this in this Bill, and I will try to do it in the future.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate today and during the whole of the Bill’s passage. First, on the specifics, as I set out earlier, the Government hope that today we are able to reach an agreement on the Government’s Motion; it represents an effective compromise that recognises the shared desire across the Government and both Houses that we must act quickly to protect our children’s online well-being.

On that point, and perhaps taking up the challenge of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as my honourable friend said yesterday in the Commons, and in fact as we have said throughout discussions on these issues, we have been clear that the status quo cannot continue. The Government were clear when they launched their consultation that this was not about whether we take action, but rather what we do. We are consulting on the mechanism and that is the right thing to do. But we are clear—and this is the result of some of the very important engagement that has gone on—that, under any outcome, we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16. As I said earlier, I can confirm that consideration of restrictions such as curfews will be in addition to these restrictions not instead of them. This is a reasonable approach for this House, and in fact for both Houses, to take—to recognise the importance of the consultation and to recognise the strength of feeling as represented in these two Houses about the need to take action.

I also hear some of the other comments around the need for enforcement. I am sure that some of the debate will continue, and that is probably for other days and possibly even other bits of legislation.

16:30

To reiterate, as both Secretaries of State for Technology have made very clear, Ofcom has absolutely got the backing of this Government for enforcement. It is already undertaking 100 investigations. The Online Safety Act, which some noble Lords have alluded to, set out a timetable for the review of enforcement measures. It seems appropriate that that happens at the point at which the evidence is there about the use of the duties. I was not here, but I presume that was the reason why that was the timetable set out by this House and the other place.

The government amendment reflects our commitment to act. It recognises the importance of having regard to harmful and potentially addictive design when exercising the power and contains a legally binding timeline to ensure that this action is urgent. It is a timeline that has been tightened due to the engagement as this Bill has gone through, so that, to be clear, regulations now must be made within 15 months of Royal Assent. To reiterate what colleagues inside and outside this House have made clear as we have set off on this process of consultation, this is a period of time that operates as a cap; it is not a target. The Technology Secretary has been clear that she wants to take action quicker than this. This House and the other place have been able to set in place a timeline that will ensure that that action happens. For all these reasons, I urge the House to join the Government and support our amendment, so that we can move on from these discussions, important though they have been, to start taking action.

It was one year ago this week that we had the Second Reading of this Bill in this House. I close by expressing my gratitude to your Lordships’ House for its constructive and valuable scrutiny on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I thank all noble Lords I have engaged with during its passage. I thank the Opposition Front Bench, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, given her announcement today—though I would have thanked her anyway. When I arrived in this House, she kindly agreed to have a coffee with me to talk about her experiences and help me to settle into my role here. She has been enormously concerned about the effectiveness of our schools and the safety and well-being of our children. She has been a doughty opponent. She has always been clear about the detail and always willing to engage outside this House, in order to bring that experience to improve our considerations. I am slightly fearful that she will be even more difficult to deal with on the Back Benches than she has been on the Opposition Front Bench. I know that for her Opposition service and her service as a Minister, there are many people who have enormous respect for her and the contribution that she has made.

I thank the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Mohammed of Tinsley—for their engagement during the course of this legislation. I thank my noble friend Lady Blake for taking this Bill through this House alongside me. Her support, knowledge and commitment to children’s social care and education have been evident at every stage. I thank my noble friends Lady Anderson, Lady Twycross, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lady Lloyd of Effra for their support during the passage of the Bill, particularly for stepping in when I decided I was going to take an extended duvet day. I thank the officials in the DfE and the Bill team for their enormously hard work, both in designing the policy and given the considerable scrutiny that the Bill has received as it has gone through both Houses.

It has been a huge privilege to argue for the transformational measures in the legislation during that time, but I very much hope that this is the last time I will need to do so. That is not because I do not think that these are enormously important issues but because it is now time to put the work of this legislation into action: it is time for free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England; to cut the cost of school uniforms; to ensure that phones do not disrupt a single second of the school day; to keep our children safe online; to ensure that there are excellent teachers in excellent schools; to stop children falling through the cracks between local services; to transform child safeguarding arrangements and to support children in care; and to lift 100,000 children out of poverty with our record expansion of free school meals. This Bill ensures safety and opportunity for every child in this country, so that every child has the best start in life. Its measures are desperately needed. We cannot afford to wait a moment longer. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate on Motion A1. I thank in particular the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who have done so much to contribute to the way this debate has moved forward. I thank the Ministers for their engagement, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who I know will be missed from the Opposition Front Bench. She is always gracious, even under fire. I thank and pay tribute to all the bereaved families, without whom we would not have had the representations that we have had, and all their supporting charities.

I heard the exhortation from the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, to exercise our inner sheepdog, but all I can display is my inner Dobermann, and so, at the end of the day, despite all the thanks and tributes to all those who have taken part, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

16:37

Division 1

Motion A1 disagreed.

Ayes: 91

Noes: 181

16:49

Motion A agreed.

Middle East: Economic Update

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

16:50

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 21 April.

“With permission, I will update the House on the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the continued action that the Government are taking to strengthen our economic and energy security in response to the conflict in the Middle East.

We did not start this war and we did not join this war, but since the war in the Middle East broke out, I have been clear-eyed about my duty: to be responsive to a changing world and responsible in the national interest. The best economic policy today is our diplomatic policy—negotiation, de-escalation and the permanent reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week in Washington, I held talks with world Finance Ministers, including the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. I struck a joint agreement with 10 other major economies, calling for a swift and lasting negotiated resolution to the conflict and agreeing to avoid unnecessary trade restrictions in order to support energy and food security. We agreed to maintain maximum economic pressure to ensure that Russia cannot profit from this war. I was proud to announce the UK’s third tranche of the extraordinary revenue acceleration funding for Ukraine’s defences, as well as continuing to work with the US Administration to increase economic pressure on Iran.

The Prime Minister has also led global action, convening a summit of nations with the President of France to work together to support freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The UK will continue to play its part, including engagement with the insurance industry to support shipping when conditions allow.

We are continuing to plan for every eventuality, but we must deal with the economic costs that are already being felt. I reject the demands for a knee-jerk response to this crisis that would put household finances at risk through higher inflation and higher interest rates. Every choice that I make will be about keeping costs down for families and businesses. That is why I have extended the 5p cut to fuel duty twice since the election, saving the average motorist £90 a year compared with the plans that I inherited. It is why I have frozen prescription charges for two years in a row and frozen rail fares for the first time in 30 years. It is why I am taking £150 off energy bills, with additional help for those struggling with the cost of heating oil; and it is why I have expanded the British industrial competitiveness scheme to over 10,000 manufacturers, addressing long-term competitiveness and cutting electricity costs from this year.

During the last energy shock, the previous Government’s package of unfunded and untargeted support saw more than a third of direct energy bill support go to the wealthiest households. That meant higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher taxes. I will not repeat those mistakes. Last week, the IMF said that my plan is ‘the appropriate response’ to the conflict. I led a joint statement, with 10 other major economies, agreeing to co-ordinate our domestic responses, to ensure that they are responsive and responsible.

This Government have the right plan for our economy. At the spring forecast, we saw how the action that we have taken since the election has prepared Britain to better weather this conflict. Inflation was at 3% and set to fall to target—a lower base than at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when inflation was high and rising. Borrowing was set to fall more over this Parliament than in any other G7 economy. We are set to reduce the deficit by £20 billion, from 5.2% to 4.3% of GDP this year. I increased our financial buffers, with headroom against the stability rule of £23.7 billion, so that we can weather shocks and keep borrowing costs down.

Last week, the IMF welcomed the UK’s ‘notable improvement’ in our public finances. I am clear that the best way we can build a stronger, more resilient economy is through economic growth. I welcome recent figures showing that the economy grew by 0.5% in the three months to February and upgraded growth for the three months to January to 0.3%. I also welcome this morning’s labour market figures for February, which show unemployment coming down and real wages continuing to rise, as they have in every month since I became Chancellor—adding to the evidence that the Government have the right economic plan to steer our economy through the uncertainty ahead.

However, as I have said, the war in Iran will come at a cost. Last week, the IMF published its updated forecasts for the global economy in response to the war. It reduced its expectations for GDP growth in the United Kingdom and increased its expectations for inflation. That builds on the IMF’s judgment that the UK is more exposed to energy price shocks than our counterparts—a problem that the previous Government failed to address in 14 years—and on its observation that, since the last energy crisis, the UK has had higher inflation than other countries. The aftermath of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, and the previous Government’s untargeted and unfunded support package, contributed to a more persistent rise in inflation and interest rates than in other countries around the world.

The IMF’s forecasts are a stark reminder of why we must stick to our economic plan and go further and faster on delivering economic security. Since the election, we have invested in clean, homegrown energy, in renewables and in nuclear power. In 2025, we imported 17% less gas than in 2021, and gas generation now sets the wholesale price of electricity around a third less frequently than it did in the early 2020s, meaning that our energy system is now more secure and less exposed to volatile global energy prices.

Today we are going further, with a package of changes to reduce our reliance on imported oil and gas, boost the use of renewables, and smooth the impact of energy price shocks. First, oil and gas production from the North Sea is an important and valuable resource, and its workforce is a vital asset for our country. That is why we are harnessing our domestic supply by managing existing fields for their entire lifetimes, including by allowing tiebacks for those fields to ensure that they remain viable. Today, in advance of legislation, we are publishing further details on tiebacks, which I first announced in the Budget. External analysis has predicted that they could result in tens of millions more barrels of oil and gas being available for UK supply. Today’s announcement gives industry greater clarity to support investment in those projects and maximise supply from our existing sites to support our energy security.

Secondly, we are sweeping away the barriers to new renewables investment by accelerating vital grid infrastructure, reforming land access rules and extending permitted development rights, as well as making more public land available for renewable infrastructure, which could unlock up to 10 gigawatts of capacity, and helping households and businesses to switch to clean, cheaper renewable electricity through plug-in solar panels and better electric vehicle charging.

Thirdly, we are reforming our energy system. Currently, households and businesses pay more for their electricity when the gas price is high. The electricity generator levy already recoups some of the excess returns made by generators due to high gas prices. Today, I am announcing that I will extend the electricity generator levy beyond its scheduled conclusion in 2028, and, ahead of that, I will increase the rate of the levy from 45% to 55%. That will ensure that a larger proportion of any exceptional revenues from high gas prices are passed back to government, providing a vital revenue stream so that money is available for government to support businesses and families with the impacts of the conflict in the Middle East. Crucially, it will encourage older low-carbon electricity generators, which supply about a third of our power, to move from market pricing to fixed-price contracts for difference.

New proposals set out today by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will further weaken the link between high gas prices and the price paid for our electricity, and limit the spikes in energy prices in driving up inflation and costs for households and businesses.

The Government have the right economic plan—a plan that was right before this conflict in the Middle East started and is now essential to weather the impact of that conflict. The plan, backed by the IMF, will keep costs down for everyone and provide support for those who need it most. In a world that is more uncertain, it is a plan to build a Britain that is stronger and more secure. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the International Monetary Fund, in its latest World Economic Outlook, has warned that the energy shock stemming from the Iran war will hit the United Kingdom harder than any other advanced economy, notably in terms of growth and inflation. It is also the case that UK borrowing costs are higher than those in other comparable OECD countries. In short, the prospects are depressing in the extreme. What, we ask ourselves, are the Government proposing to do about it?

We read one apparent answer in today’s newspapers: freeze rents; in other words, adopt a policy which has always failed everywhere that it has been tried. Can the Minister tell us when we will be told the details of this latest whizz idea, or will he be willing to rule out the ridiculous idea definitively from the Dispatch Box, given the adverse effect on the share prices of some property companies today?

I turn a much more serious subject: defence. The world situation is becoming more worrying by the day, which makes the much-delayed defence investment plan even more important and the funding shortfall of £28 billion ever more disturbing. A responsible Government would act with vigour to progress matters. Experts are unanimous in the view that our capabilities are woefully short of what is necessary. What have the Government done about this unhappy situation? The answer is: very little, unless delay constitutes action. Can the Minister tell us when the defence investment plan will finally be published?

I turn to North Sea oil and gas, where there are possibilities that would help our economic situation by increasing output, increasing well-paid jobs and improving our balance of payments. But the Jackdaw and Rosebank decisions do not seem to have moved from the desk of the Secretary of State. His ideological prejudices are well known, though difficult to understand in the circumstances that now face us. When we last debated the Middle East, the Minister seemed warmer to North Sea exploitation than I had expected. But, in short, we are still seeing more delay.

We know that the Government face very difficult circumstances, many of which are exogenous and they can do little about, but what action they have taken has tended to make matters worse, and what they have left undone is significant. Will the Minister urge his ministerial colleagues to get serious, to avoid economically damaging ideas such as freezing rents, and to take those decisions which need to be taken as a matter of urgency?

The truth is that the Government’s position on energy is woeful, as we heard during today’s PNQ. Let us take the Jackdaw gas field: it is ready, the infrastructure is in place, the operators are prepared; it could supply enough gas to heat 1.4 million homes by the autumn, and more cleanly than much of the gas we currently import; and it would strengthen our energy resilience by 6%. So why, in the face of rising global instability, with energy security more critical than ever, are the Government not bringing the Jackdaw field online? Equally importantly, why is the industry so fearful that the Government will not approve the Rosebank field? Is it right?

From an energy perspective, Britain could scarcely be entering this crisis in a weaker position. We face the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, crippling our manufacturing industries and making life very difficult for our SMEs—and consumer prices are not far behind. This is a dangerous position to be in, and I gently say to the Minister that the public will not thank the Government for ideological gestures. They will expect, and they deserve, practical action to secure our energy future.

What unites each of these issues is the absence of domestic resilience. The war in the Middle East has exposed that weakness, but it did not create it. So the question for the Government is a simple one: will they now act to strengthen the resilience of this country, restore credibility to their economic and energy strategy, and provide the certainty that our Armed Forces, our businesses and our households all need—or will they continue to rely on hope when what is required is action? The time for hope has passed, and the time for decision is now.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the impact of the Iran war has made previous economic forecasts pretty much redundant. We talked last week about warnings from the IMF and the OECD, repeated today by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, which essentially assess that the UK would suffer more than any other G7 economy. This conclusion is being reinforced by recent inflation and unemployment numbers. The Government’s response has been limited and very much a “wait and see”. Uncertainty is a reason for resilient action, not a reason for inaction. We need to see action now from the Government.

Each day, as an ironic consequence of the war, the Treasury is taking in some £20 million more in taxes, including VAT and the electricity generation levy, so why are the Government not using this money proactively to help people with spiralling living costs? That money could be reducing petrol prices at the pump through a temporary cut in fuel duty. It could be used to cut rail and bus fares or to reduce the price of home EV charging. Families need help now—they need early reassurance on the energy price cap after June and a cancellation of the 5p duty rise due in September.

We strongly support reform of the energy pricing system. Our manifesto made a clear commitment to break the link between gas prices and electricity prices—ours was the only manifesto that had that in black and white—so we are glad that the Government have taken up that approach and that they are moving to a contracts for difference model. But we are still concerned about energy costs for individual households; for small businesses, including hospitality; and for the food and agricultural sector, which has such an impact on the cost of living.

So will the Government now work with the banks to introduce a scheme of low-interest loans for householders who want to adopt energy-saving measures but need a way to finance the upfront cost? Will the Government press Ofgem to investigate the broken energy market, which is in effect blocking small businesses and hospitality from accessing good energy deals? My colleague in the other place, Daisy Cooper, met last week with Ofgem, and it is absolutely clear that there is a case for the energy retail market to answer here in dealing with small businesses and specifically with hospitality. Will the Government recognise the particular need to act on costs in the food and agribusiness sectors, which are being so impacted by this war? That impacts clearly and directly on the cost of living for ordinary people.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the questions and comments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, started her comments by focusing on the IMF’s revised forecasts that were published last week and that we discussed briefly in this House then. As both noble Baronesses know, the IMF reduced its expectations for GDP growth in the UK and increased its expectations of inflation. Both of these build on its judgment that the UK is more exposed to energy price shocks than our counterparts—a problem that the previous Government, as I have pointed out before, failed to address over 14 years. This builds on the IMF’s observation, following the last energy crisis, that the UK had higher inflation than other countries in the aftermath of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget and the previous Government’s untargeted and unfunded support package, which contributed to a more persistent rise in inflation and interest rates in this country than elsewhere.

I noticed, though, that the two noble Baronesses did not mention the positive economic news that came out last week. The latest GDP figures show that the economy grew faster than expected in the three months to February and that growth for the three months to January was upgraded. Last week’s data releases also showed unemployment coming down, real wages continuing to rise and borrowing in the year to February falling by £20 billion compared with last year. Neither noble Baroness mentioned any of those figures in their comments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that previous forecasts are now redundant and that we have no resilience. Previous forecasts are not redundant because they show that, going into this crisis, Britain was well placed to weather this conflict. At the time of the spring forecast, inflation was at 3% and set to fall to target; that compares with 11% at the start of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. We were in a much stronger position at the outset of this crisis, in terms of inflation, than we were then.

The spring forecast also showed that borrowing was set to fall more over this Parliament than in any other G7 economy. GDP per capita was forecast to rise by 5.6% over this Parliament, compared with a fall of 0.2% in the previous Parliament. We had increased headroom to more than £23 billion, making the right decisions to make sure that we had the necessary fiscal buffers to weather this conflict. As a result, we are well placed.

Some of the figures that came out last week, which neither noble Baroness mentioned, show that our economic plan was indeed working, but no one denies that we must do more on economic security so that the UK does not continue to be more exposed to energy price shocks than our counterparts. Since the election, we have invested in clean, homegrown energy, in renewables and in nuclear. Last week the Chancellor announced steps to go further: harnessing our domestic supply of oil and gas production in the North Sea, which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned; further removing barriers to new renewables investment; and reforming our energy system by further weakening the link between high gas and electricity prices. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her support for that measure. I believe our economic plan was the right one before the war started; it is even more essential now in a world that is even more uncertain.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, spoke about defence spending. We are delivering the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. The Chancellor has approved access for the Ministry of Defence to use the special reserve to deploy additional capabilities in the Middle East, meaning that the net additional costs of these operations will be funded by the Treasury. We are investing £270 billion over this Parliament, after years of our Armed Forces being neglected under the previous Government. We will increase defence spending to 2.6% of GDP from 2027, and we are increasing spending on defence by £5 billion in this year alone. In answer to the noble Baroness’s specific question, the defence investment plan will be published in due course.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned oil and gas in the North Sea. As she knows, I agree with much of what she said on that point. Oil and gas production from the North Sea is an important and valuable resource, and its workforce is a vital asset for this country. That is why we are harnessing our domestic supply by managing existing fields for their entire lifetimes, including by allowing tie-backs for those fields to ensure that they remain viable. Last week, in advance of legislation, we published further details on tie-backs, which external analysis has predicted could result in tens of millions more barrels of oil being available for UK supply. Last week’s announcement also gives industry greater clarity to support investment in these projects and maximise the supply of our existing sites to support our energy security. The Government will legislate to introduce these changes in due course.

The noble Baroness asked specifically about Jackdaw and Rosebank. Development proposals are a matter for the North Sea Transition Authority and the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning. I am not able to comment on the specifics of any individual project while the regulatory process is under way, or on the investment decisions of individual operators. The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will make a decision regarding the environmental impact assessments for these projects in the coming months.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about action to tackle energy bills. As she knows, we do not yet know what the full impact of this conflict will be, so we must be agile in responding appropriately at each moment. It remains the case that the best way to protect families and businesses is rapid de-escalation of this conflict. She knows that we have taken action already in a previous Budget, when we reduced energy bills by £150. We also froze rail and bus fares, as she asked, and we froze prescription charges, so we have done many of the things that she is calling for. She knows, too, that the price cap is giving households certainty on their bills until July, ahead of the winter months when people use 78% of their gas.

It is important to point out, as we respond to this crisis, that we must learn from the mistakes of the past. The previous Government pushed up borrowing, interest rates, inflation and mortgage costs with an unfunded, untargeted package of support under Liz Truss. Both noble Baronesses mentioned the importance of inflation; we must absolutely learn the lessons of the past. We are planning for every eventuality so that we can keep costs down for everyone and provide support for those who need it most, acting within our fiscal rules to keep inflation and interest rates as low as possible.

17:05

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, one of the big problems that the Government faced when they took office was an unsustainable level of public debt and a totally unsustainable level of debt interest being paid by taxpayers each year on that debt. The Government saw clearly at the time that one thing they had to do was to stop the welfare budget exploding as it is and increasing so rapidly. They introduced some modest measures, which they then dropped as soon as they faced discontent from left-wing Back-Benchers in the House of Commons.

Do the Government intend to allow the welfare bill to increase by the hundreds of billions of pounds forecast at the moment? Do they intend to do nothing to alter the financial incentives, which they have made better for large families, not to seek work if they have established a good claim to benefits? These are major national problems that really ought to be tackled in the face of this worrying economic position, and the Government, almost two years into office, seem to be slipping into inaction, with a complete lack of leadership, allowing Back-Benchers in the House of Commons to leave the problem to fester.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. We are repairing the public finances. At the time of the spring forecast, borrowing was set to fall more over this Parliament than in any other G7 economy. We are now borrowing below the G7 average, something that was not achieved in any of the 14 years of the previous Government. Just last week, we saw borrowing in the year to February fall by £20 billion compared with the previous year.

The noble Lord is absolutely right, of course, that the welfare system requires reforming. In the last five years of the previous Government, spending on welfare increased by £88 billion so, clearly, reform is necessary. There might not be consensus on what to do about it, but no one would believe that the system we inherited is working. It abandoned too many people to a life on benefits, wrote off too many people as too sick to work and condemned too many children to be too poor to eat. That is not a system that does not require reform, and reforming it we are.

To tackle fraud and error, we are increasing the proportion of face-to-face assessments for PIP from 6% in 2024 to 30%, saving £4.6 billion. We are rebalancing universal credit to incentivise people to work, rather than encouraging inactivity. We are redeploying 1,000 work coaches to support sick and disabled people who were previously left without contact. We are also supporting people to move into work, with £3 billion of investment into the pathways to work employment support and a £1.5 billion investment in the youth guarantee and the growth and skills levy.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, returning to defence spending, the Minister referred to the biggest sustained increase in that spending. If it happens, we will welcome it, but it does not happen until the defence investment plan is published. I noted the slight smile on his face when he said, “in due course”, but if that money is not forthcoming then the GCAP project will not have its next stage payment. If it is not forthcoming, there will be SMEs across the country waiting for contracts to go but will not be able to fulfil them, because they will be out of business. Last week, the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, and I heard the Estonian Defence Minister specifically call out the United Kingdom for being slow to come up with the money. When will the Treasury release the defence investment plan, because, if it does not, there will be consequences?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

Of course there are consequences; I agree completely with the noble Lord. He talks of a hypothetical of the defence investment plan not happening. It will happen and, as I have said already, it will be published in due course.

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, in response to my noble friend Lord Clarke’s question, the Minister spoke of the cuts that the Government are planning to make to the welfare budget. Is he saying that those cuts are sufficient and that that is all the Government will be doing?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do not have a crystal ball and I cannot look ahead to everything the Government will be doing, but I can tell the noble Lord, as I said to his noble friend, that we are reforming the welfare system.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

In Washington, the Chancellor pledged to avoid unnecessary trade restrictions. Can we look forward to the Government cancelling the bad idea of introducing a large carbon border tax or tariff, which would be a penalty on British consumers and a further boost to costs, making British industry less competitive?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

No, and I disagree with the noble Lord, as I am sure I do on many issues. He talks about trade restrictions. He obviously championed a Brexit which put up massive trade restrictions with our nearest trading partners—

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

Tariff free!

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

It was estimated at the time to be costing us some 4%, subsequently estimated to be 8%, of GDP, so he has put up massive tariff barriers with our biggest partner, which is not something that is in favour of free trade. He talks about it being tariff free, but he knows that the trade barriers in place are equivalent to some 20% in terms of tariff.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the International Relations and Defence Committee. Does the Minister agree with the assessment made by the chair of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, about complacency in the Government? Bearing in mind that the theme of this Statement is the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz, we have seen the Prime Minister, together with President Macron, announce UK leadership as and when this conflict ends—we hope it will be soon—in marshalling and providing support for the Strait of Hormuz. With the defence investment plan due, to quote the Minister, “in due course”, does he think that is a sufficient response, bearing in mind the urgency of providing our allies, particularly those in the Gulf, with the required support?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lord Robertson but I disagree with him. Looking at the decisions that the Prime Minister and Chancellor have taken, we are delivering the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. As I have said already, and I am sure will continue to say, the defence investment plan will be published in due course. The noble Lord spoke of the international action that the Prime Minister has led; he knows that the Prime Minister has led global action by convening with the President of France a summit of nations to work together to support freedom of navigation through the strait. He will know that the UK will continue to play its part through engagement with many industries, including the insurance industry, to support shipping when the conditions allow.

[Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)]

My Lords, does the Financial Secretary agree that, rather than increasing revenues, an oil price of more than $100 a barrel is far more likely to reduce them because of the wider effect on the economy? Does he agree that, at a time like this, when revenues are likely to be hard to come by, the Government should be very cautious about agreeing to increased spending proposals of the sort we have been listening to today?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord on that point. He is far more expert in these matters than me and was in the Treasury through many more crises than I have been, so he has great experience in this matter. He is absolutely right that the IMF showed last week that the impact on the size of our economy and GDP could be significant. No one quite knows yet what the full impact of this conflict will be; that will depend on its duration and severity. However, we must be agile in responding appropriately at each moment.

The noble Lord is absolutely right that, as we respond to this crisis, we should learn from the mistakes of the past. The previous Government, as I have said already, pushed up borrowing, interest rates, inflation and mortgage costs with an unfunded, untargeted package of support under Liz Truss. That package gave the most support to the wealthiest households: between 2022 and 2024, under the previous Government, households in the top income decile received an average of £1,350 of direct energy bill support. That left us with high levels of national debt and a cheque written then for a bill that is still being paid today. The party opposite talks about the importance of inflation, but we will not tackle inflation through an unfunded, untargeted package of support like we saw in the past.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister says, no one quite knows yet the impact, particularly on the oil and gas sector. I declare an interest as a co-author of the original 1979 plan for sharing oil reserves in the event of a crisis. The crisis then was, of course, far bigger—not smaller, as the IEA says—than anything we are facing now.

Can I offer the Minister one piece of advice on the Government’s response? I know it is part of a much bigger jigsaw. The short-term impact of an oil shock, small or large, in any region, may be to push prices up, but they always come down very quickly, and the oil price is nearly always lower after these kinds of upsets than it was before. There is plenty of oil on the high seas, and plenty of oil can be added into the world’s supplies. And I gather that, if you have a big enough yacht and know the right people, you can get through the Strait of Hormuz without much difficulty. I suggest to the Minister that the greatest danger of using the oil price situation as an excuse for a lot more controls, caps on prices and so on, is that that will cause more danger and suffering than any possible shortage or temporary disruption in refined oil, imported or exported. Please could the Minister tell his colleagues to go very carefully in that area?

There are all sorts of other, bigger issues, but the current oil crisis is small beer compared with what we have had in the past. The economy can handle it pretty well without too much direction and involvement of a complicated kind, which could make things much worse and increase suffering.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord for his optimism, which is much needed at times. Let us hope that he turns out to be correct. As I have said already, the long-term consequences of this are hard to predict at this point; they will depend on the severity and duration of the conflict. However, I think the noble Lord is saying that we need to make sure that our response is temporary and does not have long-lasting impacts. One of the principles that the Chancellor has set out for our response is that it should be temporary.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, one of the implications of what has happened in the Middle East is that the United Arab Emirates has announced that it is withdrawing from OPEC, which will have an impact on global oil market volatility. In the light of this new scenario, are the Government planning to take extra steps to shield energy-intensive industries from potentially very large swings in oil prices?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely correct to say how important it is to do that. That is why we have taken further action to weaken the link. Last week, the Chancellor announced plans to weaken the link between high gas and electricity prices and to prevent spikes in energy prices from driving up inflation and costs for households. That is why the delinking steps that we have taken are so important.

The Chancellor also announced the extension of the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which was a commitment in the industrial strategy. That will reduce electricity costs from April 2027 by around 25% for electricity-intensive manufacturing frontier sectors in the industrial strategy and foundational sectors in their supply chains. Last week, the Chancellor announced that over 10,000 businesses are now expected to benefit from the scheme, rather than 7,000 as previously planned. Eligible businesses will also benefit from a one-off backdated payment in 2027, covering the support firms would have received if the scheme had been in place from April 2026. The consultation on scheme design and eligibility was published last week.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that conflict in the Middle East underlines the case for ever-stronger relationships with the EU, including on trade? Secondly, does he agree that on industrial strategy, the priority must be protecting plants and jobs? To what extent can we use our considerable procurement power to ensure that we protect the jobs and skills in this country?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do agree with what my noble friend said. Already, even before this crisis, the damage that Brexit was doing to our economy was apparent. As I say, at the time of Brexit it was estimated it would cost about 4 percentage points of GDP. That has now risen to between 6 and 8 percentage points of GDP. Obviously, cutting ourselves off from our closest trading partner was never going to be good for the economy, and that has been seen absolutely to be the case. It is why this Government have put in place the reset with our European friends, and we are deepening our trade relationships. The Chancellor set out her intention to deepen further our economic relationship with the European Union in her recent Mais Lecture, and I hope we will see more action on that in the near future.

In terms of the industrial strategy, I absolutely agree with my noble friend. That is why, for example, as I was just saying, the British industrial competitiveness scheme is so important in helping electricity-intensive manufacturing frontier sectors. That was a commitment given in the industrial strategy that has now been put in place. What my noble friend says about procurement is absolutely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, will know how hard it is to change procurement rules in government, but I absolutely agree wholeheartedly with what my noble friend says.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, when the Minister rehearsed his list of government initiatives and investments, he left one thing out: the issue of gas storage. Can he tell the House this afternoon how many days of gas we have in storage in the UK at the moment available to us, and what the Government are proposing to do to expand that capacity?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do not actually have with me the figure of the number of days of gas storage. I apologise if I should have that figure with me: I am more than happy to find it and to write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, as a fair-minded Cross-Bencher, I acknowledge that there have been some encouraging signs in the first quarter, particularly GDP growth and employment in February. But I also recall that we had a brief fireworks display in Q1 last year, followed by a flatlining of the economy throughout H2. Now, as we know, as a result of the war in Iran, both the IMF and the OECD have marked down the UK’s employment forecast by more than any other G7 economy. So I hope the Government will be true to their pledge to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7—noble Lords will remember that pledge—by doing all they can to prove those forecasts wrong: none more so than for our SMEs, as we have heard, particularly our start-ups and scale-ups, which are swimming against the tide of rising taxes and increasing costs. What meaningful encouragement are the Government offering our SMEs, specifically to stimulate growth activity, investment and output, if we are to believe in this growth mission?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I have much experience of his fair-minded Cross-Bencher activities, and I am always grateful to him for his comments. He is absolutely right that there was encouraging economic news last week. As I said, the latest GDP figures show the economy grew faster than expected in the three months to February, and that growth for the three months to January was upgraded. He is obviously also right to say that Iran now presents serious challenges for our economy, and for all global economies. He is also absolutely right to say that it is important that we beat the forecasts. We have beaten the forecasts before: we beat them last year and I am confident we will be able to do so again.

We must continue to bear down on inflation and to build our energy security, both of which we have discussed already. Of course, we must continue with our growth plan. We must continue investing in growth-enhancing capital, transport and housing, for example, with record investment in R&D. We must continue reforming the planning system, to get Britain building; we must continue deepening our economic relationship with the European Union; we must make sure we have the fastest adoption of AI in the G7, which we have set as an objective; and we must deliver an effective regional growth strategy, so that growth and the increase in living standards are felt throughout our country.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Treasury gets criticised for being too short-termist these days. I am wondering whether it undertakes market research among the public about the extent to which there may be an opportunity to get greater investment from them if we were ambitious enough to try one or two tactics such as, for example, reviving post-war credits. That produced money for the Government when they needed it and paid a return. People invested very widely after the last war, a long time ago; I am looking backwards. Looking forwards and at the Front Bench of the Tories, they are very much in support of public/private partnerships. When are we going to get that moving? I believe that, if we did market research, we would find that there is a view among the public that they would be willing to invest and this would provide new revenue.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend is consistent in his support for public/private partnerships. He knows that I agree with him on that. He is also a consistent champion of greater levels of retail investment. He will know that we have launched a new model of public/private partnerships. We have said, for example, that they could be suitable for projects such as the Lower Thames Crossing, and we will look at additional projects where that model could add additional investment to our economy.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response Update

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

17:26

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 27 April.

“Given the upcoming Prorogation and State Opening of Parliament, I thought it would be helpful to return to the House to provide an update on the progress the Government have made to respond to the humble Address of 4 February as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

As Members will know, the Government published the first tranche of material on 11 March. That first tranche primarily related to the aspects of the Motion regarding Peter Mandelson’s appointment and his subsequent dismissal as ambassador, in addition to the details of his severance payment provided to him by the Foreign Office. Following the publication of the first tranche of material, we have been working at pace to lay a second tranche before the House. The House will recognise, given the breadth of the Motion, that a very significant number of documents have been found to be in scope and that it is taking time to process them accordingly.

The Cabinet Office team responsible for the Government’s response to the humble Address has been working through a large quantity of material, working closely with many officials across Whitehall, particularly in the Foreign Office. The team has been seeking to take an approach to sifting and publishing information that allows it to respond to the will of this House thoroughly but expeditiously, and in line with the approach taken by previous Governments in responding to humble Addresses. This includes co-ordinating a number of requests to government departments to identify documents potentially in scope of the humble Address, particularly electronic communications and the minutes of meetings between individuals and Peter Mandelson. This is the section of the Motion that has the broadest scope.

As Members will have seen from the first tranche, the Government cannot publish certain details, such as the names of junior officials, personal information or legally privileged information. Separately, in line with the process agreed by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, the Government will not publish information that undermines or threatens our country’s national security or international relations. As colleagues will appreciate, both those processes require detailed consideration. The Government are very grateful to the ISC for its constructive engagement in that process, which we recognise has constituted significant additional work on top of its existing responsibilities. As I have set out previously, the Cabinet Office has also been working with the Metropolitan Police to avoid prejudicing a live police investigation.

I can confirm that by the end of today, the Cabinet Office will have passed to the ISC all the material it has processed as part of the humble Address and judged to be prejudicial to national security or international relations. This has amounted to over 300 individual documents. It includes a number that are relevant to the processes of Peter Mandelson’s security vetting, too. As I mentioned earlier, I am very grateful to the ISC for the important role it continues to play in the humble Address process, and for the speed with which it is processing the documents.

I would like to reassure colleagues that Parliament will receive the second tranche of material as soon as possible following the State Opening and the conclusion of the work of the ISC, and I will return to the House at that point. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for agreeing to take questions on yesterday’s Statement.

The Falklands War was won in less than 12 weeks. This Government, however, cannot piece together a paper audit in that time. We have today simply been given a holding statement that more documents will be forthcoming. We remain no more enlightened than we were a month ago. No information has been forthcoming on the quantity of documents within scope of the humble Address passed in the other place, how many documents have been reviewed and by whom, whether the Cabinet Office has sought redactions and whether the Intelligence and Security Committee has agreed to those redactions. Can the Minister give the House a hard deadline by which the second tranche of documents will be published?

In light of press coverage in the Guardian suggesting that the Cabinet Office considered withholding certain documents from the Intelligence and Security Committee, can the Minister give us a categorical assurance that no documents within scope of the humble Address will be withheld from that committee?

In the other place, my honourable friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar asked the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister a number of specific questions that went unanswered. The Chief Secretary’s silence on questions relating to Peter Mandelson’s declaration of interests form was deafening. Can the Minister confirm that that document exists and that it will not be withheld or redacted without the consent of the Intelligence and Security Committee? Serious questions are being asked about Peter Mandelson’s links through business interests, and how his activities as ambassador may have been linked to those interests.

We are also told that the security mitigations that were put in place for Peter Mandelson were not in response to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Can the Minister give the House more clarity on that? Can she say whether the detail of those concerns will be made public if the ISC judges that they may be published? On a day when the Labour Party is whipping its MPs to prevent the Privileges Committee making an independent assessment of the Prime Minister’s conduct, can we be reassured that His Majesty’s Government will not stand in the way of other committees doing their work?

The Government’s excuses for delay are wearing a little thin. We have heard all about the urgency that the Government are bringing to the matter: I hesitate to use the famous words “working at pace”. Yesterday, we heard from the Minister in the other place that documents should be published “in a chronological order”. He went on to say:

“Otherwise, I suspect there would be questions about what documents were missing, subject to the conclusion of the Committee’s work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/4/26; col. 589.]


If it is the Government’s intention to avoid questions about what documents are missing, why are they still refusing to publish a list or overview of all the documents and whether they have been published? That overall document would help us greatly, and surely the titles or descriptions of the documents cannot be seen to prejudice any matter that is currently sub judice. Can the Minister say what progress is being made towards the publication of such a document? We have asked about this many times before and we still await a clear response.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, at the heart of this issue is the bravery of the women and girls who spoke up to reveal the truth about Jeffrey Epstein. Following his evil and criminal behaviour, there have been multiple failures of our political systems—failures that are now rightly seeing the end of various political careers. The events also raise questions about how we fix our broken systems so that we can deal much better with whatever future crises or scandals occur.

So I very much welcome the positive noises now being made about new legislation—for example, to allow peerages to be revoked in the case of scandal. However, it is fair to say that the track record of reform in this place is somewhat slow, so I hope that the Minister can confirm both that such legislation is imminent and that it will be given priority in the legislative queue, so that there is an opportunity for Parliament to debate and, if it so decides, pass such legislation promptly in the new Session.

It is also very welcome to have heard of the plans for the review into the vetting processes by Adrian Fulford, particularly because the more we hear details of what happened with the vetting, the more questions are thrown up. I will give just two examples. One is the sequence: make an appointment, announce the appointment, then carry out vetting after the announcement. Leaving aside questions of how well established that process and sequencing is and who knew about it, it is clearly a sequence of events that invites disaster. Vetting should surely come before an announcement, not after, because that is the way to minimise any pressure to come up with a politically convenient answer and to be fair to everyone involved, including somebody who fails the vetting process.

Also inviting disaster is the daisy chain of oral briefings that we now know took place without key decision-makers seeing the relevant summary of the vetting verdict paperwork. As we now know, the official who saw the paperwork orally briefed the FCDO official, Ian Collard, who did not see the paperwork himself. He, in turn, orally briefed Olly Robbins, who also did not see the paperwork. He, in turn, had oral discussions with the Prime Minister, who again did not see the paperwork so was, in fact, having matters described to him third hand. In other words, the more senior the person and the more crucial their personal decision-making in the process, the more removed they were from seeing the core paperwork involved.

There is obviously a political question in this about why the Prime Minister proceeded with such a process, but there is also a crucial issue for the future. Such a daisy chain of decision-making—with one person speaking to another person, who then speaks to another person, who then speaks to another person, without the authoritative written verdict of the vetting system being in front of everyone—is a process that invites disaster.

I hope the Minister can, as well as addressing my question about legislation to remove peerages, also confirm that these issues relating to vetting processes are within the scope of the Fulford review, that the review will be published soon—maybe even at pace—and that this House will have an opportunity to discuss that review promptly.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their contributions. As I have said before, and will say again, Jeffrey Epstein was a despicable individual and his victims must be our first priority. We should never forget that, every time we discuss Epstein’s horrendous behaviour, his victims relive awful experiences. Those survivors must be front and centre when we debate all issues relating to Jeffrey Epstein, his network and their impact. I am aware every day of what they must be experiencing as this is living and breathing in the media.

In updating the House, it would be helpful to clarify some of the points made in the other place yesterday. As noble Lords will be aware, we published the first tranche of material in response to the humble Address Motion on 11 March, just over a month following that Motion. That first tranche of material relates primarily to the aspects of the Motion regarding Peter Mandelson’s appointment and his subsequent dismissal as ambassador, in addition to details of the severance payment provided to him by the Foreign Office.

Following the publication of the first tranche of material, Cabinet Office officials have been working tirelessly—I removed “at pace” from my briefing note—to prepare a second publication. Noble Lords will recognise that, given the breadth of the Motion, a significant number of documents are in scope and are taking time to process accordingly. We prioritised the material relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment in the first tranche so that Parliament could see those key documents first.

Where the Government deem material to be prejudicial to our national security or international relations, it is being referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee for consideration. As noble Lords will appreciate, this process requires detailed consideration. The Government are very grateful to the ISC for its constructive engagement in this process, which we recognise has constituted additional requests on top of its already important work. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Beamish for his work as chair of the committee.

I can confirm that, as of yesterday evening, the Cabinet Office has passed to the ISC all material that it has processed as part of the humble Address and judged to be prejudicial to national security or international relations. This amounts to over 300 documents. This includes a number that were relevant to the process of Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. As the Government have set out, no redactions will be made on the basis of national security or international relations without referral to the ISC. As we have made clear in the first publication, there are several other public interest principles—in respect, for example, of the names of junior officials, email addresses, personal data and legally privileged information—which the Government have applied following a clear precedent set by previous Administrations. To confirm, as set out in the first publication, no redactions were applied to the Prime Minister’s box note.

I can also confirm that the next publication will include electronic communications, including those sent on non-corporate communication channels, between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, senior officials and special advisers. As the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has said on multiple occasions, the Government are fully committed to complying with the scope of this Motion. The material that has been commissioned has been provided and, subject to the processes that I have explained, will be published.

The Government have also been clear throughout that they will not prejudice the ongoing police investigation. Noble Lords will understand that this means that I cannot confirm what documents are being withheld in response to the Metropolitan Police’s request but, to reassure your Lordships’ House, as agreed in the other place, the chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee kindly agreed to look at documents given to the Metropolitan Police in relation to the police investigation so that we had a way, albeit a closed way, of showing due process and transparency to the House in relation to the humble Address. Those processes have continued. Noble Lords who know Simon Hoare MP will I am sure agree that if he thought that we were not being compliant, we would have heard by now.

On some of the specific points raised, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, asked when these documents will be published. I reassure noble Lords that we will publish them as soon as possible following State Opening of Parliament. I will provide further updates to your Lordships in due course. We will be discussing, I am sure, the detail of those papers in your Lordships’ House at that point. The noble Baroness also touched on other committees’ investigations. Obviously, there is a live debate in the other Chamber as we discuss this issue. There is also, as we have seen this morning, a live investigation by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. We are fully co-operating and I think noble Lords would expect no less.

I welcome to his place the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and congratulate him on what I think is his first outing on the Front Bench during a Statement—I look forward to many such conversations. He asked very specific questions. In terms of the legislation on removal of peerages, obviously, it is not for me to pre-empt the King’s Speech, but noble Lords will be aware that we have discussed this many times from this Dispatch Box and I expect to see such legislation forthcoming. I look forward, as the policy Minister, to discussing it in great detail with the noble Lord when we get to that point.

The noble Lord raised a very important point about vetting before an appointment. That process has now been explicitly changed, both for political appointees and for political appointees in the diplomatic space: vetting would need to be done before an announcement.

On the security vetting process, I think there are many Members of your Lordships’ House who have actively participated in the deep vetting process, either as Ministers or as civil servants. Noble Lords will be aware that there is a line here: we need people to actively participate in this process to make sure that we are getting the full information; we need to make sure that the detail of that information is then protected; and who sees what, when has to be managed by UK Security Vetting, which I thank for its work. I know that it is very nervous about some of the conversations we are having, not because of the process it undertakes but because it does not want people to be less forthcoming than they need to be in the process. However, I appreciate what the noble Lord said about a daisy chain of conversations. He will be aware that Ministers were not aware of that daisy chain at various points, but we have asked Sir Adrian Fulford to undertake a review, and I am very grateful to him. We have confirmed that this should be part of those conversations, and I will come back if I need to issue any clarification.

The noble Lord also kindly highlighted the fact that the Government have undertaken several steps in this space—my appointment is one of them. We are seeking to strengthen the foundations in the standards space and I look forward to discussing those issues with noble Lords, both through the prism of the release of the Humble Address but also because it is in all our interests, regardless of our political party or our personal politics, to ensure that people can have faith in politicians and faith in the integrity of this Building, both this Chamber and next door.

17:41

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to bring news from the front to your Lordships’ House. After another five-hour meeting today, the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I chair, has now completed reviewing all the documents that have been referred to it. I stress to the House that this has been a long process. I understand the frustration of the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, but the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee have had to read all these documents individually, in our secure premises, and then have a full meeting to consider the redactions, which has taken time. It has not been helped by the refusal by the Foreign Office in the early stages to release certain documents.

We asked at the beginning of this process that the documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment be prioritised. That was not possible for the vetting document because the Foreign Office at the time, under Mr Olly Robbins, refused to give it to the Cabinet Office. We have now seen all the documents we need to look at, apart from those that are part of the criminal investigation, and the vetting interview file. We have seen the vetting documents but not the vetting interview file, which the Government have not shared with us. I understand that they will have to go to Parliament if they wish to refuse to give us that document, but I can assure the House that we are now a position to return our considerations of those vetting documents back to the Government. Will my noble friend give me a commitment, now that those documents have been returned, or will have been later today? We have now set two deadlines for the Government to come back to the committee to say which of the redactions we have not agreed to that they wish to contest. It is important that we get the contested redactions hearing done speedily after the King’s Speech, so that these documents can be released, because the committee will then have to meet again to decide our response. I remind the House that the final decision on what is and is not redacted is not the Government’s but the ISC’s.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

Again, I put on record my thanks to my noble friend for the many hours he has spent looking at documents, for changing the way his committee is working in terms of the number of meetings, and for all the work that has been done in this space. On setting a deadline for the challenge meeting, I will speak to officials as soon as I have finished the next Statement and make sure that that date is in the diary before the House prorogues.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, today, we learned of an un-minuted meeting at which senior advisers to the Prime Minister bypassed Civil Service oversight to green-light a known high-risk appointment. Can the Minister tell the House how this meeting was within the normal due process and who gave the order to exclude the propriety and ethics team from such critical discussions?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I am going to thank the noble Lord for the question; maybe I should not. He will have to bear with me, because he, like I, will have watched some of the hearings as they were happening. I will write to him with the detail about who, what, when and where.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for reassuring the House that the next tranche of documents will be provided to Parliament as soon as practicable after State Opening. In addition to the 300 documents which have already been released to the Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Beamish, may I ask her whether there has been any divergence of view between the Government and the Metropolitan Police as to which documents should not be released because they would prejudice the ongoing investigation?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. Obviously, these are all live matters, and some of those conversations I simply cannot discuss in your Lordships’ House. We have a very constructive relationship with the Metropolitan Police and want to make sure that it has everything it needs as part of its investigations if it is seeking to make any future prosecutions.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, in addition to the redactions the Minister referred to in her Statement for reasons of national security, international relations, names of junior officials, email addresses and legal privilege, are there any other reasons for redaction? There was a report in the press about some redactions for reasons of commercial confidentiality. Can she confirm that that is not the case? When, in the Statement, the Minister said that the second tranche of documents would be released after the State Opening, does that mean the final tranche, or is there a third?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I would not want to mislead the House; I am going to write to the noble Lord about the commercial redactions. I had not been told that there would be any commercial redactions, but I will write to him to make sure that I am on the record, and I will place the answer in the Library. With the exception of those materials being withheld by the Met Police, which will be published at a point deemed to be appropriate, I expect the next tranche to be—I cannot say the final tranche, because we know there is a third—the substantive tranche, which will be all the material available to us. That is what I expect in the next tranche.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, one of the difficulties in discussing the vetting of Lord Mandelson seriously is that nobody outside the Government has the first idea what the grounds were for the recommendation that his vetting should be refused. I accept and completely agree with the process the Minister described whereby the answers and the conduct of the vetting are totally confidential and are never revealed in any circumstances. However, I cannot see the threat to national security in answering this question: can the Minister say whether the grounds upon which the recommendation was made were not anything to do with his friendship with Epstein? Can I ask for a yes or no? Were the grounds nothing to do with it and something quite different, or is it the friendship that lay behind it?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish I could give the noble Lord the answer he seeks, but I cannot, because I have not seen the material we are discussing, for very good reason. On the reasons why it was a borderline case—I believe that is the phrase now—and what mitigations were put in place, I do not know the detail.

Pension Schemes

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

17:49

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Wednesday 22 April.

“I wish to provide the House with an important update on key pension, contractual and commercial decisions.

The security and dignity of those who have dedicated their careers to our public services are not negotiable, and they deserve a pension service that is reliable, efficient and secure. For those principles to be more than just words, they need to be underpinned by rigorous accountability and a refusal to accept second best. We recognise that for our public servants, these services are the foundation of their financial security. When the standards they deserve are not upheld, the Government will not hesitate to act decisively to protect their interests. It is in that context that I want to give the first update to the House on the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme.

Following a failure to meet critical transition milestones and a lack of confidence in Capita’s ability to implement and transition to the new operating model in a timely fashion, I am announcing today that I have terminated the new Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme contract with Capita. Capita had an 18-month planning window to prepare for the transition. It failed to deliver numerous milestones, including a failure to implement the required IT automation. The Cabinet Office repeatedly flagged delays in transition milestones and that IT automation, ultimately issuing formal correspondence to reaffirm the mandatory requirements. To ensure members are protected, we will ensure continuity of the existing contract, but let the message be clear: I will not and we will not tolerate delivery failure from contracted partners. Public services require high-quality delivery, and public money should not be used to fund performance that falls short of the standards we expect.

I also want to address problems in the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme. The transition process from the previous provider, MyCSP, was not satisfactory. We are investigating the respective liabilities for those failures as between Capita and MyCSP. Given the criticality of these services, the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary and I discussed transition with the chief executive officer of Capita. We sought and were given explicit personal assurances that the transition would be handled with the utmost care and that any backlogs would be managed effectively. I am sorry to say that those assurances have not been met.

It is clear in any event that the delivery of the service to civil servants since the transfer on 1 December last year has fallen far short of the required standard. The delays that civil servants have faced in accessing their Civil Service pensions are unacceptable, especially in view of their many years of dedicated public service. That is why I established a specialist pensions recovery taskforce, led by the Second Permanent Secretary at His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, Angela MacDonald, to take strategic oversight of the scheme’s management. That intervention, which includes a circa 140-person government surge team to bolster operational capacity, is delivering results, including helping Capita to clear 15,000 inherited unread emails. Telephony wait times that averaged more than 90 minutes earlier this year have been successfully brought down to an average of under two minutes.

The stories we have heard of members missing mortgage payments and falling into hardship are distressing and entirely unacceptable. No one should have to face such financial anxiety after a lifetime of dedicated public service. That is why I took immediate action to ensure that no member was left to face these challenges alone while these service issues are being resolved. To mitigate the impact on those most affected, we have already provided more than £7.2 million in interest-free transitional support loans to more than 1,300 members. We are proactively driving the uptake of those loans to ensure that no member in need of support is missed, and I encourage all honourable and right honourable Members to ask their eligible constituents to reach out to their Civil Service employers for these loans, so that we can provide the vital support they deserve.

I can tell the House that Capita was explicitly instructed in July 2025 to prepare for the volumes it is now seeing. It knew the scale of the challenge, but failed to deliver the IT automation and portal functionality required when the service went live. The result, I am afraid to say, is a backlog of around 24,000 outstanding pension quotations. There is also a backlog of more than 1,500 open MP complaints. That is totally unacceptable. I have instructed officials to speak to Capita about how we can ensure that MP correspondence is dealt with quickly and efficiently, noting the importance of the fact that Members across the House were speaking up for their constituents. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent thousands of individuals who are unable to plan for their futures or retire with dignity.

Service delivery is about more than just speed; it is also about the absolute security of member data. The breach we saw on 30 March, which saw personal information compromised on the pension portal, represents a fundamental failure in data protection. To be clear with the House, I will not tolerate these lapses. The Cabinet Office has formally notified the Information Commissioner’s Office of this breach, and we have written formally to the chief executive officer of Capita to demand a full technical account of this failure and a guarantee that it will not happen again.

Across the Civil Service Pension Scheme, we have taken direct action on all commercial levers. We are withholding milestone payments where deliverables have not been met, and we reserve every right to take further formal action. The Cabinet Office has mandated a clear recovery target on service levels. Capita must clear all inherited arrears by the end of this month and restore service levels to standard, contractually required levels by the end of June this year. We will continue to use every commercial lever at our disposal to ensure that these standards are met.

The security and dignity of all those who have dedicated their careers to our Civil Service and the Royal Mail are not negotiable. They deserve a pension service that is reliable, efficient and secure. We will continue to use every lever at our disposal to ensure that those standards are met and that members receive the service they have earned. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former special adviser and future recipient— I hope in the long-distant future—of a civil service pension. At the heart of this issue are former public servants who are entitled to expect that the Civil Service Pension Scheme would be administered with competence, care and basic humanity. Instead, many have faced delay, uncertainty and financial anxiety. The Government have acknowledged that Capita’s performance was unacceptable, and we acknowledge that this contract was awarded under the previous Government. However, the appalling performance has been sustained under this Government. Warning signs were not acted on sooner and contingency arrangements were not in place before the handover on 1 December.

Last month, officials from the Minister’s department confirmed that the Cabinet Office had access to data showing that the backlog of CSPS cases was increasing exponentially during the final months of MyCSP’s tenure. This was known before the transfer, yet Ministers failed to put in place robust contingency plans. They did not require additional resources from Capita ahead of the handover and proceeded regardless, despite being aware that the incoming provider faced a far greater operational challenge than originally anticipated.

The National Audit Office had already found that Capita had failed to meet key transition milestones. The Public Accounts Committee had warned of a clear risk that Capita would not be ready to take over the administration of the scheme and specifically called on the Cabinet Office to fully develop contingency plans before making a final decision. Why, then, did the Government not anticipate this situation as they should have done?

The NAO report highlights a serious issue with the handling of TUPE, the process by which staff transfer to the new contractor. This is meant to ensure continuity by moving experienced staff across with the work, but the NAO notes that the formal TUPE process began only in May 2025, very late in the transition. The consequence is obvious: staff faced prolonged uncertainty about their future, increasing the risk that they would leave before the handover. In a service that depends heavily on experienced personnel, that loss of expertise directly undermines performance. Why was this process started so late and what assessment was made of the risk this posed to service delivery?

The NAO also found that financial penalties were rarely applied under the previous contract and could be waived on the basis of so-called extenuating circumstances. The new contract is supposed to strengthen those provisions, so can the Minister tell the House how many penalties have actually been applied to Capita since go-live, whether any penalties have been waived, on what grounds they were waived and who authorised the decisions?

The Minister in the other place was also asked about standardised mitigation letters for lenders. Members affected by pension delays need clear documentation that they can provide to banks, mortgage providers, landlords and creditors, explaining that their financial difficulty has been caused by administrative failure in the Civil Service Pension Scheme. Can the Minister now confirm whether those standardised letters have been issued? If they have not been, why not? When exactly will affected members receive them?

I ask the Minister about contingency planning. The Statement refers to commercial levers, withheld milestone payments and possible legal remedies. It also refers to explicit personal assurances from Capita’s chief executive, but those assurances were plainly not met. To whom were those assurances made and on what date? What due diligence underpinned them? Who accepted them? Were they set out in writing?

Finally, I am concerned that the department apparently plans to begin a review only in late summer. Why is that timetable considered acceptable? The failures are happening now. There needs to be a credible contingency plan and realistic consideration of future options.

Capita’s failings are unacceptable, but ministerial accountability does not end with condemning the contractor. The contracting authority needs to be relentlessly on the case. This is an issue that I have raised many times previously. Can the Minister tell the House what concrete steps the Civil Service has taken to improve the quality of its contract management? No well-run business would tolerate a contractor performing in such a way, so why should the Government tolerate it?

I appreciate that I have asked a number of detailed questions and that the Minister might want to reply in writing to some of them, but I hope she can shed some light on the concerns raised.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

The Minister may be glad to know that I have a slightly smaller number of questions to ask. Running basic services reliably is at the heart of the Government’s responsibility to us all. Grand promises, fancy manifestos, clever policies or visionary plans about AI mean very little if the basic plumbing of the state is falling apart all around us. Here we have, unfortunately, another failure of that basic plumbing, one with very serious direct consequences for people’s well-being. It is certainly welcome that, faced with another pension scheme going horribly wrong at the hands of Capita, the Government have bitten the bullet and terminated its contract, but that coming after the Civil Service pension contract problems raises two key questions about the Government’s decision-making.

There is certainly a lot of blame to allocate to Capita and MyCSP, but there are also two questions that are fully within the Government’s area of responsibility. One, as I pointed out when we discussed this issue in Questions on 5 February, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, has just touched on, is that the Cabinet Office told the Public Accounts Committee that it was aware of very significant problems with Capita’s preparations to take over the contract on 1 December and that it had a contingency plan ready to use if necessary. Why, therefore, did the Cabinet Office decide to go ahead with the 1 December transfer to Capita rather than invoke its contingency plan? I think it is fair to say that the fact that another Capita pension scheme, the Royal Mail one, has now gone so badly wrong as well redoubles the doubts about why that 1 December transfer was greenlit by the Government.

In addition, in the light of Capita’s failing on these two pension contracts, there is also the problem that the Government have just signed another contract with Capita—a £370 million contract that involves, to quote Capita’s press release from just a few weeks ago,

“tech-enabled back-office services for public servants across four major UK government departments: the Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Justice, Home Office, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Capita will deliver a suite of services including HR, payroll, recruitment, finance, procurement, and service desk support”.

That sounds remarkably similar to the very things that Capita has just got so badly wrong twice.

Warned last year that Capita was getting it wrong, the Cabinet Office pressed ahead with Capita on that 1 December deadline. With Royal Mail, Capita has been getting exactly the same sort of work badly wrong. I hope the Minister will explain why those two failures were not enough for the Government to say for this new contract, “Hang on. We’ve seen your track record, we’ve learned from our mistakes, and no, we’re not going to hand over more money and give you more responsibility for financial IT systems”. Will the Minister tell us what consideration was given to those two other failures by Capita when deciding to award it this new contract? Why were those two failures not considered serious enough for the Government to spend their £370 million—or, I should, say the public’s £370 million—elsewhere?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, I listened with care to the points raised by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, and I will have to revert in writing on some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn.

First, I put on record my thanks to the fantastic public servants who have been failed and who we are seeking to support. The security and dignity of those who have dedicated their careers to our public services are not negotiable. They deserve a pension scheme that is reliable, efficient and secure. When the standards they deserve are not upheld, the Government will not hesitate to act decisively to protect their interests.

The termination of the new Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme contract with Capita followed a failure to meet critical transition milestones and a total lack of confidence in its ability to implement the new operating model in a timely fashion. Capita had an 18-month planning window yet failed to deliver numerous milestones, including required IT automation. Of the 10 transitional milestones due to date, only four have been delivered and all those were late, which is why we have terminated the contract.

Regarding the Civil Service Pension Scheme, the delivery of the service since the transfer on 1 December has fallen far short of the required standard. The transition from the previous provider, MyCSP, was not satisfactory, and investigations are ongoing into the respective liabilities for those failures to protect taxpayer interests.

The stories of members falling into hardship are distressing and entirely unacceptable, which is why a specialist pensions recovery taskforce was established to take strategic oversight of the scheme’s management. To ensure no one faces financial anxiety alone, over £8.2 million in interest-free transitional support loans has already been issued to over 1,500 members most affected by these delays.

There is confidence in the surge of about 140 officials into Capita and this intervention has made a significant difference. The government surge team was essential to bolster operational capacity, successfully clearing 15,000 inherited unread emails and initially bringing telephony wait times down to an average of under two minutes. While wait times have recently spiked to an average of 44 minutes, this was a direct result of a 120% surge in volumes driven by the end of the tax year and the annual benefits statement portal suspension following the data breach on 30 March. There is no intention to withdraw the team if that would result in a deterioration of service. That judgment will be made carefully against the June 2026 deadline for the restoration of proper service.

On the NAO and Public Accounts Committee reports, the noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight these reports regarding missed transition milestones, as was the noble Lord, Lord Pack. Significant milestone payments are currently being withheld where transition deliverables have not been met to drive performance, and every right is reserved to take further formal action. The Government have accepted the NAO’s recommendations, and after its report, we implemented a number of additional controls as part of this contract. Despite these challenges, transitioning to Capita to avoid a total collapse of the service was assessed as the lower-risk path, as MyCSP had become operationally and commercially unviable.

Capita has been placed now under a firm mandate to clear all inherited arrears by the end of April and restore service levels to standard, contractually required levels by the end of June. Standardised mitigation letters are available on request via the pensions helpline to ensure that members can communicate effectively with mortgage providers and other creditors regarding service delays. Regarding the wider commercial position, there has been an offer from Capita to cover the costs of the surge team from 10 April, which will be considered in the broad accounting of all commercial issues in respect of this contract.

There were several questions asked that relate to this. As I said previously, there was an independent assurance review undertaken last year. I am going to write to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, with the dates of all the meetings that were had, the promises that were made by Capita and to whom they were made and when—there was a range of promises made. We had the independent assurance review, and we were therefore as confident as we could be in moving forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, raised the issue of MyCSP’s historical performance and the liability. The transition process from the previous provider, MyCSP, was not satisfactory and we are investigating respective liabilities for those failures between both parties. We have withheld all money due to MyCSP until transition failures are rectified and will pursue a parent company guarantee with Equiniti if necessary. Transitioning was necessary as MyCSP had become commercially unviable with backlogs increasing from 47,000 cases to over 60,000 cases by October.

I have answered the question about mitigation measures. In terms of the commercial accountability and withheld payments, we have taken direct action on all commercial levers, including withholding significant milestone payments where deliverables have not been met. Capita is under a firm mandate to clear all inherited arrears by the end of April and restore full service standards by the end of June. We will consider Capita’s offer, as I have said.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, raised an important point about why the review is in late summer. Our focus and priority have to be getting the system working, to make sure that people can access both their historic statements and their future statements, and that people can access the information they need as well as access finances that are theirs. I remind noble Lords that pensions are deferred salaries. These are entitlements: they have earned them, and we need to make sure that they can get the money. This is not about pushing review into the long grass—that is not where we are. We want to fix what is broken to make sure that the people who need access can get access, and then we will undertake a review, including a commercial review, with Capita to move forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Pack, raised a really important point about Capita receiving an additional contract. The Synergy award by DWP in February followed a rigorous and transparent public procurement process conducted under existing public contract regulations. Each contract is managed on its own merits, and the Secretary of State for DWP sought and received specific personal assurances from Capita regarding delivery.

However, I remind noble Lords that, while we are talking about two specific contracts in this Statement, both are the only Capita contracts with the Cabinet Office. Across the wider government and public sector portfolio, Capita has over 80 contracts, and performance remains high, with approximately 87% of KPIs currently rated as good. We have seen a clear failure of the Civil Service Pension Scheme and access to it. We desperately need to fix it and then look at what went wrong before moving forward with our commercial levers. But each contract needs to be assessed on its individual merits to make sure that it works and that the Government are compliant, as well as the people we work with.

18:06

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the Statement from the Commons, which I welcome. Does she recognise that the problem here—we can take the comments from the Opposition with a pinch of salt—comes to a large extent from the system of outsourcing, which is why we welcome the bit in the Labour manifesto at the last election about introducing a large degree of insourcing. We hope that programme will proceed at pace.

Can my noble friend confirm or clarify why Capita retained the Civil Service contract? Members of the scheme are suffering, both those in retirement and those claiming death benefits. They find it incredible that the contract cannot be taken away. Is the problem that, however badly Capita performs, the chaos that would ensue if the contract were taken away abruptly would cause even more problems? Is this an issue with the way these outsourcing contracts work?

Finally, I have a factual question. The Statement states that a large number—I forget exactly what it was—of people are waiting for quotations. Having spoken to the unions and many of the members involved about this, I ask: how many people have received quotations but have not yet actually received their benefits?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that series of questions. Let me start with the factual question, because I have that data to hand. There are currently 2,696 retirement cases where a quotation has been issued but the pension is not yet in payment. These cases are the remaining subset of the 6,482 retirement cases that have already received a quote and therefore no longer have an open case type related to quotations. All remaining open retirement cases where a quote has been issued are on track to be processed, with full payment by the end of May—next month.

My noble friend asked a series of questions, some of which are slightly more straightforward to answer than others. On insourcing, an assessment will be conducted to identify the optimal delivery model for these pension services, specifically evaluating both insourcing and outsourcing options. This process will involve a thorough analysis of costs, risks and benefits in line with the sourcing playbook, ensuring that we learn from the delivery failures identified in the current contracts. Although previous assessments in 2021 favoured outsourcing to realise benefits with the least risk, we remain committed to whichever model is proven to provide the best value for money for the taxpayer.

On Capita and why that contract has not been removed, as I have said, we engage with Capita on this contract every day as part of the recovery model. As noble Lords will appreciate, I have talked not only about Capita and its responsibility as part of fixing what is clearly broken, but about the legacy of what was left by MyCSP. When we have undertaken the review after fixing what is broken—there have been failures across the piece, clearly, but we must be clear on who was responsible for which part—we will know better and we will take additional steps, as we have with the Royal Mail pension scheme, if required.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. She has pointed out some signal failures in this case; they are now pretty widely known. What puzzles people, including those who are very sympathetic to the Government, is why, when there is such a failure of one particular company—of course, it is not just Capita; there have been failures by others—the failure is consecutively followed by a grant to the same company of another contract that bears some relationship in description to the one on which they have so patently failed in another department? Can the Minister tell us whether there is any cross-departmental process for evaluating failures of this nature, in order to alert other departments to the very serious consequences of the course on which they might be embarking? I confess that this puzzled me when I was in government, as well as now.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. There was I, about to say that, given his time in government and his extensive ministerial service across many departments, my noble friend knows better than I do about the awarding of these contracts.

There is a serious point here: at the heart of these conversations is the fact that every contract is managed on its own merits and contains robust, specific protections to ensure delivery. The award of the contract we are talking about followed a rigorous and transparent process under the public contracts regulations. The Secretary of State sought and received specific assurances from Capita regarding delivery after it had become clear what had happened to the Civil Service Pension Scheme. The DWP was alerted; obviously, there are members of staff at the DWP who will also have been affected by this.

It is fair to say, I think, that I have never had so many discussions with my colleagues as I have had with civil servants across the piece who wanted me to make sure that we fix this and fix it well, given my exposure to them. I am very grateful that my noble friend Lady Sherlock has come to be supportive; there are always effective cross-government communications when required, and I am pleased that my noble friend is sitting next to me for this one.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, made a very valid point. Capita was the organisation in charge of Army recruitment. It did such a bad job that even the MoD decided to dispense with its services. The Ministry of Defence has long experience with Capita. Capita was the principal delivery organisation for the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, which was the most dysfunctional arm of that dysfunctional department.

It is not as though the Government have not been warned. As my noble friend Lady Finn pointed out, the Government have not learned what a truly dreadful organisation Capita has been. Yet now Capita is the preferred bidder for the Department for Work and Pensions’ Civil Service payroll contract. Indeed, only last month, Capita was selected for a 10-year contract, valued at £370 million, to run HR and finance systems for four UK government departments. When will Ministers and civil servants learn that Capita is no friend of efficiency or accountability?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord is aware that I have been a fan for many years and would listen to him with interest on every position he takes. I do, however, find it a little rich, given the positions that he previously held, to be lectured by him about a contract that was signed by the previous Government, following many contracts, not least the ones he talked about in defence, that were signed by the previous Government. I have already talked about how we will seek to move forward with insourcing.

I should put on record the fact that I am an honorary captain in the Royal Navy and was a member of the Defence Select Committee when some of these issues were being discussed about the Capita contract and the impact it had on recruitment into our Armed Forces. I believe and hope, however, that Serco is going to benefit from some of the changes that we as a Government undertook with Capita on the defence recruitment contract, which moved to Serco last month.

At the heart of this are—as I think we are all aware—our responsibilities towards taxpayers’ money and making sure that it is spent well, and that, whenever we choose to outsource, it is because we need to bring in different expertise that is not typically appropriate for us to hold centrally. But we need to make sure that this works and works for us, and I hope we will see that going forwards. But Capita is a supplier in more than 80 government contracts.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I am agnostic about insourcing or outsourcing. What I want is good service for the pensioners. Just to give an example of how insourcing might not always go right—and I appreciate that the Minister will probably have to write to me on this, because I am going slightly tangentially—the NHS Business Services Authority is an insourcing organisation for NHS pensioners. Given the failure that we have at the moment in that scheme, I ask the Minister: what steps could the Government take to ensure that the significant delays that NHS Pensions, in applying the annual inflation increase to pensioners who have been flagged for manual reconciliation due to their lifetime allowance, can be dealt with and solved, so that those pensioners who are waiting for their annual increase this year and from previous years get that annual increase, which they are entitled to under the 1971 Act?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

As I said, I am very clear that pensions are deferred income and pensioners are entitled to them. In a previous iteration, I was a trade union officer who negotiated part of the Agenda for Change agreement. In terms of access and impact, it is key. The noble Lord will not be surprised that I do not have the detail of that pension scheme in front of me, but I will write to him with an update.

UK Biobank Data

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

18:18

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 23 April.

“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a Statement about the use of UK Biobank data.

UK Biobank is a non-profit charity, independent of government. The Biobank brings together data, kindly donated by its volunteer participants, that is shared with accredited researchers globally to make significant scientific discoveries that improve patient health. That includes discovering genes that affect the risk of heart disease or cancer, identifying new ways of predicting dementia, identifying early warning signs for cancers, understanding immunity to Covid-19, and work towards earlier detection of Parkinson’s. It is one of the most successful and important studies of its type, and it continues to benefit patients in the UK and around the world. We are all grateful to those individuals who are part of this landmark study that is so important for all our health.

On Monday 20 April, the UK Biobank charity informed the Government that it had identified that its data had been advertised for sale by several sellers on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms in China. Biobank told us that three listings that appeared to sell UK Biobank participation data had been identified. At least one of the three datasets appeared to contain data from all 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers. Additional listings offered support for applying for legitimate access to UK Biobank data or analytical support for researchers who already have access to the data. I want to reassure the House up front, however, that Biobank has advised that this data did not contain participants’ names, addresses, contact details or telephone numbers. The Government have spoken to the vendor today and they do not believe that there were any purchases from the three listings before they were taken down.

Once the Government were made aware of the situation, we took immediate action to protect participants’ data. First, we worked with Biobank, the Chinese Government and the vendor to ensure that the three listings that UK Biobank informed us included participant data had been removed. I want to thank the Chinese Government for the speed and seriousness with which they worked with us to help remove the listings and the ongoing work to remove any further listings. Secondly, we ensured that the Biobank charity revoked access to the three research institutions identified as the source of the information. Thirdly, we have asked that the Biobank charity pauses further access to its data until it has put in place a technical solution to prevent data from its current platform being downloaded in this way again. I can confirm to the House that this pause is now in place. UK Biobank has also referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We are still working with Biobank to ascertain from it the specific detail of what has happened. We have asked it to investigate as a priority how this data ended up for sale online, but I wanted to ensure that the House was aware of the incident and the action that the Government are taking.

Officials have been in regular contact with UK Biobank since the Government were made aware of the issue on Monday. I personally spoke to the chief executive and chair last night, alongside the Minister of State for Science and the Minister for Health Innovation and Safety. We have received assurances that the charity will conduct a rapid board-level review of the safeguards in place for accessing its data.

As I mentioned, in the short term, Biobank will suspend downloads from its platform. That is until a new system is brought in to control analysis downloads to approved researchers and will significantly enhance data access controls and safeguards. We have advised the chair and chief executive of Biobank to write to all participants as soon as possible to ensure that they are aware of what has happened.

In summary, and to be clear to the House and to those people affected, the charity has assured us that the data did not contain anybody’s name, address or contact details. It includes only data of people who have explicitly opted in to be part of the Biobank. Those are people who have given their explicit consent that this data can be used, in the knowledge that it will be shared with researchers globally.

Participants have done a great service to the people of this country, and human health globally, through their participation. For example, valuable research is being carried out at McGill University in Canada into chronic pain, which afflicts millions of people here in the UK. We expect UK Biobank to remain one of the leading health research resources.

This has been an unacceptable abuse of the UK Biobank charity’s data, and an abuse of the trust that participants rightly expect when sharing their data for research purposes. The Government take the incident extremely seriously, which is why we have acted rapidly to support the UK Biobank charity in its response and why I wanted to update the House at the earliest opportunity.

The Government will soon be issuing new guidance on control of data from research studies. I take this opportunity once again to urge all businesses and charities to ensure that that their systems and data-sharing processes are as secure as possible. We wrote to businesses last week about the cyber security tools available to them—for free—from the Government and the steps they should take to maximise security. Ensuring the safe use of UK data is a priority for the Government. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. This is clearly a serious incident that goes to the heart of public trust in one of our most important research assets. I pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers whose data underpins the success of the UK Biobank and the breakthrough it has enabled.

It is right that swift action has been taken to remove the listings and suspend access. It is also right to involve the Information Commissioner’s Office. However, the central issue before us is not just what has happened but what it reveals about our capacity to defend ourselves against cyber attacks.

First, on enforcement and accountability, we are told that the institutions involved have been banned. That is, of course, welcome, but it is sufficient? Were contractual terms breached in relation to data of this sensitivity? There must be clarity about deterrence and whether further sanctions, legal or financial, are available and will be pursued. Without that, I fear that we risk sending the wrong signal.

This incident also seems to highlight deeper weaknesses in our wider infrastructure. We continue to have a system that relies heavily on trust and contractual compliance, but without robust technical safeguards to prevent misuse; it is not enough simply to tell users not to download data—we must design systems so that they cannot do so inappropriately. This is a design issue as much as a behavioural one. From my time as Health Minister, I am aware that NHS databanks do not allow the downloading of data on to third-party servers. The data remains on our servers in a sectioned-off area to allow the customers to analyse and manipulate the data but not download it, so these types of breaches cannot take place.

There is a strong case for a clear step-by-step plan from UK Biobank, setting out exactly how data access will be reformed, including the technical controls that will be put in place, binding commitments to ensure that this cannot happen again, and the stopping of the ability to download the data directly. In addition, there is a strong case for reviewing the data storage and retention policies of all our health bodies.

During the cyber attack on the London blood testing organisation in 2024, I was amazed that the names of the people being tested were given to the companies, along with the samples, for them to perform the test results. They did not need to have those names at all; all they needed to have was a unique reference number, so that data did not need ever to be out there in the first place. What surprised me even further was to find out that this same company had data for individuals going back five, 10 or 15 years, and did not seem to have any deletion policies in place to make sure that the data was not even there to be hacked in the first place.

As the Minister responsible at the time, I proposed a review of the data storage and retention policies of all the NHS bodies and their associated contractual parties, but this was just before the election, so I am not aware whether or not that review took place in the end. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Minister could update us on whether this did in fact happen.

I turn to the point raised in Committee on the cyber security and resilience Bill currently going through the other place. The Conservatives tabled an amendment which would have required the Secretary of State to maintain a register of hostile actors targeting critical sectors, including health. Regrettably, that amendment was not accepted. In light of this incident, I ask the Minister whether the Government will now revisit that decision. If not, will he at least consider how we strengthen our understanding and monitoring of potential threats in this space?

While we must not lose sight of the immense value of UK Biobank, maintaining public confidence will be essential. That confidence depends on not only the integrity of the data but the strength of the safeguards around it. As the cyber security and resilience Bill comes to our House, we must make sure that we learn the lessons from this deeply regrettable breach. Indeed, a good test we must apply to the Bill is: if it had already been enacted, would the breach have happened in this case? This is a moment not just for a response, but for reform. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for coming forward in relation to this Statement and join in acknowledging unreservedly the profound scientific value of UK Biobank and the extraordinary generosity of the half a million volunteers whose participation has driven life-saving discoveries in heart disease, cancer, dementia, Parkinson’s, and Covid immunity. I emphasise that nothing I say today diminishes that contribution or our commitment to seeing UK Biobank continue to thrive at the heart of the UK’s sovereign health data strategy. But we owe those volunteers honesty, and the honest description of what has happened here, as my honourable friend Victoria Collins said in the Commons last week, is that it was

“a profound betrayal of the people who trusted this institution with some of the most intimate details of their lives”,—[Official Report, Commons, 23/4/26; col. 472.]

including their sleep patterns, mental health, genetic data and medical history.

We welcome the swift removal of the three listings, the co-operation of the Chinese authorities, the self-referral to the ICO, the board-led review, and the development of what UK Biobank describes as the world’s first automated checking system. These are the right steps, but they are steps taken after the fact, and this House is entitled to ask how we arrived here. UK Biobank has apologised for the concern caused—that is not sufficient. We join our Commons Liberal Democrat colleagues in calling for a full and unequivocal apology to participants, not for causing concern but for the breach of trust itself.

We also cannot accept the framing that this was simply a matter of a few bad apples breaking their agreements. The platform allowed data to be downloaded. As the Minister himself confirmed in the Commons,

“this was not … a cyber-attack. This was a legitimate download … by a legitimately accredited organisation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/4/26; col. 473.]

That is precisely the problem: contractual promises are not an adequate safeguard for data of this sensitivity. There must be hard, technical barriers, and we are glad that a solution is now being implemented. The question is why it was not in place from the outset.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. First, on the scale of exposure, an associate professor from the Oxford Internet Institute has stated publicly:

“This is the 198th known exposure of UK Biobank data since last summer”,


and that UK Biobank data remains available online for anyone to download today. Will the Minister confirm how many data breaches at or by UK Biobank have been notified to the Government since the original ministerial Statement, and does the Minister have any reason to believe it will not become public that Biobank data has already been used to reidentify specific participants?

Secondly, on leadership and accountability, given the series of decisions, or failures of decision, that have brought us to this point, including the dismissal of earlier warnings, does the Minister have full confidence in the current leadership of UK Biobank? The board-led review is welcome, but its credibility will depend on its independence and transparency.

Thirdly, on reidentification risk, UK Biobank itself acknowledges that it cannot guarantee absolute confidentiality. Modern AI and social media make reidentification far more feasible than was the case when this data was first collected. Crucially, do the Government have contingency plans for large-scale reidentification of Biobank participants, given that, as the Oxford Internet Institute confirms, the data has leaked on nearly 200 occasions, as I mentioned earlier, and remains accessible online?

Fourthly, on the broader lesson for data and AI policy, this incident demonstrates something important: there is no panacea in simply handing patient data to AI systems and trusting that good intentions will follow. So much NHS and Biobank data has already been used in ways that violate the rules under which it was shared. As the Minister in the Commons acknowledged, this was a legitimate download—the rules failed to prevent it. If tearing up data governance rules produced easy wins, we would have seen the evidence by now. Instead, we have received repeated failures, and the Government must reflect on that when designing the new guidance on research data controls that they have promised.

Fifthly and finally, on system-wide lessons, can the Minister confirm that other UKRI and MRC cohort studies will be required to learn from this incident and that their governance will be reviewed? Will the Secretary of State require UK Biobank to publish a full step-by-step plan for reforming its data privacy—not guidance, not reassurances, but binding commitments? The volunteers who built UK Biobank did so in a spirit of trust and public service, and they deserve nothing less than ironclad protections, genuine accountability and the knowledge that their generosity will never again be treated as a governance afterthought.

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy and Net Zero and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Clement-Jones, for those responses and questions. The Government agree that this is unacceptable; it is an abuse of UK Biobank’s data and something that we take extremely seriously, and it needs robust, technical solutions.

I start, though, by agreeing with both noble Lords in thanking the UK Biobank participants. The UK Biobank dataset is and remains critical in supporting scientific discoveries. It is quite an extraordinary resource that improves health in many of the ways described, such as predicting dementia and early warning signs for cancer, or finding genetic markers for stroke. This resource is probably the most powerful in the world to do that and none of it would have been possible without the generosity, support and trust of participants. That is why, importantly, this needs a complete and robust response.

I know that UK Biobank has apologised to its participants for what has happened. However, let me put on record the Government’s thanks to all the participants and give my assurance that we will get to the bottom of this and have a robust answer. I extend my thanks to the researchers who are working on these discoveries. We want to make sure that we can get it to be usable again so that this work can continue, but we must protect the data and the participants, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said.

I hope the House will recognise that the Government have acted quickly and seriously. We were made aware of this issue on Monday 20 April and took immediate action. First, within hours of it being raised, we had worked with the embassy in Beijing, the Chinese Government and Alibaba to have the relevant listings removed. They put in place measures to prevent listings being put up again in the same way and to automatically identify and remove relevant adverts. Secondly, we asked UK Biobank to immediately revoke access for the research institutions identified as the source of the information. Thirdly, we asked UK Biobank to stop access to its platform until a solution can be found.

On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that solution has to be a technical one. There are ways to do this, such as secure data platforms that stop people being able to download data. One thing worth reflecting on is that UK Biobank started in 2003. Its data became available in 2012; it was at the forefront of protecting data when it started and had robust mechanisms as to who could access it. What has happened is that, as the dataset has become very large, it has not kept up with the changing requirements for this, which is what need to be put in place now.

The fourth action we took was to ask that participants should be informed immediately.

On what is going to happen and whether the approach from UK Biobank itself is robust, Members of this House will be familiar with the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. He is the chair of UK Biobank and has assembled a team, including cyber experts, to undertake an urgent, in-depth review of what happened and why. That team will provide its findings to the board, and to us, on or before 10 May.

Further, as has been asked, the Government will issue new guidance on the control of data from research studies. This was in train anyway and will, I hope, be out within the next few weeks. It will apply to all the resources in the UK which are used in this way. Most of them—we think probably all of them, apart from UK Biobank—use a secure data platform, which has the controls.

The UK Biobank resource is important and people volunteered to be part of it because of the benefits it brings for others and for future generations. We need to work with UK Biobank to ensure that researchers with a legitimate need to use the datasets can resume their research, but we must put the participants first and foremost. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that this has to be stopped; there has to be a system that can stop this, not just a process.

In the meantime, UK Biobank continues to monitor whether new listings have emerged, because data was downloaded in the past. Up until 2024, it was possible to download data and that was the system used. There was a trust system, backed up by legal contract, but this has, as we know, been shared. New listings will emerge—there have been additional listings posted since the Government were made aware of the issue last week—and we continue to work with the Chinese Government to remove them quickly. While it is now not possible for new downloads of UK Biobank data, there remains a risk that new listings will emerge from data downloads that happened in the past. We will keep the participants and this House updated.

In answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about the number of breaches, a high number have occurred: most of them are not very significant, but some are significant and all of them are unacceptable. That is what needs to happen. I want to be clear, though, that the need to get these datasets used by researchers around the world pulls in the opposite direction to the need to keep them 100% safe. Therefore, there has to be a system, which is where the secure data environments are so important.

In answer to the questions from both noble Lords about identification, the UK Biobank advises that information such as names, addresses, exact date of birth and NHS number are removed from all the data before it is made available. We do not think any of that was available and we are not aware that any participant has been identified. We also do not believe that there were any purchases of the three listings before we managed to get them taken down. However, we welcome the in-depth board-level review being undertaken, which needs to be comprehensive and cover technical, cultural and process issues. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, it is increasingly possible to triangulate in large datasets and get close to identification, and that remains a very real risk.

Turning more broadly to other points, the institutions the data originated from have had their access revoked. While UK Biobank has worked to secure its platforms, all access and downloads have been paused globally. I note, though, that the Chinese Government have been very supportive in getting these listings removed.

The Government are reviewing the way in which we share biodata. A commitment of the biological security strategy 2023, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Markham, referred to, was to reduce the risk of sensitive data being exploited for harmful purposes while maintaining legitimate research collaboration. This will include seeking to harmonise the security policies of the major holders of all genomic data in the UK. We expect to conclude this work over the next few weeks.

The point made about the cyber security and resilience Bill is important, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Markham. The Bill grants the Secretary of State new powers to issue national security directions to regulated entities or regulators where the compromise or the threat of a compromise to their network and information system poses a national security risk. The use of these powers will always be underpinned by robust intelligence from GCHQ, including, where relevant, information about state actors involved in cyber threats. Minister Narayan explained in the other place that a register of foreign actors is therefore unnecessary in this particular context. We are committed to transparency. The Government are already able to communicate with Parliament and the public about such cyber security risks where it is appropriate to do so.

I end by saying again how important UK Biobank is, how unique it is worldwide in its breadth and depth of coverage, and how appalling it is that this leak occurred. We must make absolutely sure that this risk is eliminated going forward by making sure that a secure data environment is put in place. In 2024, a requirement was made for UK Biobank to put in place an airlock and the requirements that we are now talking about. On 26 January, we asked UK Biobank to put an airlock on the research access platform that it has been using since 2024. Pre-2024, it was all downloads and, post-2024, it is a research access platform, but, unfortunately, that was still downloadable. That is the bit that needs to be stopped now.

18:38

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in the area of cyber security. First, we should congratulate the Government, despite the seriousness of this, on their swift response. Admittedly, it was after the event, but the Government acted on this occasion swiftly and effectively. Secondly, although this was not a cyber attack, changing the behavioural aspects which led to this leak will not be sufficient. As the Minister and various others have said, it will require a range of cultural, behavioural and technical effects to try to minimise the chances of this happening again. In that context, both opposition spokesmen made worthy recommendations and suggestions, which the Minister will no doubt look at.

Finally, given the importance of UK Biobank and the crucial role it plays in scientific research, to the benefit of the health of us all, can the Minister assure us that, although it is an independent charity, this will not undermine the Government’s support for it in the future? It is important to the health of the nation.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions, and I echo his points about the Front-Bench spokesmen on the other side. It is very clear that everyone has the same intent here, which is to try to sort this out, and I welcome those inputs.

I agree that this is cultural as well as technical; those points need to be looked at and will be as part of the review. There is an unwavering commitment to UK Biobank; it is an extraordinarily important resource for the future health of the country and for ensuring that new discoveries are made. We will continue to support UK Biobank.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

I declare two conflicts of interest. First, I was a participant in UK Biobank, having been recruited in Oxford in 2007. My wife is also a participant and has been far more assiduous—for example, she underwent whole-body imaging about two years ago, which took a whole day. We are both very glad to be participants, but I do not think that the risk of reidentification is that high. It is not zero, but it is a very low probability. That is why I am happy to declare that conflict of interest.

Secondly, I was a UK Biobank principal investigator in a study carried out about 10 years ago, which was to develop AI algorithms for the automated identification of atrial fibrillation and which had about 100,000 participants, who undertook a test on an exercise bike as part of the UK Biobank dataset acquisition. In those days—before 2024, as the Minister said—data would be transferred and held securely on our servers under a material transfer agreement. When the paper was eventually published in 2020, we deleted all data on our servers, as all principal investigators are meant to do. As we have already heard, UK Biobank shifted its policy to a cloud-first model to enhance security, so what happened in the study I was involved in no longer takes place.

My question is about legacy data from before 2024. Does UK Biobank have any estimate, even a semi- accurate estimate, of non-compliant pre-2024 principal investigators? Does the Minister agree with me that UK Biobank should work with data privacy researchers —for example, those from the Oxford Internet Institute, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—to be much more proactive at identifying non-compliance, as part of these investigations?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Let me thank the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, and his wife for participating in UK Biobank, because the whole thing depends on that. He is quite right that, before 2024, the data was downloaded and people did their research on downloaded data. I have had this discussion with the chair of UK Biobank, which is going through a process of recontacting all the institutions—because this is an institutional agreement—to confirm that the data that was downloaded has been deleted. No further access will be granted until that is proven. That process is important, because that residual downloaded data is most vulnerable.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for coming to the House about this very serious incident, and I welcome what the Government are doing to try to prevent it happening again. I echo what has been said about the vital importance of UK Biobank. Nevertheless, I have two quick questions for my noble friend. First, the Statement says that UK Biobank has revoked access to the research institutions that were identified as the source of the leak. Can my noble friend tell the House what those research institutions are? Secondly, in regard to the self-reference by UK Biobank to the Information Commissioner’s Office, what exactly does my noble friend hope will result from that self-reference to ensure that this does not happen again?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. UK Biobank has identified the sites that were responsible for the leak. There were three institutions: the Second Xiangya Hospital, China-Japan Union Hospital, and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital. Those institutions have been contacted, to be dealt with as discussed. Sorry, I have forgotten my noble friend’s second question.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

It was about the Information Commissioner’s Office.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

UK Biobank referred itself to the ICO, which was the entirely appropriate thing to do. The matter is now in the ICO’s hands.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, my question to the Minister follows on from the previous question. How will we know that the necessary cultural revolution among stewards of medical data has taken place? What has happened—that UK Biobank allowed the download of the data—is frankly astonishing. I must admit, I have been worried about this sector since I was first involved in the drafting of the GDPR as an MEP nearly 15 years ago. I have also felt that the UK authorities were a little casual in the information given to patients. I do not know if anyone remembers care.data, with the obfuscation about opt-ins and opt-outs and moving the goalposts and so on. The chief executive of UK Biobank made the usual sort of statement:

“We take the protection of participants’ data extremely seriously and do not tolerate any form of data misuse”,


whereas other, more realistic commentators have used adjectives such as “supremely careless”, “irresponsible” and “cavalier”.

How will the Information Commissioner get proactive in this area? It is a betrayal of patients’ trust. Of course we want research. I have been tangentially involved in research for a cure for diabetes, because my late husband was type 1, and he was involved in this area. The fact is that this was re-identifiable data. Some press referred to it as “anonymised”; it was not anonymised. If it was anonymised, it would not be personal data. It is capable of being re-identified if you know some things about someone that are in the database. As Sam Smith of medConfidential said:

“If I knew that someone had a kidney removed on a particular week in June 2021 as Wes Streeting did, I would know everything else about them”.


I do not know whether that is true, but these guys know what they are talking about. As I said, how do we make sure that there really is a cultural revolution? Otherwise, we are not going to have patients’ trust in this essential area.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

That last point is fundamental: we must have trust. If we do not get trust, we lose the ability to use what is an extraordinary resource, so that has to be part of what is looked at here. It is absolutely part of what the board of UK Biobank is doing in its review, and it needs a very clear look.

When it started, UK Biobank was at the forefront of protection. It had very robust mechanisms to scrutinise researchers and institutions and make sure that this was properly looked after. What has happened is that things have overtaken UK Biobank and it has not kept up, whereas others have put in a secure data platform to try to deal with these issues, so there is a question there. Part of this is because of the sheer size of the database, but it is not excusable, and this needs to be sorted out.

Going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, it is theoretically possible to re-identify people. It is not at all easy, and it is a low probability, but it is not zero probability. Therefore, I agree with the point that this is a real wake-up call for researchers. We need to make sure that we build the right trust in. We are putting together the Health Data Research Service, with this at the very heart of what it is going to do to make sure that there is trusted access to this type of data.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a participant in UK Biobank. It is not the first time I have said that: when I was Secretary of State, I said it in the context of encouraging people to support UK Biobank. Does the Minister agree that, notwithstanding this lamentable abuse of the data, those of us who are participants see such value emerging from UK Biobank that we think we should happily continue to volunteer our data and our services whenever we are asked? However, it surprises me, as somebody who has received emails from UK Biobank, that since this was in the press I have received nothing, although it says that it is going to contact all participants and the Statement says so. I am surprised that eight days have gone by and nothing has emerged.

The website of UK Biobank says—the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred to it—that it intends to have what it describes as an automated data-checking scheme in place by the end of the year. Can the Minister kindly tell us a bit more? What would that add and why is it important? It seems to me that what we are looking for in this age of AI systems is something which not only prevents unauthorised access but is capable of identifying every subsequent use of that data wherever that data may have been provided under the licence.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Again, let me thank another participant at UK Biobank. One of the features I have found whenever I have met UK Biobank participants or visitors is how incredibly altruistic everybody is: they want to do it for the common good. That is a very common theme, and I am sure that that is going to be the response now. As for contact, we asked UK Biobank to contact all participants immediately. I understand that it does not have an email address for about half of the participants, so it has written, and I believe it has sent emails to all those it has email addresses for. As to what happens next, I agree that technological changes are so fast that this has to be something that keeps up with that. The first step, I think, is to put in one or two very clear airlocks, before you get to the data, that stop you being able to export the data. That is the immediate concern. Then there are ways in which it is possible to see where data has gone, and these things will be looked at as part of the review that is going on.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely interested in what the Minister said about leaks and UK Biobank. With his undoubted knowledge of these things, can he go back to whether there is any possibility that Covid came from activity in China, as has been suggested by an author who is here? Secondly, does he think that anybody who was responsible for getting us to close down in that disastrous lockdown should be held responsible in any way?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

This is somewhat off topic. In terms of China, I think it is very clear that there are three possibilities for where Covid came from. One is that it was a natural infection that spilled over from bats, with billions of chances for that to happen. The second is that an infection was taken into a lab and there was a lab leak at some point. The third is that it was designed in some way. I think that the last of those is very unlikely indeed, and that is what most people think. We cannot really distinguish between the first two by any other way than biosecurity services.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply on the Statement, and I commend the Government for taking immediate action when this data breach was known. Last Tuesday, the Science and Technology Committee took evidence from the chief executive of UK Biobank, and some of the issues brought out today about data security were brought out then. Two days later, we got the news about the Chinese data breach. The lessons here are about public confidence in other research. The Minister referred to the Health Data Research Service that will soon be established and the Genomics England data. Can he assure us that the public can have confidence that those two organisations sharing their data will be secure and that the Government will issue new guidance to every organisation that will use health data for research purposes?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that the Government will issue guidance. That guidance was in development anyway, and I expect it to come out within the next few weeks. I can also assure him that other platforms use secure data platforms where the downloading of data is not possible. There was a rather unusual situation with UK Biobank where the data was downloadable, which is not true for many others. We absolutely need to use this to build confidence that these data are properly looked after and used for the purposes for which they were given.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I will ask the Minister a couple of questions. This breach has had a silver lining: to remind us that the UK Biobank is a remarkable project and an act of British soft power—and, indeed, altruism—which has been used by 22,000 researchers in 60 countries and produced 18,000 research papers. It really is remarkable; when we beat ourselves up in this country, it is useful to be reminded about the remarkable things we are capable of doing. I described it as an act of altruism, but what is the cost of remedying, as it were, the procedures that led to the breach, and is the cost of the UK Biobank shared by the institutions that use this remarkable resource all around the world, or does it fall entirely on the British taxpayer? Can the Minister also comment on the role of the Chinese Government? It seems to me that we were quick to reach a conclusion when this story initially broke that, somehow, they were involved, but, as is mentioned in the Statement, this was simply a theft that took place in China and did not in any way involve bad faith by the Chinese Government.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

UK Biobank, for all the reasons stated, is expensive to run, and it is run with a mix of funding from government, charities and industry, with the major funders being the UK Government and the Wellcome Trust over many years. The principle of it has been to give access to people; therefore, there is not a big cost put on its users. On our approach, we knew that the leak was in China, and we therefore immediately asked the embassy in China to link to the Government there to see if they could help us get these taken off the website. We did not make any conclusion about where they had come from; we just thought that that would probably be the fastest way to get these removed.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

May I ask the Minister a follow-up question to the one I asked previously? He is absolutely right that UK Biobank should get in touch with the institutions where the principal investigators are based, but a lot of inadvertent leakage, if you will, of the data occurs from the researchers themselves—the principal investigators—who, believe it or not, will put the data on GitHub. They may leave the institution and go and work somewhere else while the data remains on their GitHub. That is why I asked whether the UK Biobank board could be a little more proactive and ask researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute, for example, who are very capable at looking at those types of issues, to look at individual GitHub sites and other sites where the data may still be, even though the institutions which those principal investigators were at would not be aware of it.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Yes, we are very aware of the possibility that there are things on GitHub. There has been a GitHub issue related to this, which was identified earlier this year, and that will be part of what UK Biobank looks at. Going forward, that will not be possible because of the inability to download.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are due to consider the Pension Schemes Bill, due from the other place. We will adjourn during pleasure until a point shown on the annunciator.

18:58

Sitting suspended.

Pension Schemes Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Returned from the Commons

20:30

The Bill was returned from the Commons with amendments.

Pension Schemes Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Commons Amendments

20:30

Motion A

Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

That this House do not insist on its Amendments 15 to 24, 27, 30 to 34, 36, 38 to 42, 83 and 88, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 88C, 88E to 88P, 88R, 88S, 88W and 88Y to 88Z8 to the words restored to the Bill by the Commons disagreement to Lords Amendments 15 to 24, 27, 30 to 34, 36, 38 to 42, 83 and 88.

88Y: Clause 40, page 46, leave out lines 3 to 16 and insert—
“(4) In this section “qualifying asset” means an asset of a prescribed description that is held in a main default fund of a relevant Master Trust or group personal pension scheme.
(5) A description of asset may be prescribed under subsection (4) only if it represents a direct or indirect holding in any of the following asset classes—
(a) private equity;
(b) venture capital;
(c) private credit;
(d) interests in land;
(e) infrastructure;
(f) unlisted equity securities not falling within paragraphs (a) to (e).
In this subsection “unlisted equity securities” means equity securities not listed on a recognised stock exchange within the meaning of the Income Tax Acts (see section 1005 of the Income Tax Act 2007) (including equity securities admitted to trading that are not listed on such an exchange).”

88Z: Clause 40, page 46, line 16, at end insert—
“(5A) Regulations under subsection (4) must secure that a description of asset is prescribed under that subsection in respect of each asset class mentioned in subsection (5)(a) to (f).”

88Z1: Clause 40, page 48, line 1, leave out “the first set of”

88Z2: Clause 40, page 48, line 2, leave out “regarding” and insert “setting out”

88Z3: Clause 40, page 48, line 2, at end insert—
“(za) a joint assessment by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator of the extent to which there is evidence of competitive conditions restricting relevant Master Trusts and group personal pension schemes from investing in qualifying assets, including in circumstances where such investments may be in the best interests of members of such schemes;
(zb) the Secretary of State’s assessment of the extent to which relevant Master Trusts and group personal pension schemes have made progress towards achieving—
(i) 10% (by value) of scheme assets held in main default funds to be qualifying assets, and
(ii) 5% (by value) of scheme assets so held to be of a UK-specific description (within the meaning of subsection (6A)(b));
(zc) the Secretary of State’s assessment of any barriers to relevant Master Trusts or group personal pension schemes investing in qualifying assets, including in particular where such assets are located in the United Kingdom;
(zd) the steps taken by the Secretary of State or the Authority to address any such barriers;”

88Z4: Clause 40, page 48, line 8, at end insert—
“(12A) Before making regulations under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must have regard to the joint assessment of the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator mentioned in subsection (12)(za).”

88Z5: Clause 40, page 48, line 13, at end insert—
“(14A) The Secretary of State may not make regulations under subsection (1) before 1 January 2028.”

88Z6: Clause 40, page 50, line 38, at end insert—
“(za) may make provision about the form and content of an application, including about the evidence to be provided as part of an application;
(zb) must make provision requiring an application to include a statement—
(i) that the applicant concludes that meeting the asset allocation requirement is likely not to be in the best interests of members of the scheme, and
(ii) setting out the basis on which the applicant reached the conclusion.”

88Z7: Clause 40, page 50, line 39, leave out from beginning to end of line 2 on page 51 and insert—
“(a) must make provision requiring the Authority to determine that the applicant is to be treated as mentioned in subsection (1) in cases where—
(i) the application complies with the requirements of regulations made under subsection (1), and
(ii) the Authority is of the view that it is reasonable for the applicant to have reached the conclusion that meeting the asset allocation requirement is likely not to be in the best interests of members of the scheme;”

88Z8: Clause 40, page 51, leave out lines 14 to 16

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

Noble Lords will be aware that we have one outstanding issue on this Bill still in play. Unsurprisingly, it is the reserve power on asset allocation. As this is the fourth time the House has been asked to consider the question, I will spare noble Lords a detailed exposition of the merits of this policy. Let me simply say that the Government’s underlying position has not changed, reflecting our policy intent to ensure that savers’ best interests are secured by bigger and better pension schemes investing in a wide range of assets.

Today, the Government return to their previous amendments, all of which the elected House endorsed. These spell out the intended purpose of the reserve power to underpin the industry’s commitments in the Mansion House Accord and rule out other uses, such as a focus on any specific asset or asset class. Today, we are also bringing forward a final set of changes that aim to respond to points made in this House and the other place, while retaining the policy intent I have set out. These have three elements.

First, there is a new requirement on regulators, in this case the TPR and the FCA, to make an assessment of the extent to which there is evidence for the collective action problem that we have discussed in debates on this Bill. There will be a requirement for this assessment to be incorporated into the production of the ex-ante report that the Bill requires to be published before any use of the reserve power. Our amendments today would also place a duty on the Government to have regard to this regulatory assessment before any use of the power. It was always the Government’s intent to evaluate progress against the Mansion House Accord commitments in terms of the broad direction of travel over a substantial period of time rather than shorter-term movements in private asset exposure. To reinforce this, we also propose to add to the Bill that the power cannot be exercised any earlier than 2028.

Our second set of changes builds on the savers’ interest test to reinforce the central role of trustees and providers. Our amendment in lieu would change the bar required to engage the savers’ interest test. Rather than having to demonstrate that meeting the asset allocation requirements would be likely to cause material financial detriment, a scheme would instead have to show that meeting the requirement is likely not to be in the best interests of members. This reflects language regularly used when considering trustee duties. In addition, we have more tightly specified the regulator’s role, confining it to ensuring that the trustees’ or providers’ assessment of what is in the best interests of members is reasonable, rather than replacing that assessment with its own.

Thirdly, our amendments address worries about differential treatment of particular investment vehicles by allowing for consideration of direct or indirect holdings in the six asset classes named in the Mansion House Accord.

This Bill has its roots in much work that has been under way for some time in government but also in Labour’s commitment to ensure that workplace pension schemes take advantage of scale and invest in a wider range of productive assets. That was why one of the first things the Government did on taking office was to launch a comprehensive review of pensions investment. That review found clear evidence that the DC pensions market is operating with an excessively narrow focus on cost, to the detriment of saver outcomes. That is where the reserve power comes from. It exists because the review found, and the industry itself has told us publicly and privately, that the competitive pressure focused on cost minimisation is the single biggest barrier to diversifying in savers’ long-term interests.

Of course, things can change over time, and a range of other factors may come into play; the changes that we propose today address that worry and others. They require regulators to assess whether these competitive pressures remain a material barrier to more diverse private asset investment before any use of the power. They put trustees’ or providers’ assessments of savers’ best interests centre stage.

I am grateful for engagement across the House with this Bill and for the engagement with the opposition parties particularly in recent times. This House has done its job in revising this Bill, and I commend the government amendments to the House. I beg to move.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I rise for the last time in your Lordships’ House to congratulate the Minister, to thank her for all the hard work that she has done and to say how much I have appreciated my interaction with her. We have arrived at a perfect compromise in that none of us is entirely satisfied—which has always been the definition of a great compromise. We are in a place where the major concerns that many of us had on the mandate part of this Bill have been, if not removed, modified to the point at which they are liveable with. As the Minister said, it is this House at its best.

When I came into this House in 1995, if your Lordships had said to me, “The last time that you speak will be on the fourth ping-pong of a Pension Schemes Bill”, I would have said, “On your bike—not a chance”. However, I have enjoyed the work of being part of this Bill, and I think that both the Government and the Opposition have done their job well. I hope that when this goes on to the statute book, it will deliver for pensioners.

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. I pay tribute to him. He will be much missed by this House. His work on this Bill and in many other areas has been most welcome and helpful and his demeanour and the manner in which he has co-operated with us and with Ministers has been appreciated by everybody. I declare my interests as far as pensions are concerned. I am an adviser to a master trust and a non-executive director of a pensions administration company.

I will not delay the House too long, but I want to welcome the changes that have been made. I thank the Minister for her patience, her engagement and for listening and working with this House. We have now achieved much safer and better outcomes for members of pension schemes. These will allow trustees and managers to look after the best interests of members so that they do not feel forced to invest in ways that they might not otherwise have chosen to or which are against their best judgment.

There will not be an exclusion of listed investment companies. Again, I thank the Minister and the Government for listening to the serious concerns that were expressed by this House. I also welcome the changes that we have made along the way to the Bill. It is a much better Bill. I thank all colleagues across the House who have co-operated so well.

I must pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for all the work that she has put in, and the Front Bench on this side as well, who have worked so hard to make this Bill a better Bill. I wish this Bill well. Hopefully, a lot of pension scheme members will enjoy better retirements in the future—I certainly hope so—as a result of what we are doing now.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have reached this stage, where we are now all back on the same side. We have had some exchanges when we have said, once upon a time, that we were all pointing in the same direction, and then we had a little bit of slippage away from that, but now we are back together. I am still no fan of mandation, but we have now got it suitably under control, if I can put it that way. There are reasonable guardrails to make sure that it does not go wrong, that we, I hope, never use it and that we get the additional investments that we all agree in principle are needed.

I thank all noble Lords who have worked on the Bill, because the work, the meetings and so forth have been harmonious. A lot of late-night working, and some early this morning, has resulted in the solutions that we now have. Like others, I thank everyone and hope we can see the rewards that come from the passage of this Bill.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments brought forward by the Government today, in lieu of those proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, go some way towards addressing our more fundamental concerns about the mandation power. In particular, the shift in the test—from requiring schemes to show that compliance

“would be likely to cause material financial detriment”

to demonstrating that it is

“likely not to be in the best interests of members”—

represents a significant and welcome change from the Government’s original position. By placing members’ best interests at the heart of the policy, this reform helps to mitigate the risk that mandation could cut across trustees’ fiduciary duties. It was never acceptable that schemes should have to show a risk of material detriment before securing an exemption, as the Government had proposed in earlier stages. The Government’s recognition of that point is therefore very welcome, albeit somewhat overdue.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to require the regulators to undertake an independent assessment of the purported collective action problem and the extent to which it is inhibiting investment in UK assets. The Government have consistently argued that mandation is necessary to address a collective action problem. They will now need to substantiate that claim with robust independent evidence, with the Secretary of State having regard to this assessment before they make regulations. That too is a welcome step forward, as is the Government’s commitment to remove discrimination in the clause between investment vehicles. Their decision to bring forward the sunset period from 2035 to 2032 is also sensible.

These changes are a direct result of sustained and determined pressure from across this House to address the question of mandation in the Bill. Noble Lords on all sides recognised early on the fundamental flaws in the Government’s original approach—concerns that were not only shared here but held strongly across industry. I pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, who has led that effort with clarity and persistence. She has kept the House focused on what is, without question, the central issue in our consideration of this Bill. I am glad that this has borne fruit in what is a substantial move from the Government’s original position, which was untenable.

I shall not detain the House any further but will just say that we on these Benches are content to accept the amendments that the Government have introduced. I thank the Minister for her earlier remarks. The situation is far from perfect and we remain of the view that the mandation power is wrong in principle, but this settlement, which we might now call mandation-lite, is far better than that in the Bill as originally drafted. That is a direct result of the work done in your Lordships’ House to stand up for businesses and savers in our country.

Finally, as this is my very last contribution from the Front Bench, and in this House, I wish the whole House and all noble Lords the very best of luck for the future. It has been a genuine, huge privilege to serve on the Front Bench almost continuously for 15 years. Of course, I will miss it dreadfully, but I do know that there is a life outside this great House of Lords.

20:45

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for their remarks. I will not detain the House for long. I want to say just a couple of things.

One is that this Bill is about so much more than the reserve power. We should take a moment to think about what we have done. We have done some really significant work which will help to reshape the pensions landscape, to help get better returns for savers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, said. We have addressed questions of value for money, scale, lost pots, guided retirement, a superfund regime, and an uprating for PPF members. A huge amount has gone into this, and more besides. I am so grateful to the House for its detailed scrutiny. Bills such as this show the value of this House, when we get the time to crawl all over them. I like the characterisation given by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, which I think will outlive him: that when we are all a bit unhappy, we may well have landed in a place that we can live with.

I say thank you again to all noble Lords—I will not name them all because there are too many, but obviously they include the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles, Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Altmann—for their work on this and their engagement in recent times. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, for his kind words about me—and I hope he took from the warmth of the House’s response how much his work is appreciated and how much he will be missed—and for all his years of public service.

Finally, I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, on behalf of the House, that after 15 years on the Front Bench he deserves a break. There is a life outside here—said once more with feeling, as someone who is not far off that. I thank him for all those years of public service, his years as a Minister and his years on the Front Bench, for his courtesy, kindness and engagement, and for all the work that he has done. We wish him a very happy time outside this House. When he discovers the joys to be found beyond here, he may write back and tell us and we will just be very jealous.

In the meantime, with thanks to everybody, I beg to move.

Motion A agreed.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have only just received the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill back from the Commons, we will have to adjourn during pleasure until a point, to be announced on the annunciator, when we can recommence on that Bill.

20:47

Sitting suspended.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Returned from the Commons

22:00

The Bill was returned from the Commons with amendments.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Commons Amendments

22:00

Motion A

Moved by

89G: After Clause 37, insert the following new Clause—
“Prioritisation of development of brownfield land
In section 12G of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (preparation of draft spatial development strategy), after subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) The Secretary of State must make regulations under subsection (2)(d) which prescribe the desirability of prioritising development on land that has been previously developed.””

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Motion A, I will speak also to Motions B and C.

What a privilege it is at the end of this Session of Parliament to bring back the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to the House of Lords to consider amendments and reasons from the other place. This landmark devolution Bill will deliver the biggest transfer of power out of Westminster to England’s regions and communities for a century, sparking growth across our regions. New powers for communities will give local people the power and ability to protect their treasured local assets, such as pubs, provide a stronger voice for them in their place, and give increased powers to local leaders to deliver regional growth.

For each of the issues that are before us again this evening, the Government have recognised the strength of feeling expressed both here and in the other place. The amendments tabled today by the Government respond to the concerns that have been raised. I again thank my colleague in the other place, the Minister for Devolution, Faith and Communities, for setting out the Government’s position on these amendments. That House has endorsed the Government’s proposals, and I urge noble Lords to do the same.

I begin with the amendment concerning the ministerial powers of direction in Schedule 1 to the Bill. I remind the House that ensuring that every part of England can benefit from devolution remains a key objective of this Government. That is why, at the Bill’s introduction, the Government introduced new backstop powers for the Secretary of State in exceptional circumstances to provide directly for devolution in an area where all other options have been exhausted and it has not been possible to agree a viable devolution proposal. Alongside these powers, we have sought to provide a simplified and streamlined route for creating new combined authorities, or combined county authorities, that will in turn become strategic authorities.

It remains the core objective of the Bill to put in place a quicker and less complex framework so devolution can be delivered more efficiently. For this reason, the Government cannot accept the amendments made previously by noble Lords to remove all Secretary of State-directed powers. However, we have heard the concerns from some noble Lords about the scope of the powers previously included in Schedule 1. To that end, and in the interests of not delaying progress of the Bill and of ensuring communities can benefit from the powers that I know all of us wish to see enacted at the earliest opportunity, the Government are content to remove all powers in Schedule 1 that would allow the Secretary of State to direct the establishment of a strategic authority, whether mayoral or non-mayoral, or to provide directly for a mayor of an existing non-mayoral authority.

In addition, I am happy to repeat the commitment given by my ministerial colleague in the other place that the Government will not seek to use remaining Secretary of State powers to direct the addition of a local government area to an existing strategic authority for a period of four years following Royal Assent. It will then remain subject to all the same safeguards that we have discussed at length, including application of the usual statutory tests and secondary legislation to effect the expansion that will be subject to the affirmative procedure, providing Parliament with the opportunity to scrutinise any potential use of this power to expand an existing combined authority or combined county authority.

As I have said consistently throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government’s policy and practice are clear. We are working with local leaders to develop devolution proposals that command broad support across their areas. That collaborative approach will always be our clear preference. The concessions that the Government have made in the other place put that commitment beyond doubt.

I turn now to brownfield land. The Government fully recognise the importance of prioritising brownfield land for development. As I have previously said, national policy remains the most effective route through which planning reform should be pursued. It is the right place to set clear expectations about where development should take place. Where concerns have been expressed about the effectiveness of existing policy, it remains too early to assess the full impact of recent and proposed changes to national planning policy. The Government also consider the amendment proposed by this House to be unworkable. It would undermine effective plan-making and unduly constrain proper consideration of local circumstances. It would also create inconsistency between spatial development strategies prepared by mayors and other strategic authorities and those prepared by other authorities.

However, in recognition of the strength of feeling expressed about inappropriately located development, and to further reinforce a “brownfield first” approach, the Government have tabled their own amendment. This would set a requirement in primary legislation for the Secretary of State to use existing regulation-making power to ensure that strategic planning authorities have regard to the desirability of prioritising development on land that has previously been developed. This will put consideration of brownfield land on the same legal footing as other highly important issues in the legislation, such as promoting sustainable development and the impact on health and health inequalities. It will ensure that the prioritisation of brownfield land is front and centre when strategic planning authorities are producing a spatial development strategy and considering how to meet the growth needs of their area. The drafting of our amendment is consistent with national policy, making it clear that prioritising development on brownfield land is an overall objective and desirable. Enshrining this requirement in legislation will elevate its importance and further solidify the Government’s commitment to a “brownfield first” approach.

I turn now to the issue of local authority governance. As your Lordships will know, the Bill sets a clear default position. Councils currently operating the committee system, and which are not otherwise protected, will be required to move to the leader and cabinet model within one year of the relevant Bill provisions coming into force. This remains the Government’s firm expectation. However, we have heard concerns from some noble Lords that requiring a council to move to the leader and cabinet model within a year could potentially create challenges for some councils—for example, where an authority has submitted a proposal during the transition period for a boundary change or merger in response to the Secretary of State’s new power to invite such proposals. The government amendment agreed earlier today in the other place responds to those concerns.

The amendment allows the Secretary of State to extend the one-year transition period for non-protected councils by a further year in certain circumstances. It provides flexibility where a council is already on a clear path to dissolution so that it is not required to undertake significant governance change that may have little practical benefit. This does not change the Government’s wider policy on local authority governance reform. Instead, it provides a proportionate and pragmatic safeguard in response to the points raised over the pace of change.

In conclusion, this is now the third round of parliamentary ping-pong. I hope noble Lords will consider that the Government have recognised their concerns—we have had very good and thoughtful debates on all the topics and many others that I have spoken about tonight—and are attempting to reach a reasonable compromise. I urge noble Lords to endorse the positions of the elected House and allow this Bill to be concluded as soon as possible.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I want to thank the Minister for introducing this third round of ping-pong and for her willingness to listen to alternative points of view and effect numerous changes to the Bill. The Government have demonstrated that willingness to compromise and alter. For me, this has been an example of the House of Lords doing a very good job that it is supposed to do, and that examination of the Bill has been a success.

As the Minister knows, I have said a lot during the stages of the Bill about the governance of local authorities; indeed, we have voted several times on those issues. I have come to accept that the time has come for the primacy of the House of Commons to be acknowledged. They are the elected Chamber; they have considered the issues we raised around governance, and they have concluded they want a single system based on a cabinet model. I remain convinced that local people should have a choice of governance models and that the 38 councils currently operating a committee system should be allowed to continue to do so for as long as they wish to do that. I also think that councils operating a cabinet model that wish in the future to change to a committee system should have the right to do so, led by local people.

As the Minister has heard several times, I have been critical of the Short Title of the Bill. It is called a devolution and community empowerment Bill; it is actually a Bill about decentralisation and does not do a great deal for community empowerment. But we have what we have, and we can build on it. I said at the very start of the passage of this Bill at Second Reading that I wanted it to succeed, and I really do. England is, with 56 million people, overcentralised. It is a process, not an event, when you devolve power to others. We all have to do that, and I think we can build on it. It requires all parties to work together to give a reality to the desire for greater devolution in England. As the Minister said a moment ago, this is about sparking growth, and a test for whether this devolution is a success is whether growth is sparked.

I hope the Minister will take seriously the commitment the Government have entered into for an annual review and update as to the success of the Bill. There was also a proposal in Committee or on Report for a five-year review in some detail, and I think the Government will have to do that as well. The jury is out on whether the Government are fulfilling the objectives they set for the Bill—within the Bill itself and in the White Paper on which it was built—and they will have to do a lot of work to make sure that they are.

I am aware there has been a long debate around brownfield and I am going to give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, who will talk about that in greater detail since she led on that amendment. But I hear the reasons that the Minister has given. It is clear to me that there is a will to build on brownfield first. I think we all share the ambition to deliver housing targets and to deliver the development that the country needs. There is a protection in the amendment that the Government have brought in, and I am hopeful that the compromise that has occurred will be a productive one.

In conclusion, I thank the Minister for the way in which the Bill has been managed. It has, in my view, been a model. I have appreciated that personally and I know my group have. We are in the midst now of creating a list of all the changes that have been made to the Bill. It is substantial, and that is due to the way in which the Government have entered the debate that we have had about how to improve devolution and community empowerment in England. I thank the Minister very much for that.

22:15

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I will start with Motion A. We have discussed brownfield prioritisation many times in this Chamber, and it is clear that we all agree that brownfield development should be prioritised. I am pleased that the Government have finally tabled an amendment to put that principle into legislation and therefore enshrine it in law. Time and again we were told that this is a policy matter and not for legislation, yet we do not take that approach when it comes to environmental obligations or other considerations. All we have pushed for is that brownfield is prioritised over these other considerations, which planners must take into account.

We appreciate that there are complexities and challenges in this and how the legislative changes relate to the NPPF. However, that does not mean that we should be complacent. Indeed, where is the Government’s enthusiasm to overcome the challenges of brownfield development, which people so clearly want to see? I hope the Government will follow words with action. The proof is in the pudding. None the less, we have come an awful long way on this. I thank the Minister for the time she has spent with me and my noble friend Lord Jamieson on this issue. It has been worth it to get what we all need, which is brownfield, not greenfield, and regeneration of our towns and cities.

I will speak briefly to Motion B. We have argued in favour of local choice, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his dedication to this. It has been very good working so closely with the Liberal Democrats throughout on this Bill, for no other reason than that we want a decent Bill to go through, because we are all passionate about local government. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, the issue has thrown into question the Government’s intentions behind this Bill. They say it is to empower local government, such as through letting local government choose its own governance models, but is it—as we rather think it might be—to impose the preferences of central government? It has been a valuable debate, and I hope it has perhaps made a bit of an impression on the Government as they go forward.

Moving to Motion C, I am grateful again to the Government, who have conceded to remove most of the powers of the Secretary of State in Schedule 1 to establish mayoral and non-mayoral strategic authorities or to impose a mayor without local consent. We accept the additional concession that the Secretary of State’s powers to expand the boundaries of strategic authorities will not be commenced for at least four years after Royal Assent. We understand the reasons why, and we again thank the Minister for her engagement on this matter. Our efforts will ensure that devolution is guided by local consent and that authorities are not pressured by the Secretary of State into changes they would not choose for themselves.

With that, I sincerely thank the Minister once again for her engagement throughout on the Bill and for the way it has passed through this House. I also thank all noble Lords who have debated this many times into the early hours of the morning for their passion for local government. I know the Bill is leaving in a better place than it was when we started and I wish it well.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. This Government’s objective remains clear: to ensure that every part of England can benefit from devolution. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke about the level of centralisation we have had in this country. It is completely different from other parts of Europe—probably the rest of the world, come to that—and now is the time to change that. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, reflected on the shared passion that we have across the Chamber. It has been obvious through the discussions on the Bill that we share our passion for local government; that theme has run all the way through debating the Bill.

Although we cannot accept amendments that would remove all the powers in Schedule 1, again, we have listened carefully to concerns raised by noble Lords. We are content to remove the powers in Schedule 1 that would allow the Secretary of State to direct the establishment of mayoral or non-mayoral strategic authorities, or to direct there to be a mayor of an existing non-mayoral strategic authority. We have also committed not to commence the remaining power to direct the addition of a local government area to a strategic authority for a period of four years following Royal Assent. Our Government’s preference has always been and, as I said before, will always remain to work collaboratively with local leaders to develop devolution proposals that meet local needs. We will continue to strive to do that and I hope the concessions we have set out today put that beyond doubt.

We acknowledge the strength of feeling among noble Lords on the importance of prioritising the use of brownfield land for development. As I have said before, we all share this priority. In recognition of the strength of feeling in this House and to further reinforce that, the Government have brought forward our own amendment on this, which will require the Secretary of State to make regulations that prescribe strategic planning authorities to have regard to the desirability of prioritising development on previously developed land.

As I said, our Government’s position on local authority governance remains that the executive models, particularly the leader and cabinet model, provide a more effective framework for local decision-making. I hope that the amendment we have proposed today partially meets the needs that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has described many times during our debates. Respectfully, I hope that, having withdrawn his amendments, the noble Lord will recognise that. What we have put in now on this subject is a practical safeguard, not a change in the wider policy on governance arrangements, but I hope that it meets some of the needs that have come forward during our discussions.

I am grateful for the many contributions to this Bill and especially to the opposition spokespeople, both in your Lordships’ House and at the other end of the building, for working with us and for their time and commitment, especially today, in getting outstanding matters on the Bill resolved. I had the opportunity to thank the Bill team and my private office at Third Reading, but I reiterate those thanks now to them and to the House staff, who have supported us on some late nights on the Bill. I thank my honourable friends the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Devolution, Faith and Communities for supporting me all through the Bill, as we went through its passage in your Lordships’ House.

Perhaps I am a bit biased, after 30 years in local government, but I genuinely believe that most decisions are better taken at local level by those who know best the places, people and communities that they serve. This Bill will now give local leaders the powers, funding and support they need to power up every part of our country.

Motion A agreed.

Motion B

Moved by

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

That this House do not insist on its Amendments 36, 90 and 155, in respect of which the Commons have insisted on their disagreement, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 155A to 155F, 155H and 155K to the words restored to the Bill by that non-insistence on Amendment 155.

155K: Schedule 27, page 281, line 12, after “day” insert “(the “standard period”) or that period as extended by the Secretary of State in accordance with subsections (2A) and (2B). (2A) The Secretary of State may extend that period if the Secretary of State considers that it is likely that a dissolution order will be made in relation to the local authority during the period of one year after the end of the standard period.(2B) Any extension of that period—(a) must be granted, and notified to the local authority in writing, before the end of the standard period;(b) must end no later than one year after the end of the standard period.”

Motion B agreed.

Motion C

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

Moved by

That this House do not insist on its Amendments 85 and 86, 97 to 116, 120, 121 and 123, in respect of which the Commons have insisted on their disagreement, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 123C to 123H, 123J, 123K, 123M, 123N and 123P to 123R in lieu.

123M: Clause 92, page 86, line 24, leave out from “paragraphs” to “of Schedule 1” in line 25 and insert “19 and 41”

123N: Schedule 1, page 92, leave out from line 36 to line 33 on page 93

123P: Schedule 1, page 94, leave out lines 5 to 7

123Q: Schedule 1, page 106, leave out from line 34 to line 33 on page 107

123R: Schedule 1, page 108, leave out lines 5 to 7

Motion C agreed.

Arrangement of Business

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

22:23

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we have now concluded our parliamentary business for the day and for this parliamentary Session. I will shortly adjourn the House and we will return tomorrow at 1.15 pm for the Prorogation ceremony only.

I thank all Members, all the staff of the House and the usual channels for their work this Session. I also thank and pay particular tribute to Ayeesha Bhutta, who is the principal private secretary to me and the Leader of the House of Lords, my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon. Ayeesha is an outstanding public servant, epitomising all that is great about the Civil Service. She has loyally served this Government, just as she did the previous Conservative Government. We have all benefited from her expertise, knowledge and calmness under pressure. She leaves her post at the end of next week, but we are lucky that she will be joining the House staff as the Clerk of Legislation, where she will do an outstanding job for the whole House.

Finally, it has been a huge honour for me to serve as the Government Chief Whip and the Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms. I thank the whole House for both the support and the challenges that have been provided to me over the past 22 months. Even on the toughest days, it has been the most enormous privilege, and I always try to discharge my duties with a smile and, where possible, to assist noble Lords in their important work.

House adjourned at 10.26 pm.