North Belfast: Violent Attack

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

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

The noble Lord raises a very important point. Nearly 70,000 people were deported between the general election and March 2026—a 41% increase on the 21 months before that. It is important for us to remember that we are a welcoming, open country; I am here only because of previous immigration policies that allowed my family to come. However, this is about making sure that, if you are lucky enough to live in the UK, you abide by British values, and if you do not, you will leave.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, people are conflating those who come here illegally with those who are here legally. Among the people who were firebombed out of their homes last night was an African family who have been here for 20 years. We also saw pictures of a business, potentially started by an Indian family, that had been firebombed. There is no excuse for those people who are inciting hatred and racism. Just as South Yorkshire Police took action when the Holiday Inn in Rotherham was attacked, I really hope the Northern Ireland police service has the same vigour to take action against those who put life in danger over the last couple of days.

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

The noble Lord raises an incredibly important point. We have seen people who have been too scared to go to work in the last 24 hours—people who serve in our NHS and in lots of different public services, as well as those who have built lives here, and we are grateful to them for doing so.

I would like to finish my contributions today not with my words but with the words of the Ogilvie family, because they reflect where most of us would want to be.

“We want to make it absolutely clear that overnight unrest is not welcome, and peaceful protest is the only way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work. We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility”.

Public/Private Partnerships: Shares

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I was agreeing with some of that until it got to the very end. I thank the noble Baroness for her question. Obviously, we need to look at this closely. We want to open up public/private partnerships, where they are to happen, to investment from consumers and shareholders, but we need to wait until the Budget to find out exactly what is going to be done.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, all the best for the task he has in hand—it is going to be a very difficult one. In terms of public/private partnerships, what lessons can be learnt from what happened in Sheffield with the tree debacle? Will the Government use that as a case study of how not to go about a public/private partnership?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

We will look at all avenues to improve any potential public/private partnership. There are obviously lessons from the past that we can draw on. I do not know the specific case that the noble Lord mentioned, but Ministers will look at this in the round. They are advising potential organisations on public/private partnerships and looking at legacy PFIs and what more they can do to help those PFIs to be managed, so there is a lot going on. We all want this to succeed and we need to draw on lessons from problems we have had in the past.