House of Lords

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Thursday 16 July 2026

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle.

Death of a Member: Lord Laming

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

11:06

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean)]

My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on 15 July. I understand that there will be an opportunity for the House to pay tribute to Lord Laming in the coming days. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.

Retirement of a Member: Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

11:07

[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 Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.

Artificial Intelligence: Legislation

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

11:07

Asked by

[Lord Taylor of Warwick]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether, and if so when, they expect to bring forward legislation on the development and use of artificial intelligence in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

My Lords, AI has the potential for significant advances in science, productivity and living standards if adopted securely. While we are taking steps to develop our sovereign capability, we are also bringing forward the regulation for growth Bill to ensure that our regulatory environment drives the growth we need to seize the opportunities brought by AI. Through our world-leading AI Security Institute, we are supporting international safeguard developments and ensuring that the Government have the best understanding of model capabilities as they advance.

[Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, but I also say well done to the England football team for reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup. In doing so, they demonstrated AI—actual intelligence.

The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone. AI technology has given us amazing ways of solving everyday problems. The Minister mentioned the AI Security Institute. It plays an important role, especially concerning research, but it does not have powers to compel companies to engage with or to protect us against serious risks from AI. We know that AI can bring great benefits, from health to wealth, but it can also bring problems. Can the Minister therefore tell us when we will have AI regulation? The Government seem to have a “wait and see” attitude. AI also sees, but it does not wait.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government are acting to ensure that the UK can grasp the transformative potential of AI. That includes developing our sovereign capability and, as the noble Lord mentioned, relying on the advice of the AI Security Institute. Our approach is that we will legislate where we need to. We have done so through the Online Safety Act and we are doing so in other areas where we see the need. We believe that the best way of regulating is through context-specific regulation, which will take into account the specific issues that arise when AI is adopted by particular sectors.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI regulation and policy. The Government followed Australia in its approach to access to social media for under-16s. Will they do the same with AI, now that Australia will be adopting mandatory standards for AI, as nine in 10 of the British public clearly want?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The UK’s approach is to develop our sovereign capabilities. We are investing in infrastructure and in AI growth zones. We are working to ensure that everyone in this country benefits from the potential of AI and are upskilling 10 million workers. In respect of the regulatory environment, AI can be adopted in many different areas: it can advance drug discovery, or it can support teachers in classrooms so that they have more face-to-face time with pupils. It is right to take a context-specific regulatory approach.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, the Government have recognised that greater transparency about AI model training data would help rights holders to assert their rights. Can the Minister tell the House why she has not committed in principle to statutory transparency requirements for commercial AI developers?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

We set out our approach in March in respect of the issues around copyright and AI. We acknowledged that the approach we had taken previously in respect of the proposals we had put forward did not command the support of the creative industry or the technology industry—or indeed of noble Lords. We have set out a plan to take all that forward over the summer and beyond.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

What benefits and staff reductions will the Government achieve with their £3 billion commitment to spending on AI for their own purposes?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that there may be many advances in productivity and efficiency across all the public sector and, indeed, in the private sector. We are setting up the AI Economics Institute to make sure we are well informed with the best advice on the implications for the labour market and the fiscal environment. This is a rapidly developing technology. We are drawing on the best advice so that we can be best prepared to support the UK in this transformative potential.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, the increasing use of AI in education is transforming teaching and learning at all levels. The Government are currently focused on investment in AI skills for work, through tertiary education, as well as having introduced measures to reduce the burden on teachers through innovation funding—all to be welcomed. Will the Government recognise the importance of taking a stronger stance in exposing younger generations to the tools AI offers and commit to a more in-depth curriculum that teaches primary and secondary students the safe and correct ways to use these AI skills?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that AI technology is with us today. It is absolutely right that, as he mentioned, we support all parts of society—children, students, workers—to understand this, discern it and use it wisely. That is why we are also developing our digital skills programme and ensuring that everybody can benefit from this transformative technology.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, we understand the Government’s policy of placing most of the burden of AI regulation on to existing sectoral regulators, but the cyber security and resilience Bill will create new burdens for those regulators. The Minister will accept that this is collectively an extremely significant expansion of those regulators’ powers and workload. First, are any further additions planned? Secondly, are the Government taking steps to ensure those regulators have the necessary skills and resources? Thirdly, is the new Prime Minister aware of and supportive of this approach?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Viscount is right that the cyber security and resilience Bill will indeed place new obligations on regulators, but that goes hand in hand with the support and the changes in funding and fee recovery that they will be able, after consultation, to enact. They are also supported by the technical authority of the NCSC, which provides them with advice on this. It is obviously the nature of all regulatory activities that they must take into account developments in society and the economy, and the transformative impact of AI. The Regulatory Innovation Office supports regulators to look at how they can adopt AI themselves to improve their regulatory efficiency, as well as looking at developments in their own sectors.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

Can the Minister inform the House what body will hold ultimate responsibility for the authorisation and regulation of artificial intelligence in autonomous weapons systems?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Ministry of Defence has set out guidance for the adoption of AI in defence. I am afraid that I cannot recall the name of the document—I will need to write to the noble and gallant Lord with that—but it sets out exactly where humans should be involved in defence decision-making. The ministry has consulted and it has expert panels advising it on its approach.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that AI is going to be transformational, but the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, raises a very important point about warfare, where it is going to be transformational and not necessarily for the good. I hear what my noble friend says about the MoD, but this will have to be approached on an international basis. We also have to recognise that some of our adversaries will not be concerned about regulation. Is that not a challenge that we should face now?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that AI is transforming the military and defence. It is indeed incredibly important that we work internationally. Last week, the UKAC co-ordinated the most recent meeting of the International Network for Advanced AI Measurement, Evaluation and Science, where we are working together with other countries’ ACs on best practices for model evaluations, using that expertise to build tangible international consensus to mitigate AI risks.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register as an adviser to the Crown Estate and to Simmons & Simmons LLP. I thank the Minister for her response to my Written Question of 8 July, setting out what the Government are doing on the international stage, not least with the Council of Europe AI framework. But does the Minister agree that if the UK Government take a point-of-use, sector-by-sector approach then there will be accountability deficits, transparency difficulties and a lack of the three Cs that are crucial whether you are an investor, an innovator, a creative or, crucially, a citizen when it comes to AI: clarity, consistency and a coherent approach? Would an AI Bill not resolve that for the benefit of us all?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

It remains the case that we must be very attuned to developments in AI, in AI risks and in AI opportunities. We are extremely fortunate to have the AI Security Institute, which can provide us with that advice. Obviously, we will always look at whether there are regulatory or legislative gaps and we will act if we need to.

BBC Royal Charter: Gaelic Broadcasting

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

11:19

Asked by

[Baroness MacLeod of Camusdarach]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to ensure Gaelic broadcasting will be given the same certainty and sufficiency of funding as Welsh broadcasting under the next BBC Royal Charter.

[Baroness MacLeod of Camusdarach (Lab)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and I declare an interest as a member of the development board of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic college on the island of Skye.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are clear about the vital role of Gaelic broadcasting: the BBC belongs to all of us and must reflect every community it serves. Charter review aims to put the BBC on a sustainable financial footing so that it can continue to deliver wide public value, including through the provision of Gaelic broadcasting. Alongside this, proposals detailed in the media Green Paper aim to ensure the long-term sustainability of public service media, including through minority-language broadcasting.

[Baroness MacLeod of Camusdarach (Lab)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. It certainly is a step forward. Gaelic is one of the UK’s indigenous languages, and it is much older than English. It is fighting for its life, although the number of Gaelic speakers is increasing, and Gaelic broadcasting is pivotal in that role. Although MG Alba was created by legislation at Westminster, there has been no UK funding since the Lord Speaker left the other House. S4C in Wales is funded by the licence fee, with £22 million for programmes and £96 million in cash. BBC Alba gets no cash from the licence fee, only £10 million in kind from the BBC and another £15 million from the Scottish Government. All Gaelic broadcasting is asking for is parity of esteem. It is not a big ask for a priceless gain. I hope the Minister will carry on agreeing.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I agree with my noble friend on how important our UK languages are. Keeping them alive is part of not just our history but our culture for the future, and it should matter to all of us. The Government recognise the valuable contribution that providers of minority-language broadcasting have and their vital role in the preservation of our national heritage. The Government are considering the most appropriate arrangements for providing sustainable funding for minority-languages broadcasting as part of the charter review. MG Alba’s total budget stands at an estimated £420 per Gaelic speaker, including both BBC and Scottish Government spend. This compares to an equivalent of £260 per Welsh speaker for S4C. That is not to minimise the importance of it but to show that there is investment in this space.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, in supporting the noble Baroness’s plea on behalf of the Gaelic language, and as a one-time board member of S4C, there was never a time when S4C had the certainty of adequate future funding. Is the Minister aware that S4C has called for more medium-term funding through a multi-year funding settlement that allows for inflation and for protection from outside cuts? Will the Minister give serious consideration to such an approach, and thereby provide fair funding for both Welsh and Gaelic broadcasting services?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

As I made clear, we want the charter review to put broadcasting on a sustainable financial footing. I will speak to my colleague Ian Murray about the points the noble Lord raises. We are clear that minority languages are a minority only to people who do not speak them. For those who do, minority languages are such an important aspect of our cultural life, and it is important that minority-language broadcasting is funded from the centre and open to all.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady MacLeod, has made a vital point. Gaelic as an indigenous language is not just an integral part of the culture of these islands but the means of expression of two of the greatest poets of the 20th century, Sorley MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith. There is a statutory duty on the BBC to fund Welsh, which is quite right, but there is no similar statutory duty for Scots Gaelic. The last Government set up the Islands Forum, to ensure that the voice of Gaelic speakers was heard at the heart of Westminster. This Government abolished it. The Lord Speaker, when he was Scottish Secretary, ensured increased broadcasting funding for Gaelic. This Government have not yet made that commitment. Will the Government stand behind Gaelic speakers, whose contribution to our culture is so important?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord on the importance of Gaelic speakers to our national culture. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to minority-language broadcasting models and how they are funded. The Scottish and UK Governments have a role to play to help ensure that relevant institutions and organisations have adequate funding so that they can deliver for audiences. We are considering, through charter review, how we can provide more certainty to Gaelic broadcasting and MG Alba.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I wish the noble Baroness every success in her campaign to secure funding for Gaelic-language broadcasting. It is a very good campaign. Can the Minister say how the new charter will protect the local independent production sector in Wales from centralisation, as the BBC shifts small services to digital-first formats?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

That is a very detailed question and I may have to write to the noble Baroness. Through the charter review, we are trying to make sure that we have a really broad and healthy sustainable model for the future, and it must support the smaller local organisations as well as national organisations. We are keen to make sure that works. I am happy to talk to the noble Baroness about that point.

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, from my time in New Zealand, I saw at first hand the benefit of intentional government investment in Māori-language broadcasting for younger audiences. What steps are His Majesty’s Government taking to ensure that Gaelic-language broadcasting remains accessible and relevant to younger audiences and is not merely retained as a residual service?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am not sure that describing it as a residual service does justice to the work of the people working in Gaelic-speaking broadcasting. Historically, we have been clear that this must be for every part of the population that speaks the language. What has happened in Wales—we have had an increase in both Welsh and Gaelic speakers over the last couple of decades—demonstrates the power of investment in making sure that people have got access to the language in every part of the culture, and that must include young people and children.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, another language in Scotland is Scots. Indeed, Burns wrote roughly half his poetry in in Scots, not least “Address to a Haggis”. Can the Minister tell us whether there will be money directed at the preservation of Scots as a language as well in this process?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

It is interesting, because I put that point to my officials. Noble Lords will need to wait and see as part of the charter review, but if people are campaigning for Scots to get similar recognition, please encourage them to get involved in the discussions around the charter review.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

In supporting my noble friend Lady MacLeod, and as a fellow Celt, I offer the example that Irish-language broadcasting in Northern Ireland is primarily funded by the BBC and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, which is managed by Northern Ireland Screen and financially supported by DCMS, part of our own Government. Is there a potential solution for Gaelic broadcasting in Scotland in that model?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I think there is, potentially, but we need to make sure that we do not assume that a one-size-fits-all approach works across the piece. I am happy to take suggestions back to the department and to speak to my colleague Ian Murray from the other place about this. We are keen to make sure that all minority languages get what works for that particular area, rather than assuming that one size fits all. On Northern Ireland and Irish-language broadcasting, which works on a cross-border basis, we are keen to continue to support that from DCMS as well.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, unlike S4C, MG Alba does not have statutory designation as a public service broadcaster, which leaves it more vulnerable to budgetary pressures from the BBC. Only last month, the BBC announced cuts of £500 million and 550 jobs. Is this something that the Government will look at as part of the royal charter review to address the vulnerability that MG Alba and Gaelic broadcasting faces?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

It is an interesting point. There is a statutory basis for Welsh broadcasting. Without undermining what we are trying to do in Wales, I refer noble Lords back to the fact that the budget per Gaelic speaker is considerably higher. A statutory basis on its own is not enough protection, but we will try to work through all these questions and make sure that we look at the models that work in different areas as part of our work in DCMS.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

11:29

Asked by

[Baroness Ludford]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the continued detention of individuals serving Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences beyond their original tariff periods.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

In the two years since being in government, we have made significant progress to support IPP prisoners. We have reduced the number of never-released IPP prisoners by 21% and the number of IPP offenders in the community by 70%. IPP recalls fell by 31% in 2025 compared to 2024, and we have also changed the law through the Sentencing Act. Around 100 IPP offenders became eligible for earlier licence termination when these changes were implemented on 1 June.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister has just confirmed, he said in the exchange with us on July 6:

“Noble Lords who know me will know that I do not lack ambition”.—[Official Report, 6/7/26; col. 11.]


He has again shown that is true. However, the pace of release of IPP prisoners is still too slow. Prospective new Prime Minister Andy Burnham spoke on Tuesday in the other place of the need to

“change the way this country thinks about and works towards justice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/26; col. 891.]

After this clarion call, does the Minister expect the new Government to match his ambition with greater resources, resolve and courage, so that by 2029 at the very latest the legacy of the shameful injustice of IPP sentences will be no more?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will not be surprised that everybody I meet in prisons and probation, and around the whole justice sector, is ambitious for IPP prisoners. We are committed to ensuring that they get the support they need to progress. I am still ambitious, so that is why we are supporting the hardest to reach, especially IPP prisoners, those who we know are really stuck in the system. We are trialling a new IPP advocate role and giving IPP prisoners more experiences so they can progress, with specialists working with them, and when they go to approved premises, they are staying there longer and have more support. All these initiatives will help, but we need to remain ambitious, because I know, as many of us do, that IPP prisoners can get through. Having employed many of them myself, I believe in second chances and that they can get through.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if IPP prisoners beyond their tariff had been sentenced to a determinate term, which they would have been if they had had the good fortune to have been convicted on or after Monday 3 December 2012 and not before that date, they would have been released years ago?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

It is possible that some of these offenders may have been given a discretionary life sentence and therefore would still be subject to the parole process and therefore still in prison if they had not the met the statutory release test. It is also possible that some of these offenders may have been given standard determinate sentences and therefore could have been released by now. However, all IPP offenders are subject to review by the independent Parole Board, which has, in some cases repeatedly, found them unsafe to be released.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are now about 1,000 IPP prisoners still in custody and, of that 1,000, only about 50 are unsuitable for release at any time, by virtue of either their health or the seriousness of the criminal offence for which they were convicted? Does it not seem right that we should make an aggressive effort to release some of those 950 and require the Parole Board and those in charge of early release to concentrate on them rather than, for example, child rapists or other forms of sexual criminal?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord is incorrect: 896 IPP prisoners have never been released; that is 11% down on last year. My view is that we need to get them into the right prison. Two years ago, only 70% of them were in the right prison; now 91% are in the right prison, and we need to support them so they can get out. Prisons like HMP Grendon, which is a therapeutic community, do good work with IPP prisoners, and HMP Warren Hill has specialist units to support them. I want them to progress as quickly as possible but as safely as possible, so when they are out, they can stay out and do so safely.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in his maiden speech in the other place, in relation to the Hillsborough law, Andy Burnham talked passionately about miscarriages of justice, as we have heard. He also commended victims’ families for campaigning for decades against state wrongs. Taking him at his word, will the Minister draw the new Prime Minister’s attention to the IPP scandal and suggest meeting IPP prisoners’ families to hear details of this shameful blight, on their lives and on the criminal justice system, and to hear their frustration when the state unfairly cites dangerousness as an excuse while releasing proven dangerous rapists early to solve an estate mismanagement problem—that is, prison overcrowding? They want to talk to people in power about this; the new Prime Minister is perfect. Please facilitate the introduction.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am glad the noble Baroness thinks that the new Prime Minister will be perfect. I was pleased to see the noble Baroness yesterday outside the Ministry of Justice with a number of ex-IPP prisoners and their families. I reiterate the important role that families play in the justice system. There are 193,000 children affected by parental imprisonment and a number of those are children whose parents are on IPP sentences. Some have come home and are then recalled back into custody. One of the key elements for people reforming and not reoffending is family ties. Yes, they need a job and somewhere safe to live, and we want them to be well, but families have a really important role, which is why we need to keep supporting the families of IPP prisoners.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I commend my noble friend for the enormous amount of work, time and energy that he is putting into this area. I know it is greatly appreciated by those who have campaigned for years. Will he take a look at the slowing of the work on progression plans and the progression board, not simply in relation to those who have never been released—the 896 to whom he referred—but on the length of time that those who have been recalled are spending in prison, which is of considerable concern in terms of what we are trying to do to rehabilitate and get people back into the community?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his kind words, and I look forward to seeing a number of noble Lords at the IPP Peers meeting on Monday. I will take away the point on the progression board that he mentions. However, I reiterate that we need prisons that work and a Probation Service that works. One of the things that I been focused on is performance in the justice system. I am pleased to inform Members of your Lordships’ House that 70% of our prisons and 90% of our probation regions are now performing better than they were. Self-harm and assaults on staff are down. To me, all that shows that we are getting to the right place, which will make it easier for often complex prisoners to get on so they can get out and stay out.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

Will the noble Lord say how many IPP prisoners he has met and talked to within the last four weeks, and what he has learned from those conversations?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The last IPP prisoner I met was in HMP Birmingham—I think I was there three weeks ago. He was back on recall and facing further charges. The nature of the conversation was quite troubling, because I learned from him that he felt safer in prison than in the community. Also, he did not think that open prisons were always that good for long-term complex prisoners, which surprised me because I am a big fan of open prisons, having recruited lots of people from them. I went away with the challenge of how we ensure that IPP prisoners, when they go to open conditions, are not brought back. Too many go there quite quickly and then come back.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s recent report, published last week, acknowledges the obvious point that self-harm, violence and behavioural instability among IPP prisoners are linked to the long-term distress caused by the sentence itself, yet those very reactions may be liable to be relied upon as grounds to refuse release. Does the Minister consider that additional assessments and, indeed, progression plans are going to be sufficient to break that terrible cycle, or is more needed? Are we not required to be a little more courageous about the release of these long-term prisoners?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord is right to bring this up because they are often the most complex individuals in our whole prison estate. The level of self-harm among this cohort can be pretty terrifying. There are a significant number of IPP prisoners in secure mental health hospitals, and that is the right place for them. However, we need to ensure that we have them in the right prison. As I mentioned, HMP Grendon and HMP Warren Hill are therapeutically informed environments, and the Phoenix wing we are starting next month in HMP Aylesbury is a specialist wing where we are trying things we have never tried before. The people we call our “red rated” are those who are the furthest away from release and they are often the most challenging IPP prisoners. We need to get progression support around them and give them hope, because we need them to believe that they can get out—too many times they have seen people go to progression panels and not get out. We need to make sure we do what we can to give them hope.

Key Stage 2 Exam Results

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

11:39

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the failure of Pearson to deliver Key Stage 2 exam results on time.

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

My Lords, Pearson has fully apologised for its failure to return the key stage 2 results on time and for the impact on schools, pupils and parents. The delay was unacceptable, but I can confirm that results have been returned successfully today. The Government will use all contractual provisions to ensure that Pearson is held to account for its failings, and there will be a full independent review into how such serious failings could have occurred.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the review. The Minister will know that the SATs exams at the end of year 6 are very important in the life of children and their parents. With results coming nine days late, some schools have already broken up, having broken up last week, and most schools break up tomorrow, so schools have one day to go through the results, identify any errors or anomalies, communicate with parents and be prepared to support children who did not reach the required standard. Will my noble friend the Minister explain to the House just what sanctions are available against Pearson? Does she not think it calls into question the wholesale outsourcing of important services like this? There are shades of the Capita issue in relation to Civil Service pensions.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My noble friend raises several significant and important matters and explains that some schools have already broken up. We fully recognise the frustration and inconvenience this delay has caused for schools, pupils, families and, as he rightly says, teachers. Schools should expect results to be delivered to the published timetable. We are exploring all options for recourse, including financial penalties and termination of the contract. As I have said, the Secretary of State has confirmed there will be a full independent review. I can confirm that, as the Secretary of State announced today, it will be led by Dame Christine Gilbert, currently chair of Ofsted. Of course, further details and terms of reference will be set out shortly.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, this time of year is very stressful as school leaders come to the end of the academic year. I welcome the Minister’s statement today about a review, but what assessment have the Government made of the level of disruption and additional workload that primary schools now face because of the delay in publication of the key stage 2 results? Will the Government also look at what lessons can be learned from that review and commit to actually implementing those in future for national assessments?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

We enter into the review with full transparency, which is why we have set it up; it is absolutely crucial. We also recognise the delay, and I reassure the noble Lord that we have extended until 7 September the deadline for any applications for reviews of the tests that members of staff have to do, to give more time. It is so difficult at this time of year—everyone should be celebrating the end of the school year. Of course, key stage 2 is the end of the primary phase for most young people. So, it is a serious issue, and we are treating it with the respect it deserves.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is extremely important that the transition between primary and secondary school is as smooth for children and well supported as possible. It is a traumatic time for everybody. If schools have broken up, teachers have no opportunity to support children who have not done particularly well, children with special needs and children with disadvantage. Secondary schools also have less time to consider the provisions they need to make. It is an extremely serious issue, and the Minister is obviously taking it very seriously. Is the review going to look at the options for outsourcing, and even whether there is capacity within the department to take it back in house and do it from the department’s point of view?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: transition is important. Secondary schools do not rely on the SATs results immediately; they are used in a longer-term process. However, on her last point, I reassure her that, following the recent announcement from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, a new public interest test will be applied before renewing expiring government contracts, in order to prioritise long-term value. Everything is on the table. We need to make sure we get the best outcome for those pupils, and for the staff who do such a brilliant job supporting them through all the different stages of their education.

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, from 2011 I chaired the Department for Education’s independent review of key stage 2 assessment. We had many good discussions with Pearson during that time, and I am very disappointed by this recent debacle. One of the key things is the breakdown between Pearson and the markers, which seems to be at the heart of this failure. Can the Minister probe this when the investigation occurs? The review I was engaged in wanted to produce the most humane, creative key stage 2 set of tests. It was also motivated by a desire to maintain the UK’s significant position in world educational rankings. Nobody owes this country a living. So, this failure is not just a matter of the disappointment to schools and parents in the last few weeks; Pearson has to be told it has a role to play in maintaining this country’s overall placing in world educational attainment.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his timely comments. I reassure him that the delay was about technical issues with uploading the data, rather than the actual marking of the tests themselves. Obviously, all of this will be looked at in great detail. He is absolutely right about the humane aspect. For whatever reasons—I am not sure it was the intention at the beginning—pupils take SATs very seriously. It is a really big deal for year 6 pupils to go through them. We have to make sure there is confidence in the system, and that they can be supported, particularly the most vulnerable children, who can be given an alternative form of assessment if required.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is incredibly important to support all businesses, big and small, to enhance economic growth. But in this instance, it is obviously entirely fair and reasonable to ask: what steps are both the Government and Pearson undertaking right now to support teachers who are back at their desks during annual leave, and will Pearson be required to provide full remedial action before the publication of the review?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I reassure the noble Earl that the department has given extra time. It is very conscious of the fact that teachers are looking forward to going on a break. By the end of the summer term, to be quite honest, most of them are on their knees because of the effort they have put in. I therefore reassure him that we are being sympathetic about that. I do not want to pre-empt the terms of the review. We should let it do its work and analyse the results, and then see what next steps are most appropriate for all concerned.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and on the broader question of SATs testing, last week, YouGov published a survey showing that only 7% of primary school leaders wanted to see SATs retained in their present form; the remainder wanted them either to be reformed or to be removed entirely. A large part of the reason why was the stress caused to young people, which has of course been exacerbated by the Pearson fiasco in the last two weeks. So, will my noble friend the Minister agree to listen to the views of those who know young pupils best, and look at revising primary assessment, with a view to finding a fairer and more effective form?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I always enjoy my conversations with my noble friend, particularly on matters such as this. I have a grandson who has just gone through key stage 2 SATs, and I know from first-hand experience the pressure that is being experienced. Of course, these matters are always under review. There is a special emphasis now on children with SEND to make sure they are properly looked after. We are mindful that the curriculum review looked at this in great detail, and the response was that, in the main, they were fair assessments. But this is obviously a dynamic area, and we will continue to listen to the voice of the experts—in this case, the teachers themselves.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a teacher who has taught Pearson Edexcel at A-level. I will widen the Question a bit. The Government are complaining about Pearson and talking about the delays, but the annual Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance always comes out in the holidays, giving the safeguarding teams no time to get things organised before inset days. A couple of years ago, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, promised that it would come out in term time. Do the Government have any plans for that?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I will take away the noble Lord’s comments, quiz my noble friend the Minister in great depth, and we will reply to him in due course.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

1st reading
Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

First Reading

11:50

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

11:51

Moved by

[Baroness Lady Evans of Bowes Park]

To move that this House takes note of the Government’s record on education, employment and welfare since July 2024.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to open this important debate on the Government’s record on education, employment and welfare, as we reach the end of the Starmer premiership and move to the Burnham one.

Over the past two years, an unfortunate pattern has emerged across the Government’s policies on these issues. Whether intended or not, their interventions have too often served to restrict opportunity rather than broaden it. Opportunity is the foundation of a free, prosperous society and economy. It is what allows a child from any background to succeed in education, a young person to secure their first job and an individual to build an independent life through work. Yet across education, employment and welfare, the Government have appeared increasingly determined to substitute individual aspiration and institutional freedom with central direction and state intervention. The result is not only a larger state—we just have to look at the eye-watering levels of government spending—but a society in which the pathways to fulfilling an individual’s potential are increasingly constrained and, in too many cases, cut off entirely. At a time when Britain faces economic and technological change, that is the wrong direction in which to travel.

I begin with education. The central question for any education system should be simple: are we giving the next generation the greatest possible opportunity to succeed? For much of the past two decades, the academies programme has helped answer that question positively. By giving schools greater freedom over recruitment, curriculum delivery, governance and innovation, academies have been an important driver of the significant improvements in standards and outcomes that have been achieved. Between 2009 and 2022, England rose from 21st to 11th in the PISA league tables for maths, from 25th to 13th for reading, and from 11th to 9th for science. Yet rather than building on this success, the Government in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act chose to curtail many of the freedoms that helped enable this progress. The reforms introduced by the Government to academies have represented a shift away from institutional autonomy and back towards central control. Schools now have less freedom to innovate, less flexibility to respond to local circumstances and fewer opportunities to develop distinctive approaches to excellence.

At the same time, concerns have been raised that the proposed curriculum reforms may reduce academic rigour, at precisely the moment when the demands on young people are increasing. This matters because today’s pupils will graduate into a labour market unlike any that we have previously known. AI is transforming entire sectors of the economy. Entry-level roles that once provided a foothold into professional careers are rapidly changing and, in some sectors, starting to disappear altogether. Young people will need stronger skills, higher levels of knowledge and greater resilience than ever before. So, if opportunity is our objective, we should strengthen the institutions that have delivered educational improvement, not restrict them.

It is not just academies that the Government have weakened; they have deliberately undermined the independent sector. Independent schools offer choice and the chance for social mobility through the standard of education they offer and the scholarships and partnerships they provide. Yet because of the Government’s decision to impose VAT—an unprecedented tax on education—four times more students have left independent schools than expected, and a number of schools have had to close entirely, putting unnecessary strain on the state school system. The closest thing we have to a silver bullet in public policy is education, to give children the best chance to realise their potential, so we should back all institutions that broaden their horizons, raise standards and equip young people for the challenges of a rapidly changing world—we should not undermine them.

The same concern around restricting opportunity applies to employment. Britain today faces significant labour market challenges, global economic uncertainty, technological disruption, high energy costs, a high tax burden and changing patterns of work. All these are affecting employers and employees alike. Many of these forces are not within the Government’s control, but the policy response most certainly is. As the curtain is drawn on the current Prime Minister’s and Chancellor’s tenures, their signature policy—and possibly one of the most damaging—has been a £25 billion a year increase in the tax on jobs. Despite warnings of the damage that would be caused, the Government imposed a higher rate and lowered the threshold at which national insurance is levied. Instead of focusing on creating the conditions for job creation, investment, economic dynamism and growth, government action has led to employers facing rising costs and growing regulatory burdens through the Employment Rights Act that increase both the cost and the risk of taking on staff.

The consequences are felt most acutely by those trying to enter the labour market for the first time. In the hospitality sector alone—one of the biggest employers of young people—the 2024 Budget amounted to £3.4 billion of annual tax increases, resulting in 100,000 job losses, falling mostly on those seeking entry level and part-time work. The figures show that more than 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 are now not in education, employment or training—the first time that figure has exceeded 1 million since 2013. Until the pandemic, NEET figures fell to below 10% in 2021 from nearly 17% in 2010. Youth unemployment has increased to 16.2%, equivalent to around 735,000 young people actively seeking work but unable to find it. We know that these are not merely statistics: they represent opportunities lost; young people unable to gain their first experience of work; skills left undeveloped; confidence undermined and ambitions postponed. Indeed, the recent Milburn review warned of a growing risk of a “lost generation”, because when opportunity disappears at the beginning of a career, the effects can last for decades.

There is of course an important role for programmes that support young people into work, particularly if they find that they do not have the skills needed to do the jobs in their area, and the previous Government had such schemes. However, we are now in the slightly surreal situation of the Government offering subsidies of £3,000 to employers to fund jobs for young people to deal with the damaging consequences of the employment taxes they have increased and the regulatory and wage costs they have imposed. That surely cannot be the answer to increasing opportunity across the jobs market.

That brings me, finally, to welfare. A compassionate welfare system is essential. It should provide support during periods of hardship, illness and transition, but at its heart it must be designed to help people move towards independence and participation in the labour market wherever possible. Increasingly, however, we appear to be moving towards a model that places greater emphasis on long-term dependency than on economic mobility. Every day, 1,000 people are signed off on to benefits with no requirements to look for work. Welfare spending is set to hit £370 billion by the end of the Parliament. This is simply unfair. It is unfair to taxpayers—the people going out to work to pay for those who do not—and to the people who are written off and not supported to find a job.

The Work and Pensions Secretary has said that all his colleagues want to talk about is how to raise more tax to spend on welfare. This is not simply fiscally unsustainable; it leads to the gradual erosion of the principle that work provides dignity, purpose and independence. When young people see limited rewards from entering employment and growing financial incentives to remain outside the labour market, the long-term effect is fewer opportunities for advancing and greater dependency on the state. That is neither socially desirable nor economically sustainable.

The Government’s response to the challenges we face in education, employment and welfare has too often been the same: more intervention and regulation, greater centralisation and increased cost. Yet the evidence suggests that lasting opportunity is rarely created by government direction. Opportunity is created when schools are trusted to excel, when businesses are confident enough to invest and hire and when individuals are empowered to build independent lives through work.

The challenge facing Britain today is not merely one of economic growth; it is a question of whether the next generation will enjoy greater opportunities than the last. On education, welfare and employment, the Government should ask themselves one question: are their policies expanding opportunity or restricting it? Unfortunately, too often over the past two years, the answer has appeared to be the latter. If we want to give young people the chance to succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we must reverse that trend. We must trust individuals, institutions, business and enterprise more, and place opportunity, not state control, at the centre of public policy.

I hope that the new Burnham Government will learn the lessons of the past two years and look to change course: to reduce the welfare bill and focus tirelessly on supporting those who can work into employment; to cut taxes on jobs and ensure that businesses can grow their workforces, invest in their futures and thrive again; and to once again trust head teachers to deliver the best education they can for their pupils. I beg to move.

12:03

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, my text for this simplistic opposition attack on the Government is simple: I will point out the legacy of the noble Baroness who has just spoken. She was in the Cabinet for six years. On 20 January 2025, the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House produced a 42-paragraph letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This followed a short inquiry to understand what was driving the massive change to incentivise benefits and inactivity under the Tories. Time permits me to mention just two paragraphs.

Paragraph 1 read:

“Spending on incapacity and disability benefits has risen by more than 40 per cent in real terms since 2013 … This is around 20 per cent higher than the UK defence budget and equal to 22 per cent of the total health budget. Spending on incapacity and disability benefits is forecast to rise to £100.7 billion … pushing the total welfare bill above £370 billion. The latest figures show that around 3.7 million people of working age receive the health component of Universal Credit … 1.2 million more than in February 2020. As the Office for Budget Responsibility note, since before the COVID pandemic this rise has been uniform across age groups. This is in the context of there being 1.51 million people registered as unemployed”.


In Paragraph 7 of the letter, the committee said:

“While it is difficult to unravel the data to provide a clear picture of the level of economic inactivity, administrative data show that spending on health-related benefits has risen. This has occurred in all parts of the country and in all age groups. As the OBR notes, ‘The proportion of the working-age population in receipt of an incapacity benefit reached a post-financial crisis high of 7.0 per cent in 2023-24 and is forecast to reach an all-time high of 7.9 per cent in 2028-29. This reverses the steady decline in caseload prevalence from the early 2000s to mid-2010s’”,


which was Labour’s time in office. It was a complete reversal of what had been happening under the Labour Government.

My final quote—I want to keep this short—is from an interesting piece by the Financial Times data expert John Burn-Murdoch, “What if the UK isn’t actually the sick man of Europe?”, from 6 December 2024. Time permits me to read only the final paragraph of his piece:

“It turns out the apparent rise in Britain’s illness-related inactivity is mostly not about deteriorating health, but about incentives within the benefit system”—


incentives that were put there by the Government in which the noble Baroness served in the Cabinet for six years. To finish the quote:

“Policies focused on the latter stand the best chance of getting Britons working”.


In other words, it is an absolute con. There was good progress under the Labour Government until 2010, and after that it reversed. We on the Economic Affairs Committee could not understand it. We thought we had got rid of the system whereby it paid not to work. Everybody around the table was gobsmacked, yet it had been made possible to be better off not working under the Tory Government of which the noble Baroness was a key member.

12:07

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for securing this important debate. I looked at the list of speakers and thought this was going to be a fantastic debate about our children’s future. I do not want it to be about how bad one side or the other was, because that will not help any young person. I have always been passionate about young people—I will return to that—and I will always fight for them. I did it before I arrived in your Lordships’ House and I do it now. Earlier this month I spoke about helping young people gain work experience in your Lordships’ House by coming in to assist us. This week, a fantastic A-level student from north London, Oliwia Pietrusa, helped me draft my speech and did some of the research for it.

A lot of speakers will follow me, so I will restrict my speech to two bits: NEETs—young people not in employment, education or training—and primary schools. As we have seen from the recent Milburn review, young people are being devastated by the side-effects of a lack of government intervention. Research by the House of Lords Library showed recently that 1.012 million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in employment, education or training. As the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, reminded us, Alan Milburn warned of a rising “lost generation”. The real issue now is about the system. Is it obsessed by ticking boxes? Are we just pushing our young people to chase qualifications but not finding destinations for them, by which I mean long-term, secure jobs? We are missing a proper participation system that guides our teenagers from the classroom into a career.

We also need to support schools that are struggling, which brings me on to the issue of the Government’s target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers. In my opinion, that completely ignores the challenges of primary schools. There has been a massive drop in primary school trainees. I am worried that falling rolls in primary schools are putting pressure on teacher recruitment and that the drop in primary school pupils will make its way through to secondary schools. There is a challenge there. We can see that happening here in London in particular, where places such as Lambeth and Hackney are now seeing pressures in schools. In open evidence to the Public Services Committee, we heard from one head teacher who said his school was closing.

So there is a real issue around how the Government looks at the funding formula, because it is based on pupil numbers rather than the actual cost of running schools. It is a huge issue, and not just a London-based one; it also affects rural and coastal communities. We are not going to be able to build a strong economy if our school system is hollowed out.

I have some questions for the Minister. We know from Milburn and House of Lords Library research that over 1 million young people are NEET now, and we are going to get Milburn’s recommendations. First, can the Minister confirm that the Government will fully fund all the recommendations from the Milburn review? Secondly, what will they do about tackling the drop-off in primary school teacher trainees? As I said, if we do not fix this problem now, it will follow through. Both Milburn and the fantastic work that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has done on tackling the issues around white working-class boys not achieving their potential identified that these issues start at a very young age. Finally, as I am running out of time, can the Minister please comment on the funding formula, which is causing huge issues for our primary school children and schools?

12:11

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for bringing this debate today, and it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley.

I want to focus my comments on opportunity and social mobility. In assessing the Government’s record on education, employment and welfare since July 2024, we cannot ignore the growing loss of humanities provision across higher education. Universities are autonomous institutions, but their decisions are shaped by the wider financial and policy environment.

A successful education system is measured not simply by qualifications or apprenticeships but by the breadth of opportunity it offers. The Social Mobility Commission’s State of the Nation 2024 reminds us that opportunity remains profoundly shaped by geography. When courses disappear from universities across whole regions, it is often students without the financial means to relocate who lose more opportunities first. Those from more affluent backgrounds can frequently move elsewhere or absorb the additional costs of studying further from home; those from less advantaged backgrounds often cannot. As a result, talent is constrained not by ability but by circumstance.

Social mobility depends not only on opening doors but on ensuring that those doors exist in every part of the country. If whole disciplines become concentrated in a handful of institutions or regions, educational choice increasingly becomes a privilege rather than a right. That risks reinforcing existing inequalities and undermining the Government’s stated ambition to widen opportunity and spread growth beyond our major cities.

On employment, these cuts affect lecturers, researchers, librarians and professional staff, whose expertise underpins teaching, innovation and the wider economy. Humanities graduates go on to become teachers, civil servants, diplomats, lawyers, journalists and leaders in our creative industries. They also develop the critical thinking, and communication and analytical skills, that employers consistently value across many sectors. Weakening that pipeline weakens the nation.

These concerns have been brought home to me through a friend and colleague at the University of Exeter, who has described the uncertainty surrounding proposed reductions in humanities posts. Sadly, Exeter is not alone. Similar pressures are being felt across the sector, with consequences for staff, students and local communities alike.

If we are serious about improving social mobility, we cannot allow educational opportunity to become narrower or more geographically uneven. A country that values aspiration must ensure that students, wherever they live and whatever their background, continue to have full access to the breadth of higher education. Social mobility is not simply about helping individuals to succeed; it is about ensuring that every community can retain and develop its talent, and that no young person’s ambitions are limited by where they happen to grow up.

I therefore ask the Minister: what steps will the Government take to ensure that our universities remain financially sustainable, that students continue to enjoy a broad range of subjects, and that the vital contribution of the humanities to our economy, our public services and our national life is not lost?

12:14

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on her excellent introduction to this important debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle.

I will concentrate on NEETs: that is, young people who leave school without entering sixth form or FE, employment or training. They are at the centre of Alan Milburn’s interim report on Young People and Work, which reveals very bleak prospects for NEETs. There are nearly a million of these young people—that is, one in eight of our school leavers—and the numbers are rising. Nearly 60% of them are economically inactive, which means they are detached from the labour market and not looking for work. The Milburn report describes this as a “moral crisis” with “economic consequences”. The economic consequences are that the annual cost to the taxpayer for the present numbers is £125 billion. All other EU countries, apart from Romania, are doing better than us on this issue, and, alarmingly, over the past decade, the number of NEETs citing health problems has risen by 70%, four out of 10 citing mental health problems.

I accept that the position has developed under successive Governments. We now have the aftermath of Covid, war, and a volatile world. We need economic growth. I can do no better than quote the noble Lord, Lord Walker of Broxton—I think he is not in his place today—who said in the welfare debate on 11 June that

“we will cure the problem”

of NEETs

“only by growing the economy … the Government need to be more business friendly. It is only business that creates wealth and jobs and pays tax”.—[Official Report, 11/6/26; col. 1443.]

He is of course right. Employers are key players for NEETs. They provide entry and part-time jobs in retail, hospitality and hairdressing. How many people here started off in that way? I certainly did. They also support apprenticeships. However, those functions, for which we depend on business, have been made well-nigh impossible for many employers by the Government’s imposition on them of higher national insurance costs—which have already been mentioned—increases in the national minimum wage, higher business rates and heavier regulation.

In the past, local government also was a key partner in helping to equip school leavers for the world of work. But, sadly, the Government are creating yet another barrier to the improvement of NEETs’ prospects by the chaos they are currently imposing on that sector, with uncertainty, delay and confusion surrounding its structure and its functions. Nor can there now be any sensible planning because we are told that the new Prime Minister is intent on creating a new regionalised structure on top of, or maybe instead of—we are currently not to know—the structures that we have, which means that any kind of sensible planning that is taking place will be ended by the uncertainty that the Government are imposing on the entire thing. However, of course time does not stop for the NEETs. They need urgent help to get on with their lives.

The Minister in the last debate on 11 June outlined a number of measures to be useful, and indeed many of them were. But, actually, the Government need not to introduce limited measures but to tackle the fundamental issues I have described. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response at the end of the debate.

12:19

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, the level of youth unemployment in England today is 16.2%. So many youngsters are leaving school at 18 without any employability skills, and that is a disgrace for the fifth-richest country in the world. It is also an indictment of the failure of the education policy of Conservative and Labour Governments since the year 2000, because they have created 1 million people now between 16 and 24 who are unemployed, which is an absolutely shaming figure.

The colleges that I have been trying to stimulate over the last 15 years, university technical colleges, have an unemployment rate of lower than 3%: 20% of our students become apprentices, 50% go to universities to study STEM subjects, and the rest get jobs locally because they have worked with local employers for four years. That is what is needed.

We need a revolution in education. I think that it will be introduced by our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, when he is appointed on Monday. He has made many speeches on the importance of technical, practical and vocational education. No Prime Minister since Thatcher, from John Major to Keir Starmer, has made any speech on technical and practical education and learning by hand. No Prime Minister has done it. Search as you will, you will not find them. I think that Andy Burnham will introduce significant changes. About two years ago, he made a statement in Manchester that he wanted to scrap the EBacc, which has an academic curriculum, and replace it with the MBacc. Since then, my charity and organisation of UTCs have been working with him to find a way through.

We have found one. The answer is to look at the curriculum of all secondary schools, particularly Church schools and bog-standard comprehensives, and make sure that you can insert into them good technical education. You can do so only by inserting a sleeve of education from 14 to 18. That is what Andy Burnham asked us to provide him with over the last two years. A school in Manchester will open next September with a sleeve and one will open this September in Barrow-in-Furness. That is the headquarters of BAE Systems, which cannot recruit students who are talented and committed from the schools in Cumbria. Some 120 students will join that school in September. Of those, 90 have already selected the technical sleeve and 30 have selected the academic sleeve. I think the Prime Minister will try to repeat that pattern substantially over the country. We should welcome this. That is the only way that we will get economic growth. It is the only way that we will be able to reduce youth unemployment significantly. We are going to face a revolution, which I very much welcome.

At times in our country, you need to make great changes. I was lucky in the 1980s, when great changes were necessary. I think Andy Burnham will be lucky, because there are now great changes that have to be made. I am not just talking about young men; in our colleges, we have many young women, particularly from ethnic minorities, who desperately want to study and master engineering and computing. I am very optimistic.

I add one warming word for the Minister. She is the only Minister in the Government, including the Commons, who understands education deeply. She is deep into it. If there is any justice, she should be the new Secretary of State. I do not think that the new Prime Minister will appoint a Secretary of State from this House, but I hope that we do not lose her. She likes UTCs. She went to one only last week—one of the most difficult ones to reach, up in the north-west of England next to Sellafield. I hope very much that she keeps her job, because she does like UTCs.

12:24

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

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for introducing this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who always has important and interesting things to say about vocational training—and, it seems, about ministerial appointments.

I am very proud that this Government’s mission is to reindustrialise Britain, make work pay and lift living standards. There has been real progress. The UK is now the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Better job security and higher wages through stronger employment rights incentivise workers and reduce turnover costs for business. NHS waiting lists are falling, delivering a healthier workforce. That benefits business too. The Resolution Foundation reports that this year the lowest-income half of families in Britain will see a significant improvement in their standard of living. Let us remember that the single greatest contribution to social mobility in this country has been this Government scrapping the two-child benefit limit, lifting half a million children out of poverty. That is the kind of schooling that I am interested in, because it will transform not only their lives but the lives of their families and communities.

To generate fair growth, we must tackle Britain’s record of low investment and poor productivity. Government action to accelerate clean energy production shows what can be achieved. The CBI reports that the net-zero sector now supports over 1 million jobs and over 23,000 firms whose productivity is 48% above the national average. We need to see that success across sectors, to fund decent welfare and education and to deliver the good, skilled jobs that the British people demand.

That brings me to a new report by University College London for the ETUC which was published last month. For two decades, the debate about economic competitiveness has been framed around the diagnosis that labour costs are too high, which in turn requires pay restraint and deregulation. This new report draws on a 25-year firm-level analysis of Europe’s 300 largest publicly listed corporations and provides evidence that that diagnosis is wrong. What is holding back growth is not the cost of labour but the misdirection of capital. Profits have been increasingly diverted away from productive investment into shareholder payouts, debt-funded distributions and financial reserves.

The report recommends making government business support conditional not only on decent labour standards but on meeting reinvestment requirements. It also highlights the importance of corporate governance reform. This is vital to address the British sickness of short-termism, which puts shareholder returns above the long-term interests of the company. Does my noble friend the Minister agree with the diagnosis that Britain needs more value creation and more productive investment? Does she agree that we need more government action, including on procurement power and corporate governance rules, to drive it?

12:28

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I also most warmly congratulate my noble friend on a brilliant speech in which she said all that needed to be said. Many of us will repeat the same message, but that is what you do in church—as the right reverend Prelate will understand—and you learn the message in the end, so I hope that I will be forgiven for doing so.

Education, employment and welfare cannot be judged in isolation. Together they determine whether people can build secure and independent lives. Much of what the Government want to happen is commendable, but too much of what has actually happened is deplorable. Mission is not the point. I have always had a great regard for the noble Baroness who just spoke, but lifting the two-child limit is not the point. This Government are so good at doing easy things. They do not seem to have any stomach or courage to introduce unpopular measures, yet most of us know that to achieve success you have to do difficult things. I had to shut hospitals. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, had to shut mines. If you want progress, you have to do extremely tough things. This Government too often play to the gallery and are not prepared or do not have the courage to tackle what must happen.

I will say a bit about teachers and lecturers, who provide such a vital service. It again shows commitment that 4,000 of the promised 6,500 additional teachers have been delivered, but the real problem is retention. How can we make teaching a more worthwhile activity? I have just returned from the University of Hull, where I received an honorary degree, I am delighted to say. Mine was a long service award for 17 years as chancellor, and I was being given it alongside the most distinguished noble Lord, Lord Norton, who has done decades of proper service at the university. But the ceremony was a teacher graduation, and I was so impressed by the dedication, professionalism, commitment and, above all, the support the university can offer teachers in the region the moment they get burnout. When they get depressed, demoralised and have compassion fatigue, they can provide mentors, networks and further training. I commend that example.

Much has been made of this appalling figure of 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. Those who do not study history are destined to repeat it. Many of us came into public life at the time of the race riots and terrible unrest, when young people, then Black people, had no work, no self-esteem, no recognition and no respect. That leads to crime, lawlessness and despair. The urgency of the practical steps needed to lift this generation forward cannot be exaggerated.

I commend my noble friend Lord Baker. I visited his UTC in Hull, the Baker Dearing UTC, and it is extraordinary to see the way it works with employers and the university to deliver results. At a time when there is disenchantment with university—my noble friend Lord Willetts will no doubt address this problem—more and more young people want skills, a vocation and a job. It is extraordinary how many have said, “I don’t think university is for me”. So we have to look even more urgently at technical and other education.

I support those who argue for greater regionalism. I have long been a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Gatley, whom I very much hope will be a leading light in the new Burnham Government. He argues that skills should be completely devolved, because Whitehall cannot know what each labour market needs. He makes a powerful case for joining health, welfare and employment. I very much hope that, in the same way as Andy Street did in Birmingham and as happened in Manchester, we have a better result with more regionalism, innovation and opportunity. The critical test is in delivering a complex achievable plan. Let us bring an end to government by press notices.

12:33

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for introducing this debate at a time when over 1 million young people are NEET.

In 2009, I was appointed Employment Minister in the teeth of the global financial crisis. The Prime Minister was clear: my job was to prevent the scarring effect of long-term youth unemployment and to get the headline rate to fall in time for the 2010 general election. When I told the then Permanent Secretary at the DWP that this was my task, he told me that to do so would defy history and was impossible. He was wrong. We rapidly rolled out the future jobs fund to give young people who had been on benefits for more than six months real paid work, rather than a life on benefits. It created some 150,000 jobs, and the department’s later evaluation found participants far more likely to be in unsubsidised employment two years on, and a net benefit to society of around £7,750 for every young person who took part. With determined focus, we can tackle impossible problems.

The future jobs fund was, of course, scrapped by the incoming Government in 2010 before they published the evidence that it had succeeded. This Government inherited 872,000 young people—more than one in eight—who are NEET. The number is rising much faster today. The Milburn review tells us that the cost of NEETs is £125 billion a year, which is more than our entire schools budget.

The attainment gap between poorer children and their peers stood as wide as it did three decades ago, and a generation’s mental health was left to fray: close to 1 million children were referred to mental health services in a single year, yet fewer than a third were seen. Tens of thousands were waiting over two years, many reaching crisis before anyone had reached them. Apprenticeship starts for young people fell by more than 40%. The entry-level rungs of the ladder were pulled away for over a decade, and artificial intelligence is now removing the very junior roles that are a way in. This is not a blip. It is not about NI and the minimum wage; it is structural and it was many years in the making. We should all hold our hands up.

This crisis begins in our schools. We need a curriculum that develops and challenges all young people. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Baker: I would love us to end the national curriculum at 14 and build a single 14-19 phase with genuine academic, technical and applied routes; and a space for local content, designed with employers, that fits with local industrial strategies. What the Minister is achieving post 16 is important, but it needs a better experience in key stage 4.

We must also change school behaviour by introducing accountability measures built on destinations—on whether a school actually lowers a child’s risk of becoming NEET, as suggested in the Milburn report. When we reward only exam results, we should not be surprised when the system loses sight of the child.

Behind the headline figure of 1 million are 1 million lives. These young people have not given up on work or on learning. They have not given up on the hope of a better life. The only question that should trouble this House is whether we have given up on them. In 2009, we did not. Let us resolve that we will not now—that we will stop building exam factories and start, once more, to build hope.

12:37

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, on calling this debate. One can sense in the interventions from all sides of the House the deep disappointment and frustration that we now—once again, shockingly—have 1 million young people who are NEET. It is particularly frustrating, as tackling the problem is not a deeply mysterious intractable issue that cannot possibly be addressed; it is absolutely solvable. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, set out in her excellent speech the wider policies that are necessary to bring down the number of NEETs. I will focus on specific policies aimed at those young people who, tragically, are already NEET or may be about to become so.

The evidence from a range of initiatives under successive Governments, including those going back to the 1980s and 1990s, is that some combination of the following is needed: direct support for building up employability skills, so that employers do not think that it is high risk to take on someone who is NEET or about to be NEET; plus some lowering of the costs to employers of taking them on, either through a general reduction or specific incentives and rewards. There have been lots of initiatives over the decades. They work, but the trouble is they cost money, partly because there is a dead-weight cost. Some young people get off benefits and into work anyway and the Treasury does not like expensive schemes, so to win the argument for more of these programmes they have to be as well targeted as possible.

There is an increasing amount of data across Whitehall now—from the NHS about family circumstances, from the Department for Education itself and from other government bodies—that would enable us to identify young people who are at greatest risk of being NEET for whom interventions would be most effective. However, across Whitehall you hear, “GDPR stops us sharing the data”. The data is not brought together and those 16 and 17 year-olds are tragically lost to the system.

There is an initiative, Kickstarter, that tries to break down data barriers to pooling information across Whitehall. The Department for Education participates in this initiative and its programme typically, and admirably, is about early years. It identifies children at the age of two and a half who are at risk of turning up at school, at five, underprepared. Why does the Department for Education not also run a Kickstarter initiative to identify NEETs by pooling data from across Whitehall, so that policies and programmes to help young people into work are effectively targeted and more affordable?

It is just possible that these programmes will still have a cost, so we need to find a means of financing them. It is striking that the triple lock on pensions is now costing £12.6 billion a year extra in benefit expenditure than if the pension had simply been linked to earnings since 2012 when the triple lock was introduced. So, if, as well as effective use of public spending through linking data, further resource is needed, I suggest that pension expenditure, which is the most rapidly rising and most expensive part of the total welfare budget, should be where savings are found to tackle the problem to which all sides of the House are clearly committed.

12:41

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this debate so well. I am conscious that a lot of statistics have been thrown around. I was genuinely surprised to hear the figures given by the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Knight, and I am curious as to where they got them from, because they are not what the ONS says. The ONS says that in 2001, seasonally adjusted, which is the preferred figure being used, there were 833,000 NEETs. By March 2010, that figure was 1.128 million. In June, it was 1.074 million. When the Conservatives left office in May 2024, it was 935,000, and by that June it was 921,000. We have seen a disaster in what is going on, a lot of which is due to the policy, sadly, put in place by this Government, thinking that it would do more to help jobs, which has in fact killed off growth and jobs.

Let us give them some credit: there are more people working now than before. That is true, and I am not surprised, given the rise in population. I support most of the changes that have been made to the apprenticeship schemes and the apprenticeship levy. I welcome the fact that a lot has been moved out of education, which showed no interest in young people and what they would do in the future once they had left school, and is now with the DWP. That has been a good move. But let us not shy away from this: unemployment is up and NEETs are up.

We need drive. I was very proud of my record at the DWP during Covid. Working with my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, we got the unemployment rate down to a record low since 1974. We had the lowest figures on NEETs and youth unemployment. That was not done by accident; it was done by drive and making sure that different parts of government worked together and were working in the areas. That is why we tried to enhance our working with not only mayors but also councils through our Jobcentre Plus network.

Universal credit was designed to make it so that you would be better off in work than not working. It was always estimated by Sir Iain Duncan Smith that it would cost taxpayers more, because it wrapped six benefits into one. But the underlying principle was that you are better off working than not, and that was still true until recently. What has happened recently is that, thankfully, we got rid of tax credits. I understand the incentive there. The thinking was that we would subsidise low pay through tax credits. I do not think that was the right approach, but I understand why it happened. But the way that was designed meant that, if you worked a minute over 16 hours, you would be worse off. So, big employers redesigned their work systems so that people basically had 16-hour contracts, and it has been difficult to shift that.

UC allowed the opportunity to do so, but the reason why it is now more of a challenge is that we have a quarter of a million families with a household income of over £40,000 who will now get free school meals. There are a number of incentives not to come off benefits and a huge number of incentives not to go full-time. There are definitely still challenges, which I appreciate the Government will continue to try to tackle, in the availability of childcare all year round, not just when schools are sitting.

We will debate PIP next week, so I will not devote much time to that. All I will say is that, with the cost of living challenges, a lot more people started applying for benefits who did not do so before.

To go back to the beginning and education, we can see the difference that happened in the United Kingdom. When the Conservatives came in, working in partnership in the coalition, there was a big drive by my noble friend Lord Gove and Nick Gibb on phonics—getting into the foundations and the basics. When I first visited schools, I was astonished to find that the poorest-performing school in my constituency offered 50 GCSEs, and it wondered why it was struggling. Let us get back to the core of what will give a young person the opportunity to grow and contribute to our great country.

12:45

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for securing this debate and for her excellent opening speech. Britain’s economic problems did not begin with this Government. That would be an unjust accusation. I am afraid Governments of all parties have laboured diligently over many years to produce today’s situation.

The fundamentals can be summarised in one simple set of figures. Since 2008, productivity growth has consistently fallen back. The ONS tells us that, before the financial crisis, multi-factor productivity grew at nearly 2% annually. It is now growing at about 0.5% or less and has recently stagnated. In 2025, per capita GDP was lower than in 2022.

No party in government over this period can regard this record with satisfaction. All three—that includes the Liberal Democrats, of course—to varying degrees regulated, taxed, subsidised and drove energy costs up and industry out. Then came Covid, Ukraine and inflation; each inflicted genuine damage but also provided Whitehall with that most renewable of resources: a convenient explanation to hide bad policy.

Now, there is perhaps a glimmer of something better. Maybe artificial intelligence will finally raise output per worker. Indeed, the ONS’s experimental measure on productivity suggests that it has risen by 4.2% since 2019, rather than 2.3% under the old measure. So, perhaps something is going on.

But at precisely this delicate moment, the Government have chosen to test whether a green shoot can survive being repeatedly struck with a Treasury shovel. The tax burden is forecast to rise to 38.5% by the end of this decade—the highest since records began. The Government are planning to spend nearly half of all the money in the country. The reforms to education brought in by the noble Lord, Lord Gove, have been reversed, and we know from Wales and Scotland what the result of that is likely to be. As we have heard, the Employment Rights Act has undone one of this country’s few remaining strengths—our flexible labour market. Unemployment is at its highest level for a decade. Youth unemployment is even worse.

Net zero is compounding the problem, zeroing one industry after another. Denby Pottery, in my own home region of Derbyshire, survived the Napoleonic Wars, two World Wars, the early 1980s recession and the pandemic but could not survive Ed Miliband.

Of the terrors yet in prospect under Andy Burnham, we are currently left to guess, since he refuses to face any parliamentary scrutiny until September. We know, though, because he told that pillar of our constitution, Gary Lineker, a day or two ago, that he is going to

“ask for a little more”.

It may be a wealth tax or maybe a land value tax. Certainly, we will get municipal corporatism on a grand scale.

I am at a loss to know what question to ask the Minister today. After all, she comes to your Lordships’ Chamber without, I suspect, knowing what is going to come next, so that she can tell us anything about it. Yet she has to defend, as a programme for growth, an economic record of higher taxes, higher spending, riskier and more expensive jobs, a return to union-dominated schools and among the most expensive energy in the OECD.

We know that Ministers want prosperity—of course they do—but the problem is they do not know how to get it. Maybe they have got lucky. After nearly 20 years of stagnation, maybe they just might have been handed the first genuine prospect of a positive productivity shock in a generation. But the problem is that their instinct, faced with something that might at last grow of its own accord, is to reach for weedkiller and try to convince us that it is really fertiliser—a persuasive effort that I suggest is most accurately described as a different kind of fertiliser altogether.

12:49

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Frost. The Government’s stewardship of the economy over the past two years has been little short of catastrophic for our labour market. When the Government took office two years ago, they inherited a labour market that had recovered from the pandemic, although it still bore some of its scars, and what did they do? As my noble friend Lady Evans so powerfully explained, they immediately taxed employers for the act of hiring. Unsurprisingly, as we have heard, unemployment has risen rapidly ever since and now stands at just under 2 million, with over 1 million young people unemployed.

If business had not had enough already, the Government then introduced their business-busting Employment Rights Act, which their own impact assessment forecasts will cost employers at least £5 billion a year, with smaller businesses bearing much of the burden of course, further harming the prospects of the very people the Government claim to champion. Noble Lords opposite usually mischaracterise our arguments against the most damaging aspects of this Act as that we are somehow against workers’ rights. This is absolutely not the case. The simple fact is that the most fundamental right is to have access to a job in the first place. The argument we advance is that extending rights to the moment a worker enters the building for the first time, removing the flexibility that suited both employer and worker, and making employment unaffordable leads inexorably to the fact that too many aspirant workers do not even get a day one, never mind the rights that attach.

What has been the Government’s response to the unemployment that they have created? It is a youth jobs guarantee, under which they now propose to pay employers to hire the young people those employers can no longer afford to take on because the Government put up employers’ national insurance in the first place. You genuinely could not make it up. My noble friend Lady Evans rightly called it surreal; I think she was too polite.

Throughout this period, we have had nothing but confirmation of what Pat McFadden admitted in private: that in the Labour Party, every conversation is about who we can tax in order to pay benefits to others. That is precisely what has happened, with the benefits bill rising and rising, and disincentives to work multiplying with it. It became so serious that the Chancellor was forced to concede before the Treasury Committee in March that her jobs tax is responsible for the rise in youth unemployment—perhaps timed with an eye to saving her own job, which looks like another fail.

There was a rare moment of humility last week. The other place passed a Motion regretting the combination of the rise in employers’ national insurance, the impact of the Employment Rights Act 2025 and the regulations that make it harder for young people to get their first job. We now look to Mr Burnham to reverse the failed policies of the past two years, although nothing in his conduct so far gives us confidence that he will. Perhaps the Minister can tell us exactly what Mr Burnham thinks of the Government’s employment-related policies so far.

In the previous century, not a single Labour Government left office with unemployment lower than when they arrived. Every other Labour Government since, including the last two, have left with it higher. Unless the Government radically change course under their new Prime Minister, that unbroken and unenviable record looks set to continue.

12:53

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I have been reflecting on why the lifelong learning commitment matters: the world of work has changed and continues to do so. People will need new skills throughout their working lives. We need to help people get into and, just as importantly, stay in work as jobs and industries evolve. So I share the Minister’s ambition, but there is a simple question we have to ask, and forgive me for putting it plainly: what is the point of helping people gain new skills if there are no jobs for them to move into?

If 32 years of helping people get and keep a job has taught me anything, it is this: opportunity depends on business being willing to hire. What do we see? Unemployment rising, vacancies falling and a diagnosis that the labour market is not at all well. A job needs two things: someone who is ready and willing to work, and an employer who is ready and willing to hire them. Too often, the Government talk about the first and forget the second. For a business employing somebody full-time on the national living wage, employer national insurance costs have risen by around 68% over the past two years. At the same time, the cost of employing a full-time 20 year-old has risen by around 26% since 2024. When it becomes more expensive to employ people, businesses hire less, opportunities become scarcer and more people end up relying on welfare instead of wages. My noble friend Lady Coffey put it very well: there are too many incentives to stay on benefits rather than get off them.

We have all had a briefing from UKHospitality. It says that UK hospitality is a barometer for the health of the UK economy. When the sector suffers, high streets, businesses and, most importantly, people suffer. As already referenced by my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park, £3.4 billion of tax increases were put on business in 2024 and as a result 100,000 jobs were lost. Some 38.7% of the workforce in the hospitality sector aged between 16 to 24 has been lost—their first job denied to them. The hospitality sector represents 10% of jobs in coastal communities, 50% of local employment comes from it and there has been a 25% drop in summer jobs.

I found it extraordinary that Stephen Timms recently said that the current size of the welfare bill is not a matter of great concern. Can you believe it? Does the Minister agree with that statement? I believe that a growing welfare bill should concern every one of us and so should rising unemployment. I urge the Minister to speak to her colleagues in the DWP about what can be done to make it easier and more cost effective to hire the people who we are in business to serve. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on getting this debate. I commend the contribution by my noble friend Lord Sharpe and will just say in all honesty and with genuine commitment that we have a few ideas for how that position could be improved.

12:57

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to take stock of what I am sure the Minister will demonstrate is a pretty positive record. I will focus on social security—called “welfare” in the Motion—but first I shall mention the education reforms that have contributed to the child poverty strategy by reducing the costs of education: action on school uniforms, free breakfasts and free school meals. On the last, I will quote Davina, a member of the Child Poverty Action Group’s youth panel, on why they matter so much:

“It’s not just about food, it’s about dignity, equality and belonging. Hunger makes you tired, embarrassed and left out. A hot meal gives you the energy to focus and the confidence to feel like you belong in the room”.


The Government can take pride in a number of measures on social security, including the modest real increase in the real value of universal credit, the fair repayment rate that reduces the overall level of UC deductions and, most significantly, the abolition of what the noble Lord, Lord Freud, described as the “vicious” two-child limit. A self-described mother in a hard-working family of five writes that,

“it feels like a heavy weight has been lifted off our shoulders; we can finally breathe”,

after the “devastating financial impact” of the limit.

Of course I was not happy about the cuts, but at least the worst of them was averted by the establishment of the Timms PIP review, which was co-produced with disabled people. This is such a positive initiative, as has been the ongoing engagement of the child poverty strategy with parents and children experiencing poverty. I very much hope the Government will build on such initiatives in their policy-making.

The Timms review’s excellent interim report pulls no punches in its critique, including of the dehumanising treatment of those claiming PIP, which raises wider questions about the need for a culture of dignity and respect in the social security system. The report also questions the false narrative of a ballooning overall working-age benefits budget. One consequence of cuts by the Conservative-led Governments has been a significant reduction in the real value of benefits, according to the child poverty strategy documents.

The strategy makes it clear that social security plays a vital role in reducing child poverty, critical to the goals both of security and opportunity, a point also emphasised by charities in the field and by academic and think-tank analysis. Far from restricting opportunity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said, the child poverty strategy is increasing opportunity for children with experience of poverty. So, wearing my Olivia Twist hat, I hope that serious thought will be given to further action, in particular on the benefit cap, the frozen local housing allowance and the adequacy of UC in meeting need.

The End Child Poverty coalition speaks for many charities when it says that we

“must shift from viewing social security as a sign of failure towards viewing it as an essential investment in children and families”.

According to research by Turn2us, a more positive political narrative could increase public trust in the social security system. I urge the Government not to listen to the siren voices of those baying for cuts but instead to defend social security robustly as, to quote Minister Johnson,

“the bedrock of our welfare state”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/6/26; col. 875.]

13:01

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on securing this debate and on her excellent opener. We are at an end-of-term moment, not least because the PM who promised us economic growth in his manifesto has clearly failed and, somewhat extraordinarily, the Labour Party has not found one MP in its ranks who put himself or herself up for the job. The mess we find ourselves in as a nation is due largely to actions and words from the current Government.

The Minister should not underestimate the huge damage done in the early days of this Government, when we were misled about a £22 billion black hole—yes, misled. Not one credible economist supported that contention—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I would welcome an intervention from anyone who can claim that there was such an economist who did support the contention. There is none.

The negativity that ensued was disastrous. I understand the tactics, perhaps emulating George Osborne, but the response was to break a manifesto commitment and increase taxes, which killed any chance of economic recovery and, of course, jobs growth. It was not just the retrospective taxation, such as the IHT on pensions, but the NI increases which sent the economy and youth unemployment into a tailspin. I put down amendments to exempt charities, care homes or even hospices. The CEO of a hospice, no Tory supporter, told me that she would have to cut jobs as a direct result, and consequently people would die in greater pain and agony than need be the case. I am not sure that Labour were proud of that, because it was unnecessary.

Even worse, the increase in NI has failed. We were told that it was going to raise £25 billion a year, but the OBR figures reveal that it will be nearer £16.6 billion. I am happy to be accused of being a siren voice, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to, but all the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had to do was to stand up to their own colleagues and bring welfare back to a reasonable level, and that would have been avoided. They will now pay the price.

Unfortunately, as a result, the cost of employing an 18 to 20 year-old rose by £4,095 between 2024 and 2026. As the former Labour Education Secretary Ruth Kelly put it:

“You cannot put up the cost of hiring young people and then wonder why fewer of them are being hired”.


Then the Employment Rights Act, mentioned earlier and dubbed the unemployment rights Act by many, has not just forced employers to reconsider hiring new staff; it is forcing businesses to find ways to lay off staff and automate much faster than they had planned. I have spoken to manufacturers, whose names I can reveal, that have done that. That cannot be what HM Government expected to see.

Unemployment for over-16s is now at 4.9%. Inactivity rates are at 21%, according to the excellent Jobs Foundation’s recent report. This week alone, the Entrepreneurs Network, which runs the APPG for Entrepreneurship, of which I am an officer, published its fourth survey: 79% of founders of businesses feel that the Government do not understand their needs. Only 18% are optimistic about the year ahead for the economy as a whole and, most interestingly, 82% have a negative view of the level of taxation in the UK. That is the point.

It is not surprising when one reads the Policy Exchange study published this month, which points out that the tax burden is at a 70-year high and that the UK’s tax take of 34.4% of GDP in 2024 has risen to 36% this year. That is way higher than for any other successful members of the G7. This situation will not be improved by the incoming PM, a man with very little economic experience, talking about land taxes and wealth taxes increasing. The question I have for the Minister is: does she understand the connection between increasing the tax take, specifically on businesses, and the consequential, inevitable rise in unemployment?

13:05

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on this timely debate and on her excellent remarks. It is always a pleasure, too, to follow my noble friend Lord Leigh.

The first duty of government is the national security, including economic security, of our country. By that, I mean delivering a functioning economy which creates jobs, underpins our national services and provides a safety net of welfare. It also means living within our means and protecting the right for future generations to do so. Education, employment and welfare are the topics of this timely and well-chosen debate, and key to all of this is growth. Today, I will focus my short remarks on employment and welfare.

The legacy of the last two years of the Labour Government has seen unemployment up, hirings down, a welfare bill through the roof and growth flatlining. The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report made for sombre reading by pointing out: first, that the fiscal problem is mainly spending-led and will likely worsen with the pressures of an ageing population; and, secondly, that debt is rising to unsustainable levels and the tax burden is already close to historic highs. On the eve of a new Prime Minister, I have a plea for Mr Burnham: we simply cannot afford more poor policy which will only make our country worse off and less able to deliver good schools and good jobs and support those who cannot support themselves.

What is Mr Burnham’s plan for growth? We hear that he wants to put taxes up, has ruled out so-called crude cuts to welfare and is sceptical about what he calls “tech boosterism”. His growth plan is devolution, which may or may not boost growth, and I hope that it does, but it is for the longer term and is not an immediate growth plan. Yet this is just the moment to be getting behind tech. We have the potential to play a leading role in AI to reinforce our competitive advantage for innovation in start-ups, quantum and cyber, and to boost the productively we desperately need in the NHS.

Let us look at tax policy. Mr Burnham is considering bringing capital gains tax in line with income tax, which would give us the highest rate in Europe, with less money to invest in new businesses, businesses which create jobs. As the Tony Blair Institute warned just this week:

“Taxing our way to prosperity is both bad policy and bad politics”.


By hiking national insurance and the minimum wage for the youngest, and adding regulation to working rights, Labour have hammered businesses, not helped them: worsening job prospects, especially for the young, as many noble Lords have mentioned, and adding to their job struggles, as even the Resolution Foundation warned. We now have over 1 million NEETS, as many have said, with one in five working-age adults on benefits and that number is growing. Where is the balance here? This is a tragedy that our society can ill afford.

Let us remember what our commitment is: to help people who cannot and support those who can back to work. If the Government do not want to listen to me, they should listen to their own advisers: Alan Milburn, who speaks devastatingly of the silence of the unheard voice of young people applying for jobs; Stephen Timms, who warns that PIPs are due to double by 2030 and must be addressed, or even Charlie Mayhew, who tries to tackle sickness at work. We need urgently to reassess and rebalance. I urge the new Prime Minister to have a strategy for growth and the bravery to address some of these very difficult issues in our country by getting behind businesses and entrepreneurs, incentivising work, getting young people a footing in life and tackling the tragic and increasingly unaffordable welfare bill.

13:09

[Baroness Gill (Lab)]

My Lords, parliamentary tradition prevents me using the precise words required to describe the inheritance that the previous Government left behind on the topics of this Motion. Allow me to remind the House of that baseline: a classroom workforce in freefall, an economy addicted to insecure labour and a welfare state that ran up a staggering £2.8 billion bill. Nevertheless, I welcome and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for the opportunity to set up this Government’s record of achievement. We have had to step in to make good the severe macroeconomic impacts of a botched Brexit deal, the real impact of which has been felt up and down the country, permanently fracturing our supply chains, driving up core costs, squeezing our public finances and giving us the cost of living crisis. They built the crisis on their watch, yet in just two years this Government have systematically reversed their negative trends and delivered measurable progress.

Let us look at the hard numbers in education. The noble Baroness’s party oversaw a catastrophic depletion of our classrooms, leaving just under half a million full-time equivalent teachers with real-terms wages slashed by 9%. This Government have not just lamented the crisis: they have fixed the system. They have set an ambitious target to recruit 6,500 new, expert teachers in critical shortage subjects such as maths and physics. In just two years, the data shows that we have already successfully delivered over 70% of that workforce. Furthermore, this Government have funded the national rollout of free breakfast clubs in primary schools—although I will not go into that: my noble friend Lady Lister has spoken amply on that topic—proving that opportunity in Britain is once again a basic right and not an afterthought.

In employment, the previous Government built an entire economic model on low-wage, insecure, low-productivity labour. That allowed exploitative zero-hours contracts to explode. I spoke to countless people in my old West Midlands constituency who shared the reality of zero-hours contracts with me. They did not know whether they were going to work that day, they did not know how long they would be working and they did not know how much they would be paid. Try to sort out your childcare, or manage your weekly shop, with that reality. That is why this Government brought in the Employment Rights Act. In under 24 months, we have legally banned exploitative zero-hours contracts, instantly granting a statutory right to guaranteed hours to over 2 million workers.

My final couple of points are on welfare. The previous Government used the DWP to penalise vulnerability, pushing people into destitution. In two years, we have transformed the DWP into a genuine Department for Work, launched a £240 million Connect to Work scheme to move 100,000 people safely back into careers, and introduced a Right to Try guarantee. This Government did not create the post-Brexit fiscal headwinds, nor did we cause the decay of our public services, but we are fixing them. In two years, we have done more to restore education, worker security and basic human dignity than the previous Administration managed in over a decade. The data is quite clear. The reversal is under way and Britain is finally moving forward.

13:13

[Lord Evans of Guisborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I express my gratitude to my noble friend Lady Evans for presenting the case against the Government so eloquently at the start of the debate. It has been very interesting to follow a number of distinguished speakers. It is a particular privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, who made a stirring attempt to defend the Government’s record. I hope that Mr Burnham is watching this somewhere, and that he will be able to provide the rewards which are so clearly deserved for that effort. I merely point out that, sooner or later, it will be impossible to blame the previous Government for the current Government’s failings and, of course, much sooner it will be impossible to blame the previous Prime Minister for the current Government’s failings. We will see how things develop.

My own experience in this area comes from having been the Deputy Mayor of London, where I dealt with schools, businesses, employment and skills. It is perhaps a slightly unusual spread of experience in the House today: we have heard from a lot of former Ministers. However, as the new Prime Minister takes over, perhaps this will become a more relevant piece of experience, because he has talked a lot about learning things from the regions and applying them to national government. I will be interested to see what he does, and to see whether the Minister can raise the curtain on some of the things that we can expect from the new Prime Minister. There are good things to be learned and not just, of course, from Manchester, although I am sure that there are other things we can pick up from there as well.

My noble friend Lady Coffey talked a lot about incentives, and I will just touch on the way that regulation—in particular, taxation around national insurance—has disincentivised business from employing people. We hear a lot about how having a low-paid job is a bad thing, but I would suggest that having no job at all is an even worse thing. That is where a lot of people are heading, given the current policies that are being pursued.

I have not had the benefit of a briefing from UKHospitality but I know, because I go out in my own high street in Romford probably a bit too often, and meet people running restaurants and bars there, how challenging it is for them to employ people now under the new national insurance rules. It is a very employee-intense industry. You need to employ a lot of people and everyone you employ is an additional cost, so national insurance has hit them particularly hard. They were doing well last night—the high street was absolutely full of people—but usually they do not do so well. The Government need to start thinking about how they are going to help the hospitality industry to provide those entry-level jobs that so many people take on when they first leave education.

My noble friend Lord Leigh talked about the impact on the care sector. We have hospices in Essex which have struggled to deal with the national insurance impact. I know the Government provided some extra money for hospices as a result, and that is very welcome; we should be grateful for funding from government. But we should also be aware that that funding was intended for capital projects. It will make no difference to the extra costs imposed on the hospice sector by the national insurance problem that it is trying to deal with.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate. She and I spent some months working together in the Middle East in the past, so I know how indefatigable and tough she can be. Resolving this problem will require every bit of her strength, so, rather like my noble friend Lord Baker, I hope that she retains her role in the next Government.

13:18

[Baroness Nargund (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for securing this debate. I declare my interest as pro-chancellor of the University of Portsmouth and honorary professor of women’s health at City St George’s University of London.

Education, employment and welfare are interconnected. When education fails, employment suffers. When secure work is out of reach, welfare dependency rises. If we are serious about breaking that cycle, the ambition must be a country where opportunity is decided not by your social status but on your potential. This is exactly the future that this Government are working towards.

I will focus on the education aspect of this debate. Education is where opportunity begins. Research shows that over a third of children start reception not ready for school, and one in four arrive without basic language skills. I welcome the expansion of Best Start family hubs, free breakfast clubs and 30 hours of childcare for eligible families put in place by this Government. These are investments in our children and our country’s future.

Education must prepare young people not simply for examinations but to live healthy, happy, productive and informed lives. I have long argued that more health modules, such as reproductive health and women’s health modules, should form part of secondary and post-16 education for all pupils. Too many girls grow up believing that pain is normal. Too many women spend years fighting to have their symptoms believed. Knowledge changes attitudes, breaks stigma, helps tackle the gender health gap and prevents medical misogyny.

The need for change must continue in medical education itself. Our healthcare workforce should reflect the communities it serves and understand the inequalities people face, particularly in access, experiences and outcomes. That means embedding cultural competency throughout healthcare education and ensuring future clinicians understand the wider determinants of health, which account for 80% to 90% of health outcomes. I know that our Government are introducing cultural competency education, and I hope it is there throughout the healthcare profession.

As pro-chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, I have seen how medical education can drive regional renewal. Portsmouth’s new medical school is training future doctors entirely within the local health system, with a grow-your-own approach to reduce inequalities and strengthen local communities over time. The aim is also to encourage students to stay locally rather than moving to bigger cities such as London, demonstrating a novel model to connect higher education with local employment and long-term local economic growth. Will the upcoming workforce plan consider a recruit locally, train locally, retain talent locally approach to create local growth? Will cultural competency be embedded throughout to tackle health inequalities?

Good growth needs good education. Good education needs good health. Together, they build a healthier, happier, fairer and more prosperous Britain.

13:22

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, in her excellent speech, and many others, have made strong points about the previous Government’s achievements in education. I will not repeat them, except to say that we are in the bizarre position of having delegations from overseas visiting our schools to see how we have achieved so much in education—even as the current Government work to dismantle the reforms that enabled this great progress.

I want to speak today about young people and their trajectory from childhood to productive and satisfying adulthood. Our national aim should be to build children and young people’s capacity and resilience on every front, yet the current focus of education and welfare systems is working against that. Government education policies overwhelmingly target disadvantage and low achievement. That sounds lovely, but this policy is built around mechanisms that encourage children and young people to view themselves as damaged or less than capable.

Once a child is defined and sees themselves that way, such as through having a SEND label and then perhaps a child disability allowance claim, it is now all too likely that they will become an early PIP claimant, at which point their chances of ever moving into stable employment are increasingly poor. In fact, a decision to grant PIP to a young person who suffers from, say, anxiety or ADHD, may be the single cruellest thing a Government could ever do to them. All too probably, it consigns them unnecessarily to a lifetime of dependency, yet such claims have rocketed in the past two years.

I am afraid that the Timms review shows, by its weakness and its omissions, that there is no real appetite to address this appalling waste of human life. It does not distinguish between some fundamentally different types of condition. There are some disabilities that are lifelong and preclude work entirely. There are some that are lifelong and that will limit some aspects of capacity permanently, but that do not preclude people’s ability and willingness to work; Down syndrome is a good example. There are other conditions that may be temporary or permanent but, for most, need only be temporarily debilitating. Most people diagnosed with anxiety or ADHD should ultimately be successful and happy at work, so a blanket disability label is failing many of them.

The review also does not recognise that the explosion in numbers may partly reflect a loss of confidence and resilience in our population, rather than any real loss of capacity. It also dismisses the very real loss of public confidence in PIP, despite much evidence for this. DWP’s own figures show that detected fraud has tripled in the past year. The review barely touches on the value of work to individuals, but we know that there is a huge human cost of worklessness. The Minister, Sir Stephen Timms MP, seems entirely unconcerned about the apparently uncontrollable increase in PIP spending, described as “not of great concern”. Yet, as Alan Milburn has pointed out, we are spending a lot on young people, but on the wrong things.

My noble friends Lady Coffey, Lady Stedman-Scott, Lord Willetts, and many others have made constructive suggestions. Recent Budgets and legislation have plainly worsened employer willingness and capacity to hire the young, and youth unemployment is predictably rising. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government will direct the Timms review to addressing the difficult questions that, I am afraid, it has so far ducked? Will the Government bring forward measures to modify the policies they have brought in that, no matter how well-intended, are proving damaging to human lives?

13:26

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, when I saw that the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, had put this subject down for a debate today, for which I thank her, I thought I should take a look at the statistics to examine whether I had missed a particularly bad report on education or employment. I was reassured to learn that GCSE and A-level grades in 2025 were slightly better than in 2024 and that, while our employment rates have fractionally decreased over the past two years, the number of those classed as economically inactive had also fallen by over one percentage point. Looking at welfare, the latest ONS data suggests that the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits is just over 30,000 higher than in July 2024, but sadly, we find that there has been a significant increase in the number of people claiming universal credit. However, that increase also came at the same time that working tax credits came to an end and those claimants were shifted to universal credit.

My view is that we sometimes get the language around welfare wrong. Moving from a system of working tax credits, predicated on support for those in work, to universal credit, which perhaps suggests a life supported by government, was a serious mistake. I ask the Minister to think carefully about how the Government can better use language to make this kind of government financial support once again appear more supportive of the notion of a hand up to those on low pay.

I do not share the nihilistic view of the subject matter of this debate of some noble Lords opposite. Perhaps the most worrying figure today is the number of young people, 16 to 24 year-olds, who are not in education, employment or training. There have always been NEETs; they were not created or invented in July 2024. But it seems to be a post-Covid phenomenon that we have reached 1 million of them at this time.

I am reassured by the preliminary report of Alan Milburn and the response of Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State, who have rightly focused our attention on what we need to do. It is ludicrous that we spend only £1 on helping a NEET into work for every £25 we give them in benefits. Sometimes we need to invest to save, and to give hope to those younger people who are entering a very different world of work with the challenges of the gig economy and AI.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, talked about employability schemes. It is important to recognise the work of organisations such as the Old Vic Theatre, of which I am a trustee, which run employability schemes. Take the Lead and Front Line help over 1,000 young people each year with basic employability; that is commendable for a charity, the Old Vic, and others like it.

The final version of the Milburn review is due in September, but the work has already begun to make it a central mission of this Labour Government to reduce the number of NEETs and create a workforce fit for our times. I know that will not change on Monday or Tuesday next week. I suppose the clue is in the name, but I am reassured that this is a Labour Government who care about labour.

13:29

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid I could have predicted some of the lines of this debate. Indeed, in the first speech, we heard the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, saying how dreadful everything is. The response from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded me of a guard dog having its tail stood on. He went back, justifiably, because what have we got here? We have the Government doing what Governments always do: reacting to what has happened before.

Although we can say wonderful things about various bits of the education system, there are things that did not go right. The first report I received was about off-rolling—a wonderful product of the academy system, where everybody goes out and passes more exams but we also have fewer people in education. That was in 2020, before Covid. The report brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, titled Requires Improvement: Urgent Change for 11–16 Education, looks at further education and the fact that, once again, the system is overly academic. There were problems that came with the academisation programme and things that were not embraced. The first one was that not everybody is good at passing exams, yet they were being told, in a very loud voice, “No, that is what matters”.

We need to start to address that in the education programme and in the preparation for what comes next, which for many people is further education. There is an agreement, possibly going back to new Labour, that we put too much emphasis on universities, or that universities stopped doing level 4 and level 5 courses. Let us face it: some of the new universities came from a world where they successfully did this and it was dumped. We all have our history to deal with here. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, has a solution, as he always does. It is one that we have probably not totally mined to get the best out of it, but it is certainly one way forward: making sure that we take on further education and up its status. There is also a degree of agreement that we have not done that properly.

Having said that, my questions to the Government now come thick and fast. Aside from what the Government are doing to recruit 6,500 more teachers, what are they doing about getting all those teachers who have left the industry back into it? What about re-recruitment? People who we invested in and trained have left in their droves; what are the Government doing to bring them back in? Have the Government looked at what would be required to make it more attractive to come back and teach? That is fundamental about this process.

I turn to educational needs—anybody who put money on me raising that have won, but they would not have got very good odds. I will reserve my comments on the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. We know that, for years and years, we have ignored and not recognised people who have special educational needs, and we have not found out who they are, in particular girls, who are very good at surviving in the classroom by masking, disappearing in the middle of it and not commenting. Most of the time, they get through without causing too much trouble. They underachieve dramatically in most cases, and have huge mental health problems and scars because of it, but they get through. On the other hand, boys typically—these are, of course, stereotypes—kick off at the back of the class, get thrown out, and get sent to the pupil referral unit. Not long ago, it was confirmed to me that every child in a pupil referral unit is expected to have at least one special educational need.

We have not dealt with this. It was accepted as part of the previous Government’s and the coalition Government’s reforms. Maybe I should not have acquired so many scars on my tongue and the inside of my mouth from not speaking at the time—although maybe some people think I should have acquired a few more. If we are not going to address this historical lag on this historical pressure that has pushed people outside then we are going to have trouble. We have trouble, but we are going to have more. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me exactly when we are going to get a practical system of support in schools. As I have mentioned on other occasions, we can then take it as read that certain groups will be very difficult to deal with in schools. We will need a mixed economy.

I remind the House that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which works in assistive technology; that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association; and that I am dyslexic myself. What are we going to do to make sure that those people who have traditionally failed are allowed to get through? We had a great emphasis on passing English and maths. Great: we have taken one group, possibly the biggest group, and put an extra load right on the back of their necks. We have said, “You will not go to the next stage because you’ve failed”. There have been exemptions: the children of the middle classes who can get the diagnosis and have the tiger parent to advocate for them get something out of it, but those who do not come from exam-passing backgrounds do not. I hope that the Minister can give us some practical guidance on how the teachers who we are short of, and who we are trying to recruit, will be better capable of spotting and putting in fairly easily administered support structures.

Let us use assistive technology to allow dyslexics to deliver in English in a format that someone can get around. Voice recognition is a standard factor in every computer that has been given to any Member of this House or the other. It is there with the push of a couple of buttons; I can show people how it works. It is also on every mobile phone, hence why I have one or two caveats about the “demon of mobile phones”. What are we doing there?

Then you can go on to other groups, such as those with dyscalculia; with the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, sitting on the Woolsack, I would be a fool not to mention them. We need to think about how we are going to identify, help and support other groups. These people are at their most vulnerable. They will get stopped by an education system that says, “Pass an exam”, and will have to go down a secondary route. People know when they are branded as stupid and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives. I was very lucky; I had that tiger parent. If the Government do not address this properly, they will guarantee the existence of a group of people who will find it increasingly difficult to get employed.

To be perfectly honest, upping any taxation threshold that falls directly on employment is not the best and smartest move in the world to get people out and into the marketplace. That has not helped, but if we are looking for a high-skilled, high-value workforce then we have to start to address those problems and get people ready for that world. Everything is changing. “We do not even know what will be required” is the average recruitment strategy. At the moment, whether it is a bump due to fear or something else, it looks like that the undergraduate route is not going to work any more and it comes with debts. The big question we should all be asking is: what are the Government going to do about accessibility to good further education? Unless we come away with a series of answers and strategies, we will let down that big group who do not find the academic system that easy to access and are not going to succeed at the top end but still have an expectation of being prepared for the field of work. I hope that the Minister starts to answer these questions today. Although these questions were not invented two years ago, the current Government have the responsibility for finding coherent answers.

13:39

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, what an excellent debate—the House at its very best. I have lost count of the number of former Ministers and Cabinet members speaking on their areas of expertise. I thank them all. What is striking is how much we agree on. No one here disagrees with the notion that our children should be lifted out of poverty, that they should realise their potential, that they should have productive and fulfilling lives, and that we want to see our country flourish and thrive. Where we differ is about how we get there.

We will not agree on all that, but there may be some things that we can learn from today. It is the case that the Government inherited record employment, some of the strongest reading and numeracy results in the western world, a narrowing disadvantage gap in our primary schools and an economy back in growth. It would be wrong, however, not to acknowledge the profound and lasting effects of the pandemic on school attendance, mental health and our national working culture and the fact that the Government inherited those challenges also. The question today is whether they have risen to the challenges.

I do not know whether noble Lords are aware of parallel play. It is a phrase used in child psychology to describe how children up to the age of two play next to each other with similar toys but do not actively interact. That is how the Government’s own reviewer, Alan Milburn, has described this Government’s lack of strategy. Perhaps that lack of strategy is itself the consequence of what the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney admitted was a failure to prepare for government. Playing at governing has real-life consequences and it is our young people who pay the highest price.

The problems since July 2024 in the Government’s performance can be traced to the contradictions that lie within so much of what they have done. This could not be more vividly or sadly illustrated than by the way in which they have torn down a cornerstone of their own party’s legacy under Tony Blair. In 2021, England’s 10 year-olds were ranked fourth in the world for reading—the best in the West—and, in mathematics, we had climbed from 27th to 11th. By 2018, the disadvantage gap at the end of primary school was down to 9.2 months, the narrowest ever recorded. That work began under the previous Labour Government, and I pay tribute to the part that the Minister opposite played in that when she was Education Minister in the Blair Government.

When we entered government, we built on those foundations proudly. Policy Exchange research has found that 83% of the highest-performing schools serving disadvantaged children are academies or free schools but, inexplicably, this Government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act will end that success by returning to the old default of central control, without a shred of evidence of how that will affect outcomes. This Government have said that they want to eliminate the advantage gap—we all do—but then inexplicably undid the very reforms begun by their own party that had helped the most disadvantaged.

What about our young adults? We have heard so much about them today. More than 1 million young people are now outside education, employment or training—it is the first time that we have crossed that line since 2013. Alan Milburn is clear that the causes are complex and the Minister has said the same in this House. I agree, but Milburn’s verdict is still damning. He puts the cost at £125 billion a year and describes the young victims of this chaos as a “lost generation”. Eighty-four per cent of them want to work, yet nearly two-thirds have never held a paid job. In his words,

“The aspiration is there. The opportunity is not”.


Why not? We have heard today from the Benches behind me about the economic consequences of the taxation rises. What have the Government done to opportunity? They have raised the cost of taxation on business and hit the cost of employing young people from three different directions. There are some £25 billion of new costs through the national insurance rise; yes, young people are exempted from national insurance, but the burden carried by those businesses has been stated repeatedly by our public bodies as the reason why they are not hiring young people. It is no good to say that young people are exempt when businesses talk about having to cut all their jobs. A record 16% rise in the minimum wage for 18 to 20 year-olds makes them much more expensive to hire, and excessive new employment rights make taking on an untested young worker a bigger risk for many smaller firms, which they simply cannot afford.

The Government were warned so many times. The IFS warned that the combined changes would reduce opportunities for younger workers. The Bank of England’s chief economist told the Treasury Committee that it would hit those aged 16 to 21 hardest. The Low Pay Commission said that employment would fall most among the young. The Government ploughed ahead, and the result has been brutal. Today, two years after this Government were elected, youth unemployment is close to one in six, at 16.2%—according to the Labour Force Survey, that is the highest in over a decade. The number of NEETs is also tracking upwards, according to Alan Milburn. He says it will reach 1.25 million—another quarter of a million—within five years. The ONS has confirmed that firms are not hiring because of the cost of employment.

Again, we see contradictions at the heart of government, with one department spending public money on the youth scheme that we have heard about today to coax young people into work while others have taken the jobs away. As one of the great heroes of the left, Aneurin Bevan, said, we know what happens to people when they are unemployed. Their skill goes, their hope goes and their self-respect goes. They are an army of the defeated. That army is now 4 million people of working age. One in 10 is on health-related benefits, and more than half of the rise since the pandemic relates to mental health.

Here, again, the Government’s left and right hands do not meet. Their Health Secretary says this country overdiagnoses mental health and writes too many people off—so much so that he commissioned Professor Fonagy to examine the striking rise of diagnosis of anxiety, depression, ADHD and autism. But the welfare system continues to pay out in ever greater numbers on precisely those diagnoses. The state has become quicker to pay for a condition than to treat it.

The science reinforces what Bevan knew. The research warns about excessive labelling. One of the world’s most cited neuroscientists, Lisa Feldman Barrett, shows that the brain learns to expect what we teach it to expect. Label difficult behaviours as fixed incapacity and people believe they are incapable. One part of government says we label too much and another is funding the labelling and calling it support. Milburn describes a welfare gateway that has become a one-way valve, cohorts staying longer and longer, funding the problem but not solving it, and so the vicious circle remains closed. The very taxes raised to fund the welfare bill have destroyed the entry-level jobs that, on the Government’s own evidence, would have kept young people busy and well. The revenue measure has defeated the fiscal aim. Funding more diagnosis defeats the health aim. Each department, as Milburn says, plays alone next to the others, and real young people fall through the gaps between them.

None of this evidence is mine. It is their evidence, their data, their reviewer, their Health Secretary, their own party’s research. They were warned. They were asked to stop but they have carried on, and a generation of young people, our nation’s taxpayers and the British economy are paying the price.

13:49

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

My Lords, I thank the House for some really interesting and wide-ranging contributions today, and the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for bringing this debate to the House this afternoon. If it is a Thursday afternoon, it must be a debate on education, employment and young people.

As I say, it has been a broad debate, but as a Minister who works across the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions, I know all too well just how interlinked the areas we have covered today often are. Whichever system we are talking about—education, employment or welfare—none operates in a vacuum, and they all have an important role to play in extending opportunity so that everybody can fulfil their potential. This is key to raising living standards and boosting economic growth. Sadly, though, as my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lady Gill identified very robustly, we inherited a broken system that too often did the opposite and held people back.

If we are examining the record of this Government so far, it is important to consider the starting point when we took office. Education was not working for all children, school attendance was at an all-time low and local authorities were being bankrupted by the rising costs of special educational needs and children’s social care. The number of children growing up in poverty had increased by 700,000 since 2010 to 4 million. Nearly 1.5 million adults were unemployed, and between 2021 and 2024 the number of young people not in employment, education or training increased by 250,000. We had a welfare system that all too readily wrote people off and left them without the support they needed. This was an unacceptable waste of human potential. That is why this Government are putting opportunity at the heart of our education, employment support and welfare systems. We are doing this by giving children the best start in life and by lifting 500,000 children out of poverty—my noble friend Lady Lister is absolutely right in identifying the link between poverty and education and opportunity.

We are increasing the number of people, particularly young people, in education, employment and training, and we are shifting from a welfare state to a working state that provides not only a safety net but a platform upon which people can change their lives for the better. The noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey, Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Spielman, bemoan the fact that the welfare system incentivises people to stay out of work. They are right that that is a bad design. It was of course the design that we inherited from their Government.

My noble friend Lady Nargund was absolutely right to describe education as “where opportunity begins”. That is why this Government stand for excellence everywhere, across education and care, to break the link between background and success. We are fixing the foundations of our education and care systems by ensuring that attendance is going back up; hiring more teachers, social workers and nursery staff; rebuilding more schools and opening free breakfast clubs; stabilising our universities and increasing training opportunities. On universities, I share the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle’s view of the significance and importance of humanities for understanding our world and being able to tell the stories and build the analysis of where we need to go. Of course, it is not the role of government to tell universities what courses to offer, but it is our task to deliver financial stability to ensure proper planning and provision of all courses, including humanities courses. That is what we are doing, through our increase in maximum tuition fees and through our focus, in the Office for Students, on financial stability.

Despite this progress, we must go further and faster to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to succeed. We must start early, which is why we are investing £1.5 billion over the next three years, through our best start in life strategy, to expand and strengthen family services and make early education and childcare more accessible, more affordable and of higher quality. It is why we will improve the quality of early education and childcare. It is why we are making sure that every child is achieving and thriving, through the work of our RISE teams that are driving school improvement. It is why we are recruiting more teachers in secondary and special schools. It is our ambition to halve the disadvantage gap for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, raises the issue of primary schools, where we see a real challenge from the falling numbers of primary pupils. Even this week, we have talked about imaginative ways of enabling school buildings, for example, to be used to develop community and other facilities, and we will continue to consider the challenges for schools as that demography changes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly raise the issue of teachers. High-quality teaching has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcome in schools, which is why we pledged to recruit 6,500 additional teachers across this Parliament in secondary and special schools and FE. We have already achieved over 70% of our target, including 3,008 more teachers in secondary and special schools since this Government came to office. We are continuing to offer bursaries worth £29,000 tax free to encourage more talented people to train to teach key STEM subjects. Both noble Lords suggested, and I agree with them, that retaining high-quality teachers is key to our plans. I am sure they will welcome the fact that we are making strong progress, with leaver rates dropping to 8.5%, one of the lowest ever on record. Of course, part of the reason for that is because we have been willing to find the resources to pay teachers properly, with a 10% pay increase over the last two years and acceptance of the STRB’s recommendations for the next two years. We have set out plans to invest in a new teacher retention programme from autumn 2026.

To ensure that everybody who can benefit from our world-class higher education system is able to, we are reintroducing maintenance grants for courses for the academic year 2028-29. This will ensure that anyone with the ability can access university. We are prioritising skills and further education—as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, demanded that we should, and as we set out in our skills White Paper—including through record investment in post-16 education and skills, with more than £18 billion a year in funding and an additional £800 million for 16 to 19 education in 2026-27.

We are expanding high-quality technical and vocational pathways through new V-levels and more T-levels and by establishing 29 technical excellence colleges. While I am loath to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, given the nice things he said about me, it was the current Prime Minister who made a strong speech about the need to reinvigorate non-academic routes and to develop a prestigious FE sector, which we have been delivering on. We will also give, and have already given, local leaders more powers and funding to shape provision to meet local skills needs.

To boost employment, we are making sure not just that people get skills but that they get the skills that employers and our economy need. That focus is precisely why I am now working across both departments, with DWP now responsible for adult skills. We are able to link that skills capacity and understanding more closely to the employment support that we are offering through the new jobs and careers service. We set up Skills England to assess skills needs to inform national planning. We have made the skills system more flexible, for example with shorter, more targeted training options to meet specific and fast-changing needs in the form of new apprenticeship units, developing the flexibility in the growth and skills levy to meet the needs of employers. We are investing in skills packages for key sectors in construction, defence, clean energy and advanced manufacturing. We have introduced fast-track approval of new apprenticeship standards to get rapid skills support in place for major projects in England.

All this is about making sure that people are able to seize the opportunities of the future. While some noble Lords may paint a rather pessimistic picture of the labour market, others, such as my noble friend Lady O’Grady, are right to be more optimistic. There are 400,000 more people in employment than last year; we have the third-highest employment rate in the G7; and since this Government took over, real wages have risen more than in the first 10 years of the previous Government. These figures show not a failing Government but one who are creating opportunity and security for their people.

However, we of course know that there is more to do. With over a million young people not earning or learning, and nearly 3 million people out of work due to long-term sickness, we are determined not only to help people into work but to ensure that it is good work. My noble friend Lord Knight is right to say that a determined focus on employment can make a difference, and that is why this Government are determined not to give up on a generation of young people.

That is why we are investing £3.5 billion in employment support for disabled people and those with health conditions, through our pathways to work offer, and overhauling job centres to be places where you sign up for work, not benefits. When it comes to young people who are not earning or learning, as has been emphasised by several noble Lords during the debate, we are creating half a million opportunities for young people to earn or learn, backed by £2.5 billion of additional investment through our youth guarantee. These include hiring bonuses for businesses, more work experience and workplace training, and subsidised jobs for young people who are out of work for 18 months; and we are rebuilding the apprenticeships ladder for young people, given the 40% fall in young people’s apprenticeships starts that we saw over the last decade.

Many noble Lords opposite raised the issue of national insurance increases and the minimum wage. I recognise why, and it is a common refrain, but they do so at the same time as praising the Milburn report that this Government commissioned. As I have pointed out previously, it was Alan Milburn himself who identified the fact that it is neither national insurance nor the national minimum wage which is at the heart of—or even really key to—the number of young people who are out of work. Furthermore, the Resolution Foundation Lost in Transition report found that reverting national insurance levels to the 2024 threshold for under-25s would raise the job total by 7,000 but cost the Exchequer £1 billion. Scrapping NICs entirely for under-25s would create only 38,000 jobs and cost £5.1 billion. Noble Lords opposite who want to talk, and always do, about national insurance contributions need to answer the question of what they would cut to revert this Government’s national insurance contribution changes. Presumably it would be the investment in our health service, which is helping to cut the waiting lists that keep people out of work and create additional burdens for employers. The Resolution Foundation also said that, through our £2.5 billion funding of the youth guarantee, our hiring incentives and jobs guarantee will unlock up to 200,000 employment opportunities.

I believe that we are focusing on the right place. Of course, we also need to prevent people becoming out of work and not learning in the first place. That is why we are also focused on prevention, including better support for young people with SEND and those with mental health challenges, as we roll out support across schools. My noble friend Lord Knight is right that schools need to have greater responsibility for the destinations of their students and the transition of young people at 16, so that they do not fall out of the system.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, is right about the contribution made by technical education, and I have already outlined the changes the Government are making. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is right that we need to use data effectively to be able to identify at an early stage those who are at risk of becoming NEET, which is why we have provided for local authorities the “risk of NEET” indicator tools. These enable them, at the earliest stages of secondary school, to identify the young people who are at risk and take action to prevent them falling through the gaps.

All this is designed to get more people into work, and we are ensuring that it is good work—we make no apology for that—by boosting the national minimum wage, partnering with employers through the Keep Britain Working review to build healthier and more inclusive workplaces, and bolstering workers’ rights with the Employment Rights Act. I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend Lady O’Grady’s argument for productive, not just cheap, labour.

Much of what I have already set out is welfare reform in action. It is how we are putting work, skills and opportunity at the heart of the welfare state. Welfare spending as a percentage of GDP continues to be broadly stable, as it has been for many years, and we have slowed the increase in the number of people coming on to health and disability benefits. This is where spending is increasing the most.

Far from circling the wagons around the status quo, we are determined to rewire the social security system itself, as my noble friend Lord John argued for, to promote and support work. This includes through the changes we have made to universal credit to reduce disincentives to work; by legislating for a right to try, so that disabled people can take steps into work without fear of automatic reassessment; and increasing the proportion of face-to-face assessments, which collapsed under the previous Government.

In the medium term, the Timms review of personal independence payment, to ensure it is fair and fit for the future, and the Milburn review into young people and work, have both already produced their interim reports ahead of publishing full reports later this year. This will provide the framework for further action in both these crucial areas.

From childhood through to adulthood, across the education, employment and welfare systems, we are ensuring that everybody gets the chance to succeed, equipping people with the qualifications and skills they need, creating the opportunities they need and changing the welfare system, so that instead of trapping people, it helps people to change their lives. Rather than picking up the costs of failure, we are investing in success. That is better for people’s lives and better for the public finances, and it is the change this Labour Government are delivering.

14:07

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions of noble Lords across the House to this debate. A wealth of expertise, experience and passion has been evident throughout.

What came across loud and clear in so many contributions—indeed, it was acknowledged by the Minister in her wind-up—was the need for government to consider policies and interventions across education, employment and welfare in the round. They are inextricably interconnected, and policies developed in one silo of government can have unintended and damaging consequences in another—as, unfortunately, we have seen too often over the last couple of years. As we heard powerfully across the House, nowhere is this joined-up thinking more urgently needed than in tackling the growing number of young people not in education, employment and training.

I again thank everyone who has contributed today and commend this Motion to the House.

Motion agreed.

Early Release Prisoners: Preventing Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

14:09

Asked by

[Lord Farmer]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of partnership working between prisons and local housing authorities in preventing homelessness and rough sleeping among prisoners released early.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who are here today to debate an issue that could get lost amidst the penal populism informing much of the response to the next waves of early release following the Sentencing Act 2026.

Why do I refer to penal populism? Crime must be punished, and I completely understand the concerns of many victims about early release. However, the public vengefulness politicians court to achieve popularity, notably by demanding ever-longer custodial sentences, has led to ever-longer sentences, clogged up our prisons and contributed to the need for these great swathes of early release. The inflation in custodial sentence length between 2010 and 2025 was 45%.

In their book, The Honest Politician’s Guide to Prisons and Probation, criminologists King and Willmott reveal just how many ex-Justice Secretaries, from both main parties, regret “playing to the gallery” as

“tough law and order figures”,

as my noble friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who was Home Secretary following the 1992 general election, described his successors. This response was driven by the understandable outcry following the Jamie Bulger killing in early 1993 by two other children. Instead of acknowledging the need to challenge inadequate parenting and manage expectations about what a criminal justice system can do, the Home Secretary who followed my noble friend Lord Clarke kickstarted the still ongoing competition between the two main parties as to who could be toughest on crime.

My response to the arms race that penal populism generates and has filled our prisons with is that, like the nuclear arms race, we simply cannot afford the price tag, either in sheer cash terms of £60,000 to £65,000 per prisoner per annum, or the squandering of human potential. Those sentenced for sexual offences—over one-fifth of prisoners—are treated as unreservedly heinous despite considerable variability in seriousness and the hypersexualisation of society. We want to lock them up and throw away the key, but the vast majority will leave prison. They and we need their genuine rehabilitation. Many have lost their families, livelihoods and homes. Only about one-third move into settled accommodation post release, compared to the average of around 45%.

More generally, imprisonment itself renders offenders homeless when tenancies lapse, mortgages are not paid or family circumstances mean they cannot return home. Despite a continuing duty of care, far too many are released homeless. Also, rehabilitation without a proper roof is almost impossible, and the statistics bear this out: their proven reoffending rate of 76% is more than double the 36.4% of those who reoffend after being released into settled accommodation. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government have assessed how many of those released early are likely to return to prison, whether through recalls for breaching licence conditions or reoffending?

This is a far grislier question, but have they assessed how many are likely to die? Leaving prison homeless is a major risk factor for death shortly after release. Last month, a Guardian investigation reported record numbers of deaths within two weeks of release in 2025—a 28% rise since 2021. Similarly, the charity Nacro found that more than one person dies every day in the year after leaving prison, and last year one in every 144 people released died within that period, more than three times the rate in 2015. In 40% of cases, drugs are a factor and homelessness interacts fatally with that: there is no structure, support or healthcare.

Inside Time, the prisoners’ newspaper—which I know the Minister reads, as do I—says that:

“An estimated 6,000 prisoners will be released earlier than planned from English and Welsh jails in 10 monthly tranches, starting on 2 September”.


So it is very concerning that HM Inspectorate of Prisons told the Commons Public Accounts Committee in November 2024 that, at some prisons, the limited housing stock available for those released had been

“overwhelmed by early release schemes”.

Although the Government have responded to Written Questions by saying that local authorities collaborate effectively with the Prison Service to reduce homelessness, Ministry of Justice data shows that almost 13,000 people left prison homeless or as rough sleepers in the year to April 2025—a 39% rise from the previous year. Similarly, the Government’s A National Plan to End Homelessness states that this

“could have been prevented had better coordination and planning been in place”.

The duty to refer in the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was designed to facilitate this, and almost half of all “duty to refer” referrals are from criminal justice system organisations. Almost 10 years on from that Act, I welcome the implicit recognition in the proposed new duty to collaborate that it is not working as it should for ex-prisoners. Will the Minister explain how the new duty to collaborate will achieve the level of change required and whether it will be introduced in time to meet September’s heightened need for housing? What incentives, or even sanctions where necessary, will be put in place to ensure better joint working, not least in the interests of rehabilitation?

Prison capacity has been such an emergency issue, but the time has surely come for this to come into much sharper focus as a slower-burn way of reducing our prison population and the criminal justice budget. Reoffending costs us all £18 billion a year. Releasing prisoners into homelessness, especially rough sleeping, single-handedly undermines any previous and future rehabilitation activity. Without accommodation, they cannot seek work and restructure their lives.

Collaboration with local housing authorities is essential for rehabilitation. Some are far more effective than others at finding accommodation for ex-prisoners, even in areas of very pressured housing markets. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman reports that many London boroughs compare badly with statistical neighbours where housing is concerned. In 2025, the London Assembly housing committee flagged inconsistent practice across London boroughs with weak co-ordination between prisons, probation and borough housing teams; prisons not consistently complying with the duty to refer; and late referrals from prisons contributing greatly to uncertainty.

I return to the plan to end homelessness. This Government have committed, by the end of this Parliament, to a 50% reduction in homelessness among people on their first night out of prison and an increase in the number of prison leavers in settled accommodation three months post release and thereafter. To conclude, I ask the Minister to outline how prisons and probation will deliver their responsibilities under the plan to embed local partnerships, collocation and pre-release planning.

14:17

[Baroness Gill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this important debate. For 1,000 prison leavers every single month, their first day of freedom is the first day of a new sentence: rough sleeping on our streets. The cyclical link between homelessness and the justice system is not an abstract policy debate; it is an urgent humanitarian and public safety emergency happening right outside our doors.

We must be honest about how we got here. This crisis is the structural inheritance of 14 years of systemic neglect by previous Governments. On their watches we have seen a staggering rise in rough sleeping and a left-behind, crumbling prison estate running dangerously close to absolute capacity because of a failure to build secure social housing. Worse, they chose punishment over prevention. By keeping the archaic Vagrancy Act on the statute book, the state’s default response to a vulnerable prison leaver sleeping in a doorway was to criminalise rather than support them. It was a broken approach that practically guaranteed a fast-track route back to custody. As a result, 68% of prisoners released directly on to the streets reoffend within a single year.

Thankfully, we are seeing a fundamental shift from crisis management to genuine prevention. Having worked at the front end of social housing for almost two decades, I welcome the recognition of the present Government that stable housing is the foundation of public safety. Instead of papering over the cracks, decisive action is now being taken. This includes decriminalisation: the Government have officially repealed the draconian Vagrancy Act, treating rough sleeping as a vulnerability requiring support, not a crime. Secondly, there is a strategic blueprint, guided by the national plan to end homelessness, which introduces a landmark duty to collaborate, legally compelling prisons, probation services and local councils to co-ordinate before a prisoner is released.

However, breaking this cycle is not about demanding more taxpayer money. There are powerful, resource-neutral changes we can make tomorrow by replacing red tape with common sense. First, we must permanently ban Friday releases, which dump vulnerable people on to the pavement just as council offices close for the weekend, stranding them until Monday. Moving discharge dates to mid-week costs nothing but saves lives. Secondly, we must ensure “day-one readiness”. No prisoner should cross the threshold without a valid ID, an active bank account and a pre-processed universal credit claim ready to go. Finally, we should scale peer-led mentoring models, training serving inmates as housing advisers inside the estate to manage paperwork before release. This is not about funding; it is about rewriting a broken system.

Providing a roof to a prison leaver is the necessary cornerstone of justice and public safety. I welcome the Government’s progress, but I have a couple of questions for my noble friend the Minister to clarify some critical challenges. First, how will the Government ensure that local councils are fully resourced to transition prison leavers from temporary, 12-week emergency placements on to permanent, secure social housing so that we can permanently close the revolving door? Secondly, will the Government rapidly implement no-cost, structural reforms such as ending Friday releases and mandating day-one ID readiness to stop people slipping through the bureaucratic cracks?

14:21

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on securing this debate on a subject which I know is dear to his heart. It is also important to me. Both of us spoke to amendments in debates on the Social Housing Bill around the difficulties of housing ex-offenders. Much depends on how long the offender has been in prison, whether they are still in touch with their family, whether they are likely to secure employment and, not least, their mental health.

The Library has produced an extensive brief for this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has provided startling statistics. In 2024-25, approximately 1,000 prisoners a month were released from prison without anywhere to stay and went on to sleep rough, as has already been said. It seems that the early release scheme, introduced in 2024 to reduce the prison overcrowding, has not always been implemented in a satisfactory fashion but hurriedly, with little preparation made for accommodation provision.

An ex-offender released with nowhere to go on their first night is likely to sleep rough. This means a shop doorway, a traditional bus shelter—not a modern one—an empty, derelict property or even a park bench. This might seem acceptable on a short-term basis with weather similar to that we are currently experiencing, but not if it is November or January, raining and with temperatures well below those to which they have been acclimatised in prison.

Those who have served long sentences may have become dependent on the prison routine and feel anxious about being released and how to cope outside. It is no wonder that, on release, some engage in criminal activity in the hope of being rearrested and returned to an environment which will both house and feed them and where there will be company of sorts. If it were a choice of sleeping rough in the middle of winter or returning to prison, I feel I might choose the latter.

The role of the local housing authority is absolutely key to ensuring that appropriate accommodation is provided to ex-offenders on the day of their release. There are of course probation hostels, which, provided they have capacity, can cover up to 12 weeks.

Young men and women on release will want to rebuild their lives. Offenders commit crimes and arrive in prisons for a variety of reasons, not least of which might be their inability to communicate effectively, read or write, or understand basic maths. If there is sufficient capacity within the allocated prison, these skills can be acquired alongside qualifications to help gain employment on release. But accommodation will be the stepping stone to set them on their way. The elderly may have served long sentences and not be equipped for life without support. Can the Minister say how many prisoners who are released are over the age of 70?

I turn to those on remand. Once they come to trial, some may be found innocent and released from court. Does the Minister have figures for how long the average stay on remand is? There are also those who are found guilty but whose sentence is such that they have already served it on remand and so are released straightaway. How many, once they come to court, are released without further imprisonment? These figures are not currently included in published figures. Nevertheless, this group will need help with housing as well as other support to rebuild their lives.

The duty to collaborate with local authorities is part of the national plan to end homelessness and support those who are in crisis. Local authorities have strategies to house the homeless, but it is not easy. There are also charities and agencies whose aims are to support ex-prisoners on their release. It is, however, vital that they are given sufficient notice to allow them to find the relevant accommodation. It is extremely disappointing that the duty to collaborate has not yet been implemented. Can the Minister say when this is likely to happen—and please not say “shortly”? Without this measure, some ex-offenders will continue to have nothing but sleeping rough to look forward to.

I look forward to the Minister’s comments at the end of this important debate.

14:27

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this important debate, not least because it brings together two of my long-term concerns—homelessness and the rehabilitation of offenders. I declare my interests as the chair of the Church Housing Association and as a trustee of the Clink Charity, which works within and beyond prisons.

Homelessness is both a cause and a consequence of offending. Breaking this cycle requires an understanding of individual vulnerabilities and a “whole community” approach to rehabilitation. Without long-term, joined-up thinking that provides prison leavers with the tools to live independently, prisoners are trapped in a cycle of reoffending. This undermines their intrinsic human value. From these Benches, I would add “their God-given value”. In St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus notably refers to concern for prisoners as one of just a handful of criteria determining a divine judgment.

At the risk of repeating a cliché, prisoner rehabilitation requires a person-centred approach. It is a cliché that needs repeating, because all too often what we offer those leaving prison is a service-centred approach. The convenience of service providers and their organisational boundaries separate a human being into a series of disjointed attributes. They are homeless; they are unemployed; they are unskilled; they are unwell; they are unable to receive benefits in a timely manner. Different service providers then seek to respond to these distinct aspects, often in an ill-connected way. The person falls between the cracks. At the same time, the services that are provided in prison are too often separated from those provided outside.

All major life transitions are challenging, even if they are as welcome as being released from prison. If the transition into life on the out is not to lead to further offending, many of those released, especially those who have served sentences of more than minimal duration, will need accompanying over a period of months, if not years, by a consistent human presence, a trusted human presence, within and without the walls.

Homelessness is a deepening crisis. Recent Nacro figures show a 40% increase in the number of people released from prison into homelessness. People who leave prison are twice as likely to reoffend if they are homeless. Prisoners often lose their homes because they are unable to continue paying rent. Meanwhile, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, powerfully reminded us, releases on Fridays or otherwise out of working hours mean that support services are not immediately available. Who is immediately available is the drug dealer.

Prison leavers are left to fend for themselves in an unfamiliar world. Housing associations and other providers must be empowered to facilitate housing assessments while prisoners are still in custody and to identify those most at risk of falling through the cracks. They must be enabled to provide prison leavers with routes into stable accommodation and should be given adequate notice of release to allow them to do it effectively.

Housing provision is not much use if you cannot pay for it. The inability of claimants to begin a universal credit application while in prison pushes prison leavers into poverty immediately they are released. With the DWP more closely integrated into pre-release planning, prison leavers might be given the financial means to find accommodation from the day of their release. Not only would this better enable them to settle, it would leave them less tempted to reoffend in order to find the money to pay the rent.

While such measures could go a long way towards preventing homelessness in the short term, it is not enough to tackle the symptoms without addressing at the same time the root causes. To achieve lasting housing security, prison leavers must be given the skills, as other noble Lords have already said, to find steady employment and generate a reliable income.

The Clink Charity, where I serve as a trustee and with which the Minister is very familiar, provides training and rehabilitation support to people in prison or at risk of offending. Informed by their clients’ histories of trauma, unstable housing, exclusion from education and poor mental health, the Clink has now successfully trained over 5,000 people. It is a prime example of the joined-up working I am talking about. It means that prison leavers are treated as ends rather than means, and as people who are able to live lawful lives and make positive contributions to our communities. If any noble Lords want to know more about the charity, please come along to our flagship restaurant in Brixton Prison.

This debate gives us an opportunity to begin to shape what a more integrated provision for those leaving prison, especially the many facing homelessness, might look like. I know that the Minister has this very much in his own heart and I look forward to him responding to the debate in due course.

14:32

[Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for tabling this debate and for his compassionate and evidence-based work over many years in this space to make our country safer and to improve the lives of all those impacted by the criminal justice system. The topic of this debate is a subject close to my heart as well, having spent part of my career working with people immediately prior to, on the day of, and following, release—known in the sector as “through the gate” work. I will focus most of my remarks today on women, because that is the bulk of where my professional experience lies.

As alluded to by the right reverend Prelate, the transition from prison to community is a tough one. Some of the people I have worked with have told me it was a tougher transition than going from the community to prison. It is made harder by a lack of supportive relationships with people not involved in crime, by complicated applications for benefits, by trying to ensure that you have the correct medication, by perhaps trying to ensure that you have the correct support for abstinence programmes—and then you might be met at the gates by your pimp or dealer. There is also the enormous social stigma that can last many years after your conviction and licence have ended. In the middle of all this is the question of where the person might sleep that night and on subsequent nights, which is crucial to determining future positive outcomes.

Noble Lords are well aware that the country is in a housing crisis and a prison population and capacity crisis. I am proud to sit on these Labour Benches and I support all that we are doing to address this, not least in the Social Housing Bill, which we will debate on Report on Monday.

Neither the prison crisis nor the housing crisis can be solved overnight. But, alongside the immediate actions that this Government have taken, I urge noble Lords to continue to use the privilege of being long-term incumbents to ensure that strategic and longer-term plans are laid, so that we are able to both prevent and solve women’s homelessness and criminal justice involvement.

I want to tell you about Hayley, who I worked with—unsurprisingly, that is not her real name. I met her a few days before her release from a prison located far from anywhere, as they often are, it seems to me. On the day of her release, we went on several bus journeys to save money, rather than using other forms of transport, to take her to probation, the drug and alcohol services and the homeless persons unit. There, we sat through a perfunctory questionnaire while it was rattled off—“Do you have pets? What is your local connection? Are you the victim of domestic abuse? Are you the victim of sexual assault? Have you ever worked in prostitution?”—as though these were perfectly normal questions to ask in a public council office.

We spent several hours there and through advocacy we were able to secure her somewhere to sleep that night. But the part of the borough where she had been engaged in prostitution was also the part of the borough where cheap B&B temporary accommodation was available, and that was what the local authority could afford. Therefore, after a very long day—we were on hour 10 or 11 by this point—we went with the keys to an address in the very streets where she had previously been living and working, using drugs and being involved in prostitution. I took her to this sparsely furnished room via Tesco to get a few bits and left her for the night in this very basic room with nothing more than a magazine and a box of cereal to distract her. I was not optimistic about how this was going to go, and it felt deeply unsatisfactory to leave her there. A decade later, as I recount this to noble Lords, I am still deeply unsatisfied by our failure to meet that woman’s needs and to keep her safe, even though it might have been regarded as a success because she had a roof over her head for the night.

I am sure that well-informed noble Lords across your Lordships’ House are keen to take a strategic view and, just as Marmot introduced the idea of the social determinants of health, noble Lords here can work on the social determinants of crime. In Hayley’s case it was childhood trauma contributed to by parental addiction, resulting in her own addiction, being groomed into prostitution as a teenager and living on the streets when she was not living in a prison.

There are many charities and local authorities doing good work in this space, and I urge the Minister to keep digging into that evidence and drawing on the resource available from local authorities. My former workplace, Islington Council, does amazing work finding solutions in this space. It has a Housing First officer employed by the council to meet prison leavers at the prison gate. They are co-located in the probation office to co-design their service. They have quarterly meetings with probation and, at the last rough sleeping count, nobody found rough sleeping in Islington had left prison.

I wonder whether the Minister has come across the Californian outfit Impact Justice, which, through its Homecoming project, has helped house 600,000 people leaving prison for six months using an Airbnb-style platform where hosts offer their spare room to the person being released. A scheme like that would ensure that another Hayley will not be left in a box room with a magazine and a box of cereal for company, with the whole system just crossing its fingers that it will work. We have to get this right. I urge the Minister to continue pursuing best practice, from local authorities and internationally, to meet this need.

14:37

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the many people who have spoken in the debate, with their direct and personal knowledge and commitment to this intractable issue: a subject that so often people do not want to know about. Above all, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his steadfast and long-term commitment to people in prison, their relationships and their families, because so many relationships break down when someone goes to prison, and then the prospect of finding a home or work when they come out is all the less. I am only saying the obvious, but it needs to be repeated.

No one should complete a prison sentence, step outside and find the pavement waiting; we all agree that a prison sentence must never become a sentence to homelessness. But delivering that aspiration in practice is an intractable and complex problem. Partnership between prisons, probation and local housing authorities is essential, but it is not sufficient. The voluntary sector plays a vital role. So many of us are going to refer to different voluntary sector projects. The Clink is quite remarkable, and I must quickly declare my interest as I think my firm once found one of the chief executives, and I got to know them extremely well. The voluntary sector can act flexibly and swiftly to provide innovative solutions. The voluntary sector can sometimes take steps that are unpopular with the public, whom, if you are an elected body, you have unfortunately to satisfy.

The official figures should disturb us profoundly. In the year to March, only 84% of prison leavers were housed the night following their release. Nacro calculates that more than 12,000 people a year leave prison homeless or are rough sleeping, which is more than 1,000 people every month. Of course they are not just statistics; they are people leaving custody, frequently with little money, addiction, medical vulnerabilities, fragile or non-existent family relationships and no place to go.

I appreciate that the Government have said much to suggest that they are signed up to this agenda. We are all realistic about the pressure on public funding and the difficulty of taking the public with us, and I am sure nobody more than the Minister fights the corner in private, whatever he can say to us in public.

I wonder when the Minister will feel able to publish specific accommodation and reoffending outcomes for prisoners released early. This, of course, is an extra complicating factor. The comment about not releasing people on a Friday is so often said, but when will it be delivered? A form passed from one public body to another does not, I am afraid, keep somebody off the streets. Practical steps have to follow. The Inspectorate of Prisons reports that many establishments still release 20% to 30% of prisoners without a settled address, and the independent monitoring boards describe release preparation as “alarmingly inadequate”. What further reassurance can the Minister give us that there will be improvement in this field?

Homeless Link, another voluntary body working directly with people experiencing homelessness, offers practical answers—I always like those. They are: first, assume that every prisoner is at risk of homelessness until demonstrated otherwise; secondly, begin planning early; thirdly, complete housing applications inside prisons; fourthly, bring all the relevant agencies together before release. But more must be done, and I want to commend to the Minister a charity that I have come to know very well.

The issue for many is that when they finish the 84-night statutory stay, there is a critical window. If the prison leaver cannot overcome practical financial barriers, they may still leave temporary accommodation for the street. Small grants released quickly for deposits, identification documents, essential furniture or travel can make all the difference. I wonder how many people in this House know about Greater Change. Does anybody? Greater Change is a thrilling, pioneering charity started by Jonathan Tan when he left Oxford 10 years ago. It provides small grants through the care workers to help prisoners and others at risk of homelessness, and it is obsessively evidence based. It is quite remarkable. When I first heard of this charity, I thought: “That is exactly what needs to be done”, because it reinforces the value of the trusted front-line worker who assesses whether the individual is worthy of the project or can justify it, and then it raises the money to provide these grants.

Greater Change is currently proposing a £10 million programme that would enable personalised budgets to support more than 5,500 people leaving custody. It would evaluate housing stability, progression from CAS3 into settled accommodation, engagement with probation, employment outcomes, reoffending and savings across the criminal justice system. I do not want to test the Minister’s patience, because he has very kindly met MM McCabe from Philosophy in Prison, but I really hope he will find a chance to meet the team from Greater Change, who are as good as those at Emmaus and the Forward Trust. We all need to work together to deliver this agenda.

14:43

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for bringing this topic to our attention today, and I pay tribute to him for his tireless work in this area of concern. It is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley.

The north-east, where I live, offers both encouragement and challenge to the theme of our debate today. HMP Northumberland, Northumberland County Council, the probation services and voluntary organisations, which we have already heard quite a lot about, have developed strong partnerships to improve resettlement. Those partnerships deserve recognition, but they also raise the important question of how we are assessing their effectiveness. Success should not be measured simply by whether a referral has been made or a duty fulfilled. It should be measured by outcomes. As other noble Lords have asked, did someone leave prison with suitable accommodation? Were they still housed weeks and months later? Did they avoid rough sleeping? Were they able to access healthcare, treatment for substance misuse and, where appropriate, employment and training? Those outcomes are closely connected. Homelessness rarely exists in isolation. It intersects with poor mental health, addiction, unemployment and social exclusion.

Nacro’s recent report, Reducing Deaths Among Prison Leavers, reminds us of the human consequences. It found that people released from prison in the north-east are around six times more likely to die from a drug-related cause within two weeks of release than those released in the east of England. While the report makes clear that this disparity cannot be explained by homelessness alone, it underlines the importance of viewing housing as part of a wider resettlement pathway, rather than as a stand-alone intervention.

There is also a strong economic case for getting this right. Preventing homelessness at the point of release reduces pressure on emergency accommodation, health services, the criminal justice system and local authorities. Stable housing provides the foundation on which recovery, family relationships and employment can be rebuilt. Without that foundation, the risk of reoffending and repeated crisis raises significantly. Partnership working should therefore be viewed not simply as good practice but as a sound investment in safer communities, better public services and better outcomes for individuals seeking to make a fresh start after prison. Early release makes this even more challenging because it compresses the time available to co-ordinate housing, healthcare and community support. That makes effective partnership working more important than ever. Organisations such as the Oswin Project in Northumberland, with its excellent café in Newcastle Cathedral, show what can be achieved when employment support, mentoring and rehabilitation are integrated with housing. But these initiatives depend on timely planning and sustained collaboration.

Nacro has called for a clear plan to halve by 2029 the proportion of people leaving prison who are homeless. I hope the Government will not only pursue that ambition but set out how success will be measured. What indicators will be used to assess whether partnership working is preventing homelessness and rough sleeping, and how will outcomes be monitored for those released early? How will examples of effective practice, such as those emerging in the north-east, be identified, evaluated and shared more widely?

Ultimately, the measure of success is not whether agencies work together but whether people leaving prison are able to rebuild stable, healthy and productive lives. Can the Minister ensure that any measures around the effectiveness of partnership working include regional outcomes, so that we can understand both what is working in areas such as the north-east and where further support might be needed?

14:47

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this debate on a very serious issue that involves a very real tragedy. We have heard that every month about 1,000 prisoners are released from prison directly into homelessness. The Question from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, appears to start from the proposition that early release is an important contributor to homelessness. It may be, but I am not sure we have the evidence on that issue. We do know, however, that any release into homelessness has a very severe impact on released prisoners achieving reintegration. Indeed, it is almost self-evident that they will not, and the stark evidence that there is calls into question our whole strategy.

As my noble friend Lady Bakewell pointed out, the risks of release without a home to go to, away from warmth and company—such as it is in prison—are severe. Prisoners on release risk mental health breakdown and relapse into alcohol or drug abuse, and their risks of reoffending are magnified. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester referred to the “cycle of reoffending”. The noble Baroness, Lady Gill, also reminded us of the cyclical issues that follow unplanned release. Worse still, the risks of self-harm and early suicide are seriously increased by homelessness and rough sleeping. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle emphasised the regional differences on that.

The 31 May article in the Guardian by Jessica Murray, to which both the Library briefing for this debate and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, referred, told the story of a young man released after serving a 19-month sentence for assault. He was found dead in a house after taking prescription medicines and smoking crack cocaine because nowhere to live could be found for him by the local authority.

Another man of 48 with no known mental health problems could not be found even emergency accommodation on release and was found dead in a woodland after having to sleep in a tent. Another 49 year-old died of a drug overdose five days after release from HMP Swansea with nowhere to live. It is vital that accommodation be found. My noble friend Lady Bakewell is right to emphasise the importance of local authorities in the improvement of release as part of the improvement of rehabilitation. The account from the noble Baroness, Lady Hyde, of Hayley’s experience shows how arrangements made by local authorities can fall far short of good practice.

I do not recite all these cases because they are dramatic, but because they are, or should be, at least in part avoidable. As we have heard, under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, prison and probation officers have a duty to refer anyone to local authorities if they are likely to be made homeless within 56 days. That means that preparing for prison release should happen early, as has been stressed by several speakers. There is a requirement for prisoners to give permission for such an approach to a local authority. I ask the Minister: what effect is that requirement having on the proper working of the scheme?

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, asked about the new duty for prisons and local authorities to collaborate. How will it work in practice? What planning has been done to ensure that the collaboration is real and effective? Will that collaboration be sufficiently resourced? What steps are being taken within the Prison Service and by probation officers to ensure that foreseeable homelessness can be avoided? How much is done before release to ensure that all prisoners have somewhere to go?

The Prison Reform Trust advises prisoners to seek advice from housing advisers or offender managers in good time before release. Given the incapacity of some prisoners, their unwillingness, or even a misplaced optimism when they are soon to be released, what steps can we take to ensure that that advice is tendered in time? Is enough advantage taken of the option for governors to help prisoners pre-release, with payments made directly to accommodation providers for short-term accommodation when that is all that is available?

I will add two points that have come out of this debate. First, there seems to be unanimity that Friday releases must end. They are impractical, dangerous and cause many of these problems. Secondly, I know that the noble Lord is interested in seeking to find arrangements whereby the location of prisoners is suitable for their release. It is no good being released in the north-east if all your family contacts and prospects are in the south-west. Proximity of prisons to family contacts is of crucial importance.

14:53

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, like all other noble Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Farmer for securing this important debate. I thank him for continuing to draw attention to the vital link between successful rehabilitation and stable accommodation.

This issue sits at the intersection of housing and criminal justice. If we are serious about reducing reoffending, protecting the public and ensuring that people who have served their sentence can rebuild their lives, we must recognise that a safe and stable home is often the foundation upon which all other progress depends. A person leaving prison with nowhere to go is placed in an extremely difficult position. Without accommodation, it becomes harder to secure employment, maintain contact with the Probation Service, access healthcare or establish a stable routine. These challenges affect not only the individual but our communities and, ultimately, public safety.

The Government’s own figures demonstrate the scale of the challenge. As many other noble Lords have said, in 2024-25 around 1,000 prisoners each month were released and found themselves sleeping rough on the night of release. That is a deeply concerning outcome, and it raises serious questions about how effectively services are working together to support people as they transition back into the community.

This debate is not suggesting that the answer is simply to provide housing without expectation or responsibility. A Conservative approach is always to balance compassion with accountability and to believe in a firm but fair system. Prison exists to protect the public and punish those who break the law. However, punishment and rehabilitation are not opposing objectives. Successful rehabilitation is one of the strongest tools we have to prevent future victims of crime. That is why partnership matters. Prisons, probation services and local authorities all have responsibilities in helping prevent homelessness among prison leavers.

The duty to refer, introduced through the Homelessness Reduction Act, recognised that criminal justice agencies cannot operate in isolation from housing services. The question we must ask is whether those arrangements are working effectively enough in practice. Too often, responsibility becomes fragmented. One agency may identify a need, another may provide support, and a third may have statutory responsibilities. Yet unless those organisations are working to a shared plan, the individual leaving prison can fall through the gaps. That is particularly important when considering early-release arrangements. If the state decides to release someone into the community earlier than anticipated, there must be a confidence that the basic foundations of resettlement are in place.

There are three areas where a greater focus would be beneficial. First, intervention must begin earlier. Housing needs should not be considered only in the final days before release. For many prisoners, accommodation planning should begin at the start of the sentence, giving time to address issues such as previous tenancies, family relationships and support needs. Secondly, there should be stronger local accountability. We should be asking not only whether referrals are being made but whether they are resulting in sustainable accommodation outcomes. Thirdly, we should continue to support employers, charities—which, as we heard from so many noble Lords, are important—and social enterprises that help prison leavers return to productive lives. Stable housing and stable employment often go hand in hand.

Communities rightly expect that those leaving prison are properly supervised and supported. Effective resettlement is therefore not just about helping offenders but preventing further crime and making our streets safer. In that regard, I know that the Minister comes to this debate with significant background in this field. Through his work employing former offenders and supporting rehabilitation, he has long argued that people leaving prison should be given a chance to turn their lives around. The House greatly acknowledges the contribution he has made in that area. I therefore ask the Minister: what assessment has been made of the effectiveness of current partnership arrangements between prisons and local authorities? Does he believe that existing duties are sufficient, or are further measures required to ensure that no prisoner leaves custody without a clear and realistic accommodation plan? Preventing homelessness among prison leavers is not a soft option; it is a practical measure to protect the public, reduce pressure on public services and ensure that rehabilitation has the best possible chance of success. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

14:59

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his Question, and for the opportunity to discuss these critical issues that are close to his and all our hearts. The noble Lord has long argued that, if people are to leave crime behind, we must make sure that support and stability, including a safe place to live, are waiting for them beyond the prison gates. I could not agree more. That does not just mean a bed and a roof, although that is important. It means much more than that: somewhere they can call home, feel safe, keep their belongings, receive a letter or register for a GP. Ultimately, it means somewhere they can start a new chapter in their lives. As the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, said, it is about dignity, stability, second chances and, above all, hope.

The evidence is clear. People released from prison without stable accommodation are more than twice as likely to reoffend as those who do. On the question from a number of noble Lords about Friday releases, progress has been made. It is a lot better than it used to be, but we still need to do more. The more stable the prison population and the way we do our releases are, the better that will become. However, it should not surprise us that it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild your life if you do not know where you will sleep each night. That is why accommodation is an essential foundation for rehabilitation, but it is out of reach for far too many and there are no quick or simple fixes.

The first and most important thing we can do is to bring stability to the prison system. Too many offenders were trapped in a relentless cycle, locked up for short periods with little time to address their issues, released with no support and, almost inevitably, returning to prison. I am sure a number of noble Lords will have seen, as I have, people standing outside the prison gates with a plastic bag with “HMP” written on it, with a few pathetic possessions and nowhere to live that night. It is not surprising that they go back.

We are taking a different approach, built around supporting rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. We are already seeing results, with 75% of prisons and 90% of probation regions performing better. However, there is a long way to go and I am clear that we need to focus on what happens when somebody is inside prison and on what happens when they leave. As my noble friend Lady Hyde clearly said, Through the Gate work is vital, because preventing homelessness on release is not simply a housing issue; it is about public protection, rehabilitation and rebuilding lives. The example that my noble friend gave of Hayley shows just how complex it is, and also what a kind and generous person she is.

This is a challenge that the Ministry of Justice cannot solve alone; it is a team game. I am working closely with the housing sector and colleagues across government as part of our national plan to end homelessness. We inherited not just a prisons crisis but a homelessness crisis. Both rough sleeping in households and temporary accommodation more than doubled under the previous Government. This homelessness only reflects the wider pressures on housing across the country. Our national plan commits to halving the proportion of prison leavers who become homeless on their first night after release by the end of this Parliament, while increasing the number in settled accommodation after three months. There is a lot to do but they are important targets. All this is supported by record investment of £3.6 billion in homelessness and rough sleeping services. These are ambitious goals, but I am ambitious and I am determined that we will meet them.

As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has spent years helpfully reminding us, families can make an extraordinary difference too. For many people leaving prison, it is a parent, partner, grandparent or child who gives them the strength to keep going. Strong family relationships remain one of the most powerful protections against reoffending. We know that imprisonment also has a profound impact on families, especially children, so supporting families to maintain those relationships where safe and appropriate to do so is absolutely crucial. That is why almost all public sector prisons offer specialist services to support prisoners and their families, and we are updating our policies to help prisoners do even more to strengthen family relationships. Our incredible charities and voluntary organisations, such as Housing First and Crisis, do an amazing job and play a vital role in turning people’s lives around. I must thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for mentioning the Clink. It is a brilliant organisation and I was sad when its project near Manchester, at HMP Styal, was closed—maybe it can get going again at some point.

I recognise the innovative approaches of residential community and charity projects, such as Hope Street in Southampton and Willowdene, which provide training, counselling, therapy and work opportunities all in one place—that is really important. I have not heard of Impact Justice in California, which offers a spare room for people who need it, but it reminds me of my childhood: people used to turn up at our house because my parents knew they did not have anywhere to live and would end up staying with us, sometimes for years. This is about stability, support and providing firm foundations for people to take their next steps. The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, mentioned the Greater Change charity—I know a little about it, but am very happy to find out more—giving small grants and small donations to support people. It often does not take much money to make a big difference.

We are making sure that nobody leaves prison without the best possible chance of making a fresh start. That begins with having somewhere safe to go and support from day one. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, quite rightly emphasised, it is important that they get that support through the gate on day one. It means identifying housing needs earlier, improving information sharing and bringing prisons, probation and local authorities together well before someone is released, so that we are preventing homelessness, not responding to a person in crisis. We are already seeing excellent partnership working. Let me give one example: ID and banking administrators have been working in prisons for about three years now, to get everyone the documents they need. They work with the work coaches in DWP to get people on to universal credit so that they are good to go when they leave.

Too much still depends on where someone is released. A prison leaver’s chance of rebuilding their life should not depend on their postcode. I want people to receive the same high standard of support wherever they leave custody. They should be able to expect early engagement, a clear housing pathway and support that begins before they leave prison. We are using performance data to work out which areas need to improve and which areas are getting it right, so that we can learn from them. As part of this, we are working with MHCLG on new league tables which will show, by local authority, how many prison leavers end up homeless or rough sleeping on release. This will drive accountability and transparency, and I am pleased to announce that they will be published by the end of the year and then annually from next July.

We are piloting strategic housing advisory boards, along the same lines as the successful employment advisory boards I established a few years ago, to address the big systemic barriers prison leavers face when trying to find housing. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said, it is about co-ordinating this partnership. The regional outcomes will help because we have regional employment councils, which I hope will help co-ordinate this work as well.

Alongside this, we continue to invest in accommodation support. We recently added more than 200 beds to CAS3, the service that provides up to 84 nights of accommodation support following release, but we recognise that some prison leavers face particular challenges in finding housing, especially those serving IPP sentences. We are investing in a new single accommodation service, which brings together support delivered through commissioned rehabilitation services and “duty to refer” pathways into a single digital service. This is a big shift—the equivalent of moving from the Yellow Pages to booking.com—but, if we get it right, this digital tool will improve information sharing and make sure we can match prison leavers to the right accommodation and support, so that no one reaches the prison gate only to find they have nowhere to go.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked how many prisoners released were over the age of 70. As of 31 March this year, 2,180 individuals held in prison in England and Wales were aged over 70, which represents 2.5% of the total prison population. Published data is not currently available on prison releases by age band. I was asked about the average stay on remand. Unfortunately, we do not currently hold this data. If there are any other questions that I have not covered, I will write.

To finish, the national plan to end homelessness includes a commitment to introduce a duty to collaborate, and we will legislate for this as soon as possible. I fear that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, will be slightly disappointed, because it will be when parliamentary time allows. However, we all recognise how important this is and we want to get on with it. This duty will compel public services to work together to prevent homelessness by identifying need earlier, intervening sooner and supporting people at crisis point.

As I said earlier, this is a team game. If we are to turn lives around and protect the British public, we need prisons, probation services, local authorities, housing providers, charities, families and communities all working together to make sure that everyone leaving prison has the opportunity of a safe, secure and stable home. This is about more than a bed for the night; it is about changing and even saving lives. Every prison gate should open not to homelessness but to hopefulness. On the possibility of fewer victims, safer communities and a better life, I thank the noble Lord for bringing this important issue before the House and I look forward to ongoing discussions.

Future Capability of the Armed Forces

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

15:09

Moved by

[Lord Harlech]

To move that this House takes note of the future capability of the United Kingdom’s armed forces in light of the current international situation.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have signed up to this debate. I am grateful that your Lordships are able to debate the United Kingdom Armed Forces’ capability shortly after the publication of the defence investment plan. I look forward to all contributions, not least that of the Minister and the valedictory speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I declare an interest as a serving officer in the Army Reserve.

Let us confront a single stark reality: the United Kingdom remains the third-largest defence spender in NATO, surpassed only by the United States and Germany. Yet NATO’s own internal assessments rank us 31st out of 32 members in delivering on capability targets, with only Iceland, which has no armed forces at all, sitting below us. This is the critical gap I intend to scrutinise—not the disparity between our forces and our adversaries, real though that is, but the profound disconnect between the funds we invest and the capabilities we can deploy. This is the gulf between the promise and the product.

Let me say plainly what this debate is not. It is not a party-political point. I belong to the party that was in government for 14 years and, for much of that time, we did not spend enough on defence. Many of us said so then, and I say it again now. I have no interest in a quarrel about who cut what a decade ago, or who is pledging what for 2035. The two great alibis of defence policy are the distant past and the distant future, and both are used to dodge the only question that matters: what are we spending now, and what will we feel tomorrow in the years in which we might have to fight?

Those years are not theoretical. Admiral Sir Keith Blount, who stepped down only this year as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, DSACEUR, warned a fortnight ago on the “The General & The Journalist” podcast from the Times that Britain now risks losing influence within the alliance if it fails to deliver what it has promised. When our most senior recent commander at NATO says that in public, the Government should listen.

I give credit where the Motion invites it, on future capability. The strategic defence review was serious work, and I support its direction of travel. The best decision in last month’s defence investment plan is the one that looks furthest ahead—more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, the largest such investment we have ever made. That is the right instinct. It is the lesson of Ukraine, where innovation cycles are measured in weeks. It is, in the Government’s own phrase, investing for

“the next war, not the last one”.

My concern is not the direction of travel; it is that £5 billion is not enough and that, when you open it up, the wider plan does not bear weight. Consider the headline of £298 billion over four years. It is a number designed to end an argument. But only around £15 billion is new money over last year’s settlement, and the Defence Secretary has acknowledged that most of that £15 billion is not for new equipment at all but for day-to-day running costs—keeping the ships and aircraft we already own available and our people trained. That is necessary, but it is not rearmament. It is paying to run the force we have and calling it the force we need. Is even that money real? Of that £15 billion, only around £10 billion is funded. The rest, some £4.7 billion, waits on a Budget that has not yet happened. That is not a funded plan; it is an IOU. The plan leaves the years from 2030 to 2035 all but blank, reaches 2.7% of GDP in 2027 and then flatlines. It funds neither the 3% promised for the next Parliament nor the 3.5% signed up to for 2035. Set against the threat that the Government’s own advisers place before 2028, this is a plan matched not to the danger but to the Treasury’s accountants.

My disagreement with the review centres on its approach to personnel. The proposal to expand our reserves by a mere 20%—even then, only when financial conditions permit—is far too cautious. Currently, we field just 30,000 trained reservists compared to 137,000 regulars, rendering our Reserve Forces only a fifth of the size of our regular military. In contrast, Finland, directly confronting the Russian threat, maintains a formidable trained reserve many times the strength of its modest regular army. My goal is far bolder: we must aim for a trained reserve that is not a fraction of our regular forces but three times their size. Achieving this will require a generational pivot, but it offers the only cost-effective way to restore the strategic depth this nation has neglected for far too long.

Numbers, though, are the easy part. I would not have the House think I am merely asking for a longer list of names. A reservist without equipment, training days and a drill hall to train in is not a capability, and here our record is dismal. The Public Accounts Committee found that the volunteer estate, the reserve centres on which all this depends, is in what the department calls “managed decline”. The reserve estate optimisation programme, REOP, has all but stopped. Tranche 1 was delivered, but the funding bid for tranche 2 failed and had to be rebid, and the department has still not secured funding for the phases beyond. Yet the department’s own evidence to that committee was that this estate is the critical enabler of the very reserve growth the review promises. We have written the ambition and declined to pay for the foundations beneath it.

This is the habit I most want the Minister to break. When budgets tighten, the reserve is always the first to be raided because it is dispersed and part-time and, sadly, too many decisions affecting it are taken by regulars. If the reserve is genuinely part of the first echelon, as the review implies, because our regular forces are so small, then it cannot also be the balancing item. You cannot ask a formation to be ready to mobilise while treating its training, equipment and accommodation as discretionary spending.

This matters most for the mission closest to home. Homeland defence and national resilience are not some additional burden for the reserve. They are its natural work. It is the reserve that is local, dispersed and embedded in every county. These are the people who would guard critical national infrastructure or reinforce the response to a flood, a cyber attack or an act of sabotage, drawing on their skills and experience from their civilian life. Every reserve centre we allow quietly to decay is a node of national resilience dismantled, and a link severed between the Armed Forces and the communities who must ultimately sustain them. If we are serious about resilience, the drill hall is not an overhead; it is infrastructure.

I add one further warning on the industrial base. Small and medium firms build the drones this plan celebrates. They are the least able to survive a Government who cannot make up their mind, and techUK warns that the delay to the publication of the defence investment plan has already forced firms in the supply chain to issue redundancy notices. You cannot switch an industrial base off and on. Once the engineers are gone, they are gone, and our allies see all this. The Public Accounts Committee has warned that the delay has damaged our credibility with the very partners the review tells us to put first. “NATO first” is good and the right doctrine, shared across this House, and I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, in his place. However, a nation ranked 31st out of 32 on NATO’s own scorecard is practising “NATO first” in the press release and “NATO last” in the plan.

I have three questions for the Minister. First, when will the £4.7 billion of unfunded commitment be confirmed and, until it is, why should the House treat this as a funded plan? Secondly, will the Government raise their ambition on the reserves well beyond 20% and will they fund the volunteer estate and the training and equipment on which such growth depends? Thirdly, given that the sharpest risk is placed before 2028, what capability will reach the front line inside that window?

I tabled this Motion not to embarrass the Government but because the distance between our words and our capability is now visible to our adversaries as well as our friends, and because the years in which that distance matters most are these ones, not some comfortable decade hence. We spend enough to stand third in the alliance. We should be able to field far more than 31st. The task is not to spend more in 2035. It is to spend well, spend diligently and spend now. I beg to move.

15:20

[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for securing this important debate. He speaks with great authority, particularly about the Reserve Forces. I agree with everything he said about that subject and congratulate him on his service.

I speak to employers and employers’ organisations who are keen to support our reserves. I take this opportunity to once again talk up the role of the voluntary reserve. They give us a continually refreshing source of capability and long-term resilience. They are central to our Armed Forces’ present and future capability to defend and deter, and they need to be nurtured. Employers need support to shoulder their share of responsibility. I ask the Government once again to continue to encourage more employers to take on reservists. I look forward to progress reports on the SDR’s medium-term aim of seeing the active reserve expanded by 20%, although I acknowledge that the ambitions of the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, go beyond that.

The subject of this debate raises huge questions about national priorities in an era of new external threats. Other speakers in this debate are far more qualified than I am to speak about matters of national security and war-fighting readiness, but I can comment on one essential component of national resilience: the role of the defence industry, which the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, already touched on. The future effectiveness of the UK’s Armed Forces depends in large measure on their access to platforms, munitions, cutting-edge skills and capabilities that match the challenge of modern warfare and deterrence.

The SDR said that the defence industry must play an indispensable enabling role. It said that our Armed Forces needed to be underwritten by a thriving and resilient industry, ready to scale and innovate. As we meet today, we are falling short of this ambition. The SDR called for changes in procurement practices. It said that industry should be partners, not clients, with companies engaged early in processes and rewarded for productivity and risk-taking. The Industry and Regulators Committee is currently looking at this. The evidence the committee has heard so far chimes with what I have been told separately by defence companies, and by the people who work for them and their trade unions.

Prime contractors have told me about their supply chain vulnerabilities. They have talked about problems in sustaining UK suppliers where they cannot provide predictability to smaller companies, and they are all too aware of MoD bureaucracy that stifles innovation and speed. This is fundamental to today’s debate. Down the chain of dependencies, the capability of the Armed Forces is tied to the strength of the defence industry’s sovereign supplier ecosystem. Safeguarding these small businesses is critical to national security and not a secondary consideration.

The SDR asked the MoD to develop a support package for industrial partners and remove barriers to collaboration. I invite the Minister to tell the House what progress is being made towards this goal.

In conclusion, I note with great joy today’s announcement of a new partnership with 35 universities to boost defence skills and research. I have met many graduates and apprentices in defence companies who tell me that their universities and schools did not encourage them to seek careers in the defence industry. I invite the Minister to take that back to colleagues.

15:24

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, the most obvious and urgent thing to say about military capability is that we have nothing like enough of it, either now or as currently planned for the future. This must be addressed as a matter of urgency but, in the limited time available to us in this debate, I want to make three points about the nature of those capabilities.

First, I warn against oversimplification when considering future force structures. Recent debate has focused on the need for much greater numbers of uncrewed and, in some cases, autonomous vehicles in all three environments—what are commonly but inaccurately termed drones. I agree with the general proposition, but such vehicles are not the solution to everything. Ukrainians have used them very successfully to make up for their relative shortage of front-line personnel, and we can certainly employ them to create more mass. They will be a key feature of the future force mix, but they will form part of the force structure, not the whole of it. It is crucial that we adopt transformational technologies, but we should not imagine that any one of them will solve all our problems.

Secondly, whatever capabilities we have at the start of any high-intensity conflict, they will not be sufficient to sustain our effort through to victory. Some, perhaps much of them, will be destroyed in the early fighting and will have to be replaced. At the same time, technological developments and enemy initiatives will force us to adapt accordingly. It is worth remembering that many of the capabilities the Ukrainians are employing so successfully against Russia today did not exist four years ago. Therefore, we will need an agile, innovative and rapidly scalable industrial base that can support such an effort—not just traditional defence companies but the high technology sector more widely. This will require a substantial and steady stream of investment over time to underpin the necessary research and development and, importantly, to attract the necessary private sector investment.

Finally, I warn against focusing solely on capital investment. Military capability requires not just the right equipment but the people who can operate it effectively in the most demanding and dangerous conditions. That means that both regulars and reserves need regular and rigorous training. Without it, we will be sending them into combat inadequately prepared for what they will face. This not only weakens our war-fighting effectiveness but exposes our people to unnecessarily high risk. This would be an act of criminal negligence.

Our training requires not just equipment but the fuel, the spares and the other support necessary for its operation. This is paid for by resource funding, not capital. Such funding is under pressure and, despite some rebalancing in the investment plan, it remains insufficient. Our people are already inadequately trained for high-intensity conflict. In-year pressure on the defence budget means that this will get worse. I understand that the MoD can do little about the problem in the current financial year, but I ask the Minister to assure the House that the position will be transformed in future years. The Government simply cannot go on failing our people and the country more widely in this way.

Most of what I have urged—I could have urged much more—comes down to funding. The settlement in the defence investment plan was inadequate and incoherent in the light of the commitment that the Government have rightly made to NATO. This failure endangers us all and it must be put right very quickly.

15:28

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very great honour to follow the noble and gallant Lord. I find myself in no man’s land, squeezed between a former Chief of the Defence Staff and a valedictory Bishop, so I shall try to navigate as best I can through what could be dangerous territory.

I particularly welcome back my noble friend Lord Harlech; it is very good to see him. He was sent to the scrapheap. The REME have got hold of him, reconditioned him and polished him up. He has come back to serve on these Benches and we will get a lot of usage from him over the coming years, of that I am certain.

I draw attention—not only because I need to under the rules of the House but because it is appropriate to our deliberations this afternoon—to my involvement with BOKA, a company dedicated to security and defence, aerospace and space, sovereign resilience, AI and quantum. I chair the investment committee of that company, which is involved in many of the technologies that we have been discussing and will continue to discuss this afternoon.

I listened carefully to what the noble and gallant Lord just said, and he is right. I suspect that many of the speeches this afternoon will dwell on similar topics to underscore the fact that there is a profound change in the economics of warfare. The demand from defence comes from changing defence patterns resulting from our most recent experiences in Ukraine and Iran—two very different military scenarios, but with some common themes.

We are now witnessing a rapid pace of newly iterating technologies and attributable systems. These act as force multipliers to defence forces that are struggling with recruitment, and they assist in combating new threats in both conventional war-fighting and in the grey zone, such as the cyber domain. As such, defence procurement must be more focused on annualised budgeting with agile deployment and testing. It must rely more readily on partnering with private capital not only to share the burden of finance but to assist with the proper due diligence of new technologies in quick time. Further, the larger, exquisite systems will require dedicated sovereign funds for longer-term procurement cycles, but the number of items procured is likely to fall over the next decade.

In conclusion, I remain unconvinced that we have properly addressed and adapted our procurement policy in a rapidly changing environment. We need to be smarter and quicker. Our Armed Forces need equipment now and simply cannot wait for long-term projects to be realised. The funding of this sea change, which is what is required, will require a change in Treasury thinking, without which none of the desired changes will be achievable. It also requires leadership from the new, as yet untested Prime Minister. Tackling the country’s economy and unsustainable welfare budget must be his priority, without which the Government will simply be unable to fund the spending on defence we need in order both to honour our international commitments and to ensure the safety of our own people.

15:32

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for bringing this debate. Let me begin my valedictory address by making it clear that it is not my intention to advise His Majesty’s Government on the number of dreadnought battleships they should be laying down or what the future of the Blue Streak missile programme should be. I wish to address some wider issues that I believe are directly relevant to our future capability and which arise out of our current situation.

Quoting from the Global Peace Index 2026, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich reminded the House during a debate on the Armed Forces Bill on 6 July that

“the world has continued its longstanding trajectory of deteriorating peacefulness”.

It has always been my contention that, since the UK left the European Union, the costs of our security, diplomatic efforts and cultural reach will need to rise, since we no longer benefit from the partnership and pooled resources that the union provides. Instead, our defence spending has stagnated and NATO is in difficulty, with the United States now in unpredictable mode. We are planning to reduce the Diplomatic Service, and the BBC and other major cultural players continue to make cuts.

I appreciate that, as we shall hear, a different trajectory is planned for UK defence. A good deal will be said about the changing nature of warfare in the light of the appalling assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine by President Putin. However, the continued reduction in what we used to call manpower across all three services is worrying because, at the end of the day, fearful decisions need to be taken by human beings, and some situations should be addressed only by a human presence, not an AI-driven remote response. AI and drones are no substitute for physicality, presence and engagement.

It may seem strange to hint at a moral dimension in a business which is never decorous or happy, but the basis of international humanitarian law in conduct of war finds its origin in the Christian doctrine of a just war with its tests of necessity, proportionality and restraint. The Geneva conventions, our more elaborate and contemporary responses, were themselves born of fearful conflict and barbarity, not wishful thinking. Yet increasingly, in conflicts such as in Sudan, in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and, I so regret to say it, in the manner in which Israel has responded to the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, international law is set aside for reasons of expediency, and with appalling results and much innocent suffering, not least in Gaza. That is why the other issues I alluded to, such as the size and effectiveness of our diplomatic service, matter, and why good quality journalism matters, including British journalism and British values in the form of the BBC, to help uphold international rules, because when these become degraded, people suffer, and we all become less safe.

Finally, I wish to thank the House for the consideration given to the Lords spiritual and to me, for the great privilege of serving here, for the high calling of your Lordships and for the dedication of our staff, not least the doorkeepers, many of whom served in our Armed Forces. As someone who has led your Lordships in prayer at the beginning of business, I am reminded of the words of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, that “the largest party in this House is the praying party”. I give thanks for that and assure all your Lordships of my continued prayers.

15:37

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a distinct privilege to rise in your Lordships’ House, particularly when the subject matter before us concerns the key priority of any nation: the defence and security of the realm in an era of unprecedented global volatility and conflict.

However, before I turn to our physical defences, it is my great honour to pay tribute to a defender of a different kind, one who has spent years fortifying the moral and spiritual armour of our nation. I refer of course to the right reverend Prelate—and my dear friend—the Bishop of Southwark, and I congratulate him on a poignant and reflective valedictory speech.

I feel immense warmth towards the right reverend Prelate and his neighbourly affection, for he is the person who is the spiritual guide for many of the good people of Wimbledon—indeed, he is the shepherd, as many remind me. I have always maintained that trying to guide people spiritually, especially when they are quite diverse, including the occasionally highly opinionated folk of south London, requires a level of tactical patience, strategic diplomacy and sheer resilience that would challenge any seasoned peacekeeping commander around the world. Yet, the right reverend Prelate has done so for over 15 years with quiet but effective diplomacy and, as we have seen again today, boundless grace and deep humility.

In this House, the right reverend Prelate has been a reassuring and welcome presence. He has never been one, as we have heard again today, to shy away from what I would call difficult issues. Indeed, over many years in the very place where the Minister sits, I was on the receiving end of his quiet but very effective challenges to the Government of the day. He has consistently championed the homeless, the marginalised, and a cause that we share and which is incredibly close to my own heart. I live by the mantra that the greatest test of our own faith is when we stand by and for the faith and belief of others. He has lived by that. We have stood together on many platforms advocating for human rights, and I have always been struck, as I have already said, by his gentle yet effective moral clarity.

While the Ministry of Defence has frequently struggled with its logistics at times, the diocese of Southwark has operated with enviable precision under the right reverend Prelate’s stewardship. It has proved, perhaps, that faith can not only move mountains but manage complex organisations. We worked together when the right reverend Prelate was the lead bishop on the issues of the Middle East, and again—I quoted that mantra earlier—he stood for justice, not just for Christians or for the Jewish community but for the Muslim community, and he addressed the challenges both in Israel and Palestine with equality and justice.

Together, we worked with Archbishop Hosam of Jerusalem, a friend to us both. I was proud to lead on the issue of Christian persecution, where the support of the right reverend Prelate and others on the Spiritual Benches was vital. I am sure that I speak for all in this House when I say that we will miss deeply his wisdom, his pastoral warmth and his profound service to this House and to the nation. We wish him every blessing for his well-deserved retirement, which is with our sincere prayers.

Turning back to earthly challenges, I thank my noble friend Lord Harlech—we will hold the “gallant” for a moment or two, but I am sure that it is something for the future—for tabling this debate and join the chorus welcoming him back. When I look at the international horizon, I am reminded of my own time representing our nation and our interests globally. As a Foreign Minister, one learns very quickly the value of diplomatic tact. However, as any seasoned hand will tell you, diplomacy is greatly assisted when the person whom you are negotiating with knows that you have something more formidable behind you than a beautifully drafted joint communiqué. In my case, it was my noble friend Lady Goldie. We were a double act often on the world stage.

However, on a serious note, we find ourselves surveying a world that is, to put it in our customary British way, “highly complex”. To our east, state-based threats are no longer looming but are real and are redrawing borders. In maritime lanes around the world, we see state and non-state actors operating with technology that makes some of our procurement processes look positively glacial.

This brings me to the capabilities of our own, magnificent Armed Forces. Our men and women in uniform are, without a shadow of doubt, world class. Their courage, their adaptability and their professionalism are second to none. I have seen their work on the ground and witnessed what they did in places such as Afghanistan. The only issue, as has already been highlighted in this debate, is that there are ever fewer of them. We have a Navy of sublime sophistication—the noble Lord, Lord West, is in his place—but, on certain Tuesdays, one wonders whether we have enough hulls to cover the water that we are legally obliged to protect and to fulfil our duties to the treaties that we are signed up to.

Our defence procurement has historically operated on a philosophy that I can best describe as bespoke tailoring. We do not merely buy a helicopter; we commission a flying work of art, hand stitched by many committees, adjusted for 32 different eventualities and delivered precisely three years after the conflict that it was intended for has resolved itself. The Government’s own SDR is so ably led by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who I am delighted is in his place and who chairs the International Relations and Defence Committee which I am honoured to serve on. He highlighted this very issue of procurement. Yet I want to be fair. The SDR and the welcome and final publication of the delayed Defence Investment Plan is a move forward and shows that we are waking up to the reality of the challenges that we face in 2026. We are investing heavily in cyber, space and AI, areas where a well-placed line of code can do the work of an entire regiment. This is commendable, as is the £5 billion for drones.

Yet you cannot deter a hostile frigate with a sternly worded PowerPoint presentation. At some point, hard capability must mean physical presence, be it in the Middle East or defending the Falkland Islands. We are a nation that prides itself on punching above our weight. It is a marvellous face, but without that punch behind it having the force of our Armed Forces, you eventually bruise your knuckles. Our friends, but more importantly our foes, are looking at us very carefully.

We have rightly stood together in unity on Ukraine. I commend the Prime Minister’s comments today in Ukraine and thank him for his service in that area.

Let us continue to work together, as my noble friend Lord Harlech said, in supporting government steps to modernise. However, let us do it with a healthy dose of reality and realism. Let us ensure that when we speak of deterrence, we are talking about forces that are ready to be deployed today, equipped today and sustained for tomorrow. We need the defence readiness Bill. When will we see that?

Our adversaries are not waiting for the next strategic defence review to conclude. They are acting. When it comes to peace, the pen may be mightier than the sword, but it would be incredibly reassuring for all of us, in a typically British way, to have a highly sharp, fully serviced and readily available sword in the umbrella stand, just in case we need to deploy.

15:45

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Ahmad in congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark on his final speech. I hope he enjoys an excellent retirement and has every opportunity to go on worshipping God and doing his best to swell the congregations in our churches. I think he will find that easier when he is no longer encumbered by the necessary political compromises that have to be made in your Lordships’ House.

My noble friends have made the point that we do not have enough money for the defence budget, but nobody is asking why. A tremendous amount of money is being spent by this Government on welfare that is not achieving what it is intending. It is supposed to be lifting people out of poverty, and it is not; it is condemning people to poverty. There are enormous savings to be made in the welfare budget but, unfortunately, the Labour Party in the other place will not allow those reforms to go through. That has grave implications for our democracy, and I would be very worried if I were a member of the Labour Party. If it cannot fulfil its functions as a Government with the enormous majority that it has, one has to ask whether it would ever be worthy of forming a Government again. If I were in the Labour Party, I would be very worried about that.

This comes at a particularly unfortunate period in defence. There have been a lot of false forecasts of peace in Ukraine, but as the Ukrainians develop technology in the amazing way that they have and, with western help, develop longer-range missiles that can penetrate central facilities in Russia, I think we will eventually bring this conflict to an end. At that stage, NATO must ask who is going to fess up, come to the plate and say that they are prepared to help provide Ukraine with the essential security guarantees that it needs to ensure that Russia does not invade again. That is going to be a big test for NATO.

I look back to the Joint Expeditionary Force, which was established by NATO in south Wales in 2014. Two years later, two countries joined—Finland and Sweden—that were not members of NATO at the time. We could expand the Joint Expeditionary Force to become a nucleus of the coalition of the willing. I was on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly but was slung off when the Conservatives did so badly in the election. However, I gather from a former colleague that Poland might join the Joint Expeditionary Force. That would be very significant indeed; it would form the nucleus for a coalition of the willing that might be able to change the price of fish in European NATO, as we look to a future in which the United States plays a reduced role in defending European interests. You might have some sympathy with the United States when it reminds us that Russia has an economy smaller than that of Italy. It is therefore a great pity that we cannot properly fund our Armed Forces at this critical moment, when we should be setting an example to all our allies and not be laggards in the business.

15:50

[Baroness Antrobus (Lab)]

My Lords, I appreciate that this debate has already focused, and I am sure will continue to focus, on the challenges facing our Armed Forces—issues around funding, the defence investment plan and, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, eloquently argued, the role of our reserves. I declare an interest, as my husband is a reservist.

However, in the context of a strategic defence review that put NATO first, and a defence investment plan which headlined our NATO commitment as its first priority in stepping up UK leadership, I want to focus on our Armed Forces’ nuclear deterrent capability. Sir Adam Thomson, former UK permanent representative to NATO, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on Monday and made an important point that I wish to amplify in this Chamber.

The UK is one of only two European nuclear powers, and the only one that has committed its nuclear capability to NATO. In the DIP, our Government set out their key investment commitments, including to the UK nuclear deterrent. The plan committed to over £20 billion more investment in the defence nuclear enterprise over the next four years, compared with the previous four, to modernise the UK’s nuclear capabilities and the facilities that deliver them, including new submarines. This is a commitment that contributes significantly to European deterrence against our adversaries.

It also recommitted, following the original June 2025 announcement, to joining NATO’s dual-capable aircraft nuclear mission. This will see the Royal Air Force, in the form of the acquisition of F35A combat aircraft, returning to the airborne nuclear role it relinquished in 1998. In the last 12 months, I have reconvened some of our now-retired RAF “Cold War warriors” from the Tornado, Jaguar and Nimrod aircraft forces to distil lessons from that era. Although there are many differences—the weapon will not be a UK weapon, the technology has changed vastly, and the likely readiness commitment will be significantly less—there is also much to learn from the past. I, of course, say that as a history scholar.

The Chief of the Air Staff and the Chief of the Defence Staff have both talked about the need for the RAF to rediscover its “nuclear IQ”. Those who joined the RAF during the Cold War were fully aware that they were joining a nuclear-armed force and that they might be stationed at a nuclear-armed base, regardless of their branch or trade. Now, the RAF is constituted almost entirely of personnel who joined after the Cold War, during the era of wars of choice. Similarly, politicians and the public have lived through the decades of expeditionary warfare.

This future airborne capability—the theme of today’s debate being, of course, future capability—will add an important rung to the escalation ladder. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, wrote in a recent paper, co-edited with Daniel Skeffington,

“the stronger …the ‘ladder’ … – through the possession of credible capabilities on a sliding scale between small arms and strategic weapons – the stronger the deterrent effect”.

To conclude, there are many challenges facing our Armed Forces, but I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree that we should find, in Sir Adam’s words, “fresh ways” to emphasise the importance of our nuclear deterrent to the UK and to our NATO allies in Europe.

15:53

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harlech on introducing this debate. I join other noble Lords in wishing the right reverend Prelate the best for the future and in thanking him for his work and his valedictory speech.

I begin by commending the Lord Speaker’s lecture, delivered by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, yesterday evening. I encourage all noble Lords to read it, if they have not already. He posed a fundamental question: is Britain really safe? His answer was very clear: the threats that we face are real, they are growing, and meeting them will require urgency, resilience and sustained national resolve.

Our Armed Forces, regular and reserves, remain among the finest anywhere. But the question is not the quality of those who serve but whether they are being given the equipment, support, resources and training they need. The strategic defence review, led by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, recognised that Britain is responding to an immediate and growing threat, not preparing for a distant possibility. The Government’s acceptance of the recommendations is welcome. The challenge remains delivering on them at the pace that the security environment demands.

The Prime Minister has warned that Russia could pose a direct challenge to NATO before the end of this decade, a view echoed by NATO’s secretary-general. If that is the Government’s assessment, procurement and investment must reflect it. Yet some priority capabilities are not expected until the early 2030s. Every delay narrows our margin for deterrence.

The war in Ukraine has reinforced enduring lessons. Technological advantage remains essential, but so are ammunition, logistics, industrial capacity and the ability to sustain operations over time. Tomorrow’s technology cannot compensate for today’s shortages. Deterrence depends on forces that are trained, equipped and ready and on a resilient defence industrial base. Production cannot be expended overnight, skilled workers cannot be created in a crisis, and supply chains cannot be rebuilt once conflict has begun. Industry needs confidence that government decisions will be timely, consistent and backed by long-term commitment. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, has warned, we are running out of years. If the threats are accelerating, our response must accelerate too.

National security is not solely a Ministry of Defence responsibility. It also depends on a resilient energy supply, secure communication, cyber resilience and the protection of critical national infrastructure. Defence is now a whole of government and whole of society responsibility, requiring an honest conversation with the British people about national preparedness. Our allies will judge us, and our adversaries will too, not by the quality of our reviews but by our ability to deliver them. Britain’s influence rests on credibility, demonstrating that when we identify a threat, we have the resolve and the means to respond. Preparing for conflict is not about expecting war but preventing it. The stronger our deterrence, the less likely it is to be tested.

I have several questions for the Minister. First, what concrete steps are being taken to accelerate the implementation of the strategic defence review so that delivery matches the urgency of the threats we face? Secondly, how will the Government ensure that our Armed Forces have the equipment, munitions and industrial support they need before the end of this decade rather than after it? Thirdly, what are the Government doing to give the defence industry the confidence to invest in skills, production and innovation so that it can respond rapidly in a crisis? Finally, when will Parliament see a credible pathway to defence spending that matches today’s security challenges and enables the ambitions of the review to be realised?

Britain retains exceptional Armed Forces, world-class intelligence services, innovative defence industries and alliances that remain the cornerstone of our security. We understand the threats we face, and we know what we must do. The question now is whether we will deliver in time.

15:57

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, much has been said in recent months about the possibility of a Russian conflict with NATO. Such a war will be deterred if we and our allies react to strengthen our weak arms posture now. NATO’s potential military, economic and technical strength far exceeds that of any potential adversary. The challenge is to ensure that this strength is credible, visible and ready to deter any prospect of open conflict. Such determination must be led from the top of Governments. For the UK, a clear graph of intended progress to 3% then 3.5% is required, not ring-fenced with any “if fiscal conditions allow” type caveats of uncertainty.

As it takes two to tango, the assessment by the potential aggressor of their own warlike capabilities and chances of strategic success matter. If Russia were that opponent, what is there to learn from its fight with Ukraine? Far from being what was expected, namely, a quick conquest of Ukraine and a change to a Russian-subservient Government in Kyiv, the Ukrainians, after great difficulty and challenge, are now able, with much NATO help, to hold Russian advances and operate far into Russia itself, to Moscow and St Petersburg as well as into Crimea and elsewhere. Maybe Putin sacked some senior commanders for bringing him only bad news. Maybe their successors rely on holding their posts by reporting only good news from the front. Maybe Putin even feels that all adverse results reported reflect western propaganda and so cannot possibly be true, but what he feels and believes is what will drive him on.

While much of Putin’s available forces are fighting in Ukraine, there is much more uncommitted, with advanced capabilities in missile and maritime offence. Sub-conflict measures are already occurring and increasing in dangerous ways. But faced by a strong NATO alliance, would Russia believe it could wage and win a war of conquest, not just with arms but to achieve political mastery? One judgment might be that without the latter, the incentive to go further than sub-conflict measures may exist only if the NATO alliance appears to be weakening or even breaking apart.

While there are differences between last century’s Soviet belief in the worldwide spread of communism and today’s Russia, we learned from our spy Oleg Gordievsky of the Kremlin’s abiding view that NATO is an aggressor from its perspective. Since 1949, NATO has moved from the original 12-country transatlantic alliance to one of 32 that has grown and reached eastwards to the very borders of Russia, from its far north all the way down to Turkey—far too close to Mother Russia for its own sense of security. Now, NATO’s strong support of Ukraine and the US assault on Iran, with the expectation of NATO help, must only further alarm the Kremlin’s paranoia about NATO, so real and abiding tensions exist. It may not be possible to ease such confrontation in the military domain, but more might be done with arts, culture and sporting events to ease the existing tensions, and Putin is not immortal.

16:02

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, a week ago in the Times, Andy Burnham wrote that

“increasing our national security … will be my first priority”.

It made me ask: does he really mean this? This Government have had loads of top priorities. The current Prime Minister has said:

“Growth is the number one priority”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, told the House that the

“absolute priority for the Government”

is

“to have a water Bill”.—[Official Report, 6/1/26; col. 1046.]

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, disagreed: she told this House that “making creative careers accessible” was the Government’s “key priority”. I have a whole dossier of number one priorities tossed out by government Ministers, all utterly meaningless.

I have to ask myself: does Andy Burnham mean what he says? Is he really going to give a cast-iron guarantee that service chiefs will get the equipment and resources to meet our NATO commitments? Is he really prepared to make the money available, and for domestic programmes to take the hit—and, if so, which ones? In the annual spending round, Ministers have to pit the claims of their department against the competing claims of other departments. If one department is always to get its way, you would no longer be evaluating its bid for more money. By the way, which departments win and which lose does not always depend on a rational evaluation. It also depends on who has the political weight in the Government and the Cabinet.

I hope Andy Burnham means what he says and will throw his weight in support of defence, but that will mean standing up to his Back-Benchers, which the current Prime Minister has failed to do, most notably on welfare reform. He needs to do it. We have had warning after warning from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, about this. We are highly vulnerable to Russia on the warpath, not just potential military attack but attacks on our domestic infrastructure that could bring down our energy networks, our banking and financial systems and the day-to-day life of the whole country.

Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister next week. We will eventually have the opportunity to question and challenge the new Government in this House. The House has great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, so I very much hope that the Defence Minister in this House in the new Government will still be the noble Lord.

16:05

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I join with the noble Lord, Lord Swire, in welcoming the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, has been recycled; the value of that is before us this afternoon. We have talked repeatedly about percentages of GDP to be spent on defence. I do not like the concept of percentages of GDP. The amount of money you need to spend is what you need to spend, and some artificial percentage does not make much sense. We need to re-evaluate that.

I was fortunate enough to be present when President Zelensky came into this building in March. I attended the meeting in Committee Room 14; many noble Lords will have been there. He had a big screen and a laptop, and he was able to show us in real time what was happening on his own battle-front: what was coming in and what was going out. There were four other laptops in Ukraine that were doing the same thing. Most of us went to that meeting on the understanding and acceptance that he presumably wanted more money or more ammunition. No—he was selling at that meeting, not begging. With his colleagues, he has developed a wartime economy. He has been agile and innovative, not simply for commercial reasons but out of sheer necessity to survive.

The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, started his lecture last night by mentioning that we are not engaging in a meaningful conversation with the general public on what confronts us. This is not a political thing; the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, opened the debate with that point. This goes back 40 years, to the end of the Cold War. We were all very happy, whether we were Ministers or whatever, to spend the money on things that we felt were important—non-defence matters such as education, welfare or health. We were all happy to do that and all allowed it to happen, so we are not throwing stones here, but we need to recycle—in our own minds, and in the minds of the general public—the issues that confront us now.

I do not believe that Putin’s tanks will roll up Whitehall or that his submarines will come up the Thames—although most of us would hardly notice if they did. The fact is that we do not have the right mindsets. We need to engage with the public to educate people on what we are confronted with: the damage that can be done to our infrastructure, such as the undersea cables on which so much of our wealth and commerce is dependent. Hardly a day goes by when we do not have a photograph in the paper of some ship or other that has been decommissioned or is laid up in a port somewhere. It is not good enough. We have to start a conversation, and I hope the new Prime Minister will do that, because we have to get the people onside. Unfortunately, that means difficult choices. We will have to rethink the post-Cold War spending profile and begin to get our heads around the fact that we face an enemy driven not by logic but by ideology.

16:09

[Lord Risby (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is particularly timely as the Farnborough International Airshow begins on Monday. We do indeed live in a volatile and dangerous age, but there is no Member of your Lordships’ House who cannot recognise that, over time, our influence on the world stage has been reducing. At the heart of this has been an anaemic economy and an insufficiently sizeable and focused defence budget.

Nowhere is the lack of direction more glaring than in the space domain—the very central nervous system of modern high-intensity warfare. Instead of accelerating our surveillance satellite programmes, a new plan cancels critical narrowband communication networks. By failing to secure our own space infrastructure, our future forces will risk being dependent on non-sovereign networks controlled by external providers. Furthermore, our approach is drifting. Space resilience is heavily cited in official documents but remains entirely unfocused, lacking specific variable requirements for system recovery and capability generation. Worryingly, we are falling critically out of step with the United States, which has made a fundamental conceptual shift towards an offensive space control mindset.

The strategic defence review called space

“a domain that is central to warfighting”.

Indeed, rapidly increasing congestion in space means that there are now 16,000 satellites compared with 3,000 five years ago, and 100,000 are expected by 2030, offering nefarious actors more opportunity to conceal their activities. In the context of the international environment, space can no longer be viewed merely as an enabler of other domains. It is a critical war-fighting domain and the backbone of our critical national infrastructure.

Underpinning developments in fifth generation warfare is the role that space-based assets play. This is important, particularly as digitalisation increases, delivering precise navigation, instant communications, global surveillance and early missile warning systems. Without space-based assets, co-ordinating fast-paced multidomain operations and combined arms manoeuvres becomes very difficult. The recent defence investment plan announced that the incoming Skynet 6 narrowband satellite system would not proceed. Cancelling Skynet 6A will have a demonstrably adverse effect. This is so disappointing when many in the industry felt that, for three years, the significance of this had been understood clearly by government.

By contrast, if we want a model of a country that has really understood the challenges, we turn to Poland. It is investing 4.5% of its GDP into hard and visible capacity, helping to create greater defence capability from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Even Germany, casting off the Merkel inheritance, is projected to spend more on defence than France and the United Kingdom put together, without the huge debt situation in both countries. Recently, I had the chance to learn all about this by talking with government officials who are in Poland. What was spelled out was impressive yet depressing, because this great success has arisen from fiscal and pro-business policies which had stimulated growth in the private sector. For us, the lessons are obvious.

16:13

[Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on securing this debate, which is essential to the future of our country. I thank him for his service, as I thank all our Armed Forces volunteers for theirs. I associate myself with many of the comments he made in his opening remarks.

I begin with a simple truth: the world has already changed, but our defence capabilities have not kept pace. The threats we face are no longer neatly divided into war and peace, foreign and domestic, military and civilian; they are hybrid, continuous, complex and aimed at undermining the very resilience of our society. Across Europe and beyond, nations have recognised this shift. Finland’s total defence, Sweden’s civil military integration, Israel’s Home Front Command and Singapore’s multi-pillar resilience doctrine all demonstrate one lesson: the defence of the nation is no longer the job of the Armed Forces alone; it is a job for the whole of society. Our Armed Forces remain world class, but they are being asked to do too much with too little in systems designed for a different era. We cannot meet today’s threats with yesterday’s structures. With the winds of political change in the air, I want to argue for three radical shifts.

First, we must build a whole-of-nation resilience—not a patchwork of agencies or a set of disconnected emergency plans, but a statutory, integrated approach that brings together defence, civil contingencies, local government, critical national infrastructure and the private sector. Finland’s National Emergency Supply Agency shows just what is possible: strategic stockpiles, shared planning and clear duties on every sector. We need the same here: a UK resilience agency with real authority, real resources and real accountability.

Secondly, we must fuse civilian expertise with military capabilities. Our Armed Forces need engineers, cyber specialists, medics, logisticians and data scientists, but we cannot recruit and retain all of them inside the military. Other nations have solved this through dual-track service approaches, where civilians can be mobilised rapidly into defence roles that match their professional skills. I believe we should create a UK national reserve: a modern, flexible force that draws on civilian expertise, is trained for crises, both domestic and international, and is integrated into defence planning. That would be not conscription but a national capability-building exercise for every community and every nation in this country.

Thirdly, we must redesign command and co-ordination for the hybrid age. Israel’s Home Front Command integrates civilian protection directly into military planning, Japan’s self-defence forces train routinely with civilian disaster agencies, and Norway’s civil and military co-operation doctrine plans for peacetime, crisis and conflict. We need a UK equivalent: a joint civil-military resilience command, responsible for dealing with grey-zone threats, infrastructure protection and rapid mobilisation in times of crisis. It should sit alongside the military’s Strategic Command with equal status and a clear mandate.

If we are serious about future capability, we must stop imagining defence as something that happens over there. Cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and the undermining of trust in institutions is all happening now to our people, our economy and our country. Our Armed Forces will remain essential, but they cannot and should not be asked to defend the nation alone. Modern threats demand that we build a system where every sector, every skill and every citizen contributes to the security and resilience of this United Kingdom. That is the scale of ambition we need and the future capability that our times demand.

16:17

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I join with others in thanking my noble friend Lord Harlech for initiating this debate. This House meets to consider a question that goes to the very heart of our future national security. Just weeks ago, the Chief of the Defence Staff publicly stated that the United Kingdom is running out of time to boost its Armed Forces, and that our adversaries are definitely “raising the stakes” and risk “crossing a line”.

Let us be clear: this is not a distant, hypothetical threat; it is a present reality. Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its fifth year; our critical infrastructure is being tested daily in cyber space and beneath our sea, and there is an assumption that the sustained decades of relative peace in Europe no longer hold. Meanwhile, the conflict in Iran has shown how trade routes can be easily disrupted and the prosperity of our nation threatened by the closure of vital international waterways that we might be required to help unplug. We must resist the temptation to treat defence policy as a matter of budgets and spreadsheets alone. To do so would be to diminish what is really at stake: the ability of this country to keep its people safe, honour its alliances and deter those who would do us harm.

This is a moment for not only ambition but candour, because the hard truth is that our war-fighting readiness has been degraded for years. It did not happen in a single Parliament and it will not be restored by a single spending review or investment plan. It is a structural problem and it demands a structural answer. The defence investment plan, which was published only recently, was meant to deliver the strategic defence review’s vision of a stronger Army, a hybrid Navy and a next-generation Air Force, yet even the Government’s own assessment points to a funding gap of billions of pounds in the years ahead, as decisions will need to be made about discretionary spending.

Even after the DIP, our defence spending will reach only 2.7% of GDP by 2027-28. This is a welcome commitment but, given that we have an objective to reach 3% in the next Parliament and 3.5% in “core defence” by 2035 to align with our NATO commitments—with no sense of where the money will come from—we are entitled to be concerned that our Armed Forces will be short-changed. Intentions and actual capabilities are not the same.

Of particular concern must be that the British Army now stands at its smallest size since the start of the Napoleonic Wars over two centuries ago. The Royal Navy is at its smallest size since the mid-17th century. We all understand and appreciate that the nature of warfare has changed and that size does not necessarily matter, but the ability to project power clearly still does. For all the technological advances promised in the DIP, mass will still count for something, and there are fears that here we are falling behind. We rightly welcome new investment in drones and autonomous systems, in the Dreadnought programme and in AUKUS. These are opportunities to modernise, to deter and to protect those who serve. Let us be honest, however: the scale of the challenge ahead means that we are beyond easy answers. Rebuilding warfighting readiness cannot happen overnight and requires a laser focus that has eluded us—by choice or by neglect—for generations.

Today, therefore, as we take note of the future capability of our Armed Forces in the current international situation, let us also use this debate as a moment of real scrutiny and ensure that we support whatever measures are required so that the men and women of our military have the capability, the equipment and the support they need to keep this country safe.

16:22

[Lord Magan of Castletown (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harlech for initiating this debate. I declare my interest: my grandfather was a soldier, my father was a soldier, my brother was a soldier and my son was a soldier. My son Edward, a captain in the Irish Guards, saw active service in the second Gulf War in Basra, Iraq, and subsequently served with Special Forces in Afghanistan.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, widely respected on all sides of this House, has spoken movingly about members of his own family who served the Crown in conflict. He will recognise, as all serving families necessarily have to, the traumas of uncertainty, apprehension and fear, hoping the telephone is not going to ring, which are part and parcel of such family involvement and commitment. One does not forget those days of such very considerable anxiety. Yet, once again, we face the prospect that our own forces will find themselves increasingly on a front line where technology is changing the character of warfare at the fastest rate in history. The UK is woefully and inadequately prepared for the challenges now likely to be faced. Starmer’s Administration have comprehensively failed to meet their responsibilities for the very necessary further rapid enhancement of the defence of the realm.

It is all the more notable that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has presided with increasing exasperation over the extensive debates held in this House on the June 2025 strategic defence review and, subsequently, the long-delayed defence investment plan, which certainly has not, as was promised, delivered a vision of warfaring readiness and transformation over the next 10 years and beyond. In fact, the delayed publication of the defence investment plan in June this year was so poorly received that it led to the immediate resignation of John Healey as Secretary of State for Defence and of the Defence Minister Al Carns, who said that the defence investment plan was

“not built for the threat we face. It is neither transformative … nor sufficiently funded”.

That is a damning indictment of a wholly inadequate, much-delayed priority policy requirement.

Further, Al Carns asked, what will Putin do? When Russia finds itself cornered, it escalates. I believe that Russia will escalate horizontally, sending drones over a NATO country, daring the alliance to respond. We are on the brink of serious conflict, in which the lives of our service men and women are going to be lost, maybe at scale. Responsibility for such potentially disastrous procrastination, prevarication and indecision lies fairly and squarely with outgoing Prime Minister Starmer. The dangers now have to be faced rigorously. There is no time to be lost by incoming Prime Minister Burnham.

First, the total funding package of £15 billion, one-third of which is unfunded—heinous fiscal legerdemain—is woefully inadequate. The Chief of the Defence Staff has made it clear that £28 billion in extra funding is the minimum requirement, committed and delivered on time. Secondly, under the current plan, we will be spending just under 2.7% of GDP on defence in 2030; 3% was the target. John Healey, the outgoing Defence Secretary, has said that we need a target date for 3% and a

“clear, credible funding plan to meet our NATO commitment of 3.5% … by 2035”.

Thirdly, it must be remembered that, at the height of the Cold War, we were committing 5% of GDP to the defence budget. We can do it, but this Labour Administration’s priorities need to be straightened out fast. Fourthly, it is essential that the £10 billion munitions plan is reinstated. It is necessary to rebuild our munitions stockpile, now much depleted, particularly after the war in Ukraine. So where are you, Mr Burnham? Do not keep hiding. Come out and face the music. Show now that you truly have the mettle needed for equipping our forces—

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

I am sorry. Will the noble Lord wind up, please?

16:27

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for securing this debate. The level of engagement on a Thursday afternoon shows the interest in your Lordships’ House. The debate has been particularly useful in that, unlike nearly all the discussion in the other place and in the media, it has not just focused on, as the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, framed it, “What are we spending?” but rather on “What are we using defence and security money for?” Is it on capabilities that make us more secure, or is it driven by imperatives of private profit or pride?

There is one form of defence spending to which I want to draw attention and to question. It is one that noble Lords who are regular Tube users here at Westminster Station will know. As we descend the escalators, we are confronted by, blared at by, a shiny advert for BAE Systems. Future jet fighters; Navy capabilities: the subject occasionally varies, but, for the seven years that I have been in this House, that prime and no doubt very expensive advertising spot has been permanently occupied by BAE Systems. Ultimately, of course, the cost of that no doubt very expensive, endless advertisement, directed at a small number of Tube users—parliamentarians and officials—is part of our defence budget. But it is not, I suggest, spending that makes us any safer.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark for, in his valedictory speech, introducing another point that I want to make: that our security is about much more than defence. Soft power, diplomacy and the international service provided by the BBC World Service are crucial, and all this together needs to be treated as a package. Last week, I put to the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, that the FCDO was in turmoil and the noble Baroness denied it fervently. Well, this morning, I was on the picket line in King Charles Street with PCS members who are FCDO staff, expressing their anger and fear about the turmoil—and that very clearly is an accurate word—in the department. That is a workers’ rights issue, disappointing to all there in the light of having a Labour Government, but it is also a security issue for us all.

I will pick up another point, from noble Lords on the Conservative Benches, who have suggested that the welfare budget must be cut to allow for more defence spending. Yet we have also heard, occasionally from the Conservative Benches and from around the House, about the most basic defence resources of all—human capability and human will. The foundations of our welfare system were laid after the Boer War, with an awareness that child poverty and general deprivation meant that many young men were unfit to serve. If people have not been cared for by society and have been left without the basic resources to live decently, while they see the few—the “have-yachts”—harvesting the resources that might have been sustaining them, that is not going to build the will, let alone the physical capability, to stand up to the threats we face.

On defence procurement, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, we have huge problems with the tradition, established over decades, of commissioning works of art, and, I would add, making decisions for economic rather than military reasons. We often heard from the previous Government—there are similar hints from the incoming one—that they used defence spending as a form of economic development funding. But that risks doing two things badly, rather than focusing on the activity that is supposed to be the spending’s purpose.

16:32

[Lord Mott (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, which was secured and opened so powerfully by my noble friend Lord Harlech. I begin by referring the House to the register of interests, in particular my support for the charity Ukrainian Action, which provides humanitarian assistance, recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine. When you visit Ukraine, you see first hand not only the destruction caused by Russia’s illegal invasion but something else: I saw a country that continues to innovate, to manufacture and to adapt, despite fighting a war for its very survival. That resilience deserves not only our admiration but our attention, because Ukraine is no longer simply a recipient of military assistance; it has become one of Europe’s foremost centres of defence innovation, as highlighted earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Empey.

One of the defining lessons of this conflict is that innovation has become a strategic capability in its own right. Modern warfare is no longer determined solely by who possesses the most sophisticated equipment, but increasingly by who can improve it most quickly. Ukraine has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to shorten the cycle between identifying a problem on the battlefield, developing a solution, testing it under operational conditions and rapidly scaling production. That culture of continuous innovation is something all Ukraine’s allies should be studying carefully. I believe that Britain has much to learn from Ukraine, and Ukraine has benefited from our support.

That is why I believe the next phase of our partnership should place greater emphasis on defence industrial co-operation. The United Kingdom possesses one of the world’s leading defence technology sectors. Alongside our established defence companies, we have innovative SMEs developing autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and electronic warfare capabilities. These businesses have enormous expertise to offer, yet many tell us that procurement remains slow, that barriers remain high and that opportunities to work alongside Ukrainian partners are often more difficult than they should be. Of course, there must always be appropriate safeguards around defence exports, technology transfer and national security. No one would argue otherwise, but speed has become a capability in its own right, and procurement systems designed for peacetime must continue to evolve if they are to keep pace with modern conflict.

Ukraine is already moving in this direction. Earlier this month it expanded its drone deal framework, creating long-term partnerships centred on joint production, technology transfer, industrial co-operation and significantly faster approval processes for participating partners. More than 20 further countries are now in discussions on joining similar arrangements.

At the same time, only this week the European Union announced a new defence industrial partnership with Ukraine, recognising that it is no longer simply receiving capability but helping to shape Europe’s future defence industrial base. Our defence industry has much to contribute. Can the Minister update the House on what discussions the Government have had with Ukraine about establishing a similarly deep defence industrial partnership with the United Kingdom—one that enables greater collaboration between British defence technology companies and Ukrainian partners and supports faster technology transfer, joint production and defence exports where appropriate—including the status of the ongoing negotiations for the UK to join the drone deal?

Ukraine continues to defend not only its own sovereignty but the security of Europe. It also demonstrates remarkable ingenuity, resourcefulness and technological innovation under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. We should continue standing with Ukraine. We should continue learning from Ukraine, and we should build with Ukraine.

16:36

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on initiating this debate. I apologise for starting with something that he might feel he left out, because I am inviting this House to remember 1968. Quite a number of us will remember it, but I am not sure how many noble Lords will remember where they were on 21 August 1968 and how they felt that day. I do remember. I lived in a small Bavarian village, about 80 miles from the Czech border. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries started to invade Czechoslovakia, and the tanks started rolling. We did not know if the tanks would stop at the border, but we listened to the World Service as the one reliable source of information. We did not need to be persuaded that defence was important or that there were bad actors out there, or that at some stage people would have to give their lives to defend our values and what we stood for.

Today we are discussing the future capability of the Armed Forces against a slightly different backdrop. We should remember that the Armed Forces do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of a whole society and need its support, because true resilience requires a complete approach from every sector. It also means that if you spend more money on defence, then you forgo spending on other things. Military capability requires an underpinning of soldiers and the right equipment, and I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord West, because I am not asking for more ships, even though I am an Honorary Captain in the Royal Navy. However, maritime resilience is also important.

I am glad that, if the papers are to be believed, we are starting a national resilience campaign and that later this year the Government will hold the largest national home defence exercise since the Cold War. There will be new guidance for schools and colleges to teach children how to stay safe in emergencies. As an aside, after we knew that the tanks had stopped rolling at the Czech border, in those days, between finishing O-levels and getting the results, you did training on what to do in the case of nuclear attack or how to administer first aid, and general resilience training. That taught me that this does not require a single conversation. We have been promised a national conversation. It cannot be a one-off exercise because the public conversation has to be ongoing.

I also urge that we stop assessing risk, based what we think we can afford. It has to start with what the real risk is. Unless we have defined our national values and can protect them, we cannot defend or protect our national interests. We need to ask where our food, energy and medicine come from. I am very taken by the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, of pulling all this together.

The threats are real, not imaginary, and they are here now. We said we were going to be war-ready by 2029, but we have not explained to the public in a way they can fully engage with why we need to be war-ready by 2029. I am therefore asking the Minister for a long-term strategic plan on how we will engage with the public on an ongoing basis. Because we are an island, that kind of threat sometimes seems remote. We seem to think that bad things happen only to other people and somehow it will pass us by. We do not have that guarantee. We need public support for the Armed Forces and to be prepared to forgo spending on some things which we value, but we need to value defence even more.

16:40

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Harlech of the Coldstream Guards for securing this debate and I thank the Minister for hosting us with such courtesy, as he always does.

I start by noting that the strategic defence review presented our defence position very clearly last year, but at that time made almost no commitments to expenditure and, fatefully, made just a reference to an ambition for 3% of GDP as being a kind of soft target. The Government at the time accepted all the recommendations of the strategic defence review, as noble Lords will remember. Notwithstanding their acceptance, it turned out that expenditure and the position of the public finances were central to the problem, and became central, alas, to the last Prime Minister’s fate.

We might ask how that came to be. Possibly rather unhelpfully for the Government, the OBR put out its financial sustainability report in July, which explains quite clearly that the public finances are on an unsustainable trajectory. That is because, as we know, and as we often talk about in this House, we are deficit financing the Government at the moment. The gap between the amount we raise in taxation and what we spend is very wide, and it is risky for the Government to be funding on that basis. We will be raising £150 billion of new money for the Government in debt this year, which is much more than we spend on defence, just in the current deficit. We are at quite a risky, delicate moment.

The need for defence arises at just the moment when the OBR points out that we are in no position to meet economic—or any other—shocks to public finances. It is a risky moment, not only because the Government are funding all the time in the government debt markets but because of inflation, the foreign exchange and growth. All of these factors lie well beyond this debate, but they place fundamental risk on us, just as the defence challenge does. It is very hard to know how we are going to fund defence in the next few years.

The Government have promised to consolidate the public finances by 2031 or so. That probably marks the limit of where deficit financing is going and the limit for the next Administration of what they can do. They cannot go much further than this promise of debt consolidation. By the way, that will still mean that we are deficit financing in the 2030s but just to a more modest level—but let us assume it is the limit.

Against that backdrop, the OBR took a look at what would happen in the coming years. Its approach was to ask why we do not just keep all the variables and expectations of public expenditure where they are and not change anything. This is not realistic, if you think about it. It accepts all the promises made on public expenditure as they are and expects all the spending on net zero, for example, to be unchanged.

The one variable that the OBR changes—which shows that the OBR itself is part of the national conversation about which the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, spoke—is that it talks about the need for defence. It says that defence spending is likely to pass 3.5% of GDP in the early 2030s and may go to 5%. At 5%, defence spending in the UK would be similar to where it is in Germany today, all of which is to say that it is completely unsustainable and completely unknown, and a degree of change will have to come. The clue for that change is in this national conversation.

I end by saying that this is a moment of opportunity for the Government, where we could restart a conversation on public finances and defence at the same time.

16:44

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I join everybody in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for introducing this debate and for the non-political way in which he did so. Across the whole debate and from all sides, we have recognised that the threat is real and our preparedness is inadequate—that is the message we are getting across.

In the fourth century AD, Vegetius said,

“si vis pacem, para bellum”—

if you want peace, prepare for war. That is precisely the point of deterrence. Our Armed Forces, as everybody has said, are highly professional and a credit to our nation. However, the peace dividend has left us seriously depleted in numbers and capability. As a number of Members have noted, the Government have talked about starting a national conversation, as did the strategic defence review—but where is it and what is it? Denmark has established a Ministry of Resilience and Preparedness and, as the noble Lord opposite said, other countries have engaged in preparing something like this. We have talked about it but we are not doing it, so can the Minister give us an indication of exactly when this will happen?

Preparing the public requires engagement. Recent YouGov polling showed that three-quarters of Britons consider it “important” to strengthen both the UK’s hard and soft power, including approximately four in 10 who rate it “very important”. However, only a minority favour tax increases or spending cuts to fund greater spending on the British Armed Forces. That is what we need to engage in. I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for his excellent speech—we shall certainly miss him—and for raising the issue of soft power, which is absolutely relevant.

The International Relations and Defence Committee—of which I am a member alongside the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and which is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson—had an evidence session yesterday, in which I raised the issue of the cuts not just to soft power but to our diplomatic presence, in the wake of our aid cuts. I suggested that removing our diplomatic presence from across the world is not the way to protect our interests, which is what we are actually doing. Sir Matthew Rycroft, a former British ambassador and a former Permanent Secretary, was one of our witnesses. He said that

“diplomacy is more cost-effective than development, and development is more cost-effective than defence. One of the reasons why the aid cuts are so short-sighted is that they will end up costing us a lot more in the long run”.

Other witnesses echoed that and said that we have emerging powers around the world with which we need to engage. This is one way to reduce our defence risk and to engage support.

A helpful briefing from the Library has indicated the problem we have with strengthening our Armed Forces. That was an important point that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, raised. The Baltic and Scandinavian countries have got the balance right in a way that we have not: they have strengthened their reserves. A point has been made to me, although I am not a technical expert, that suggests, ironically, that the great sophistication of modern defence technology makes it much easier to operate—there is a black hole in there that you may not understand, but you can press the right buttons and you get results. That suggests that we can train many more people as reservists in ways that would be effective, which seems to be a real priority, as well as building civilian capacity for other crises. Russia will target our infrastructure—it is probably already doing so—and we need to have people across the country who know how to respond to that. That is a very important point that we need to address.

If you take the hardcore of the Budget, a huge chunk of it is going on updating our nuclear capacity—as the noble Baroness pointed out—on the AUKUS submarine project and on the Global Combat Air Programme. All those things are important, but they are very expensive, and that is squeezing out money that could go to other sectors. We need more warships, drone capacity, ammunition, missiles and ballistic missile defence. The question is to what extent we can deliver all those things. Yesterday, I asked: if we are going to phase out our warships, battleships and destroyers, what is our line of defence against ballistic missiles? That is the only defence we have at the moment, and “We’ll think of something” is not a good enough response—we need to know. The British public assume that we have such a defence, but the reality is that we will not if we do not replace the destroyers or find some other way of doing it.

I want to be positive. I know that the Minister will say what we are doing, and I will not dispute it: “We are building frigates, drone support ships and amphibious vessels”. All of that is good and essential. I do not want to suggest to the Government that we do not recognise that they are doing things, but, nevertheless, we need to deliver a lot of things very quickly. We cannot assume that we will not come under direct attack, as Russia probably regards the UK as its number one enemy and will exploit any perceived vulnerability. A debate such as this is a clear advert that we are vulnerable.

Everybody is saying that we could face an attack within three years. Is anything we are doing now equipping us to be able to counter such an attack? At the moment, I think the House feels fairly insecure that that is the case. The outcome of the Ukraine war is crucial, but how that will affect the UK needs to be assessed and countered. What key developments of home defence do we need to develop, as well as supporting NATO? As long as Ukraine is holding out, it is holding Russia back from other adventures that it would like to have.

A few weeks ago, I took part in an IPU visit to Lithuania. We were left in no doubt about the determination of the people of Lithuania, and of all the Baltic and Scandinavian states, to defend their freedom. They took us to the former KGB prison in Vilnius to show us the horrors they suffered under 50 years of Soviet occupation and their resolve never to suffer again. They have a defence budget of 5.5%. They know what the threat is and they are determined to maintain their freedom—but they know they need our support too.

We went to the Belarusian border and saw the fence erected not for defence but to counter Belarus’s actions. It is taking immigrants, whom it is recruiting from central Asia and Africa, to the border and forcing them across in order to disrupt society in democratic states. It is a ploy. It is advertising cheap flights to come to Russia or Belarus from wherever you are and have a good life. That good life consists of being put at gunpoint in a truck and forced over the border into the EU, where the immigrants will be deported. That is a pretty shocking situation and is, in effect, a state of war.

Knowing what we do of Russian activity around our shores and its hybrid and other interventions in our territory, it is clear that our deterrent and effective strength need to be increased. The question to the Government is: how fast can we move? How do we engage the public in a way that enables us to take decisions and take them with us? Will the Government consider defence bonds—this idea came from the Liberal Democrats, but has now gone wider—as one way of raising short-term funding? I completely accept that bonds are still borrowing, but if they are ring-fenced and targeted, it might be done in a way that the markets find acceptable and release money that might not otherwise come into the public sector. That seems a legitimate matter for consideration.

The Government will change on Monday. The new Prime Minister will have a whole raft of stuff on his doorstep. I was also at the meeting with Middle Eastern ambassadors—I think the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, was there too—who expressed their concern that our new Prime Minister seemed to be highly focused on domestic issues and not terribly engaged in international issues. The honest truth is that we do not know, but they were concerned that this was an indication of an inward-turning UK, reinforced by our diplomatic retreat, soft power cuts and Brexit. All those things are giving the impression that the UK is not serious about our international relations.

I am not suggesting that the Minister, or the other Ministers who engage in this, are not serious, but when you look at what we are doing, it does not stack up as a credible strategy for a country of our standing. We have had respect in the world and we have influence, but we are not using or playing to them very well and there is a lot more we could do. NATO is the pivot of our alliance, but we need to explain to people not only that we are here to respond to an attack on NATO but that we have the capacity to defend ourselves, with or without NATO, from the attacks that we are told we will face in two or three years’ time. In his response, the Minister needs to give us an indication of how the Government will address this, take the public with them and ensure that we get where we need to be as fast as necessary.

16:55

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent and fascinating debate, with hugely perceptive contributions. I thank my noble friend Lord Harlech not only for securing the debate but for his insightful and powerful contribution, made in a characteristically elegant and gracious manner—which I do not promise to emulate.

The Government’s defence policy can be summed up in four words: too little, too late. It is too little money and too little equipment, all delivered too late. I make that claim because the plans the Government have laid out are for the future; they do not meet the threats we face right now. The NATO Secretary-General has warned that we may face war with Russia within the next five years. If that happens, we need to be ready to fight a major war by 2030, not after 2030. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I know the advertisement to which she refers from BAE Systems above the escalator in the Tube station, but, unlike her, my view is: what an advert for British skills, and what a formidable capability this terrific British company is capable of delivering. May I see it translated into our defence capability before too long.

On the Secretary-General’s memo, the Government seem to have missed that point. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, reminded me—poignantly, because I remember where I was in August 1968—that the invasion of Czechoslovakia caused shock. As she rightly pointed out, you cannot assess risk on the basis of what you can afford. Risk is there, threat is there and the duty of the country is to have the wherewithal to counter it.

Where are we? The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, confirmed in a Written Answer that there will be no new deliveries of F-35s until the early 2030s. The integrated air, space and missile defence operations centre, announced in the defence investment plan as the future ballistic missile defence system, will not be operational until the early 2020s. The Type 91 uncrewed missile platform announced in the defence investment plan has no planned in-service date, and the only timeframe the Government can offer is “from the early 2030s”.

There is a pattern emerging. Virtually everything in the defence investment plan will not materialise until well into the next decade. The vital new equipment required by our Armed Forces right now will not be ready in time, and the Government simply do not get the urgency and the immediacy with which we need to rearm.

Last week, in front of the House of Commons Defence Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who obviously is one of the Government’s own, said:

“Quite simply, we are running out of years. The reality is that the challenge is now bigger, more serious and earlier than we had anticipated, yet the defence investment plan does not come up to it”.


His concerns were emphatically endorsed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and reflected upon gently and philosophically by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, to whom I also extend my best wishes for a happy and fulfilling retirement. I extend my thanks to him for his reassuring presence on those Benches, to which I often direct a glance at moments of tension.

The defence investment plan was supposed to do two things: prepare our Armed Forces for major combat operations within the next five years, and end the uncertainty and unease dogging our defence industry over the last two years. The noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, eloquently described the challenge. However, instead of allaying all those fears, the defence investment plan, unbelievably, made things worse. We have been left with less clarity as to the Government’s plans for defence than we had previously.

Take the Royal Navy, for example. The DIP confirmed that the Government will scrap the Type 83—the replacement for the Type 45 destroyers—and scrap the new light class of frigate, the Type 32. Yesterday, my noble friend Lord Minto mentioned the common combat vessel. This is the proposed replacement for both the Type 83 and the Type 32. The Type 83 was in the concept phase of its development. It was supposed to be the centre of the Future Air Dominance System, which had its outline case approved but has now been scrapped without a successor. We know absolutely nothing about these common combat vessels—how much they will displace, what armaments they will have, how many sailors will be required to crew them. We have no detail. It is a phantom concept, a ghost ship.

What was the MoD doing in the past year while it was preparing the defence investment plan? If it was planning to replace the Type 83 and Type 32 with the CCVs, one would have thought that it would have done more preliminary work so that when it published the DIP, it could tell us what a common combat vessel would look like. The suspicion is that the MoD did not decide to scrap the Type 83 until very recently. In September, in response to a Written Question from my honourable friend Ben Obese-Jecty, the Minister, Luke Pollard, said:

“The Type 83 is planned to enter service from the mid-2030s and is assumed to have a 25-year service life”.


So just last September, the MoD was committed to the Type 83s, but now it has changed its mind. It is frightening.

Let me express a caveat. This concept of a hybrid Navy deserves a word of caution. I am increasingly concerned that the lessons from Ukraine are being overlearned. We seem to be moving in a direction that assumes that drones and automation are the answer to every question of future capability. However, Ukraine is not the same as the north Atlantic. Providing a carrier strike, escorting supply ships, fighting piracy and defending a naval taskforce from air attack has no parallel with the Ukraine conflict. What of hard defence diplomacy, which the Government have said they are championing and to which my noble friend Lord Ahmad astutely referred?

An uncrewed missile barge does not have quite the same clout as a large, highly capable destroyer. I completely understand the benefits of uncrewed vessels and aircraft. They have their place and we must learn from their use in Ukraine. However, they should be additional rather than an alternative capability. They should complement destroyers and fighters, not replace them. We will need conventional warships for years to come. Yet, under these plans, Britain will have no destroyers at all by 2040.

I hope that the Minister will understand that my unrelenting and unapologetic focus is on the threat that we face now and the urgent response that is needed to address it. I am trying to impress upon the Government, as far as I possibly can, that the mid 2030s is, quite simply, too late. We know the threat. Sadly, we can predict the conflicts. We need more F35s, more modern Typhoons, more helicopters, more drones, more warships, more missiles, more tanks, more armoured vehicles and more air defence—and we need them as soon as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, delivering the Lord Speaker’s Lecture last night, to which many of us were privileged to listen, quoted Warren Buffett:

“Predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does”.


This was a wise man quoting a wise man. Let me conclude by quoting a third wise man, Shakespeare:

“Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends”.

That is my message to the Minister. I look forward to his response.

17:04

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to respond to this debate. I thank everyone for taking part and I will try to respond to many of their points. I start by declaring an interest: my son-in-law is currently mobilised as a reserve, so I just make your Lordships aware of that.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on introducing this debate, on the way he did it and on his own service. We all recognise the importance of that. He made the point that the Armed Forces, the defence of our country and our work with allies and friends is not a party-political matter, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, demonstrate. It is about how we challenge each other to deliver the best defence that the country needs. That is an extremely important point for all of us, and I am very grateful that it is the attitude across the Chamber.

I will answer some of the specific points from the noble Lords, Lord Harlech and Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, then move to some other matters. It is important to say at the start that, although much of this debate has been about the future capabilities laid out in the defence investment plan—we can debate and discuss whether it has all the right measures in it to develop our future capabilities and the spending that we will need for them—the concern expressed by many in this debate is about the capabilities that we have now and how we will develop them. That is an interesting debate. I am going to commission the Ministry of Defence to produce a paper that demonstrates what we are doing now and what we intend to do over the next two or three years, and I will put a copy of that in the Library. That will help, because it is important for us to have concrete examples of the sorts of things that are being done now and the sorts of capabilities that the MoD and the Government are saying we will have in the next year, the next two years and so on—not only that but some of the changes that we need to make and things we need to do. That shows that this debate is making a positive contribution to the sorts of things that we are seeking.

I will point to many of the things that are happening, for those who watch and listen to our debates. A number of people have asked what we are doing about Russia at the moment. We have an aircraft carrier in the north Atlantic with F35s all over it and other things around it, deterring the Russians with our NATO friends and allies. What are we doing in the Middle East? RFA “Lyme Bay” is there with a Type 45 destroyer, preparing itself for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, I hope. A noble Lord mentioned the Baltic states, and we currently have troops in Estonia. Others mentioned the nuclear deterrent. It is quite rightly being modernised at the present time, which is costing billions of pounds, but is a deterrent not only in Europe but across the world and it contributes to peace. All those things are going on at the current time.

We have Typhoons on quick-reaction alert, in case of incursions or threats to our airspace. It is quite right to challenge what needs to be done now and what should happen in the future. All I say in defence—this will be the only time that I am defensive about this—is that we ought to say to our adversaries alongside this, “We have capabilities that we are using at the present time to deter and to defend our people”. I know that that is accepted, and that there is a belief that we need to do more, but that is the challenge for the Government now and in the future. I hope that the paper that I will commission, a copy of which I will put in the Library, will help.

I come specifically to two or three of the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. He asked about the £4.7 billion gap, as I think he described it. The Treasury clearly confirmed to me, in preparing for this debate, that a further £4.7 billion will be confirmed in the 2026 Budget in a fair and balanced way. That is the information that I have had from the Treasury.

On the question of the ambition for the reserves, the noble Lord knows what is in the Armed Forces Bill currently going through your Lordships’ House. Investment is going into the infrastructure, training and equipment needed to support the reserves, and we recognise the importance of that.

I have answered the point about what we are going to do about current priorities. I think the paper will be of interest not only to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, but to all of us more generally, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, as the Front-Bench spokespeople for their respective parties. As the shadow Defence Minister for His Majesty’s Opposition, the noble Baroness I think will find it very helpful.

I fundamentally agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that you prevent war by preparing for it. I do not like thinking that, but it is a crucial point. A national conversation is important, as a number of noble Lords have said, and soft power is crucial. I wrote the defence diplomacy strategy in the Defence Investment Plan, along with my department, and I shared it with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, just before publication. It talks about the importance of soft power and developing those relationships with other countries, as well as hard power, of course. The idea that it is a choice—that you have one or the other—is nonsense. You have to have both alongside each other.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

I appreciate that, and the Minister and other Ministers frequently say that, but the reality is that the British Council is nearly bankrupt, the BBC is struggling and our diplomatic forces are being reduced. On that particular point, can he feed back to the Government that, if we do not have diplomats on the ground, we are not able to influence the world?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I will feed that back to the department. All I am saying is that there is now a much more co-ordinated, effective diplomatic strategy that links the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence together to deliver the objectives that the noble Lord wants.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, made the point about immediate threats. I hope that putting a paper together and putting in the Library will answer the particular questions she asked about what we are doing about those immediate threats, as well as future threats. I say to her that there are difficult decisions to be made. She made difficult decisions when she was in government. This Government made the really difficult decision to replace the Type 83 and Type 32 with the common combat vessel. That will help develop the hybrid Navy that we will need, rather than continuing with vessels that we were advised by the military advisers will not meet the threat in 10 or 15 years’ time. To have a warship that can deliver drone capability, above the surface, on the surface and below, increases the mass available to tackle the threats we face. That is the hybrid Navy concept.

We had the debate and we said, “We’re going to get criticised, you know? They’re going to say, ‘There you go, you’re cutting ships. You’ve taken away this capability and that capability’”. All I would say is that, if I have to take some criticism by doing that with others, because we believe that opens up the opportunity to create the Navy we need, I am willing to take that criticism.

However, I fundamentally agree with the point the noble Baroness made that drones are not the only answer. Of course you need warships, fighter planes and land vehicles—all those things are fundamental—but, alongside that, you need the increased capacity of drones.

On being optimistic, I know that a number of noble Lords were at the retirement of Pedro Serrano, the brilliant EU ambassador to the UK, who said:

“The United Kingdom is one of the most important military powers in Europe with a very important defence industry. If we’re going to be successful, we will be successful together”.


I spotted that when I read the Financial Times, as I normally do in the morning, and I thought, “I’m going to use that”. I am not being sarcastic. In the article, he points to the fact that the UK has joined the €60 billion EU defence loan scheme for Ukraine. The noble Lord, Lord Mott, asked me what the Government were doing to open up opportunities with respect to Ukraine. There is one example that I hope specifically answers the question the noble Lord raised.

I thank my noble friend Lady Carberry for her points about the importance of the defence industry, Rolls-Royce and SMEs. She is absolutely right.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made a crucial point about RDEL and CEDL. He has made this point to me before. We made this point in the defence investment plan. I have the figures here. In 2026-27, RDEL was increased by £2.1 billion and CEDL was increased by £0.7 billion, so there was a significant uplift of RDEL rather than CEDL. Next year, it will be £1.6 billion compared to £1.2 billion. We absolutely accept the point about RDEL and CEDL, the necessity to focus not just on capital projects and the importance of resource allocation.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, about partnering more with private capital to try to do that—the defence bond argument—alternative financial mechanisms to support what we do are crucial.

I wish the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark well for the future. In his valedictory speech, he reminded us of the importance of international humanitarian law. That is important to our country and our democracy. We understand the need to use force sometimes, but we question ourselves about whether we have the legal basis to do so, and I think we should commend ourselves for trying to act, sometimes with force, in a legal way. I wish him well for the future. We all struggle with moral dilemmas, so I look forward to him struggling with that and trying to help others with respect to that when he preaches.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who spoke about the importance of soft and hard power. He and I have talked long and hard about that. Soft power is crucial, but it is not, as I said before, a choice, as he agrees, between soft and hard power. I totally agree with him about the speed of procurement and trying to deliver things much more quickly. I hope the paper that I am going to ask to be put in the Library will help answer some of the points on that. He asked about the defence readiness Bill. It will be in this Parliament, and it is being worked on as we speak.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about complementary groups under NATO. NATO is the crucial umbrella, but underneath that you can have other organisations, such as JEF or whatever, as long as it complements NATO—I think that is particularly important. The role of the US remains crucial. That is the only point I would say. We have to retain the strategic alliance with the US.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

The JEF point is interesting. Does the Minister agree that, if neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden can join, then so could Ukraine?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

That is a matter for discussion between all of us. The relationship with Ukraine remains crucial. How that is taken forward will have to be discussed.

I thank my noble friend Lady Antrobus. We are committed to the nuclear deterrent. I sometimes think we should talk more about it. When people ask what is the UK’s commitment to Europe, it is not a bad start to say that the UK has been committed to the nuclear deterrent for the defence of Europe for decades. It is a proud thing for us to state. I know the point she made about the ladder of escalation and the involvement of tactical nuclear weapons in future through the F35A.

I think the spending review of 2027 will answer some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, made about spending. She will recognise the point about defence and security being the number one priority within that.

I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, about thinking imaginatively as well as responding in a tough way to Russia and about some of the other things that he mentioned in dealing with that.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, that the Prime Minister-in-waiting clearly means what he says about defending our nation. I thank the noble Lord for his kind words about me.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned the national conversation, which is fundamental and crucial to us, and the priorities for the public. Particularly important, as he mentioned, are the grey zone, underwater cables and cyber attacks. Those sorts of things are crucial.

The noble Lord, Lord Risby, talked about space. I take the point about Skynet 5 being extended rather than a new Skynet 6, but when we look in the Defence Investment Plan, as I know he will have done, it is quite interesting. I was looking at it while he was speaking, and on pages 48 and 49 there are some quite interesting investments into space. I understand the importance of space technology and satellites if we are to fight the wars of the future, and the noble Lord is absolutely right to remind us of the importance of all that.

I thank my noble friend Lord Forbes for his points about the whole-of-society approach. By raising the age of reserves to 65, we may be able to recruit more of the engineers, doctors, cyber specialists and so on, as he was talking about.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, that we are accelerating our war readiness plans. The spending debate will continue, but it is going up; the debate is just about how fast it goes up and how much it should be.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Magan, for reminding us of the service of his own family, because that reminds us of the service of so many families and family members across this country. Again, we will come to a debate and discussion on the spending point, particularly around the 2027 spending review.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made a point about soft power—that is a terrible name for it in many ways, but it is crucial to delivery. I will just make this point about soft power and defence diplomacy: everywhere I go across the world, irrespective of the view of the UK, countries are queuing up for the UK to stand with them. They do not necessarily want a warship, a tank or a fighter jet. They want the status, legitimacy and confidence of what a British military uniform gives to them when they make difficult decisions to deal with the challenges they face in their countries or regions, and I am proud of that. It has been hard earned by our service men and women. I think it is something we do not appreciate enough and should speak much more of, because they make a huge difference in huge numbers of countries across the world.

I have mentioned the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mott, about the article that I may wish to look at. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, about the importance of the national conversation; the plan is developing. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, also made the point about the importance of a national conversation.

Let me say a few concluding remarks. I know that these debates are watched and read. I want to say clearly to Russia, to China or to anybody else who believes that this country is weak, and that we will not stand up for democracy, freedom and the values we cherish, that we will and we do. Do not misunderstand that in a democracy, people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, can challenge me and think I am wrong. They can think that the Government are wrong and challenge them to do more. That is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength, and it is how a democracy works. That is what we have struggled and fought for through many decades and centuries. So if anybody is watching this, let them not mistake an honest, open, frank exchange of views as anything other than all of us being proud of what our country stands for, and what we will continue to stand for.

17:25

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I am truly grateful to all noble Lords, all noble and gallant Lords, and the right reverend Prelate for taking part—I wish him godspeed in his future endeavours. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for answering my questions and those of others, and for his powerful, impassioned reply at the end, which we all fully support. I add my voice to those. Whatever happens in terms of a reshuffle, we hope very much that the Minister stays in post.

This has been a fascinating strength/weakness, opportunity/threat analysis, because it has been cross-party, from all sides of the House. Again, I am truly grateful to everyone who signed up. It has also been a cross-interest debate: we have had the defence voices, but we have also heard diplomatic, economic and political voices too, which has added to its richness. I truly want the media to play its part in stimulating the national conversation; I just wish that it would give more column inches to this debate and others like it, rather than the Punch and Judy stuff that happens in the other place.

It is rare to have such unanimity of opinion but, as the Minister has said, we have heard that today. The direction of travel is right, but we must go further and faster. To govern is to choose. Yes, 3.5% or 5% is more, but it is a damn sight cheaper than the alternative of fighting a war with a peer adversary.

I will finish, as I know there is additional business to come. The campaign slogan of the right honourable Member for Makerfield, the incoming Prime Minister, was “Vote Andy, Vote Hope”. Those of us who have had a military career—and there are some here who have had much longer military careers than me—know that you learn pretty early on that hope is not a planning tool. He must understand that the defence of the realm can, and must, be a Government’s top priority.

Motion agreed.

National Security Act 2023 (Designated Bodies) Regulations 2026

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

17:28

Moved by

[Lord Hanson of Flint]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 13 July be approved.

Relevant document: 9th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

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

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for its consideration of this draft instrument, which will see three bodies designated: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, and the GRU Volunteer Corps. I know that there has been significant interest in the House in this matter from both Opposition and Liberal Democrat Benches. I hope that they will welcome these regulations today.

Threats from foreign powers and their proxies have grown in scale and complexity. Designation is a powerful tool for disrupting state bodies and those acting in concert with them, and it sends a strong message of the UK’s commitment to tackling foreign power threat activity globally. The Home Secretary has determined that these three bodies are involved in foreign power threat activity and, as such, we propose to designate them under this new power, as I suggested we may do when the Bill, now an Act, went through Parliament recently.

Before I give more detail of the bodies in question, it is worth setting out the legislative basis for this decision. For a body to be designated, the Home Secretary must reasonably believe that it is involved in foreign power threat activity, as defined in the National Security Act 2023. The definition of foreign power threat activity covers the most serious offences in the Act, including espionage, sabotage and foreign interference. It also covers broader activity that constitutes a serious threat to life or public safety when carried out for, on behalf of, or with the intention to benefit a foreign power. If that test is met, the Home Secretary must then consider whether designation is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. She will take into account considerations of foreign policy and the impact on human rights as part of that decision-making process.

Once a group is designated, it will be a criminal offence within the UK’s jurisdiction to support a designated body, assist a designated body or obtain material benefits from a designated body. The penalties for these offences are imprisonment for up to 14 years and/or a fine. Where an individual commits certain espionage conduct or sabotage for a designated body, this can attract sentences of up to life imprisonment. Designation therefore enables law enforcement and intelligence agencies to disrupt designated bodies more effectively.

Given its wide-ranging impact, the Home Secretary will exercise this power only after thoroughly reviewing the available evidence, including intelligence material and cross-government advice. A decision to designate is taken only after great care and consideration, and, as noble Lords will know, it must be approved by both Houses. It was approved by the House of Commons yesterday evening.

For the benefit of noble Lords I will give some explanation of the bodies in question. First, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a group that has been commented on significantly in this House over many months, before the gracious Speech and since. The long-standing threat posed by Iran and its proxies is no secret. We know that the Iranian intelligence services have established a pattern of targeting dissidents, Persian-language media organisations and journalists, as well as Jewish and Israeli communities globally.

The IRGC Quds Force and IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Its role extends beyond conventional military operations and includes intelligence activity, the use of proxy actors and influence operations designed to advance Iranian state objectives. Activity linked to the IRGC has included threats to life and intimidation on UK soil, including credible plots to target individuals in the United Kingdom. The IRGC supports militant actors overseas and has been associated with cyber and other state threats activity aligned with Iranian state objectives. I know that noble Lords across all parts of this House have great concerns about that body.

The Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, otherwise known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah, has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and Persian-language media, including an antisemitic attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March, a well-known arson attack that Members will be aware of. Sitting behind the IMCR were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, who almost certainly directed IMCR attacks across Europe. These incidents, including acts of arson and intimidation, have caused real fear and distress and have had a profound impact on those communities. It is clear that this sustained activity directly threatens the safety and interests of the United Kingdom.

The GRU Volunteer Corps is Russia’s threat to the United Kingdom in a form that extends far beyond conventional military action to include state threats. Moreover, the Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force, nor a loose collection of volunteers; it is a proxy organisation operating under the direction and control of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

These formations are directed, supported and sustained by the GRU and are already operating across conflict zones, most notably in Ukraine in support of Russia’s illegal invasion. What we are seeing is a conscious attempt by the Russian state to blur the lines between military action, intelligence activity and criminality, using deniable forces to carry out sabotage, destabilisation and violence beyond its borders. This is not conjecture. It reflects a pattern of behaviour that underpins Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and that has been seen repeatedly across Europe, including here in the United Kingdom.

In 2024, two men organised an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned business in east London. They acted on behalf of the Wagner Group—another proxy body that acts on behalf of the Russian state and is proscribed as a terrorist organisation. It is notable that large parts of the Wagner Group have also been absorbed into this so-called Volunteer Corps, which demonstrates the threat posed to the United Kingdom by this group.

With noble Lords’ consent, these bodies will be designated. Having carefully considered all the evidence, the Home Secretary has decided that there is sufficient evidence for her to reasonably believe that each body is involved in foreign power threat activity and that designation is necessary to protect the United Kingdom. Designation will strengthen our ability to disrupt these bodies and those who support and facilitate them. More broadly, it sends a powerful message to any foreign power or proxy that the United Kingdom will not allow harm to ourselves or our interests, and that we will do whatever it takes to prevent such activity on our soil.

In conclusion, these bodies operate in different ways but are united in their role of endangering the safety and interests of the United Kingdom through violence, intimidation and destabilisation. I know this House has called for designation. It is a proportionate and necessary response, and this Government will continue to use every available tool to confront state threats wherever they arise. I commend this instrument to the House.

17:36

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches fully support these designations. We consistently supported the proscription of the IRGC throughout the passage of the Crime and Policing Act, to which the Minister has referred. It had been our party policy for some years, as it had been the policy of the Labour Party before the last general election. Nevertheless, the Government preferred to pursue the course, as recommended by Jonathan Hall KC, of passing the National Security (State Threats) Act. We passed fast-track legislation through this Parliament extremely quickly, not without amendment but with careful, though fast, consideration. We are now improving it in a number of ways, with an eye to promised security legislation in the future. We on these Benches regarded the Act, and the amendments negotiated to it when it was before the House, as a good example of what can be achieved by cross-party co-operation.

As the noble Lord explained, these designations respond to no fewer than seven attacks publicly claimed by the IMCR—the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, also known as Harakat—which is one of the bodies designated under these regulations. These were attacks within the United Kingdom that were linked to Jewish and Israeli communities. They included setting fire to the four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March, and attacks on some Persian language media and their journalists. The designation of the IRGC also fulfils the promise made to the Jewish community by the Prime Minister in April when he visited Kenton United Synagogue following the appalling arson attack there. That promise was that action would be taken this July to legislate for powers akin to proscription to outlaw foreign state actors and respond to threats posed by the IRGC. This designation amply responds to and fulfils that promise.

This designation of the IRGC by the United Kingdom follows the designation of the IRGC by the European Union in February this year in the aftermath of the violent repression of unarmed protesters in Iran over the turn of the year, which saw mass arrests, executions, internet shutdowns and the open use of lethal force against many thousands of demonstrators, as well as more international activity.

The designation of the Russian Federation Volunteer Corps directorate recognises the threat that the Government have concluded is posed to the United Kingdom’s national security by the Russian state and security apparatus, of which this body is part, as the Minister has explained.

We are entirely clear that the Government are rightly satisfied that these three bodies have met the requirements set out in the Act for designation and, for that reason, we fully support these designations.

17:40

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I am very happy to thank the Minister for bringing forward these regulations today, after ongoing calls to do so, as he mentioned. We welcome that the Government are taking action to designate the three bodies after Parliament recently passed the National Security (State Threats) Act. We all know the risks that groups such as the IRGC pose towards the United Kingdom, and it is right that the new powers have been brought forward and used to prevent support for and assistance to state-linked bodies that pose such threats.

The Minister will know that my noble friends Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel welcomed the state threats Bill when it was before your Lordships’ House. However, they raised a number of concerns as to what we considered to be gaps in the Bill and what we think remain gaps in the Act now. It was disappointing to see the Liberal Democrats side with the Government in opposing our amendment to that Bill to criminalise the display of insignia and the wearing of uniforms associated with a designated body, as recommended by Jonathan Hall. It is unfortunate that, despite these regulations designating the IRGC, the flag of the IRGC—with its menacing fist holding aloft an assault rifle—will still be able to be prominently displayed on our streets. The Government have said that this is about diplomatic relations, but there are no diplomatic relationships with Russia or Iran, which are of course the mother countries of these organised associations designated in the regulations.

It is also concerning that the Government appear not to have tackled the true nature of the threat presented by the IRGC. It is not just a conventional state actor—the Minister has outlined that. It constitutes a unique hybrid terror threat. Although it is a state actor, it is also an ideological group that adheres to a specific form of extreme Islamism. It combines both conventional hostile state activity with a sort of asymmetric warfare and the dissemination of terrorist material. It incites, promotes, instigates, inspires and carries out threats of ideologically motivated violence and terrorism, including, as the Minister said, on British soil.

These are the threats that we were trying to tackle in our amendments to the state threats Bill. Although it is welcome that the Government have at least tried to tackle the threat from the IRGC, the GRU Volunteer Corps and the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, I still worry that they have not created legislation with the teeth to tackle these threats. I would be grateful, in conclusion, if the Minister can reconfirm, as he said during the passage of the Bill, that the issues that I have outlined today will be addressed in a future national security Bill.

17:43

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let me first welcome the noble Baroness back to the Home Office, even if it is only a temporary glitch. Let me also, through her, pass on my thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, for their broad support for the Bill, which has allowed us, now that it is an Act, to effect these designations. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, for his broad support for the proposals before the House today.

As the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, mentioned, this proposal came out of, first, a manifesto commitment to have a review, and secondly, Jonathan Hall KC bringing forward proposals on how we deal with state threats. I am grateful to His Majesty’s Official Opposition and to the Liberal Democrats for their support in helping get the state threats Act, as it now is, through Parliament. There were some challenges, there were some amendments which we accepted from the Liberal Democrats, and there were some amendments that I tried to explain from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, but with that Act passed only a couple of weeks ago and Royal Assent granted only in the last 10 days or so, we have got to a position which has allowed us to bring forward these regulations for the reasons that I outlined.

I think there was general consensus from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, that this measure is required for these groups, for the reasons I outlined in my opening speech. I do not intend to delay the House too long on those matters, because I think there is general consensus that we need to do this.

In discussions that we had with both Opposition Front Benches in the run-up to the state threats Bill before it became an Act, I tried to indicate that the Act was being proposed for a purpose, and today is the first use of that power for a definitive purpose. We wanted to have that Act at speed, and I pressed both Front Benches very hard to get it through speedily, because we needed, in my view and in the view of the Home Secretary, to get this legislation passed, both in the House of Commons, which rises today, and in the House of Lords, where we face another week in Parliament, as quickly as possible. That means that this designation, once I sign the order, if it is agreed by this House, can be put into effect fairly soon. For all those reasons, I welcome the support of both Front Benches, including their support for further action, as the noble Baroness asked for.

In the gracious Speech, we promised a state security Bill later in the parliamentary Session. It will cover a number of issues, which the House will not expect me to go into because the Bill has not yet been published, but we discussed issues such as passports in Committee on the state threats Bill, and I gave indications that we wanted to take action on that. On the display of a Palestinian flag but not an IRGC flag, and the illegality of that, if a person expresses support in any way, and if their reasons for doing so are prejudicial to the safety of the United Kingdom, they will commit an offence. I hope that gives the noble Baroness some reassurance. That is different from the provisions in the Terrorism Act and reflects the reality of dealing with bodies that benefit from protection under international law. Individual decisions to arrest or charge will be for the police and prosecutors, but people who glorify terrorism will potentially face action in future.

The noble Baroness asked me about not criminalising the specific offence of the display or wearing of certain articles of clothing. I said during debates on amendments to the state threats Bill that we consider that the supporting of a designated body offence is wide enough to capture the display or wearing of articles when this is done for a prohibited purpose. It was therefore, in our view, unnecessary to create a specific offence, while also avoiding potential enforceability challenges by foreign state officials who are protected by international law. Whether we like that or not, that is the situation. I gave that explanation to the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Cameron, and I give it now to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford. I hope that she will recognise that there will be further action downstream. As a former Minister in the Home Office, she will know that I cannot say what, I cannot say when, and I cannot give detail, but, if she remembers, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, will concur with this, I could not say when or what or give detail about the regulations that I have brought forward today, but those regulations are here.

For the reasons I have mentioned and with gratitude for the support of both Opposition Front Benches, I condemn—no, not condemn; it has been a long day waiting for the debate—I commend these regulations to the House and hope Hansard will treat me kindly.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 5.50 pm.