Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to the amendments from the point of view of anti-terrorism and national security. I do so with trepidation, having listened to the wonderful speeches that have been made thus far.

I find it difficult to understand why there is an unwillingness to give the clarity that has been requested in this group of amendments, particularly on AI models. I note that the Minister, in response to the first group of amendments, said that AI could be in scope. Would it not be much clearer for all concerned if AI was specifically in scope? Ethically speaking—and this follows on from the noble Baroness, Lady Harding—I would have much preferred it if we had had a royal commission look at AI and say, “Here are the guardrails for the development of AI”, but for some unknown reason we are either unwilling or unable to do that as a nation. In its absence, Amendment 75 is very important because, from a national security point of view, we should adopt the precautionary principle. We live in very dangerous times. We have listened to experts such as Jonathan Hall KC say very clearly that we need to take it into account. I say to the Minister that it would be helpful to hear from the Government how they intend to deal with AI as it moves forward and gets bigger and bigger. Surely we should have that ethical and moral conversation about where the guardrails are.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly add my support to the amendments in this group, particularly the “red lines” amendment and the “last resort” amendment. Nobody who has read the report on the Hugging Face incident can fail to think that we need legislation now to deal with these kinds of events. The incident showed unintended co-operation between agents that discussed among themselves whether individual actions were ethical. They were referring to their own ethical guidelines and none of the agents then flagged to their human supervisors what was going on. You can see the training and programming behind these agents: they have some ethical guidelines in there, but those guidelines are in the gift of the companies that train them. We must have more control and oversight over that sort of behaviour, because you can see its consequences. This was an unintended consequence; obviously, there could be intended consequences as well. This legislation is our only opportunity now, and we need to take it because this is not the future; it is the present.

Heritage Craft and Building Sector

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The noble Lord is aware that the current scheme is funded until the end of March, when the budget is reached. We are very clear as a department that huge value is placed on listed places of worship by local communities and by their congregations. We extended the scheme in recognition of the importance of the listed places of worship scheme. The cap has not affected the majority of applications—94% of applications will be unaffected by the change; most claims are under £5,000. Immediately before Christmas, I met key stakeholders such as the National Churches Trust and the Church of England to make sure that they are kept up to date on where we are going as a department. I appreciate that people will be anxious to know about potential future funding and potential changes, and I will provide an update as soon as possible.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, government funding for level 2 and 3 diploma courses in some building crafts, such as stonemasonry, has recently been withdrawn. For a craftsperson, who is usually a micro-entity business, to take on a novice apprentice without previous foundational training is a big risk and potentially a big immediate cost. How are the Government planning to support busy craftspeople to take on novice apprentices?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I recognise what the noble Baroness said about the issues faced by some craftspeople in taking on apprentices. That is why I met my noble friend last year and why we are working with the sector to make sure that what we put in place, and what is put in place by the sector and supported by government, reflects the needs of the heritage sector so that we get the workforce that we need.

Craft Industry: Support

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will also speak about the crisis approaching us in building craftsmanship. Here we are, in this temple of British craftsmanship—we are very proud of its history—yet we are in real danger of losing many crafts as the last craftsmen reach the end of their careers without apprentices. On the other side of the equation, we currently have around 923,000 young people not in education, employment or training; that is one in eight 16 to 24 year-olds. These are young people whose potential is being squandered.

You may think that it is a rather unbalanced equation. When you hear “heritage building crafts”, it is easy to think just about the big prestige projects, such as Notre-Dame and the Houses of Parliament, but that is one of the mistakes we have made. We have ended up with specialist crafts all in their own little niches and struggling to be sustainable.

One-fifth of all our housing stock in the UK —5.9 million homes—was built before the First World War, using traditional methods and materials generally different from those used in the past 50 years or so. These all require maintenance from craftsmen, such as the plasterers who know how to work with lime and the carpenters who can fix a sash window frame. Some £28 billion-worth of work is done annually on these buildings. Equally urgently, these houses need retrofitting to higher insulation standards to help us meet net zero, as well as an understanding of how their fabric works. Then there is the conversion of old industrial buildings to new homes to help meet housing needs. There is a continuum of building craft skills, from the needs of the small, everyday houses to those of our most treasured and visited heritage buildings. Overall, the numbers of building craftspeople needed are very large.

Now think about the pipeline needed to feed this—that huge pool of young people who do not want to sit in front of a computer or at a desk, seeing their jobs replaced by AI and uninspired by corporate management structures. How do we match them with the thousands of self-employed building craftspeople, mostly in their 40s or older, who are ready and willing to give one-on-one mentoring—absolute training gold dust—leading to well-paid, satisfying jobs that are ideal for those who want to take pride in being able to see something they did and did well?

Here in the Lords, we know all too well that the hereditary system of jobs being passed from parent to child has pretty much gone. That potentially opens up opportunities more broadly, but we need to provide its replacement. Surveys show that half of young people have never considered a career in trades; nearly 40% said that they were discouraged from them. We need to inspire them with what these careers can be, and we need to make the pathways for them clearer and easier. Hands-on and heritage skills need to be part of all mainstream construction training.

Then there are the individual apprenticeships and small courses sponsored by the Church of England, the King’s Foundation, the parliamentary R&R programme, English Heritage, the traditional craft guilds and so many more. They are all doing their absolute best, but they need to be greater than the sum of their parts. Thankfully, though, there is no shortage of enthusiasm, ideas and—crucially—deep knowledge and understanding of what can be done. We have some really good reports, and so many organisations are ready to help. I thank especially the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Building Crafts College, Cadw, the parliamentary R&R programme and the Natural Stone Industry Training Group for helping me understand the situation.

What we need now is to bring together the vision and knowledge from industry and the Government’s ambitions. I spoke to Marianne Suhr, one of this country’s leading experts in traditional building crafts and the presenter of the BBC programme “Restoration”. There is no one more inspirational. She is absolutely fizzing with ideas, passion, deep experience and knowledge to help. Will the Minister and others in government please meet Marianne and a small group of experts to see how we can turn their great ideas into reality? To borrow the motto of the movement in France that seeks to support its traditional crafts, Les Compagnons du Devoir, be one of those who build the future.