King’s Speech

Lord Dixon of Jericho Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dixon of Jericho (LD) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech during this debate. It is an honour to follow the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater. I am not sure whether protocol also requires me to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on the delayed moments of her earlier speech, as she did part of her maiden speech today.

Making sure that people have a fair chance in life has been the core of my work: at Victim Support, in government, at Citizens Advice, and at the drug, alcohol and mental health charity I was privileged to lead with the support of my noble friend Lord Carlile as chair of trustees.

I want to start my speech today by congratulating another noble friend, my noble friend Lady Leaman, on her maiden speech. There are few people with deeper and truer instincts about what is right and what is wrong, and with the courage to say so. It is good to see her step into the light.

I want to thank all noble Lords for their welcome here. This is a daunting place, and the warmth I have experienced from right across the House has been quite something. To all of those who have smiled, inquired or pulled me on to the Benches when I was sitting in the wrong place: thank you. This is a culture that is fragile; it is a hard and rare and precious thing, and I will do my very best to sustain it and foster it. I want to add my thanks to the staff team here: the doorkeepers, the attendants, the clerks and the wider teams right across the estate. They are always reasonable and always kind, and there is often a twinkle in the eyes.

I want to thank my supporters: my noble friend Lady Grender, who has been both impish and wise counsel to me, as only a true friend can be, as she has been for the past six years; and my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, sat here in front of me, who has been a kind and astute interpreter of this place, its customs, its history and particularly its architecture. If anyone ever wants to ask a question on that, I highly recommend his advice. Of course, I thank the staff in our Whips’ Office, who have guided me through this strangest of experiences with care, expertise and real attention. Most of all, I thank my mum, who brought me up by herself, in Jericho in Oxford—not the other Jericho—to believe you should be kind and that you should try.

Before I move to the matter of the gracious Speech, I need to declare an interest as the current chief executive of the Liberal Democrats.

I have always believed that the best policy, the best legislation and the best decisions come from truly understanding what matters to people, and what people actually do. That sounds obvious, but in my experience in lots of organisations it is all too rare. It is so easy to make assumptions from our own lives about how people will respond, and so easy to miss the nuances in what people say. One of the things I have most valued about the debate today has been the care and attention with which people have both listened to what others have said and tried to hear the meaning and motivation behind the words. It can be hard to get the words right, but the meaning and the motivation have been approached today in a spirit of generosity.

Since January, volunteers across the Liberal Democrats have held more than a million conversations with people across England, Scotland and Wales, asking them what matters in their lives. I mention this not because it lies behind my party’s success. Volunteers in other parties have also worked hard, but sadly that data on how hard they have worked is less accessible to me than I would like it to be. I mention it because I truly believe that that is how politics should work: by starting with, listening to and serving people as you find them.

A decade ago, I was at Citizens Advice, and the website there was written in very precise and technical language that got the law absolutely right and was completely impossible for most people to understand. With a brilliant team, including many people who worked on the prototype of GOV.UK with the noble Lord, Lord Maude, we took it from being used by 4 million people a year to 38 million people a year. That one change has probably helped more people than anything else I have done in my entire life. We did that by listening to the language people used, understanding the way people approached problems in their own lives, and designing our tools and giving our advice in a way that was simple and clear. If government needed to bend to how people thought about a problem, we made sure that it did so.

I have also spent countless hours in drug and alcohol services, where one simple change we made had a huge impact. The regulations used to require charities such as mine to ask an astonishing number of, frankly, pretty impertinent questions to people who had just walked through the door of a drug and alcohol service, which is one of the hardest things to do in life. Too many people would never come back, and our country has lost too many people as a result of the way it was regulated. Our front-line workers did not feel they had permission to do what they knew was right; but we backed them, and they proved the obvious, which is that, if you make people feel welcome and show them they are safe and that you care, they will come back, and you can ask the questions later. I am pleased that, some years ago, the regulator followed our lead and changed its requirements, so more people now get help and more people are alive because of that regulatory change.

In this Session, we will debate in Bills on modernising how citizens interact with public services and how we use technology to do so. I hope the examples I have given today give a sense of what I want to bring to this House in discussions with all noble Lords: a curiosity and a focus on what actually matters in people’s lives; the importance of emotion and dignity in our decision-making, as my noble friend Lady Leaman said in her speech; the opportunities technology provides if we start with people and put them before machines; and the need for public services to serve people as they are, not as we may assume them to be. As I start my work in this House, I look forward to many conversations on these issues, and to working with—and, in particular, learning from—as many people across the Chamber as I can.