King’s Speech
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate our maiden speakers, the noble Lord, Lord Hobby—it is fantastic to see someone with his experiences joining your Lordships’ House—the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, and my noble friends and colleagues Lady Leaman and Lord Dixon, who I have known for many years. While I was listening to their speeches, I learned a lot more about them than I thought I knew. They are all fantastic additions to your Lordships’ House, and I am sure they will make many more fantastic speeches.
The areas covered today are very broad. I would love to speak about NEETs—I have worked on that for many years—but I will leave it for another day. I will do the same with Erasmus. I am very excited that the Government will, in 2027-28, at least go back to where we were before—I say this as someone who served in the European Parliament. I was on the CULT committee and, in 2019-20 we were very keen, as a Parliament, to triple the Erasmus budget, to make sure that more young people from across different sections of society benefited from it. I really hope that training is also a priority, rather than just the academic route.
For the remainder of my time, I will talk about the education for all Bill. For too long, our special educational needs and disabilities system has been failing the very children and families it was designed to support. Parents and carers across the country are forced into exhausting battles simply to secure the help their children need and are entitled to. At the same time, local authorities— I say this as someone who has just finished serving as a local councillor—are buckling under immense financial pressures, with SEND costs driving many councils to the brink of effective bankruptcy. This is neither sustainable nor acceptable.
The previous Conservative Government left behind a system in deep crisis, and reform is not only necessary but urgent. In that context, we on these Benches recognise that the Government have inherited an unenviable challenge and that difficult decisions must be made. The proposals for a more coherent national SEND framework, including a universal SEND offer and greater access to specialist expertise, represent a step in the right direction, but reform without children and families at its heart is reform destined to fail.
The Liberal Democrats have serious concerns about the proposals to remove and weaken parental rights to challenge decisions through tribunals. Parents already navigate a system that is too often opaque, combative and draining. To strip away the route of appeal would not reduce conflict; it would merely silence families, while leaving poor decisions unchecked. We will fight to ensure that legal rights are preserved, settled placements are protected and meaningful mechanisms of challenge remain available.
We are equally concerned that funding and workforce capacity are not yet in place to deliver these much-needed changes. A universal offer is meaningful only if schools have the staff, training and resources to identify and support need early.
Curriculum reform must proceed in lockstep, ensuring that, alongside high standards in literacy and numeracy, children receive a genuinely broad and balanced education. Creative subjects, sport and physical activity are not luxuries to be squeezed out but essential elements of healthy child development and emotional well-being.
Finally, I will address the spiralling cost of specialist provision. It cannot be right that private providers, often backed by private equity, extract excessive profits from the system supporting vulnerable children while councils struggle to stay afloat. We on these Benches believe that profits in this sector should be capped and steps should be taken to reduce profiteering from SEND provision. We must also expand capacity. Not every child will thrive in mainstream education. Councils should not be pressured into unsuitable placements through restrictive funding conditions or halted specialist expansion.
We support the need for reform, but we will judge this Bill by one simple test: does it make life better for children and their families? If it does, we will support it. If it does not, we will work tirelessly to improve it.
UK Energy Sources and Cost of Energy
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Lord will know that we do have quite a presence in the Gulf, not of ships but of other defence capacity which can play some part as far as the Strait of Hormuz is concerned. He will also know that the US has already indicated that it does not wish to have the UK and other NATO countries’ assistance in undertaking the clearance of the Strait of Hormuz. Nevertheless, we regard the opening of that strait as imperative as far as fuel supplies are concerned. As far as UK fuel supplies are concerned, only about 1% currently comes from sources relevant to passage through the Strait of Hormuz—for example, Qatar. We are not as internationally exposed to those supplies as a number of other countries.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, following up on the question from my noble friend Lord Russell, who mentioned support for domestic users in particular of heating oil, my question is on highly energy-intensive industries, particularly steel. What support, if any, are the Government thinking of providing, particularly if this war continues for weeks and months rather than just ending in days, as we hope, for the steel industries in south Wales, Scunthorpe and South Yorkshire?
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The Government are open to all eventualities as far as this crisis is concerned and are keeping the position under review on a very regular basis. The noble Lord will know that immediate support has been for heating oil, particularly for those customers who are off grid in the UK. The Government recently announced over for supplies of heating oil, with particular reference to Northern Ireland, where a substantial proportion of the population are dependent on oil for heating. Of that £50 million-odd, £17 million has gone to Northern Ireland for that purpose.