That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

My Lords, it is a great honour to open the fourth day of our debate on the gracious Speech. His Majesty’s Speech recognised the challenges facing our country and set out a clear plan not just to meet those challenges but to build a more resilient Britain which protects people for the long term and spreads opportunity for all. Today’s debate will cover some of the issues at the heart of the Government’s plan, including energy security, education, technology and culture.

I will begin with energy and our response to the second fossil fuel shock in just four years. Almost two years ago, this Government came into power with a mission to take back control of Britain’s energy security. As my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, set out in our debate on the previous gracious Speech, it was clear then that the only way to bring down bills, drive growth across the country and tackle the increasingly urgent climate crisis was to end our dependence on unstable fossil fuel markets that we have no control over and instead harness our immense potential for clean, homegrown energy.

As someone who has been campaigning and advocating for, and writing on, clean power for just shy of half a century, it is a privilege for me to be part of a Government who are now delivering on their promise. Since July 2024, we have secured enough clean, homegrown power for 23 million homes through two record-breaking renewables auctions. That clean power is already making a difference: new wind and solar saved Britain around £7 million per day in gas purchases during the first month of the Middle East crisis.

We have moved solar power from the margins to the mainstream, making rooftop panels standard for new builds and bringing plug-in solar to the UK for the first time. We have established Great British Energy, our publicly owned clean energy champion, which has already installed solar on hundreds of schools and hospitals, as well as investing in cutting-edge floating offshore wind projects. We are delivering the biggest public investment in home upgrades in British history with our £15 billion warm homes plan to get solar, batteries, heat pumps and insulation into more homes to save energy, cut bills and ultimately lift up to a million households out of fuel poverty—all of which is contributing to record growth in our domestic clean energy workforce, which is set to double to around 860,000 jobs by the end of this decade.

While the Government have made remarkable progress, the House needs no reminding that our mission has taken on renewed urgency and importance following the conflict in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Just as we saw four years ago when Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices soaring, the impacts of 21st-century conflicts are felt far beyond the battlefields. Once again, it is businesses and households here, including, as is so often the case, the most vulnerable in our society, who are bearing the brunt of wholesale price rises. In response, the Government have taken direct action to bring down bills, as well as expanding the £150 warm home discount to 6 million people.

There are those who believe the long-term solution to this latest fossil fuel crisis lies in doubling down on our dependence on oil and gas—the very problem which led us here. This Government believe that would represent a failure to learn from multiple crises going back to the 1970s and an abdication of our responsibility to households and businesses across the country, which would continue to suffer. Instead, as the Energy Secretary has set out in the other place, we are going further and faster for clean, secure, homegrown energy to ensure we are never at the mercy of volatile fossil fuel markets again.

That means bringing forward the next renewables auction to July, exploiting untapped public land for solar and batteries, and working across government to speed up the electrification of our economy. It also means taking direct action to break the link between gas prices and electricity prices, which is responsible for some of the extreme costs that we have seen in recent years. Noble Lords will be aware that successive Governments have failed to address the complex challenge of delinking but, from next year, we will seek to transfer existing low-carbon generators that have renewable obligation contracts and which supply about a third of our power on to fixed-price contracts that deliver value for money for consumers. In doing so, we will safeguard households and businesses from spikes in the price of gas.

The next great step forward on the road to energy security, as set out by His Majesty in the gracious Speech, is our energy independence Bill. This legislates for the powers that government needs to deliver the full benefits of the clean energy transition to the British people. It will underpin action on three core objectives.

First, it is about standing up for working people by tackling the cost of living crisis. The energy price cap fell by £117 in April because of the decision taken in last year’s Budget to move the cost of some levies from bills to the Exchequer. This Bill will place that change on an enduring legal basis, removing an average of around £90 a year of costs from household bills, as part of the £150 reduction in costs announced in the Autumn Budget. It will also pave the way for the warm homes agency—a dedicated public body that will deliver the warm homes plan and tackle fuel poverty across the country. It will bring in new rules to ensure that landlords invest in home upgrades that cut bills for renters as well as giving the energy regulator the powers that it needs to be a strong consumer champion and stay ahead of a rapidly changing energy system.

Secondly, this Bill will speed up our drive for energy security as well as the electrification of our economy. That means transforming market, planning and regulatory frameworks to get projects, including offshore wind and hydrogen, built more quickly. It means speeding up the buildout of vital grid infrastructure, with a package of measures to reduce unnecessary delays, including reforms to land access rules and networks consenting.

Thirdly, the Bill will deliver a fair, managed and prosperous transition, with the North Sea at its heart. This Government’s view is that neither drilling every last drop nor turning off the taps completely is a realistic plan. Instead, we are led by the science, the facts and the needs of workers and communities, so we are managing existing oil and gas fields for their lifetimes, including through new transitional energy certificates for areas adjacent or in close proximity to existing fields, linked via a tie-back. We are also demonstrating the climate leadership that people expect of us by meeting our manifesto commitment not to issue new licences to explore new fields and the commitment to ban fracking.

At the same time, we will keep investing in the rapidly growing energy industries of the future and help workers and communities take up the opportunities that they offer. Bearing in mind that the green economy is expanding three times faster than the economy as a whole, we are locking in this growth for the future. The Bill will also expand workers’ rights and protections, as we pave the way for a new generation of good jobs in clean energy.

In the gracious Speech, His Majesty also set out plans for the nuclear regulation Bill. It is no exaggeration to say that we are on the cusp of a new age of nuclear power in this country, driven by government investment in the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century—from Sizewell C to our small modular reactors programme with Rolls-Royce SMR.

Nevertheless, according to last year’s Nuclear Regulatory Review, the sector is still held back by a system that is overly complex and “bureaucratic”, and which favours process over safe outcomes. The environmental impact assessment for Sizewell C, for example, was 44,000 pages long and left neither side particularly happy. It is not hard to see why the UK is the most expensive place in the world to build new nuclear.

The measures in the nuclear regulation Bill will deliver a pro-nuclear, pro-nature approach to building, with a co-ordinated system that reduces costs and timeframes. This is not about compromising safety; it is about simplifying a needlessly unwieldy and frustrating system so that we can unleash the potential of this rapidly growing industry. It epitomises everything that this Government are doing to get Britain building things and owning things again. Alongside the energy independence Bill, that is how we will become more resilient and create more opportunities for today’s and future generations.

Turning to technology, the gracious Speech was clear that every path to stronger growth in this country has innovation front and centre. That is why this Government have made a record investment of £86 billion in research and development, as well as launching five AI “growth zones” across the country. In the Department for Energy, we are exploring all of the possible ways in which AI can improve our power system and cut out inefficiencies.

The Government’s task is not only to fuel innovation but to help people navigate and benefit from the changes that new technology inevitably brings. Free AI training is being rolled out to 10 million people—a third of the country’s workforce—in the biggest national training effort since Harold Wilson’s Open University. We are introducing a national digital ID through the digital access to services Bill, which will provide people with a free and optional proof of identity to access services without needing to rely on physical documents that can get lost or be stolen.

It is clear that people need to trust the technologies they use every day and, in particular, that their children are safe online. In the last eight months, we have legislated to make online content that promotes self-harm and suicide a priority offence in the Online Safety Act, and we have stood up to X to stop the spread of intimate deepfakes on its platform. Our cyber security and resilience Bill will better protect our most essential services, such as hospitals and water supplies, from advanced cyber attacks.

We know that parents everywhere are grappling with how much screen time their children should have and the impact of social media. That is why we are running a national consultation on the best ways to protect children’s well-being, including a possible social media ban, overnight curfews and other measures. The question is not whether we will act but how.

The gracious Speech set out plans for an “education for all” Bill, based on the principle that every child should be supported to achieve and thrive. The measures include national inclusion standards, with tools to help teachers identify and support those with additional needs. For those with the most complex needs, new specialist provision packages will be designed with experts and tested with parents to set out exactly what support is required.

We will set clear expectations of public services and hold them to account. For the first time, Ofsted will inspect nurseries, schools and colleges to see how well they include children with additional needs. We will regulate independent special schools, ensuring that children get the right placements without unnecessary costs. We are investing billions of pounds across the system to support early intervention and make it easier to access specialist expertise. We will also invest in the transformation of local SEN—special educational needs—services, including £1.8 billion to bring experts, such as speech and language therapists, into settings.

Finally, let me touch on culture. This Government are determined to maintain the UK’s reputation for world-class events, while ensuring that working people up and down the country can both enjoy them and feel the wider economic benefits in their communities. The new sporting events Bill will ensure that events such as the 2028 European football championships can be delivered as efficiently as possible, while securing the jobs and world-class facilities that our regions deserve. It will also strengthen our claim to host future global events and tournaments, including the 2035 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

We also need to ensure that real fans have fair access to matches, concerts and other major cultural events. For too long, fans have been ripped off by touts buying large volumes of tickets online at an industrial scale and reselling them for vastly inflated prices. We are introducing secondary ticketing laws to end the scourge of touting, by making it illegal to resell a ticket for more than its original cost. In this context, I pay tribute to the work of Robert Smith of The Cure, who has done exactly that with his ticket prices and world tours and has encouraged many other artists to do the same—I thereby out myself as a dedicated Cure fan in the process. This will support our world-leading creative industries by diverting profits back into our live events sector and the pockets of hard-working people. This could save fans £112 million each year and result in a £37 reduction in the average ticket price on the resale market. Therefore, Robert Smith’s efforts will become just the norm as far as tickets are concerned, with all the consequences that that involves.

I began by setting out some of the challenges we face as a country in a world which is more volatile and dangerous than many of us can remember, but as the expression goes, necessity is the mother of invention. As we face up to these challenges, we have an opportunity to strengthen our foundations, and not just get through hard times but build something stronger from them: by getting off the rollercoaster of fossil fuels and embracing the security of clean, homegrown energy; by putting science and technology at the forefront of economic growth; by ensuring every child gets the support they need to succeed; and by making the UK one of the best places in the world for sporting and cultural events, with British citizens feeling the direct benefits. That is how we will make our nation more resilient while ensuring everyone has the platform they need to go forward and thrive.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to open this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition. I am delighted that this debate will include the maiden speeches of several noble Lords. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Blackwater, whose historical understanding and insight into Britain’s constitutional makeup will be an asset to the whole House. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, with his experience at Citizens Advice and in advocating for society’s most vulnerable, brings a public-facing experience to the House from which we shall all benefit. The noble Lord, Lord Hobby, has had an extensive career within the education sector, and I know I speak for the whole House when I say that his expertise will be welcomed and appreciated in this important forthcoming education legislation. Lastly, the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, brings to the Liberal Democrat Benches a wealth of experience, and I look forward to supporting her campaign to address the scourge upon our society that is violence against women and girls.

I will first briefly touch upon education, beginning with the SEND system. This Session will introduce legislation that recognises the crucial moment we find the system in. Costs are ballooning and councils are flailing, and it is the most vulnerable children who are the worse off for it, yet the impression remains that there will be no additional departmental spending until 2029, when central government will absorb SEND provision. When this occurs, it will account for £4 billion of the £6 billion annual shortfall, and that is before we account for the projected council deficits of £14 billion. I hope that the Government will, in due course, set out a timeline to deal with these costs.

I reflect briefly on the impact of the Government’s policies in the past Session. We began with a new tax on education, advertised as an equaliser, which has served only to funnel more children into a struggling state sector. The number of pupils leaving private schools is now almost four times more than the 3,000 originally estimated due to the Government’s policy. That tax was meant to be one half of a trade-off that helped recruit 6,500 new teachers. That plan has failed: there are in fact 400 fewer teachers now than when they took office.

Under-25 apprenticeship starts are down, gender-questioning guidance has been watered down, parental and school freedoms have been reduced, and the Government have yet to put forward a concrete policy regarding poor-value degrees which shackle graduates with decades of spiralling debt. My noble friend Lord Markham will speak to that latter point, but I can only hope that the Government recognise the damage of these policies in the last Session and will have learned something from them.

Turning to the focus of my contribution—energy— I declare my interest as an independent consultant to Terrestrial Energy, a US nuclear technology company developing generation 4 advanced nuclear technologies. In the light of the still mounting costs of energy, I shall use this opportunity to give an overview of the policies that have brought us to this point and highlight the need to change course in order to prevent this Session’s legislation rendering us entirely energy dependent upon undependable power and unreliable imports.

The Secretary of State is doubling down on his headlong rush towards renewables without properly acknowledging the consequences of this approach. Britain continues to suffer some of the highest wholesale electricity prices in the world. Since the Government were elected on the promise to reduce energy bills by £300, they have risen by £73. Meanwhile, constraint costs reached £1.7 billion in the past financial year, while balancing costs stood at £2.7 billion. By the Secretary of State’s 2030 target, those combined costs are projected to rise to £15 billion.

The blind pursuit of renewables is costing the British economy and the British people. The problem is not renewable energy itself, but rests on the fact that there is currently an absence of perspective and balance in the Government’s strategy. The Secretary of State is committing the country to intermittent power generation without ensuring that sufficient firm power exists to support it. Hoping that the wind will always blow and the sun will always shine cannot and will not deliver a competitive, affordable and secure energy sector. What it will do is leave the British public increasingly dependent upon the whims of the weather, while paying for the privilege.

The Secretary of State does at least quietly acknowledge the need for firm power. We welcome his acceptance of the Fingleton regulatory review and look forward to working constructively with the Government on its implementation in the forthcoming nuclear regulation Bill. Nuclear power should form the future foundation of our national energy system. It remains the only source of low emissions and firm power capable of delivering genuine domestic energy security. However, the Fingleton reforms will have to cut through the layer upon layer of environmental and planning bureaucracy that has paralysed development. We will see whether the Government are really going to take on the many MPs in the parliamentary Labour Party and the Green Party when it comes to accelerating the delivery of new-build nuclear.

Recent nuclear projects have been characterised by soaring costs and ever-extending construction timelines. Environmental impact assessments and planning procedures have too often become more burdensome than the construction of the plants themselves—and that is before we even begin to discuss the procurement of the most cost-effective technology. We welcome the announcement of the Rolls-Royce SMR development at Wylfa, but it is disappointing that building will not commence until 2030. Meanwhile, there is ample room on that site for a gigawatt-scale development as well, to commence development much earlier alongside Rolls-Royce.

All these projects need skills, and there is an acute shortage at all levels, from technical skills—welders, electricians and general engineers—to apprentices both graduate and postgraduate. I was pleased to hear the Minister’s comments on this skills shortage for renewables, but I encourage the Government to consider establishing an SMR fleet technical education centre in North Wales to complement the work of the Bangor University nuclear department at M-SParc. There is also an urgent need for a thermal hydraulics facility and a materials test reactor to put us at the forefront of global research. If we are to build global expertise in this field, we need to start developing this critical infrastructure now, not only to provide technical support and training facilities for the operating fleet here and overseas, but to create high-value clusters around these technologies of the future.

I sincerely hope that the forthcoming legislation will address these shortfalls, but such reforms will inevitably take time to produce results. Given the projected timelines for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, nuclear power is unlikely to provide reliable, large-scale firm power before the mid-2030s. In the meantime, we must still rely upon oil and gas as the foundation underpinning intermittent renewable power. The Secretary of State knows this. Last year, he instructed NESO to ensure that 40 gigawatts of backup electricity generation is available by 2030 through new gas-fired power stations to guarantee supply when wind and solar output is low. Yet, while he acknowledges this, the Government have simultaneously pursued policies that make oil and gas less secure and more expensive. Indeed, the flagship policy in the energy independence Bill will be the statutory ban on the licensing of new onshore oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Gas still accounts for roughly a quarter of our annual energy consumption, half of which is imported. Banning new licences will only increase our reliance on these foreign imports. Increasing reliance on imports makes little environmental sense; in fact, it is positively damaging. The average carbon emissions intensity of North Sea gas production is 24 kilograms of CO₂ per barrel of oil. The Jackdaw field, were the Secretary of State to approve it, would produce just 8.5 kilograms per barrel of oil. That is what the ban on licensing will prevent. And what will replace it? In its place, we will be reliant on imported LNG, which has an average carbon emissions intensity of 85 kilograms per barrel of oil. That is not a sustainable energy policy.

Similarly, banning new licences only makes us less secure. Renewables and firm power are inseparable. Wind and solar provide only as much security as the reliable backup capacity supporting them. By relying on imported LNG, we make ourselves very vulnerable to international instability. The most recent war in the Middle East demonstrates precisely why dependence is so dangerous. What happens when the Ras Laffan is disrupted? What happens when global shipping lanes close? What happens when another international crisis sends imported energy prices surging overnight?

We have already seen, specifically across the Iberian Peninsula, the very real risks associated with instability in energy supply. Blackouts become a real risk and carry with them profound economic and human consequences. We constantly hear that the North Sea is a declining basin, yet for 40 years annual projections have repeatedly underestimated the remaining reserves. Norway was supposedly written off in 2010, yet last year it produced 4.1 million barrels of oil a day compared with the United Kingdom’s 1 million. It drilled 49 exploration wells—us, none. The only thing that separates many of these fields is an arbitrary line across the continental shelf.

With constantly improving technology supplemented by AI, the potential to exploit undiscovered reserves remains substantial. The companies are ready to invest; the expertise exists. All that is lacking is a Government willing to reconsider their own self-defeating policy.

Beyond the environmental incoherence and insecurity inherent in the Government’s policy lies the question of cost. The Minister will no doubt continue to argue that oil and gas prices are set internationally and that increasing domestic production therefore brings little benefit. But this ignores the economic reality. The more Britain develops its own reserves, the less exposed we become to international supply shocks, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. Greater domestic supply does not insulate us entirely from global markets, but it does improve resilience and it reduces the current exposure to volatility.

Secondly, quite apart from production levels, the Government still exercise enormous influence over energy costs through taxation. The reason why energy bills now sit £73 higher than when the Government took office is not merely international pricing; it is that the Government are accelerating towards net zero while loading additional policy costs and levies on to consumers to fund that transition.

Even if wholesale prices were to halve over the next five years, forecasts suggest that consumers would still face electricity bills 20% higher than they currently stand. It is no wonder that, faced with these burgeoning costs, the Treasury’s own economic modelling predicts that energy-intensive sectors will be forced to cut over 160,000 jobs this year. That loss is a direct result of deindustrialising, high-cost policies and, thus, entirely lies at the Government’s feet.

The economic principle remains straightforward: if you reduce taxation and regulatory burdens, you reduce costs, and the market does the rest. If the Government were serious about lowering bills, they would consider the Conservative proposal to scrap the renewable obligation scheme, which currently guarantees some wind farms prices three times above the market rate for electricity. They would repeal the energy profits levy, stimulating investment and protecting jobs in the north-east of Scotland, and they would remove the carbon taxes which continue to inflate electricity costs for households and businesses alike.

Jobs are declining and bills are rising. Far from increasing our energy security, the Government’s current approach risks making Britain more vulnerable to blackouts and more dependent upon unstable imports.

True energy independence requires reliable, firm power on which the wider system can safely operate. In the long term, I hope sincerely that nuclear energy will fulfil that role, but, until the necessary reforms are enacted and new nuclear capacity is operational, we face a straightforward choice: imported oil and gas, or domestically produced oil and gas. The latter is environmentally preferable, supports British jobs, generates revenue for public services, reduces exposure to international instability, and helps moderate costs for consumers. The Government remain trapped within a dogma that serves no one except the most rigid net-zero ideologues. The forthcoming legislation gives Ministers an opportunity to rethink that approach. They should seize that opportunity, reduce the tax burden, restore investment confidence and allow domestic production to proceed. If they do that, Britain may yet achieve genuine energy independence.

My Lords, it is an honour to speak in this debate on energy security. I look forward to the maiden speeches of all the new noble Lords and noble Baronesses, and I wish them well in their time here.

If a week is a long time in politics, the period since the last parliamentary Session feels like an eternity. Our world continues to be ever more dangerous and unstable. Families and businesses are feeling the reality in their bills and their shopping baskets and have a sense that something is wrong with the way we are managing our affairs. If there is one lesson we need to draw from the turbulent events of recent months, it is that what we need now is not internal party politics and leadership battles but a change of policy backed by renewed ambition, upscaled delivery and a clear national commitment to cut dependence on volatile and unreliable fossil fuels.

I thank the Minister and his officials for the work they have continued to do, quietly and diligently, through a period of considerable turbulence. My gratitude is genuine, but it is not a substitute for greater urgency. There will be shocks ahead and we must be ready for them and honest about their impacts. The International Energy Agency has been clear that this global energy crisis is among the most severe. Global energy stocks are being depleted at record pace. There is a quality to this moment. Rather like watching an explosion at a distance, the flash has already occurred, the light has reached us, but the destructive pressure wave has yet to arrive. Our task is to prepare for what is coming, not to persuade ourselves that it will pass us by.

This crisis is not simply a question of oil and gas prices, uncomfortable as those are; it cascades through the whole economy, into jet and heating oil, diesel, fertiliser, food production, and supply chains of every kind. It will increase government borrowing costs in many economies, triggering recessions. The United Kingdom, with some of the most expensive domestic energy bills in the G7, is particularly exposed.

The longer we remain dependent on fossil fuels, the longer we remain price takers and not price makers, subject to decisions made in foreign capitals and boardrooms over which we have little influence. The cost of dependency is tangible. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has calculated that the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels led to direct economic impacts of £183 billion in the four years following the invasion of Ukraine. To put that figure in perspective, it exceeds the entire annual budget of NHS England in 2024-25. These are not ideological arguments; they are arguments of economic necessity.

America, once our closest ally, now pursues a National Security Strategy that speaks explicitly of global energy dominance, backed by a denial of climate change—a belief that is contrary to responsible energy policy. The consequences are only beginning to impact us now and resolution of the Iran conflict is not imminent. In this context, or any other, it would be a “delusional fantasy”, as Ed Davey put it, to suggest that North Sea oil offers any serious answers to our energy insecurity. It does not, and the Official Opposition should stop pretending that anything else is the case.

The answer lies in what Carbon Brief has already demonstrated in hard figures: since the Iran conflict began, Britain’s existing renewables have shielded us from some £1.7 billion in additional gas import costs. That is hard evidence that clean power is already working and saving us money. The Climate Change Committee has also made it clear that the total cost of another fossil-fuel crisis of this kind would exceed the total cost of reaching net zero. This is the most powerful argument for added urgency.

I am genuinely pleased that the Government are moving at speed and scale towards the achievement of Clean Power 2030. Renewable projects to power the equivalent of 23 million homes have already been secured. We want Labour to succeed in this endeavour, not from any partisan generosity but because, if it does not, the days ahead will be considerably darker.

We therefore broadly welcome the energy independence Bill, and we will engage with it constructively, but we will press for a ban on fracking that contains no loopholes: one that cannot be quietly unpicked by future political pressure. We will seek to require solar panels on suitable new warehouses and car parks as a matter of standard practice. We also want communities to be genuine participants in the energy transition, not merely its hosts. People who live alongside new infrastructure ought to share in the benefits it generates. That means a right to sell electricity, restored funding for Great British Energy, directed in part towards community coastal onshore wind, and better access to local generation and storage. On market reform, we are clear: more levies must come off electricity bills, the system must properly reward clean power and a social tariff must be introduced for households that cannot absorb repeated bill shocks. These proposals are not radical; they are proportionate and compassionate.

Brexit has left us poorer, less secure and more energy vulnerable than we need to be. Our future lies in closer energy ties to our nearest neighbours. Rejoining the EU internal energy market and linking our emissions trading schemes, where that is practicable, will reduce costs and strengthen resilience. In a modern energy system, isolation is just inefficiency by another name.

On the nuclear regulation Bill, we recognise the case for faster delivery and for streamlining where it is genuinely warranted, but we will scrutinise the detail carefully. Public confidence in the safety and accountability of nuclear power is not a luxury; it is a precondition for its success and should be treated as such. Nuclear power requirements cannot override our nature protections. If Labour is backing a renaissance of nuclear power, it must extend to greater efforts to deal with the legacy of nuclear waste and ensure that those costs do not spiral.

The electricity generation levy Bill implements the pot-zero proposals that my party called for over a year ago. While we support them, these matters are rightly complex. Persuading companies to negotiate new contracts will also be complex and take time, while the savings may be slower than anticipated. Beyond this, more must be done to further fundamentally reform our outdated energy market arrangements. We call on the Government to develop proposals for a strategic reserve for gas-fired power stations outside the market, as we move towards a more wholly renewable energy market.

I turn finally to a matter that troubles me. I checked the gracious Address carefully. The word “nature” does not appear in it and the phrase “climate change” appears only once. We do not wish to see Labour following the Green Party’s latest example, so we call on the Government not to ignore climate and nature in their discourses. This omission reflects our real concern about the current limits of the Government’s vision and ambition. Energy security—any security—cannot be meaningfully separated from the climate and nature crisis. They are, as my party has long argued, two intertwined aspects of the same emergency.

Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries. That matters for our food, our water, our health and our long-term resilience. Since 2020, we have had five of our worst harvests. Last year was the worst year for burning from wildfires. The real consequences of an ever-warming climate are a national security issue and must be treated as such. Our adaption pathways are, by any assessment, inadequate for the climate impacts already under way. We need a proper national strategy for nature and adaption: properly funded, integrated into policy-making and treated as a matter of national security rather than an afterthought.

I ask the Conservative Benches to return to the cross-party consensus on climate and nature that this country once led and that many of them helped to build. I ask the Government to stop treating nature as something that can be omitted from their legislative programme. This Government should lead the world on climate change and must provide adaption and support for those less fortunate who live on the front line of climate impacts.

The Liberal Democrats will support this Government where they act in the national interests and we will hold them to account, courteously but firmly, where they fall short. We stand ready to work co-operatively on the difficult decisions ahead, because on these matters co-operation makes the near impossible merely difficult and its absence makes the merely difficult impossible. The clean energy transition is not simply the right thing to do; it is the affordable thing, the secure thing and the only thing that seriously answers the crisis we are in. The opportunity is before us; let us not waste it.

My Lords, before we move on to the Back Benches, we have over 70 speakers taking part in the debate, including four maiden speakers, and I know that noble Lords are looking forward to well-informed and concise speeches. I encourage noble Lords to stick to the four-minute advisory time limit, so that we can finish at a reasonable time and give respect to other speakers in the debate. Whips are a kind and generous group of people, so please excuse us if one of my number needs to get up during the debate to remind people of the four-minute limit.

My Lords, imagine if, this morning, a child could go to school in the United Kingdom knowing that the technology in their classroom was designed to support their learning rather than simply to harvest their data and that their personal information, whether their educational record or visits to the school nurse, was protected from commercial exploitation.

Imagine if safety by design was the price of access to children, if addictive functionality was no longer the business model of social media, and if online protections started at birth and continued to adulthood. Imagine if social media and AI companies were required to fix all identified risks in their products. Imagine if generative AI systems had to check that they could not be prompted to create child sexual abuse material. Imagine if chatbots were not permitted to manipulate, exploit or provide unsafe advice. Imagine if tech companies had a duty of care.

Imagine if Ofcom had enforcement powers that worked and if tech executives were held responsible for risks they chose to ignore. Imagine if, when a parent watched helplessly as their child was groomed by a chatbot, they could turn to the police, a court, a regulator or a hotline for an emergency halt to the service.

None of that is fanciful. None of that is technologically impossible. It is simply the list of proposals in my name that this Government refused in the last legislative Session.

Last week, Jess Phillips said in her resignation letter:

“It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space. Not legislate, just threaten”.

She was talking about child sexual abuse material. Her fury mirrors my warnings to Ministers that they will regret kicking these issues into the long grass. A narrow consultation, vast powers to the Secretary of State, long timelines and photo opportunities with bereaved parents are not action.

My amendments did not stop with child safety. They extended to AI accountability, data sovereignty, public sector dependency, workers’ and creatives’ rights to their labour and property, procurement, security and the basic question of whether this Government are willing to govern in the national interest rather than subsidising and creating further dependency on a handful of rapacious American firms. This is not a collection of isolated failures; it is a pattern. Again and again, when forced to choose between the needs of UK citizens and democratic accountability or the demands of Silicon Valley, this Government have chosen the latter.

The King’s Speech says remarkably little about tech, an issue that controls every aspect of private and public life. The Government promise transformation, efficiency and empowerment for UK citizens, but their legislative programme does not provide the means. If there is a beautiful technological future over the horizon, I am afraid this is not it. Unless we recover the confidence to govern technology in the public interest, the Government will be found profoundly wanting, particularly where children are concerned. This weekend, I spoke to campaigners in Canada who are supporting UK families as their loved ones are groomed by chatbots, because our Government refused to provide a route to protection—in fact, they whipped against it. It is on our watch that lives will be lost.

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I look forward to the maiden speeches to come.

In the words of the King’s Speech,

“an increasingly dangerous and volatile world threatens the United Kingdom”.

The Government will respond “with strength” and in line with

“the British values of decency, tolerance and respect”.

Not all threats are visible, though all need an intentional response.

The potential of artificial intelligence is clear, but there is rising public concern about the risks and dangers, both present and future. There is concern about employment and jobs being displaced by technology—which is already registering in statistics—and in the aspirations of the young. There is concern about the toxic effects of social media on public discourse. Nearly 1 million children are in the mental health system and, according to a report by Smartphone Free Childhood, youth worklessness has doubled over the last 10 years. There is concern about public truth, abuse perpetrated through and by chatbots, and increasing violence against women and girls. There is concern about the proliferation of AI in warfare, and there is growing concern about the international competition to develop general AI and the lack of guardrails for technology companies.

There are some things on technology in the King’s Speech to welcome, each of which will require careful scrutiny in this Chamber. However, for me, there is a massive hole in the centre of government policy in the area of online safety and security and the relationship between government and technology companies. The best interests of our citizens are simply not being served by a small number of global companies pledged to generate revenue and meet the demands of their shareholders. We are seeing, and will see, an increasing distortion of human dignity and value in the interests of profit. I look forward very much to Pope Leo’s forthcoming encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which will be on AI, to be published on Monday, and to your Lordships’ House exploring these issues in more depth on 5 June in the debate on human-centred AI, sponsored by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Where in the gracious Speech is the legislative vehicle to deliver the urgent changes needed to the online safety regime? Where is the strategic approach to AI safety? Where is the careful balancing of ethics with innovation? Where are the laws binding development on superintelligent AI? Will the Minister please comment?

Finally, as the bishop of a diocese with over 280 schools, and which has two of our own MATs and is a partner in 22 further MATs, and on behalf of the Church of England, I welcome the proposed reforms of the special educational needs system. They align with the Church of England’s vision for education, centred on human dignity, belonging, inclusion and enabling every child to flourish, regardless of their needs or abilities. However, we need to pay much more attention to the ordering of the digital world our children will inhabit.

My Lords, I will speak about the vital importance of creativity and imagination, the twin engines of our world-leading creative industries, and of books in particular. I declare my interests as a former publishing CEO and book charity founder.

Research conclusively shows that reading for pleasure fires the imagination, builds empathy and is the single greatest predictor of academic success, life outcomes and well-being, regardless of social background. Books are also a major economic force, driving exports and inspiring global film franchises, TV series and plays. It is therefore alarming that, according to the last yearly survey, only one in three—32%—of eight to 18 year-olds chooses to read for pleasure. That is the lowest figure on record. Less than 50% of adults read a book a year, and too many parents no longer read to their pre-schoolers: 50% of five year-olds have never been read to. This is despite powerful evidence that, when adults read to babies, their breathing, heartbeat and brain rhythm synchronise in the most magical way.

The problem runs deeper. The Financial Times reported that human beings may have reached peak cognitive powers in 2022, and we have been in decline ever since.

I thought I was just getting old.

It might also be true in this House.

University students struggle to concentrate on classic texts and, this year, the first UK reading census found that 30% of the population are too distracted to read, and a further 16% are completely disengaged. As the Guardian editorial highlighted, we live in an attention span crisis, with a tsunami of data, where truth is downgraded and reality itself sometimes seems fake.

This is such a troubling environment for our children, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, so often and powerfully reminds us. They are captured by addictive algorithms and rising anxiety. Books, by contrast, offer quiet, immersive pleasure, real entertainment and, as the Children’s Laureate argues, genuine happiness rather than digital “sedation”. Neuroscience from the Queen’s Reading Room charity shows that just five minutes of reading a day can reduce stress by 20%.

The Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, announced a national year of reading this year, 2026: the first in the age of AI and a true public/private collaboration, delivered by the National Literacy Trust. Already, the campaign has reached 2 million children, distributed 600,000 books and signed up 11,000 teachers, 7,000 schools, 3,000 libraries, 150 local authorities and 800 partner organisations, ranging from the Premier League to parent-teacher associations and prisons. The campaign is also recruiting a growing army of community volunteers, already at 30,000 and aiming for 100,000, linking schools, homes and libraries. I welcome the Education Select Committee’s investigation into reading for pleasure, the Government’s commitment to a library in every primary school and additional funding for secondary school books. I also support calls for regular story time in primaries that distinguishes listening for pleasure from formal skills teaching.

King’s College research also shows that, like reading, looking at a painting reduces cortisol levels by over 20%. Our splendid free museums are a brilliant policy legacy, and anything that adds friction and complexity, such as charging for visitors, should be avoided in my opinion.

In the book industry, we must protect the creative pipeline with robust copyright and ensure that writers are fairly and transparently remunerated. AI is trained on human creativity. Human imagination has never been more important or more under threat. Reading for pleasure should be nurtured throughout the school years, including a re-evaluation of cuts to arts and humanities in further education, which the Minister might want to comment on later. Interestingly, McKinsey has pivoted to hiring philosophy and literature graduates, who are able to think creatively and are better equipped for the AI world of work.

The Government have a key role to play in reversing the decline in reading for pleasure, restoring its enrichment and joy for a generation, and thereby turbocharging the creative economy. The journey has only just begun.

My Lords, the gracious Speech spoke of a country in which

“every child is included in the nation’s highest aspirations”

and in which no child should be held back by poverty, special educational needs or lack of respect for vocational education. Well, that is quite a challenge on the day that an 11-year high in youth unemployment has been announced. Among 16 to 24 year-olds, the rate has surged to 16.2%, with a 24.6% spike in London: one in four of that age group is unemployed.

We are promised a Bill to raise standards in schools and introduce generational reform of special educational needs. Let us hope that that is ambition enough, but the test is whether it makes a real difference in classrooms, communities and cultural institutions, where too many people fail to receive opportunities for a worthwhile education.

The gracious Speech failed to refer to culture, the arts or the creative industries—unless you count sport. There was much about growth, economic security and public service reform, but education is more than just achieving standards and examination success. Culture is not an optional extra to be afforded only when times are easy. The creative industries—if not our Eurovision songs—are part of Britain’s national pride and strength. A country that nurtures talent, widens opportunity and develops human potential will gain socially and economically.

How serious is the Government’s growth agenda when so many of their actions impede growth? The increase in employer national insurance contributions, and lowering employee pay thresholds where the employer has to pay, have a harsh impact on labour-intensive sectors, including the arts. Theatres, orchestras, museums, galleries, festivals and production companies are all suffering as a result of the steps this Government have taken. Higher employment costs mean less rehearsal time, less touring and fewer new commissions. A Government praising creative industries as drivers of growth should not make it harder for those organisations to survive and flourish.

Of course, our cultural model is a mixed one. We do not have the high public subsidy of Europe, nor the scale of private philanthropy seen in the US, but what we are seeing is the pressure on private giving and philanthropy. Those who studied the Rich List report last weekend will have seen that one in six of those who were on the list two years ago did not appear. One-third have left the country. This is a really alarming result of a Government who make success, prosperity and wealth seem unworthy. We are losing the people who so often have funded many of our major activities.

The Government have announced that they are accepting or exploring much of the review from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge. I welcome that and I hope it makes a big difference. I have often referred to Hull as being a great centre of creative activity. The head of the National Theatre, the most important theatrical job in the country, and James Graham were among those educated there, and what it did for a community with high unemployment and low pride is quite remarkable.

Let me quickly refer to those young people and older people of all ages who fail to get the recognition they deserve: those in prison education. I call on the Government to end the ludicrous ban on prisoners taking university degrees. Too often, education in prisons is short-changed, due to understandable employment and funding problems. Victor Hugo said:

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison”.

Education is critically connected to the prison population.

My Lords, I welcome culture being part of today’s debate and the acknowledgment by the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, of its importance—and, if I might say so, its wonderful celebration by the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck. Culture and our consequent creative industries provide social glue and are an engine of economic growth—and my goodness does our country need both. We, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, welcome the review of Arts Council England by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, including her endorsement of the arm’s-length principle and the need to properly fund big national organisations. They support smaller regional ones, contributing to the talent pipeline and to touring, as well as providing international reach. We also welcome strengthening regional decision-making through new regional boards.

I will again address skills. For our creative sector to thrive, we need a skilled workforce, but creative education has been almost eroded from our state schools. This has serious implications for the creative sector. We are relieved that the Government’s new, revised curriculum aims to address this, but I ask the Minister to give us the timetable.

Next is the nurturing of skills. The recent creative industries skills audit paints a sobering picture. Necessary skills are changing at speed. Continuing development of the workforce is essential. The apprenticeship system needs to be more flexible to fit a freelance workforce, and the new growth and skills levy must be put to good use. Will the Minister listen to the industry’s needs and asks? Also, can she tell us when the freelance champion will be appointed and what the terms of reference will be?

Then there are the calamitous consequences of Brexit. The ability to access the continent involves complicated paperwork, carnets, cabotage and visas, which inflict punishing costs and red tape across the creative sector. In addition, our young people have been cut off from European culture. We must pursue visa waivers and a youth mobility scheme and apply to participate in Creative Europe.

Finally, and crucially, I turn to the BBC. Recent Reuters Institute data shows that the BBC remains the most trusted source of news not just for the UK but for the world. In an era of disinformation and social media silos, the BBC stands as a beacon of accuracy and impartiality. However, the BBC is not just about the news; it develops and invests in talent and R&D; it is radio stations, podcasts, orchestras, Bitesize, BBC online, iPlayer, the World Service and BBC Sounds; and it is David Attenborough. It is the glue that I referred to earlier. It plays a pivotal role in promoting the UK around the world, through both the programmes it exports and the World Service, which is ever more important now that President Trump has cut off funds to the Voice of America. It has also drawn American streamers to our shores.

Audience viewing patterns are changing. The BBC has responded—its new partnership with YouTube creates BBC content, including news, for YouTube viewers—but we need to help PSBs navigate this new environment. Does the Minister agree that the provisions of the Media Act on prominence and discoverability must be properly enforced and strengthened? We on these Benches applaud the Secretary of State’s support for the BBC, but we have some asks. All non-executives to the BBC board and the chair should be independently appointed, and the Government should maintain long-term public funding for the BBC, crucially protecting the principle of universality.

This is of course against the backdrop of that 10-year event, charter renewal, so I have another request: the need for renewal should go and the BBC should have a forever charter. Without that and in the wrong hands—Farage-like hands—the charter can simply be terminated on its last day. There would be no negotiations and no BBC—it would be gone. I end with the words of the embodiment of the BBC and PSB, Sir David Attenborough:

“Every section of society, for one reason or another, should be glad that the BBC is there”.

My Lords, decarbonising energy and deploying AI are the defining technology challenges of our times. They are fundamental to growth and are intimately linked. The greatest constraint on technology deployment in the United States is energy availability. In the UK, Ofgem has 140 data centres on its books, so the energy independence Bill will scale up renewables, accelerate the deployment of clean power and build out the grid. As we have heard, the nuclear regulation Bill will speed up new nuclear and deal with the damaging delays.

I turn to technology and AI in particular. The UK is the world’s third-most important hub for AI start-ups. We are an AI maker as well as an AI taker, so the Government’s streamlining of planning, the new UK compute road map and the AI hardware plan are all vital infrastructure fundamentals, but they must be matched by pace in deploying AI. I welcome the AI growth opportunities plan, the funding of start-ups and the growth labs to train new UK AI. Regulating for growth will create new sandboxes, relaxing existing rules for new AI products that can transform lives. The UK is raising its game around innovation, and regulators will be required to support growth, boost investor confidence and speed up the time to market. All these actions signal a new, largely cross-party consensus that Britain should prioritise outcomes over processes.

It is hard to overstate the long-term impact of AI, as we have heard already: two-thirds of jobs exposed to some form of automation and many entry-level jobs will be changed for ever.

Let me conclude on the security challenges that have already been touched on. The cyber security and resilience Bill will strengthen our cyber defences, but post Mythos, we have to ask whether it is enough. Mythos, of course, found severe vulnerabilities in every major operating system: the systems that run our electricity grids, retail networks, military systems, emergency services and hospitals. The US Administration have been compelled to act. Project Glasswing gave leading firms a head start in patching vulnerabilities. However, the American media is now awash with talk of executive orders, bipartisan Bills and co-operation with China—all moves towards greater oversight.

Balancing AI growth and security is complex. As with climate change, we need to balance national and international action. International co-ordination matters: 80% of Europe’s digital services are provided by non-European companies. The European Union’s own attempt at legislation was too broad and created disincentives. In the UK, our AI Security Institute operates without statutory authority or parliamentary oversight; indeed, some have argued that that very ambiguity has been the key to the trust it has built.

So what do we do? Many AI company CEOs talk sincerely about balancing growth and safety, but profit invariably takes precedence in corporate cultures. That is why some risks—the Economist calls them “externalities” —are better overseen by citizens. We can draw lessons from other sectors: more transparency, safety by design cultures and corporate liability as a potential lever. That is what lies ahead of us. The technology has huge potential, and Britain has great potential in that for realising the upsides. As other noble Lords have noted, this Chamber is well equipped to discern the public interest. That is the opportunity before us and the really interesting times that we live in.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander. It is also a pleasure to speak on the same day as so many distinguished maiden speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord Blackwater. We are fellow alumni, and those of us who are devotees of his magisterial tomes know that he will bring a splendid erudition to your Lordships’ proceedings.

I want to touch on a part of the gracious Speech that is a bit of a minority interest. It is the words on the Civil Service—the proposals that the Government pledge to bring forward to

“strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation and productivity of the Civil Service”.

I welcome this; I applaud it, although tinged with a little bit of déjà vu. Few people are better qualified than me to know that the easy part is the bringing forward of the proposals to address the failings of the institution of the Civil Service— not the civil servants, because we still have brilliant civil servants in this country, but the institution itself, which is flawed and needs serious reform.

The flaws are well known: the churn, the unplanned movement of civil servants from one post to another, the class distinction, the lack of parity of esteem between those charged with delivery and implementation versus those who make the policy—the Whitehall civil servants who get nearly all of the top jobs—and the lack of openness to influence from outside the Civil Service. All these are flaws which have been identified going well back even to before the Fulton committee report in 1968. Therefore, we look forward to these proposals, but the hard bit is making it happen. There are three things which need to happen to make it even possible for these changes to be introduced and then to stick.

The first is authority. Real authority needs to be given to the head of the Civil Service, and that authority can be given explicitly only by the Prime Minister, whose statutory powers can be delegated so that the head of the Civil Service does not need to rely upon her admittedly splendid powers of charm and persuasion to ensure that these reforms can be implemented on a whole-of-government basis. They need to be implemented on a whole-of-government basis, although that may give offence to those in the Treasury who worship at the altar of the hermetically sealed departmental silos. Authority is essential.

The second is transparency. It is time to lift the veil that conceals the sensitive area of the management of the Civil Service. This is deemed too precious, rare and sacred to be exposed to view, particularly to the view of politicians—the people who, after all, are required, rightly, to take responsibility and to be accountable for everything that is done by civil servants.

The third element that needs to be strengthened is mentioned: accountability. It is time for there to be genuine, external accountability for what is actually being delivered as regards the Civil Service’s capability. For too long, the Civil Service has scrutinised itself. It is time to beef up the role of the Civil Service Commission to make it a genuine external regulator of the Civil Service. The tendency now is for the Civil Service to mark its own homework.

Authority, transparency and accountability: if these are introduced genuinely, there is at least a chance that these no doubt splendid proposals will actually be put into action.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to rise to give my first speech in this House. I declare an interest as the chief executive of the Kemnal Academies Trust.

I want to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for all the support I have received. I have been genuinely bowled over by the warmth and the kindness that I have found on every Bench and in every part of your Lordships’ House. I want to say a special thank you for my introduction by my noble friends Lady Bousted and Lord Kestenbaum, and the guidance of Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments and her team, the door- keepers, all the staff, and especially my noble friends Lord Kennedy, Lady Wheeler and Lady Smith, and the team behind them. A final thank you to my family —Vic, Keir, Cameron and Fred—for literally everything.

Waiting for this moment has given me the chance to make my contribution in a debate on education, which has been at the centre of my career for the last 30 years —despite, dare I admit, never having taught in a classroom. Luckily, I have not mentioned that anywhere with a permanent record of what is said.

I did not know it at the time, but this journey began at the age of eight. I was at a family funeral, and as I stood outside at the end I saw a familiar figure walking away. It was Mr Peacock, the head teacher of my primary school. What sticks with me is not just that he took the time to come but that he sought no attention or credit for doing so.

There is no standard, professional qualification or inspection judgment that properly captures these daily acts of care that characterise everybody who works in our schools and colleges. I work in education to back those people and because the answer to almost every challenge our country faces leads back to the classroom.

Above all, if we want greater unity and cohesion, we must ensure that everybody has a stake in the future. I admire all who work in our education system to make this happen. But you can see why I have a particular fascination for the role of the head teacher.

It was a famous Member of the other place who once said, “God has not seen fit to grant to Prime Ministers the power he has granted to head teachers”—a line that is a little poignant right now.

So, it was a great honour for me to represent 29,000 head teachers and their deputies when I became general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers in 2010. After the NAHT, I became chief executive of Teach First, that amazing charity founded to encourage talented graduates to spend part of their career teaching. Because the evidence is clear: the most important in-school factor driving educational outcomes is a good teacher.

Today, I lead the Kemnal Academies Trust, a group of 45 schools in the south and east of England. This is a fantastic opportunity to say thank you here to my 56 head teachers, 3,200 staff and 22,000 students, many of whom are in the middle of their GCSEs and A-levels, who do a stunning job in demanding circumstances. As I speak, we have Ofsted in one of our schools, so best wishes to Rainham School for Girls. I am being grilled by the inspectors tomorrow and I am not sure which of those events I am more nervous about—this speech or my inspection grilling.

We have a good education system, but it does not yet do well by every young person. Those who grow up in poverty and those with special educational needs and disabilities do not achieve all that they deserve. It was right to remove the two-child benefit cap. I saw the damage that caused every single day. Whatever you may think of the motives, incentives and choices of adults, surely we do not penalise children for those choices. The reform of special educational needs will be difficult, but it is essential if these most vulnerable of young people are to thrive as they deserve. Our current approach is broken—an adversarial system that encourages conflict, delays diagnosis and forces separation. As a practitioner I am nervous about the reforms, like many, but these proposals were well received in the sector. I have come to realise that the expertise and scrutiny that is characteristic of this Chamber will be a crucial part of navigating the development of these reforms.

As we debate education matters, I hope we will remember that having gone to school does not make us experts on pedagogy any more than having been to hospital makes us experts on surgery. What teachers and heads want from us are the resources to do their job, clarity on direction and support for the difficult decisions that they must often make. We can give that to them, and we as a country can reap the benefits. As families regain their stake in the future, the unity and the optimism that we all crave will grow again.

My Lords, it is with the greatest pleasure that I follow that excellent and very moving speech from my noble friend Lord Hobby. He is renowned as a person of strong values and deep conviction—two attributes that will serve him well in this Chamber. His has been a lifetime of service, at the heart of which have been his tireless efforts to elevate the sacred profession of teaching and, in particular, the delicate task of getting teachers to those places where they are most needed and in front of children who most need them. My noble friend has done more than most to place schools and their people at the heart of the nation’s affections. For this reason, your Lordships’ House will be thankful for his presence and will look forward to many more outstanding contributions.

In that spirit, I will focus my remarks on the Government’s intentions on education, as set out in the gracious Speech. This Government are rightly focusing attention on the grave dangers of nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training—the so-called NEETs. The NEET title masks the toxic cumulative effect of chronic disadvantage, often over many years and often since early childhood. Forthcoming research from Teach First, where I serve as a trustee, will set out the profound impact that sustained poverty through childhood will have on educational outcomes and life chances. The correlation between child poverty and low GCSE attainment is sobering. These challenges are especially acute where disadvantages are geographically concentrated—some coastal areas, some rural towns and, of course, former industrial centres.

However, we know that these outcomes and this hopelessness do not have to be inevitable. It is the blessed combination of great teaching and strong school leadership which consistently demonstrates that life chances, in particular post-16 year-old destinations, can be profoundly altered for the better. The best available evidence, notably from the Education Endowment Foundation, is incontrovertible. Put simply, great teaching and strong school leadership are the most important levers that schools have to improve outcomes for their children.

There is another correlation, but this one an inspiring one. Wherever you find children from disadvantaged communities consistently achieving excellent outcomes, you will always find inspiring teachers and remarkable school leaders—heroes who know that what is at stake is not just qualifications but the opportunity to build strong aspiration, personal confidence and stability.

We are often told that there is no silver bullet. That may be so, but we know one undeniable truth: as government policy seeks to attract school leaders into communities facing the greatest disadvantage, it will, in so doing, change the face of this country. A former Member of this House, the late and revered Lord Sacks, said in his own maiden speech that:

“To defend a country, you need an army”,—[Official Report, 26/11/09; col. 493.]

but to defend a society, you need teachers. It is no exaggeration to say that there is an urgency to this challenge, as set down by the late Lord Sacks, equivalent to the very defence of this realm.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, on his maiden speech and look forward to those maiden speeches that are to come.

If there was precious little in the gracious Speech about the arts per se, social cohesion was mentioned, and they are inextricably intertwined, as we have heard. A society bereft of culture cannot question itself and cannot rejoice in itself, but whenever the economy comes under pressure, the arts are one of our first casualties.

We seem gifted at scoring own goals. Whatever your feelings about Brexit, few would deny that it has been catastrophic for the creative industries. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, graciously conceded that his Government got wrong the negotiations on artists and musicians performing in Europe. That has had a disastrous effect on countless artists, in terms of reputation and income, and on the Treasury and the cultural reputation of the UK. When I put this to the Prime Minister in an interview on Radio 3, he agreed. So here we are with agreement across the political spectrum—Reform, possibly, aside—but no advance, though I hope that Erasmus might be a chink of light, as a door gradually opens. Can the Minister make me feel better by reporting on progress on European access for artists and musicians?

I also tackled Sir Keir on AI and copyright, and the implacable concern of colleagues such as Elton John that allowing the unfettered use of copyright in AI training is the thin end of the wedge. Intellectual property either belongs to its creator or it does not; there is no halfway house. The long-established principle of ownership being vested in the creator cannot and must not be watered down to appease big tech. The UK must of course be at the forefront of AI, but not by ceding control of copyright.

I too admired the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, in her report on the Arts Council. Can the Minister say whether her Government will mandate the Hodge recommendations, particularly on tax cuts or tax easing for performing organisation? We are in real danger of diminishing beacons of innovation such as the London Sinfonietta, an aural equivalent of the Tate Modern, through funding cuts. It is 41% down on its grant. The equivalent in Paris, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, works to a budget 12 times that of the Sinfonietta, and it is the same in Germany.

Finally, I turn to where it all begins—music in schools and tuition for all, not just the well-off and privileged. I felt shame when the mother of that wonderfully gifted tribe, the Kanneh-Masons, told me that, in today’s educational set-up, her children would not emerge. I know that the Government are very committed to work at this stage, and I welcome that, but there is so much more to do so that every child is exposed to music, if only, for example, at assembly. Some schools do a very good job here, playing a piece of music at every assembly—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, can confirm this. It is such an easy and cheap thing to do. Hearing three minutes of music, be it pop, classical or jazz, can change lives. This is something that I would love to see the Government insist on in every school.

We have much to be proud of, but we need to continue the legacy for the next generation. It is our legacy, it is their legacy and it is society’s legacy.

My Lords, I congratulate all noble Lords making their maiden speeches today. I wish to highlight the emotional needs of children and our duty to ensure that their happiness and well-being are at the very heart of the Government’s policy, because childhood lasts a lifetime. It is our responsibility to ensure this happens, and that includes what content they consume in the media, especially on online platforms. The content that children watch in their formative years will have an enormous impact on this outcome. We need to consider how they are being influenced and who is shaping their lives, because many are suffering from mental problems and anxieties.

I declare an interest, because this year it is 50 years since I first appeared on children’s television. Back then it was a thriving industry, contributing millions to the Treasury, but today it is no longer a viable business. Children’s television is in crisis: it has collapsed; it is on its knees.

I took millions of my “Play School” babies, the nation’s children, through the round, square and arched windows, exposing them to their world, full of fun, education and creativity. This was done with unconditional love, continuity and age-appropriate content, helping them to live through adversity and face the future. At present, we are failing our children as the content they watch in droves online on platforms like YouTube and TikTok is adding to their mental vulnerability.

The BBC has announced plans to get rid of 10% of its staff, but I make a plea that it tightly ring-fence its children’s programming output. Apart from a trickle of preschool programming from Channel 5, the BBC is the only public service broadcaster commissioning children’s TV content. If it does not, it will join Sky and ITV, which have completely abandoned children’s commissioning. Any cuts could be the hammer blow that kills off the industry completely.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to cut down kids’ screen time, especially as the endless algorithms on YouTube and TikTok are engineered to make our children dedicated to watching content that is not culturally relevant, is highly imbalanced and does not represent their lives, voices or communities. Teachers are noticing how many children now speak with an American accent and have very little concentration span because of the way the content is delivered.

There is no use funding content, because the way the system is set up by online platforms means UK content is not easily found, which is the biggest problem. We need prominence and regulation on these platforms to ensure that the cleverly and carefully crafted, trusted content that Children’s BBC provides is not buried under content from around the world which does not reflect our children’s lives.

Streamers should give prominence to content that passes a cultural relevance test—content not just made by the BBC but from independent UK producers who at present are suffocating. With this policy the problem of finding will then be solved. Funding can be supported by having a culturally relevant tax rebate for producers, equal to that given to independent UK films. The combination of prominence and tax rebates can help increase the creation of content here in the UK. It is not where children watch but what they watch that matters. I ask the Minister: how are the Government going to rescue our decimated children’s media industry?

I believe the answer is to require online platforms, including social media companies operating in this country, to obtain a licence from Ofcom with binding conditions, just as television broadcasters are required to do. Also, as the future of the BBC is debated, I urge the Government not to consider commercialising this great and unique institution, especially its trusted children’s output, but to celebrate and support it in every way possible. It is our legacy for the future.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, on his maiden speech. It seems not five minutes—in fact, it was 10 years ago—since he was visiting the Department for Education to gently point out where we were going wrong with government policy; more gently, perhaps, than some of his colleagues on these Benches. We will return to that later in debates on education. I declare my interest as chair of the Careers & Enterprise Company.

I want to focus on the issues of tech and education. First, I welcome references in the gracious Speech to cyber resilience measures and the digital identity Bill, and I look forward to debating those. But as we have already heard, there will have to be much focus in this Session on online safety and the implications of new technology. I entirely support the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford about the Online Safety Act version 2-shaped hole in the gracious Speech. I also support the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, on the need for tech companies to have a licence for broadcasting to children, and on the impossibility otherwise of Ofcom enforcing successfully many of the obligations under the Online Safety Act.

Something we are looking forward to in this Session is the report on the under-16 social media ban, due fairly shortly thanks to the last-minute government amendment. The first report from the Secretary of State on how that consultation is to be implemented is due by the end of July and is of deep relevance to many families and many Members of this House. The House will also have to consider the impact of new technology, particularly AI chatbots, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has spoken about so powerfully not just today but in other debates.

I am reminded of the damage that AI-generated child sexual abuse material can do. The Internet Watch Foundation says that in 2025, it saw over 260 times more AI-generated child sexual abuse videos—more than 3,400 of them—than in 2024, when it saw 13. This is a growing problem.

One other element of harmful content is, sadly, the rising tide of antisemitism online. Given the link with education in this debate, I think it right to mention the StandWithUs UK report, which I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has seen, on the scale of antisemitism faced by Jewish students, particularly at UK universities. However, there was a report today in the Times of the antisemitism faced by schoolchildren in the classroom. I have been told that the report includes a recent bomb threat made via Instagram to the Jewish Society at Royal Holloway University. The Community Safety Trust has told us of over 1,500 online antisemitic incidents in 2025. This is another issue that the House will have to return to in this Session.

On schools, I support the direction of travel, and have said so publicly, of the Government’s reforms to the education of those with special educational needs. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, I think there are questions to be asked, particularly about the preparedness of teachers and schools for more inclusion; about how families who have children with the highest needs, particularly the highest medical needs, will be catered for; and about the timing of transition for families who currently have education, health and care plans, many of whom are rightly concerned about having some of their entitlements taken away.

I remind the Minister that she has promised that we are going to return in this Session to dealing with the extension of relationship and sex education to the over-16s in our colleges.

Finally, I support the moves in the White Paper on more enrichment in schools, but it is not just about activity; it is also about the development of character, values and traits, and I look forward to debating that. This is undoubtedly going to be a heavy Session, and this House will have to do much of the heavy lifting in relation to its legislation.

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness and to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, on an excellent and very moving speech. I intend to focus my remarks on education. Before I do, I declare a number of interests: as the provost of Worcester College, Oxford; as the chair of governors of the University of the Arts London; and, as will become obvious in a second, as the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

If this country is to remain globally competitive, economically successful and socially cohesive, a strong education system is indispensable. Investment in education should never be regarded merely as a cost, nor as a luxury. It is an investment in the future prosperity, resilience and fairness of our country. A good education equips young people not only for employment but for citizenship. It enables them to think critically, engage confidently and participate fully in our democracy.

At present, we are facing a troubling combination with declining levels of reading, as we have heard, and analytical thought, alongside an increasing dependence on social media and fragmented sources of information. The consequence, I fear, is that it becomes even more difficult for people to distinguish fact from falsehood. This creates fertile ground for simplistic populism and division.

During my time as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I was deeply concerned by the extent to which children and young people with SEND were too often treated as second-class citizens. The 2021 census showed that disabled people are three times more likely to have no formal qualifications than non-disabled people. It is against that background that I welcome the Government’s commitment to education for all in its Bill to improve provision for children and young people with SEND. I recognise that some families fear that this will have a negative impact on their access to care plans, but overall I am persuaded that the proposed investment of more than £4 billion, as I understand it, with greater inclusion in mainstream settings, will absolutely move us forward and address these long-overdue improvements.

I also welcome the commitments in the Government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper to strengthen support for further education, its staff and its students. Employers urgently require more skilled young people, and the FE sector educates and trains at least half of those who do not pursue a university route. We also know that FE funding has declined substantially over the last two decades. We cannot neglect a sector that is so essential to national productivity and social mobility.

As noble Lords will readily acknowledge, further education is often described as a Cinderella sector in comparison with higher education, but I fear that the higher education sector now faces profound challenges itself. I see at first hand the pressures confronting universities: the long-term erosion in the real value of tuition fees, rising pension liabilities and increasing operational costs. Across the country, especially in the humanities, I see the closure of departments, wholesale redundancies, restructuring and institutional mergers. I therefore welcome elements of the White Paper that seek to support the HE sector, including increased research funding, improvements to governance and measures to enhance the student experience. They are fundamental to driving change in the sector. Greater collaboration between institutions may help to strengthen resilience, but we must not overlook the huge dependence on international students. The proposed international levy creates additional uncertainty for institutions that are already financially fragile.

We cannot ignore the importance of the arts in education. I welcome that the Government are now committed to restoring art subjects more fully within the school curriculum from 2028. If the United Kingdom and its citizens are truly to flourish, we must be willing to invest seriously in education, skills, culture and the arts. To neglect them is not simply short-sighted; it is to diminish our collective future.

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, and his extremely intelligent speech. I speak partly as a professor, and I know that what he is saying about higher education is exactly true and that it is a great challenge for all parties across this House.

I also echo the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Hobby—I speak as a fellow debutant—who made an exceptional maiden speech. I congratulate the noble Lord on that, and I echo what he said about the welcome that we get when we come to this House. In the short time I have had the privilege to sit here, I have been deeply gratified by the warmth of the welcome extended not just by my noble friends—who may perhaps feel that they have a duty to do so—but by noble Lords from all parts of this House. For this great generosity of spirit I am sincerely grateful.

With equal sincerity, I readily salute the kindness and professionalism of the clerks, our magnificent doorkeepers and all the other staff who make this important part of our constitution actually work. They did an exceptionally superb job during the induction process and in preparing me for my introduction. As those of us who write books say in our acknowledgements, all mistakes are entirely the responsibility of the author.

I am particularly grateful to my sponsors—my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my noble friend Lord Swire. I have had the honour of knowing both for, I realise, more than half my life. Such is their distinction that I always knew that they would one day adorn these Benches; it never occurred to me, however, that I would sit here with them. It is rather humbling. I could not have wanted for better sponsors, nor better friends.

My one regret is that a man for whom I have the highest regard, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, had to make his valedictory speech yesterday. He has been a great friend to me for many years, a great example and a great mentor. He was also my PhD examiner, so I owe him a great deal, and I wish him the happiest and longest possible retirement. I know that he had enormous and sincere tributes from this House yesterday, and that we will all miss him, but I presume to say that I may miss him more than most.

I have taken the title of my barony from a river. The Blackwater enters Essex from the North Sea and flows first through the ancient borough of Maldon, famous for the battle where the Vikings beat Ethelred the Unready’s Anglo-Saxons in 991. This established a tradition of euroscepticism in Essex that lasts to this day. Maldon is also known for its annual mud race, in which hardy people heave themselves from one bank of the Blackwater to the other, at low tide, swamped by brown sticky stuff. I am striving to avoid an oratorical emulation of this in my speech.

I have lived near the Blackwater all my life. Growing up on the Essex marshes, I would go and paddle in it and—usually unsuccessfully, because they sank—play with toy boats in it. That at least helped me to realise that I was not cut out for a naval career. Now it is the main river nearest to where my family and I live. A little further downstream, it changes its name and becomes the River Pant. I am relieved we live where we do, because the comic possibilities of a Lord Pant are self-evidently endless.

Noble Lords will recall the tension of preparing for their maiden speech. For me, there was an extra complication: I am conscious of the convention that one must not be controversial. Although I have been a professor of history for some years, since the 1980s I have earned most of my living as a Fleet Street columnist. In that line of business one tends to get sacked if one is not controversial, so your Lordships see before you a man struggling to break the habits of a lifetime.

However, there is one subject very close to my heart and relevant to today’s debate on the gracious Speech that might, I hope, provoke noble Lords into only agreement: the importance of teaching music in schools, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Sixty years ago, at my tiny state village primary school, I and my schoolfellows were all taught by a visionary teacher to play the recorder and read music. An attempt was also made to teach us all to sing, although it rather failed in my case.

Today’s reality is different. I am associated with two musical charities: I am the chairman of one of London’s greatest choirs, the London Chorus; and I am the president of the Chamber Music Foundation. Despite the excellent review of music education by Darren Henley in 2014 and the promise by the then Government to develop a national plan for such teaching, the availability of both general music and specific instrumental and voice teaching in schools has continued to decline. It did not help that my noble friend Lord Gove, who was a superb Education Secretary in many respects—including this one—was moved on, after welcoming the Henley review, before he was able to ensure that its recommendations were properly implemented.

Henley’s first recommendation was that a child’s experience of music should include performing, composing, listening, reviewing and evaluating it. This has come nowhere near fruition. One of our leading music professors recently told me that there are whole areas of the country where music teaching is simply unavailable to state school pupils beyond the age of 14. Arts Council-funded hubs exist to assist schools in teaching music, but many schools have no contact with them and no qualified music teachers. To fulfil the demands of the national curriculum, primary schools need offer only one hour of music a week; that usually leaves no room at all for instrumental teaching.

In the time available to me today, I can barely begin to describe the deficiencies of music education— I hope to return to it at length another time—but I should like to leave noble Lords with one statistic to contemplate: the number of students taking A-level music in England has fallen by more than 44% since 2010 to fewer than 5,000 in 2025. These are the same people whom the great Sir Hubert Parry, a distinguished forebear of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, called “we singing English”—no more, I fear.

The profession of music in Britain, in the way it creates both performers and their audiences, must inevitably suffer. However, since we all know that music expresses so much that words cannot, all those who fail to encounter it properly are having not just their civilisational development but their emotional development severely retarded. For generations, we have rightly expected children to leave school literate. All I ask is that we should be able to expect them to leave school musically literate as well.

My Lords, it is a singular honour to follow my noble friend Lord Blackwater’s excellent maiden speech. It was a privilege to be one of his supporters along with my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, who seems to have attached himself permanently to my noble friend Lord Blackwater’s side. My noble friend has already revealed the length of all our friendship, if not the depth, and I, like many others here, welcome his presence on these Benches.

My noble friend is a polymath, as well as being one of the country’s foremost and respected commentators on conservative politics. His interests are extensive and varied, from French politics to ecclesiastical architecture and, of course, music—in particular, English music, his knowledge of which is matched only by his passion for it, as we have just heard.

My noble friend’s writings would enhance any library. His authoritative book on Enoch Powell, Like the Roman, which was first published in 1998, has just been reissued and is required reading for anyone seeking to understand that complex man better. Of course, his three more recent works—High Minds, on the Victorians; The Age of Decadence, on pre-World War I Edwardian Britain; and Sing As We Go, on Britain between the two world wars—are unmatched. I am currently half way through—that is saying something, as my noble friend does not do short or small books—that last book, Sing As We Go. The arguments about conscription and rearmament then are the same arguments as we are having today; indeed, they are similar to the arguments we were having in the 1930s. Sometimes, it seems, we never learn. More recently, my noble friend’s editing of the three volumes of the life of Sir Henry Channon—or Chips, as he was better known—was masterful as well as being hugely informative and entertaining. We know that political diaries can often be so, do we not?

Yesterday, it was a privilege to hear at first hand in the Chamber the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Case, and the valedictory speech of his former pupil-master—as we have just heard, he was also the pupil-master of my noble friend Lord Blackwater—the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield. They showed this House at its best, and I have every expectation that we can expect contributions of a similar quality from my noble friend; that is needed now more than ever.

My noble friend Lord Blackwater spoke briefly about the London Chorus, formerly the London Choral Society, of which he is the chairman. He and I have discussed the problem in raising funds for them, which is, unfortunately, not uncommon. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, said earlier in her contribution, funding for the arts has become a very real problem, if not a crisis, of late—not least because so many high-net-worth individuals have been driven out of the country or are uncertain about the way the economy is heading. These are precisely the people who fund our museums, galleries and other cultural institutions. So I ask the Minister: what assessment has he made of this flight of capital and its impact on the cultural sector? What measures is he contemplating to make up for the loss? I can see precious little about this in the gracious Speech.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, has produced an excellent report on Arts Council England. It is full of good ideas, but one area it seems to shy away from is the issue of free admission to our national museums. I do not have time this afternoon to rehearse all the arguments for or against free admission, which I understand as well as anyone. I bear the scars of this as someone who, as the shadow Culture Minister, argued this in our 2005 arts manifesto:

“We will support museums that provide free access, and we will not impose entry charges. Neither will we penalise those institutions that feel it is in their best interests to charge”.

I would argue that that approach was balanced and fair then, and remains so today. However, since 2005, there has been one fundamental change: we have now left the EU. Our membership was always given as a reason why museums could not charge non-nationals, but museums are currently suffering a financial crisis. Some are closing galleries, while others are limiting opening. The current funding regime is unsustainable, forcing museums to ramp up dramatically the prices they charge for temporary exhibitions.

On 1 December 2018, there was a letter on this subject in the Daily Telegraph from a perhaps unexpected source: Sir Roy Strong. The article states:

“National museums and galleries should charge an entrance fee and subsidise discounts for millennials because high ticket prices—

for special exhibitions—

“are ‘excluding’ young people”.

It goes on to say that, although Sir Roy, when he was a director at the V&A,

“objected to his then trustees forcing him to introduce voluntary charges - which were later ‘swept away’ - he now believes that national collections have little choice because they are so strapped for cash”.

Only today, we read that the British Museum is preparing to charge up to £33 to see the Bayeux Tapestry for a 40-minute slot, although there will be the usual concessionary tickets. Our major museums are being forced into these sensational blockbusters to make the money they desperately need simply to keep the lights on. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Louvre now discriminates against non-EU members, charging €32. The Prado charges €15, the Uffizi up to €29, and the Rijksmuseum €25. Why cannot we do the same?

There has, unfortunately, been this obsession about the number of people who visit our museums, but there is a fundamental difference between visitors and visits. As Nicholas Penny—once the director of the National Gallery, where I was the first sponsorship secretary and then the first development director—wrote:

“Attendance figures … make no deductions for the protestors and celebrators in Trafalgar Square who enter the National Gallery to use its facilities, for teenagers attending rock concerts in the garden court of the V&A, and for the coachloads of tourists decanted into the British Museum while their hotel rooms in Bloomsbury are being prepared”.

I am sorry—could the noble Lord wind up, please? He is well over his time.

There are many ways of slicing the cake, such as concessions for pensioners, student days or even free admission off season. The problem is that this argument has become politically hijacked, and it should not be. Let us build on the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, and re-examine all aspects of our funding, including allowing our national institutions to raise much-needed funds by introducing charges if that is what the trustees and directors choose to do.

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on two fine debuts. I think we can all look forward to many important contributions in their many years ahead.

I very much agree with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I urge the Government to engage positively and constructively with the creative industries to strike the right balance with AI. I declare my interest as a board member of the BPI, which represents recorded music.

We all want growth, but there is a feeling sometimes that we are compelled to worship at the altar of AI, no matter at what cost to other industries. There are other very powerful engines of growth, and those include the creative industries and culture.

We are blessed across these shores with such creative riches. Our creative talent is a precious national resource. We export our music, film and fashion all over the world. Our museums, galleries, opera, orchestras and theatre bring people to our great cities, and they support and nourish hospitality and tourism. If anyone is looking for something to watch, I can highly recommend “1536”, which is about three young women in a small village in Essex in Tudor England, and the satirist Rosie Holt’s play called “Churchill’s Urinal”, which is all about a rather stressed out and frazzled female Chancellor—it is entirely fictitious, by the way; it is also very funny.

We get that AI is very important, but so too are our creators, and intellectual property and strong copyright laws are the bedrock of a successful knowledge-based economy.

This debate also draws together education, tech and culture, and I welcome the Government’s ambition to regulate young people’s access to social media, but we cannot delay and cannot be timid. We are seeing young men and women scarred and, I think, permanently damaged because of their access to hardcore violent pornography in the palm of their hands. Of course, there are many other threats from social media, and not just for our young people.

One of the most frightening things we are witnessing as a result of unfettered and unregulated social media is the rise of extremism and polarisation: unhinged hate, antisemitism, racism, anti-Muslim vitriol, misogyny—the list goes on. We are living in deeply anxious times, where algorithms run by billionaires who have an agenda are exploiting very human emotions of fear and insecurity and manipulating them into something far darker. We used to hear, “It is just words”; it is not. We are seeing this play out with terrifying consequences on our streets, in our schools, campuses and colleges, in our synagogues and in our mosques. People are being threatened, maimed and even killed. We know that bad-faith foreign actors are using social media to unleash fear, loathing, terror, division and violence in this country. We have to ask in this House why we are just letting this happen. This is the time to fight back. We need action, courage and a sense of urgency—for the sake of our country, our children and our grandchildren. If we do not try to take on the algorithm of hate now, we will regret it for generations to come.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, and my noble friend Lord Blackwater on their excellent maiden speeches. My noble friend has a deep knowledge of English culture and English history, and we had that on display as he rooted his Euroscepticism in a battle in Essex in 991. Now I understand it, and I very much look forward to his interventions in the future.

I should declare my interests as chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office and a visiting professor at King’s College London, because I want to touch on the technology and education themes in the King’s Speech.

The speed of technological advance means that regulations cannot just assume the old ways, and, of course, there are deep concerns about AI and online safety, which have been expressed already in this debate. But those 44,000 pages of environmental assessment before a nuclear power station can be built are a scandalous waste of public resource. We need to get the balance right when we set regulation. I very much support and hope that the nuclear regulation Bill and the regulation for growth Bill will be opportunities to do just that.

Universities are key drivers of new technologies and innovation. They are also a key route for young people, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, to transform their lives, so it is very frustrating to read this week that Alan Milburn, leading the NEETs review for the Government, said that he wanted to steer young people away from higher education because of graduate unemployment.

The Minister is responsible for NEETs and policy. If we look at young adults aged 22 to 24, we will find that 10% of graduates will at some point during that period not be in work, which is a problem, but will she confirm that 30% of non-graduates will have that experience while they are aged 22 to 24?

Getting into higher education is a great way of boosting job prospects and reducing welfare dependency. Can I therefore also ask the Minister why the legislation to index university fees, proposed in the Government’s own White Paper with the promise of legislation, does not appear in the King’s Speech?

We do have a problem of NEETs and youth unemployment. When we compare our performance to other countries across Europe, we find that the big reason for our poor performance is quite simply that we have fewer people in education and training. Particularly, things go wrong at the age of 16—the transition from GCSE. We do not have enough people staying on for level 3 education and beyond. We heard in the excellent maiden speech by my noble friend Lord Blackwater a powerful example, a case for the cultural and educational benefits of that education. Our problem in this country is not too much education; it is too little.

My Lords, I am sure I am not alone in thinking that the contributions of the two noble Lords in their maiden speeches today have enriched this House, and I look forward to their contributions in the future.

I declare my interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society, an honour I share with my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. A while ago I visited an autistic unit in a mainstream school, where the head was very keen that I should meet a pupil who had behavioural problems and was about to move on to a comprehensive school. “You’ve heard I’ve got behavioural problems”, he said to me when we met. “Yes”, I said, “I have”. “I’m trying to do something about it”, he said, looking for approval from his head teacher. “Have you heard I’m going to comprehensive school?” I said, “Yes. Are you looking forward to it?” He answered, “Yes, and I’ve decided on my career”. “Have you?” I said, “What are you going to do?” He said, “I’m going to become a High Court judge, and I tell you now, if you come up before me, you’ll get a lenient sentence”. Who knows? Perhaps he will become a High Court judge. I know that, as a result of the education and support he had at that school, he has a future.

I wish that were the case for all autistic children, but it is not. Some 74% of parents think their autistic child’s school place does not meet their needs, and 26% of autistic pupils feel unhappy at school. To be fair, the Government’s proposed SEND reforms are most welcome. In particular, the plan to ensure that every child with SEND has an individual support plan is good. This has the potential to make a real difference to the lives of autistic children and their families. However, further clarity is needed.

Issues remain around accountability for the plans and the lack of legal options to challenge inadequate support if a plan is not implemented fully. More information is needed on how education and health care plans will be restricted to those with what the Government call “more complex needs”. The Government must clarify what will be considered more complex needs. Parents urgently need clarity on what support their child can expect for their level of need. There are doubts about the level of funding. The funding set aside does not match the level of ambition proposed, particularly the investment in staff training programmes. Adequate funding is the only way to guarantee that these reforms are not implemented in a haphazard way.

I have some questions for my noble friend. Do the Government plan to ensure that there are legal mechanisms for parents to hold providers accountable for implementing individual support plans effectively and appropriately? How do the Government intend to ensure the meaningful involvement of families in the assessment of their children’s needs and in the development of the plans? Have the Government assessed the number and availability of trained professionals needed to meet the Experts at Hand plan included in the schools White Paper? Finally, will my noble friend commit the Government to work closely with groups such as the National Autistic Society and the Disabled Children’s Partnership and others as they develop their SEND proposals? That is the better way, the effective way, to make things right and get it right from the start.

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register of Members’ interests as chairman of the Countryside Alliance and related positions, and I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, and my noble friend Lord Blackwater on their fine maiden speeches.

On Thursday, the Gambling Commission will decide whether to approve the rollout of affordability checks on online betting. When the previous Government announced these checks three years ago, Ministers said they should be totally frictionless. The pilots have not been. Immense damage has been done to horseracing already, and to what effect? Betters resent intrusive checks and are driven to the black market. Racing loses revenue, an estimated £250 million over five years, and so in turn does the Treasury. While I appreciate the potential harm of other forms of gambling, betting on racing is simply not in the same league. The risks are akin to those of playing National Lottery scratchcards. Should these be restricted, too? There has been no proper evaluation of the affordability pilots, and it appears that the checks will be green-lighted with no parliamentary debate or scrutiny. Affordability checks are directly contrary to the Government’s declared support for racing, so I urge the Culture Secretary to step in now and revisit an ill-targeted policy which, after all, was not the Government’s in the first place.

When racing is damaged, so too is the rural economy. I wonder whether the Government understand how rural communities feel about successive policies that have been directed at them. First, we had affordability checks; then we had the family farm tax, which had to be partially reversed after a year of protest; and then, out of the blue, we had an extraordinary plan in the land use framework to license game shooting. Now we have a proposed ban on trail hunting. Tony Blair’s Government faced enough opposition when they forced through the hunting ban, but they were not so unwise as to attack racing, the nation’s second most popular spectator sport, farming and shooting at the same time.

When Members of Parliament so obviously face a mortal challenge from Reform UK, these unforced assaults on rural voters are not just bad policy; they are inexplicably bad politics too. Twenty years ago, Ministers justified the abolition of hunting by telling people they could hunt trails instead. Now, this Government want to ban this activity too, on the grounds that it risks the pursuit of animals. But this is already a criminal offence. Outlawing the following of an artificial trail is akin to banning cars to prevent speeding. It is illiberal, disproportionate and completely out of step with voter priorities.

After the local elections, there is much talk of a reset, and I hesitate to intrude on the bloodsport of leadership challenge, but I offer this suggestion for future policy. There are enough real problems in the country and the countryside to address without creating new ones. The job of DCMS is to back sport, not to undermine it; the job of Defra is to support rural communities, not to attack them; and the job of the Government is surely to improve people’s lives, not to behave like new Puritans, telling everyone what they can and cannot do. The gracious Speech committed the Government to promote the British values of tolerance and respect for difference. That respect should extend to rural communities, and I suggest that freedom is foremost among British values too.

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow maiden speeches, and I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on their distinctive and excellent speeches.

There was no AI Bill in the gracious Speech, but AI will play a major role in NHS modernisation and education for all. Here, I declare an interest as a senior adviser to the Alan Turing Institute, the national AI institute. Over the past six months, the institute has argued that the time has come for the UK to train its own sovereign large-language model. At present, the choice is between closed-source models, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, from US big tech companies or open-weight models, mostly from China. Neither type of model can be fully trusted as they may be poisoned with sleeper agents or may harbour back doors. For uses of national importance—and I argue that these include education and health care, as well as defence and national security—the only way to have 100% security when using an LLM is to have complete knowledge of both the training data and the model’s weights. Other countries, such as France, Switzerland, the UAE and South Korea, keen to reduce their dependence on the US and China, have announced their own sovereign LLMs in the past 12 months.

There are further advantages for the UK in going down this route. First, a sovereign LLM will be trained using UK values with full transparency, respect for the law on copyright and the possibility of creating a process to remunerate training data providers. This would help to end the standoff between the UK’s growing AI sector and its world-leading creative industries. Secondly, the UK has unique datasets in both its health service and its school education system, including BBC resources, that could and should be treated as sovereign data assets prioritised for use in training the country’s sovereign LLM.

Is it affordable when it costs US big tech companies tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to train their frontier LLMs? In contrast, the Alan Turing Institute, supported by evidence from the Swiss model, estimates that it would cost only between £5 million and £10 million pounds to train the UK’s sovereign LLM. How can that be? US big tech companies do raise hundreds of billions of dollars to train the next general-purpose frontier model, but the key lesson from DeepSeek 18 months ago was that frontier-level performance on application-specific tasks can be achieved with much simpler models through distillation and fine-tuning.

The UK sovereign LLM, distilled and fine-tuned on NHS data, will be able to give healthcare advice as accurate as, if not more accurate than, GPT-5. It will not be able to translate Hamlet’s soliloquy into Arabic, as a general-purpose LLM such as GPT-5 can, but that is of no consequence to an NHS doctor or a patient seeking a second opinion.

With the Health Data Research Service due to launch its first services by the end of this year and with AI tutoring tools now being developed for secondary schools, we urgently need a UK sovereign LLM. This would enable fully trusted, application-specific models fine-tuned on our unique NHS and education datasets. The Government launched a sovereign AI unit last month; it should now support the development of sovereign AI models.

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the excellent maiden speeches of an old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, and my noble friend Lord Hobby. I remember when Teach First was established during Tony Blair’s premiership. It is a brilliant organisation—my step- daughter is an alumna—and my noble friend took it to great heights.

I look forward to the Government’s response to the Timms and Milburn reviews, and the aim of supporting both young and disabled people to flourish in work as the basis of their long-term economic security. That will require further reform of the welfare system. I welcome the Education Bill, targeting support for those at risk of joining the growing number of NEETs, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Kestenbaum and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. This is a particular concern of mine, as is the pipeline being built, inspirationally and educationally, for the workforce of the future, alluded to by other noble Lords.

The Engineers 2030 report from the Royal Academy of Engineering—I declare my interest as a former director—is a wake-up call to the perilous skills gap we face. There is demand for engineering skills in clean energy, defence and housebuilding, as well as skills in the emerging digital technologies such as AI, software development and cyber security. These sectors will experience the highest growth in employment, by a factor of six to one, with entirely new roles emerging all the time.

Some 76% of employers are struggling to recruit personnel with the required skills now. Improving the take-up from underrepresented groups is vital. Women make up 17% of the engineering workforce, minority ethnic groups 14%, and disabled people and people with special needs also 14%; and all have higher attrition rates. At age 10, only 11% of girls say that being an engineer would fit well with who they are, compared with 44% of boys.

The Royal Academy of Engineering’s recent submission to the Women in Tech Taskforce praises the Government for upskilling 10 million people in AI and the new AI apprenticeships, but recommends urgent systemic reform of the entry barriers, starting with an updated and dynamic curriculum and advice for young people. Present arrangements are uneven, not tailored to underrepresented groups, and not prioritised. I know that the Government are working hard to meet our future employment challenges, but I urge a greater emphasis on careers advice in the early years that captivates and inspires.

I end by welcoming the prescient Bills to strengthen our energy security and national security. I urge the Minister to read the report published today, again by the Royal Academy of Engineering, regarding the digitalisation of the grid, which will enable the Government to go further and faster to deliver clean energy.

I sit on the National Resilience Committee, which has been a tremendous education, both reassuring and alarming, in the nation’s preparedness for the myriad threats we face. The committee has heard repeated warnings of the interconnected nature of these risks. Energy security is a resilience issue, not just about supply but about the systems that depend on it: transport, communications, finance, health, food, water, and local emergency response.

We have also heard evidence relating to the rapidly increasing number and AI-engendered sophistication of cyber threats. Some 43% of UK businesses have suffered some form of cyber attack, most notably JLR last year. Imagine a concerted assault on our energy installations. I hope that the Minister will take into account our recommendations in due course.

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, and my noble friend Lord Blackwater, on their maiden speeches. It is great to have both noble Lords in the House, with their differing views; I am sure that they will add much value between them.

It will not take noble Lords many moments to realise that nearly 1 million young people in the country are NEET. The Minister will no doubt stand up and say that these problems worsened after Covid under the previous Government, that we are to blame and that we should look at ourselves before criticising this Government. So, to save her the trouble, I will say it for her. Are noble Lords listening? Yes, part of this problem is structural. Yes, part of it reflects the long shadow and economic scarring of the pandemic. But what we cannot ignore, excuse or allow to slip by are the deliberate political choices that this Government have taken which are actively making the situation worse.

If the objective is genuinely to support youth employment, improve labour market participation and reduce barriers to work for younger people entering the labour market—and, surely, that should be the objective—you do not tax employment more heavily. You do not increase the marginal cost of taking on an extra member of staff. And you certainly do not increase employer national insurance at precisely the moment that businesses are already becoming more hesitant about hiring those at the edges of the labour market. Nor do you create uncertainty for business through the Employment Rights Act and make employers even more cautious about taking someone on.

The unemployment figures are going only one way and I would desperately ask the Government to rethink their policies on this. If we are serious about getting young people into work, we need to focus on two things at the same time: a young person’s readiness for work through skills, education and support, but also the cost and risks of employing somebody in the first place.

The Government have at least recognised that there is a problem—I welcome that—but the youth guarantee scheme, while it has many good parts, leaves a great deal to be desired. With the number of young people not in education, employment or training continuing to rise, we have to be honest: this is not simply a temporary labour market fluctuation, nor a problem to be solved by a single programme at the end of the process. Something more systemic is going wrong further up the line.

Let me suggest what should happen long before a young person ever reaches the point of becoming NEET. The school curriculum should have fundamentally running through it preparing young people for the world of work. I have told this story before and I will tell it again: when I was at Tomorrow’s People, we had a young girl who had never worked. We got her a job in the Unipart factory in Oxford, booking the executive director’s travel; she had died and gone to heaven with that as her first job. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday she turned up, but on Friday she was a no-show.

We got in the car and drove round to her house. She came downstairs in her pyjamas. We said, “What’s going on?” She said, “I never went to school on Friday and nobody ever said anything”. We told her to get dressed, took her back to work and thought that was it. The second week, the same thing happened again. We took her back to work. By the third week, it was right.

I do not have long enough for this, but I will just finish quickly. I will leave the Minister with these questions. How do the Government believe their current approach helps young people such as the one I have just described? How does increasing the costs and risks of employment make employers more likely to take a chance on younger workers? When will the Government recognise that, if we truly want to tackle the NEET crisis, we must focus not only on programmes at the end of the process, but on the deeper cultural, educational and economic barriers that are stopping too many young people entering the world of work in the first place?

My Lords, it is an honour to speak in the debate which saw such wonderful maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater. There is much in the gracious Speech that I welcome. I particularly welcome the proposal for an overnight visitor levy Bill, and I hope that the proceeds of such a levy can be directed half to local cultural activities and organisations and half to the place-making which will enhance the experience of both visitors and citizens.

I want to focus, though, on two other things. The first is the consultation under way by the DCMS to explore the possibility of charging overseas visitors for entry to national museums and galleries, on which I cannot disagree more strongly with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Swire. Such a proposal would undermine one of the very best achievements of the new Labour Government—and I was pleased to play a small part in ensuring that it came about. First, there are huge practical difficulties. How on earth can you tell who is a British citizen and who is not? We have no national identity card system as yet in this country. There is also the need to install turnstiles, barriers, ticket desks and to employ supervisory staff. This will undermine any savings that come from charging visitors. Secondly, fewer visitors means less spend in the café, the shop and the restaurant. Thirdly, having barriers in place effectively puts up a sign saying, “You’re not welcome here”, and that will have an impact on British visitors as well as overseas ones. Fourthly, this is an important part of Britain’s soft power. Free museums for all has a major reputational benefit for the UK and means enhanced tourism income for the country. Fifthly, imagine the opprobrium if we are charging visitors from Greece to see the Parthenon marbles and visitors from Nigeria to see the Benin bronzes. Sixthly, the overnight visitor levy is a far better way of ensuring that foreign tourists contribute to the life of this country. Do not, for heaven’s sake, I plead with the Government, go down the road of changing free entry for all to our museums.

The other issue I want to raise briefly—and I remind the House I am the chancellor of Cambridge University—is the complete failure of the student loans system. The system is broken. It is causing enormous harm to young people and beginning to be a deterrent to going to university. I regret there is nothing in the gracious Speech to reform this system. Young people’s university experience ought to be full of excitement, aspiration and hope. It is a passage to adulthood, an experience that teaches them how to explore, discuss, learn and discover. Yet because of the student finance system in place at the moment, the experience is darkly overshadowed. I plead with the Government to bring the light back in.

My Lords, I too congratulate both maiden speakers.

As my noble friend Lady Smith of Llanfaes noted yesterday, a new political era has opened in Wales. Plaid Cymru First Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, emphasised in his first conversation with Keir Starmer a wish to work constructively with Westminster on issues of common interest. An indicator of reciprocal good will would be an early review of Wales’s funding formula. We have today in another place heard about the reset of HS2—a massive £100 billion boost to England’s transport infrastructure—so can we now have an assurance that this time Wales will receive consequential funding previously denied?

We are today discussing education, culture, technology and energy security. Education and culture are largely devolved, so I will concentrate on creating job opportunities in the energy sector in Wales. Coal, nuclear and hydro have long been part of Wales’s industrial structure. Long-lasting bitterness arose when profits from coal were rarely used to Wales’s benefit, yet we were left to clear up the mess and live with dangerous tips. Please will the energy independence Bill ensure that the full costs of removing or securing remaining coal tips are not lumbered on to the Welsh Government, nor left to private companies to work residual coal in a largely unregulated way? I welcome the decisions to move ahead with SMRs at the Wylfa site. Will the Government, in collaboration with Senedd Cymru, work to ensure appropriate training facilities to equip local workers with the necessary skills?

Another aspect of energy security is energy storage. Pump storage hydroelectricity generation, such as the Dinorwig power station, is an essential partner to nuclear, tidal, solar and wind-generated electricity to balance supply and demand. It is quite outrageous that public money—as much as £346 million—was paid in 2025 in Scotland alone to those operating wind turbines, compensating them for turning off their generating equipment because there was, at certain times of day, a glut of electricity. The figure for the UK was almost £1.5 billion last year. Pump storage schemes, along with developing battery technology, are the obvious answer to such challenges of mismatch. Will the Minister please clarify what is delaying the licensing of new pump storage capacity, and will he review the schemes queuing up in north-west Wales for approval and accelerate that process?

Finally, will the Government take steps to defuse the tensions in some rural areas in Wales where local communities are in conflict with large-scale wind generation projects with their networks of highly intrusive transmission lines? These detract from the natural beauty, and have a detrimental effect on the tourist industry, to the cost of local communities. Surely, there should be an agreed protocol that either such lines are placed underground or those suffering such impositions should be financially compensated. In the absence of any such offsetting benefit, people should have a veto over schemes which undermine their quality of life.

Plaid Cymru looks forward to playing a constructive role in scrutinising the Government’s programme as we move forward.

My Lords, it really is a pleasure to speak in a debate after two such excellent maiden speeches. During them, I realised all the things I had done wrong in mine, so apologies, for instance, to my sponsors, who I never thanked—thank you to my noble friends Lord Alli and Lady Winterton. Thank you to the doorkeepers et cetera.

In that spirit, because I am half way down the speakers’ list, I can simply say I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, everything the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, said and everything the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said. I agree with quite a lot of things—but not everything on Brexit—that the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, said, and very little that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, said, other than his tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater. Obviously, I pay tribute to my new noble friend Lord Hobby. His expertise in education is clearly going to be very welcome.

I must declare up front that my registered interests include being a very part-time chief executive of the UK Opera Association and, currently, chair of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for 2026. Being half way down the list also means that I can dispense with anything that has already been said, which is really handy. So I am going to spend just a couple of minutes talking about the political economy of arts, culture and heritage.

If arts, culture and heritage are, as I believe, the important features of our national life that they truly are, we need a well-articulated political economy which deals with both the demand and supply sides, as well as the most important bit of all: the joy. I think the joy is self-evident, and so many august Members in your Lordships’ House have spoken of it eloquently—far more eloquently than I can. I have experienced it myself as a cellist and musician for 56 years now, and so many of your Lordships have done likewise. But for that to work, we need a political economy with political arguments made for economic questions.

Those economic questions are about how we make sure that, from early childhood, every child is given the education and, to pick out bits that have not yet been mentioned, the specialist education—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, did mention this—that includes conservatoires but also specialist music schools, as well as music hubs, which serve slightly different needs for slightly different groups of young people. They are both important if we are to have world-class musicians, as are art schools and the arts and humanities departments in universities.

If we attend to the careers, we also need to attend to the employment conditions. The Employment Rights Act, which I was proud to support, does not really deal with the freelance conditions experienced by most creators in the arts, culture and heritage sector, and so I welcome the small business late payments Bill. I hope that, by the time it becomes law, we will have named a freelance champion. That has been well trailed, and we need such a freelance champion, if only to make sure that freelancers actually know what their rights are.

I confess that I am slightly confused about the ticket touts legislation. First, I saw “draft” and I was irked, because quite a few of us in my former Commons team, as well as my dear friend Sharon Hodgson, campaigned on this long and hard, and it was in the manifesto. Then I saw that there is mention of ticket-touting in the Sporting Events Bill. I gently ask my colleagues on the Front Bench whether, as an amendment to the Sporting Events Bill, we can just insert the entire ticket touts Bill. I would really like to know, as we have done loads of work on this already. We know how much it is going to save. The only people who benefit from a delay to the ticket touts legislation are ticket touts. The corollary to that is we will give more joy if we bring it forward.

What else is needed? My noble friend Lady Rebuck mentioned so much, and I meant to say, “And everything Gail said”. My noble friends have said so much about the importance of reading, music and the BBC, and of sorting out the AI legislation, but I want to finish on this. If we want a thriving creative sector, we need a political economy that articulates how we train, sustain, develop and grow the body of work that makes our country so great, that identifies the UK to so many people, at home and abroad, and that helps bring us together in a series of national stories, which matter now perhaps more than ever.

My Lords, I am grateful to be contributing to this debate in response to His Majesty’s most gracious Speech and it is an honour to be following such excellent maiden speeches. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

I want to speak to your Lordships about the removal of peerages Bill, which, as my noble friend Lord True said, will need to be looked at carefully,

“lest it ever become a licence for the social media lynch mob”.—[Official Report, 13/5/26; col. 11.]

He referred to it as Peter’s law, since it is clearly inspired by the Government’s desire to punish Lord Mandelson, and therein lies the problem. The threshold for removal will have to be low enough to bring Lord Mandelson’s behaviour within scope, which means that removal will almost certainly not be limited to Peers who have been convicted of a criminal offence. It will of necessity be retrospective, since the sins that the Government want to punish Lord Mandelson for are those he has already committed. I fear the threshold will be something along the lines of bringing the House into disrepute.

I know from numerous cases the Free Speech Union has fought that this is a nebulous standard, easily weaponised by political activists seeking to punish their opponents. I will give just one example. It is the case of Anil Bhanot, a Hindu community leader who was awarded an OBE in 2010 for fostering community cohesion. In January 2024, he received a letter from the honours Forfeiture Committee, which sits in the Cabinet Office, informing him that it was minded to recommend he be stripped of his OBE because he had

“brought the honours system into disrepute”.

What had he done? Following a campaign by Muslim activists, the committee had received a number of complaints about replies that Mr Bhanot made to social media posts some three years earlier, regarding the murder of Hindus by mobs of Islamists in Bangladesh. Those replies, according to the committee, were Islamophobic; it singled out one in which Mr Bhanot said that accusations of Islamophobia were sometimes used as a weapon to chill free speech. That argument in itself, said the Cabinet Office, was an example of Islamophobia. The same complaints that were made to the Forfeiture Committee about Mr Bhanot were made to the police, the Charity Commission and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. All three cleared Mr Bhanot, but not the Forfeiture Committee. It went ahead and stripped him of his OBE.

Would Members of this House be at risk of being stripped of their peerages for saying something similar, or even for making the same point in this House? Parliamentary privilege might not protect us, since the Conduct Committee can consider complaints about things said on the Floor of the House—and I assume that the committee would play a part in deciding whether noble Lords should be stripped of their titles. If that is a genuine risk, Peter’s law will inevitably have a chilling effect on what Peers feel at liberty to say, including in this House.

When arguing for Peter’s law earlier this year, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said the reason the Government are bringing it forward is to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of Parliament. But if it ends up preventing Peers speaking out about matters of national importance, for fear of being accused of bringing the House into disrepute, it will further erode the reputation of Parliament and not restore it.

My Lords, I too echo the congratulations to the two maiden speakers who we have heard so far this evening: the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, who I worked closely with when I was a shadow schools Minister, and the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater. I particularly enjoyed his devastating critique of the previous Conservative Government’s policy on music in education and hope to hear much more of it from him during his time here in this House.

Culture is part of our debate today and this is Ivors week, because the Ivor Novello Awards take place on Thursday. It is the world’s greatest award ceremony for songwriters and composers. I should declare that I am a member of the Ivors Academy and I pay tribute to Tom Gray, the chair of that academy, and Roberto Neri, its chief executive. They do so much to try to enhance and protect creator remuneration in this country. It is also because Ivor Novello came from Cardiff, which is where I come from.

I praise the Government first for introducing and laying an SI, which many noble Lords may not be aware of, that will put the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority on a statutory footing, as an external whistleblowing authority for the creative industries. I congratulate both Jen Smith, the CEO of CIISA, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, on their work in getting that important body to this stage. I hope the Government will also take reserve powers to ensure it gets properly funded.

In the King’s Speech, we heard about the draft Bill regarding ticketing. I welcome that, though I wish it was more than a draft Bill. It was one of the recommendations in my own recently published report, commissioned by the Culture Committee in the Commons, on live and electronic music. It contained what I call the seven essentials of live music: celebration, by embracing live music not just for money-making but as a public good; grass roots, by nurturing grass-roots and community live music for its own sake and as an incubator of future success; safety, by prioritising fans from harm of injury, crime, violence, harassment and discrimination at live events; accessibility, by thinking and acting accordingly at all times; transport, by making live music a central part of transport policy; having a voice to promote and support the voice of music fans; and ticketing, by treating fans with respect, providing transparency and ending rip-off practices.

I hope that the Government come forward sooner rather than later with the actual Bill and introduce it to Parliament. I hope that, when they do so, they also put into the Bill another recommendation in my report: to at least take the powers to put the live trust levy, which is currently voluntary, on a statutory basis to ensure that it is properly funded.

Last week I attended the Great Escape music event in Brighton, which promotes new music, where I met a young man called Isaac Neilson. He is a working-class artist from the Derbyshire town of Buxton who has been trying to build his career as an artist and songwriter since 2022. Isaac is performing a gig every day in 2026 to try to build his career. He is currently on day 139 of that challenge. If any noble Lords, or anyone else listening to this debate, has any venues in their area that they think he might be able to perform at, I hope they will offer him that opportunity.

I want to mention one other thing to the Government, which concerns recorded music. Battery Studios, one of our iconic studios, is in danger of closure and redevelopment. We ought by now to have measures to designate assets of cultural value to protect such places, where everyone from Paul McCartney to Kylie Minogue have recorded.

My Lords, for the past seven years, I have served as chief of staff to my right honourable friend Sir Ed Davey. While I declare this interest, I must say that it has not all been wet suits and splash parks. I am not sure that my new leader, my noble friend Lord Purvis, is up for bungee jumping between votes on College Green either.

Together with an extraordinary team of colleagues, including my noble friend Lord Dixon, whose own maiden speech I am very excited to hear later in this debate, Ed and I had the task of rebuilding our party. At the last election, the Liberal Democrats returned our largest number of MPs in a century. I say this because it matters. With populism on the rise across the world, it matters that we have a thriving liberal force in this country: one committed to holding Governments to account when they fall short, and, crucially, prepared to stand firm against those who would drag our politics and our communities to the extremes of left or right. Division and demagoguery are not inevitable, but they must be resisted, and I intend to play my part in that resistance from these Benches.

In joining this House I follow in the footsteps of many former political staffers across all Benches. I would like to acknowledge two of them in particular today: my sponsors and friends, my noble friends Lady Grender and Lady Suttie. They have been generous mentors to me over many years, providing wise counsel, encouragement, wine and, on occasion, the perfectly timed piece of rather blunt advice. While I thank them, I also thank Black Rod, our doorkeepers and attendants and staff across this House for their support and good humour in helping me find my way at this end of the Palace, as well as our wonderful team in the Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office. I would like to add my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on their maiden speeches, both of which gave a real sense of the contribution they will make to this place.

It is a huge privilege to speak in this debate on His Majesty’s gracious Speech. It certainly feels a very long way from Chipping Sodbury where, along with my brother and sister, I was raised by my lovely mum. Mum spent more than 40 years as a nurse in the NHS, promoting the health and protection of children and those who look after them. I was fortunate to be able to draw on the values mum instilled in me to support Ed Davey to tell his story of care, and to place the millions of unpaid carers across our country at the front and centre of our general election campaign to help make the case for those who form the invisible backbone of our communities—those who constitute an economy within the economy: uncosted, too often uncounted and still, overwhelmingly, women.

I am going to focus my remaining remarks on the families who are often part of that same story of care: children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and the parents and carers who spend months, often years, fighting for support. The SEND system is broken. That is the lived reality of families across the country. Children are failed every day. Parents are forced into exhausting battles simply to secure what their child should have been entitled to from the start. Teachers and school leaders are doing their best in a system stretched beyond capacity. Meanwhile, local authorities are being driven to the brink by costs they cannot meet.

That is why reform is urgent, and why I welcome the education for all Bill as a step in the right direction. But reform will succeed only if children and families are placed at its heart. If reform means removing rights from parents who already feel powerless, weakening routes of appeal or disrupting settled placements, it will fail. This is particularly true for neurodivergent children. Understanding of autism, ADHD and other forms of neurodiversity has grown enormously, but support has not kept pace. Too many children wait years for assessment. Too many families are told to come back when things are worse. Too many children learn far too young that school is a place where they are misunderstood.

I know this not only as a matter of policy, but as a parent. My son and daughter each waited three years for their diagnoses. In my daughter’s case, I am not sure she would have been referred at all had it not been for one teacher, Miss Holmes. She saw my daughter clearly when the systems around her did not, and advocated for her when she could not yet advocate for herself. But I think of the children who do not have a Miss Holmes: the children whose distress is quiet; the girls who mask until they break; the young people whose underlying neurodivergence is missed, as my own was.

The challenges within the SEND system are complex and fixing them will not be cost-free, but failure is not cost-free either. We pay for delay in crisis placements, parental exhaustion, children’s mental health and lost potential. I look forward to working with colleagues across this House, of all parties and none, to make the case for children who cannot wait, for the families who should not have to fight, and for a country that is at its best when it sees, hears and values every child.

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the speech of my noble friend Lady Leaman, of Chipping Sodbury. I congratulate her on setting out with her customary clarity the important case of neurodiversity in children. They will have a great new champion in this House. I also welcome the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater.

Having worked with my noble friend for over a decade, her dedication to SEND issues comes as no great surprise. Our collaboration started with a request from her for mentoring. To be honest, she showed such political know-how that I have never quite been sure whether it was me doing the mentoring or her. My noble friend Lady Leaman has political intuition, tenacity and a level of drive that leaves most people who work with her sprinting to keep up. Being a chief of staff to a party leader, as many on these Benches and others know, is one of the toughest leadership roles in any political party. To take on that challenge at a point when the question was whether that party would continue to exist, helping to deliver the best general election result in a century, shows extraordinary strategic leadership and skill.

My noble friend Lady Leaman worked alongside Sir Ed Davey and told his story of care, humanity and love with something that everyone involved in caring recognised. She managed to make it moving, human and just a little bit of fun too. Her ability to put care and social care at the heart of politics, alongside her experience working for Save the Children, means that I look forward to her future work in this House with some relish.

I also look forward to hearing the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Dixon. I should declare an interest, in that he was my boss for three years when I was director of communications for the Liberal Democrats. He was a brilliant chief executive and friend. I thank him, my noble friend Lady Leaman and Dave McCobb, our campaigning guru and Hull luminary, for being part of a leadership team that was one of the best experiences of my life.

Sadly, we are seeing the opposite of teamwork at the moment in the House of Commons, and I fear for its programme. These plans lack the ambition and urgency we seriously need. For too long, communities have suffered while water companies profited, polluted our rivers and seas and let their customers down. The water Bill is therefore welcome. But the Government already hold many of the powers they need to act. Stronger enforcement of existing rules should accompany any new legislation.

We continue to believe that the Government should go much further on transparency, stronger regulation and ending the broken financial model that has failed customers and the environment and simply rewarded the shareholders. The Government’s own environmental improvement plan points to important work on water farming, land use and food. However, the gracious Address—and debates this week—had a lack of information about the all-important issue of Defra, and the Government do not yet show the urgency or ambition needed to deliver.

The Address is also striking for what it leaves out on food security, at a time when affordable food and domestic production matter more than ever. There is still no clear plan to back British farmers or strengthen our resilience. That matters, because food security is national security. Urgent measures are needed on sustainable food production, food affordability and farming resilience. Unfortunately, for years the Conservative Government neglected British farmers. Subsidies have fallen by 20% in real terms since 2015, and now Labour is cutting further. Our over-reliance on imports, alongside continuing energy price pressures, leaves food inflation as a real danger. Who is exposed? It is the poorest families who are exposed. In February of this year, these risks were raised in a joint letter from 100 food companies that called for a White Paper and legislation to confront these problems.

The Government promised to legislate to end peat sales, but without a timetable. That is not good enough. We need to meet environmental commitments and restore business confidence to UK horticulture. On water, farming, food security and nature, the Government must move at the speed of the current crisis, not at the glacial pace of their own internal wrangling. We on these Benches will be on their case on these issues.

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman; it is excellent to have another woman on our Benches. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on their excellent speeches. We look forward to hearing much more from all of them as they move forward.

Three of the themes for today’s humble Address debate—education, culture and technology—offer the ideal context to highlight the benefits of aligning them more effectively in our work in schools. I declare my interest as chair of Camden STEAM. Central to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act and the forthcoming SEND Bill, which together will do so much to improve opportunities for all, is the introduction of the new national curriculum. Its ambition—to be cutting edge and fit for purpose—is essential if we are to equip children and young people for their future lives and work. Digital and creative entitlements have emerged as priorities, as has the critical area of media literacy within that.

Officials are currently working on what that will mean in practice, at a time when the intersection between the national curriculum, creative digital skills and online safety continues to ever intertwine. Ofcom has a statutory regulatory duty regarding the national curriculum, which, in practice, is developmental and advisory and does not extend to curriculum design. However, Ofcom’s research, guidance and regulatory expectations for platforms have significant implications for what children need to learn to participate safely and creatively.

Ofcom defines media literacy as

“the ability to use, understand and create media and communications”

across a range of platforms. The Department for Education, while not using a specific definition, currently emphasises thinking critically, understanding and evaluating digital technologies and participating safely in civic life. The difference is striking. The DfE’s framing omits “using and creating”—activities children are already immersed in, and which make learning practical, relevant and come alive. I hope that my noble friend the Minister agrees that bringing together the best of both approaches and aligning them at this development stage is essential. Will the Minister act to help support positive progress in this area?

A further concern is that media literacy at post-16 was not addressed by the national curriculum review. There are currently A-levels in film and media arts, and other related qualifications. The answer may be that, within the national curriculum review, there was no definition of the arts used beyond the distinction between core and foundation subjects set out in the current legislation. As that did not include the GCSEs and A-levels in film and media, they were not considered. Why were they not included? Officials report that those decisions were taken as part of earlier curriculum reforms, with no detailed record as to why, although we may all have our thoughts on that—Mickey Mouse is wandering across my eye.

The latest review was asked to refresh the curriculum and address growth, innovation and the future of work. It has done that in many areas, yet on this issue it chose to look backwards rather than forward. At a time when these subjects are fundamental to creative and digital knowledge and the foundational skills that are needed both for media literacy and roles right across the economy, both now and in the future, they remain the only expressive arts sitting outside the curriculum and the remit of the National Centre for Arts and Music Education. That stands in stark contrast to much international practice.

I look forward to the urgent establishment of the advisory committee, recommended in the review of Arts Council England by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, to establish something that aligns the work between DfE, DCMS and anchor stakeholders. If it had been in place, perhaps we would not be in this position. I ask my noble friend the Minister to see if a deep dive exercise into film and media arts can now be commissioned to address this omission and find a positive way forward. I look forward to her reply.

My Lords, I will begin by marking the sad and sudden loss of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, as did the noble Lord, Lord Horam, last Thursday. Professor Lord Skidelsky’s distinction as an economist and historian was a shining advertisement for the excellence of UK higher education. He was also a stimulating colleague and friend to many of us in this House. I congratulate all the maiden speakers, singling out my noble friend Lord Hobby, if only because he is my very welcome roommate.

I wish to speak about education and culture. Both are central to the sort of society that I believe all noble Lords wish to promote and live in, but they are also vital drivers of economic growth, directly and indirectly, short-term and long-term. In the context of education, I declare an interest as a trustee of LAMDA for a few more months, and, in relation to the creative industries, as a director of Digbeth Loc. Studios and the Theseus Agency.

The gracious Speech did not contain a lot on education in general and higher education in particular, although I welcome the education for all Bill—even if the devil is likely to be in the detail. Nearly three years ago, the Industry and Regulators Committee of your Lordships’ House, in its report on the OfS and higher education, flagged the looming financial crisis for the sector. The OfS, backseat-driven by the last Government, insisted that all was well. Since then, the accuracy of these predictions has unfortunately become ever clearer.

Mergers such as those recently announced between the Universities of Greenwich and Kent, and King’s College London and Cranfield University, may bring some improved resilience to the sector, but these will not solve the chronic underfunding described by my noble friends Lord Isaac and Lord Smith. The OfS funding for smaller, specialist institutions is an essential support for world-leading conservatoires and other institutions. Can my noble friend the Minister say when the process for awarding the next round of these grants will begin? The OfS requires universities to provide rolling five-year financial forecasts, yet, too often, decisions on grants, essential to an institution’s viability, have been left until the last minute.

The funding crisis in the cultural and arts sector is if anything even greater than that in higher education. The Hodge review, which I hope we will get the opportunity to debate in this House before the Summer Recess, set out a number of modest recommendations for increasing funding. Although the Government accepted these and all the review’s recommendations, they will only scratch the surface of the funding gap. From where will the rest of this gap be plugged? It should have been, as I have previously argued, from the lottery, where the new operator, awarded the licence under the last Government without any enforceable sanctions for failing to deliver on its ambitious financial promises, is struggling to maintain even previous levels of support for good causes. What does my noble friend the Minister intend to do to ensure that the lottery operator delivers on its promises?

My Lords, we have heard three wonderful maiden speeches, each distinct in its own way. I can see clearly that each of our contributors today will make an important contribution to our future debates, and I congratulate them all.

I will focus on the proposed SEND changes in the forthcoming education Bill. Perhaps the House will be surprised that I do not intend, for once, to single out autism, because I hope to cover this in more detail on 10 June, when we debate the Select Committee report on the Autism Act 2009. My noble friend Lord Touhig flagged up many issues of concern in the legislation as far as autism is concerned. That SEND needs to be reformed is not disputed but, following the Government’s consultation, we are short on the detail. This has raised concern, particularly from charities, parents and professionals. So today I will ask questions that I expect to be raised during the course of the Bill and that I hope will give the Minister an opportunity to do a bit of prep before the Second Reading begins.

If children are no longer to have education and care plans—ECPs—how do the Government intend that both education and health will be brought together to provide a whole-person plan? They do not work well together now, except in casework that has reached a crisis. Something needs to be done to make this more mainstreamed for a much wider group of children.

Following on from that, how do the Government plan to deal with long waiting times for assessment involving both health and education? If it is the case that intervention will begin before assessment, does that mean that children will be grouped under umbrella labels, and how will that affect the concept of “No decision about me without me”? It is a good thing to seek to provide more support and services, but will the Bill provide more detail about the number of staff needed, their funding and, most importantly, their training? We are looking at a very wide range of disabilities, with many comorbidities. Without specialist training, this merely provides staffing at best to manage children in the classroom, as opposed to educating them in the broadest sense of the word—academically where you can—to build confidence, speech and language, mobility, and independence, which is so important, as the child develops.

Compared with the present, is it intended that children who are assessed and diagnosed will be treated under umbrella terminology rather than a specific diagnosis, even when that diagnosis has been provided by a clinician? How do the Government view the changes in the Bill impacting when schooling is over? How will they prevent the cliff face between further or higher education and, ultimately, employment, and of course independent living? Will specialist schools currently providing all these post-16 facilities for disabled children be affected? If so, what analysis have the Government made of how they will be affected? Where do the Government see parents’ role in the SEND programme? Will parental rights be diminished? How easy will it be for parents to challenge decision-making?

Disabled children live longer than they did previously and they have higher expectations when they leave school. I hope this Bill will ensure that this improvement continues.

My Lords, to govern is to choose, and I commend the Government on their choices in the areas covered today: in education, their choice to start change with early years; in culture, their choice to put arts back on the curriculum; in technology, their choice to harness the power of the digital age to change and improve access to public services; and, in energy, their choice to invest in the transition to green power. So I welcome the education for all Bill, the digital access to services Bill and the energy independence Bill.

However, I will focus my contribution on culture. In a world where truth is made to look like lies and lies to look like truth, both social media and the BBC become vital. I wait with huge interest for the Government’s response to the consultation on social media, and I support the Government’s steadfast commitment to the BBC. Why are these two issues so important to me? I know, like many noble Lords, that the most important thing is truth, which is the cornerstone of any strong democracy. I believe it has to be safeguarded, protected and fought for.

The BBC is one of our country’s greatest assets in that fight, and I welcome my right honourable friend the Secretary of State’s commitment to ending the cycle of charter renewal. But I also believe that the BBC needs the resources to invest in local, national and international journalism, because that is the front line of the fight for truth. I also believe that tech and social media companies should be under the same obligations of truth. That means less talk and more doing when it comes to the protection of children from harmful content.

When the Government bring forward their recommendations after the consultation closes, they should put themselves on the side of parents as they struggle with this new media age. They should introduce a ban on mobile phones in school, they should strengthen the enforcement of age restriction, they should remove anonymity from social media users and they should work with other countries to turn tech and social media platforms into publishers, responsible for the content that they produce. I also believe that the Government should bring in the long-overdue independent press regulator. That is what a fight for truth looks like.

This King’s Speech is a choice. It is a choice to govern from the centre ground. It is a choice not to govern from the extreme left or the extreme right. It is a choice to spend more on public services, because we have seen the chaos and harm of not doing so. This is a King’s Speech that I believe makes the right choices to further strengthen our economic security, our energy independence and our national security. But there are also cultural choices, and we will see those unfold over this Session. I remain hopeful that the choices will be rooted in the values of my party and my country, but also the battle for truth.

Before I sit down, I too will congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, and the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, on their maiden speeches, and I look forward to that of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, in a few moments.

My Lords, we have been lucky to hear three absolutely first-class maiden speeches today. I look forward to a fourth in just a few moments—no pressure. In the last King’s Speech debate, in July 2024, I praised the Government’s ambition to achieve an 80% employment rate by helping 2 million people from welfare into work. Now, 22 months on, the figure required is 2.2 million, meaning the target is 10% more difficult to reach. In the same timeframe, we have seen unemployment increase from 1.4 million to the 1.8 million announced this morning, with those signed off with no requirement to seek work up from 2.7 million to 4.2 million. I want to focus on one cohort within those figures, the 960,000 young people who are not in education, employment or training—another figure which has increased since 2024.

The Prime Minister called the gracious Speech

“a King’s Speech for the young people whose gifts lie in their hands, and who work hard”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/5/26; col. 24.]

Last Monday, he said that

“incremental change won’t cut it”.

For the 1 million NEETs, there is a mismatch between the Government’s programme and their rhetoric. To tackle a NEETs crisis, it should have included a Bill to ensure that our education system properly prepares young people for employment. It should have included a Bill to reform welfare so it is targeted at those who genuinely need it, rather than those who can work. It should have included a Bill to help businesses create jobs and provide training opportunities, an essential element to get Britain working. To be fair, the Government have said they will respond to the Milburn review, but the hole in the King’s Speech on NEETs betrays the Government’s view that new legislation is not required to solve the crisis.

What will happen between now and the next King’s Speech? The rate of change is likely to accelerate, but at the foothills of the AI transition. British Chambers of Commerce research suggests that AI use has doubled since 2024, with the majority of businesses now using it. By the time of the next King’s Speech, its use will be universal. Our labour market is therefore heading for a fundamental shift. Taking King’s and Queen’s Speeches as a barometer of how seriously UK Governments, both Labour and Conservative, are taking AI is revealing. Of the six gracious Speeches since the 2019 general election, AI has warranted just two mentions, once in 2023 and once in 2024. Trawling through the explanatory notes for those six Speeches, AI tells me that buses were mentioned more than AI, with 33 and 28 references respectively. I suspect that Claude does not realise how interested voters are in public transport, but when historians look back at this period, it is safe to say that the AI revolution will feature more prominently. In fact, I argue that there is a strong case that AI should have been the key theme in this King’s Speech, rather than an add-on.

To conclude, I urge the Government to consider a strategic AI review on a par with the strategic defence review to properly and thoroughly examine the impact and opportunity of AI. Such an approach is needed, not just to prevent the NEETs crisis from worsening but to prepare our economy, our society and the public sector for the future.

My Lords, I must admit that when I saw my name so far down the speakers’ list, I hesitated and thought, “I’ll have so many speeches I have to listen to”, but I am so glad that I have spent the afternoon and early evening here, because as an ordinary but avid consumer of the arts, I have a whole new level of motivation. My learning has increased, especially listening to the impressive maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, and the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman. I anticipate that my learning will continue further.

I want to focus my remarks this evening on energy policy. I would argue that the starting point for energy policy has to be the stark realities of climate change, as has been mentioned much earlier in this debate. The Climate Change Committee confirms that we are already experiencing more frequent heatwaves, heavier rainfall and conditions conducive to wildfires. These are not distant risks; they are happening now, and the UK, we have to be honest, is not adequately prepared. We see the consequences immediately, at first hand. As my noble friend Lord Harris said earlier at Questions, in 2022, extreme heat contributed to over 3,000 deaths and disrupted vital infrastructure. In 2024, the UK faced 50 consecutive days of rain and a number of named storms. Across the globe, extreme weather is intensifying, with enormous consequences. The evidence is all around us and the science is clear: we face not isolated incidents but cascading and compounding shocks across sectors, with threats to national infrastructure and global supply chains’ disruption and fragility. I do not have time to begin to list all the consequences that we face, but let us listen, as of course we should, to Sir David Attenborough, who reminds us that what happens over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all on the planet.

We know what we need to do, and what happens next is up to us. That is why the legislation in the King’s Speech is so important and makes it clear that it is time to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and accelerate our transition to clean energy. The energy independence Bill is central to the ambition of change. It will strengthen our energy security at a time of global instability. We have experienced two major energy shocks in just five years, and in fact we have been experiencing energy shocks since the 1970s, with increasing costs to families and businesses. It will help build national resilience—and I too sit on the National Resilience Committee. We need to reform markets, improve planning and produce better regulatory frameworks.

I also welcome the nuclear regulation Bill, because it will play a vital role in delivering reliable, low-carbon power. We must acknowledge the challenges in delivering nuclear power. Delivery is too slow and costs remain too high.

But all in all, we need absolutely to accept the need for urgent action. Energy policy has rightly been a central focus of government action and it must remain so. We stand at a defining moment. The Government must keep their nerve and focus with these measures in the King’s Speech. We must act to protect lives, livelihoods and the foundations of our economy. Inaction is the costliest choice. Now is the time for leadership, ambition and enduring commitment. We must not back off.

My Lords, I too congratulate the three excellent maiden speakers today and wish the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, luck in a few minutes’ time.

I will restrict my comments to technology. Much of the gracious Speech involves and impacts tech, but I was sad to see nothing that holistically addresses the positive and negative impacts of technology, especially AI, on society. There was no resolution on protecting copyrights, no updated online safety Bill for the AI age, no approach to societal guardrails for superintelligence and indeed no AI Bill at all. Instead, there are various references to growth being equated with inward investment, and specifics such as the NHS single patient record and digital ID.

Noble Lords may say that it is right that tech is embedded in everything now, so it should just be part of each piece of legislation, but I think that that misses the point. We are living in an era of huge technology change. It is reminiscent of the late 19th century. Tech companies are more powerful than countries. They are making huge fortunes and delivering much positive innovation, but also great societal harm. We need to build the moral and legal frameworks for this new AI age, and in this regard, the gracious Speech is sorely lacking.

There are two Bills in particular that will be important in establishing this moral and legal framework but, unfortunately, not for the right reasons. The competition reform Bill will change how the Competition and Markets Authority makes competition decisions. It risks reducing the CMA’s independence. This matters because AI investment is like catnip for all politicians: we risk being bedazzled by short-term investment from these tech titans. In this House, many of us fought hard for the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and I worry that the competition reform Bill risks weakening this regime as it only just gets started. Can the Minister say how this Bill will not reduce the CMA’s independence and how it will ensure we have fair and competitive digital markets rather than even stronger tech monopolies with faster CMA decision-making?

The second Bill that I am concerned about is the one on regulating for growth. The critical question is: what kind of growth do the Government want—short-term investment in data centres or sustainable growth that comes from competitive and fair markets? Will this Bill place beyond doubt copyright owners’ rights and prevent tech companies stealing their content? The robber barons of the 19th century needed regulation—anti-trust regulation and health and safety regulation—for society to get the sustainable and fair benefits that growth from their technologies promised. The same is exactly true for the digital AI era, and it is only if we regulate sensibly that we will get that sustainable growth.

Finally, what is missing is a legal and moral framework for AI that does not accept that “just because we can” means “we should” and instead sets out the legal barriers we wish to impose on new tech, just as we do in all other parts of society—a proper AI Bill that addresses child safety in an AI age and that puts to rest any doubts about copyright protection and starts the process of building genuine citizen trust, so that we can benefit from the undoubted upsides the technology could bring. Without that, I fear all these other Bills will not actually bring society with us. Like my noble friend Lord Elliott in front of me, I fear that this is a big hole in the gracious Speech.

My Lords, we have already had three excellent maiden speeches from my noble friend Lord Hobby, the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, and the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman. I am looking forward to our fourth maiden speech, that from the noble Lord, Lord Dixon; I am sure he will make it a great quartet. I congratulate everybody.

The King’s Speech proposed a number of really positive legislative changes to improve productivity and stimulate growth, offering much-needed hope. I think particularly of the Social Housing Bill, on which I will speak at Second Reading, as well as those on reform of water companies, tackling bureaucracy in the National Health Service, a defence housing service and calling out the awful antisemitism threatening our communities.

We have only one opportunity to speak at this stage, and I welcome the Government’s recognition in the King’s Speech of the central role education plays in driving economic growth, social mobility and national resilience, and their continued emphasis on skills, innovation and improving opportunity across the education system, including SEND reform. I will focus on higher education, an area in which the United Kingdom remains a global leader, and which is essential to the delivery of the Government’s ambitions for growth, productivity and international competitiveness.

Over the past year, the Government have taken several welcome steps to support the sector by increasing tuition fees in line with inflation for the next two years, by acknowledging the significant financial pressures universities face and by the retention of the graduate route visa to maintain the UK’s attractiveness to international students, who contribute enormously to our economy and society. It is also encouraging to see the ways in which universities themselves have recognised the need to evolve, to improve accountability and to ensure students receive genuine value and opportunity from higher education. In that spirit, I welcome Universities UK’s future universities programme, focusing on working closely with employers, communities and government while equipping students with the adaptability and resilience needed in a rapidly changing world.

Our universities are among this country’s greatest national strengths. They generate more than £265 billion in economic output, support hundreds of thousands of jobs, drive innovation and research, and anchor regional economies across the United Kingdom. It is a success story, but it is under strain. The current funding model is no longer sustainable. The value of domestic teaching funding has been steadily eroded in real terms over many years. Research funding is under pressure, with institutions increasingly forced to cross-subsidise research from other income streams. At the same time, uncertainty surrounding international student policy has increased financial instability for institutions that rely on overseas recruitment to remain viable.

This is not simply a challenge for universities themselves; if institutions weaken, the effects will be felt across our economy, our research base, regional growth and the opportunities available to future generations. The Education Select Committee’s recent report on higher education funding and insolvency rightly highlighted the urgency of these issues and called for a more strategic and sustainable approach— I echo that call today. The sector now urgently needs clarity on the proposed inflation-linked tuition fee mechanism.

There are ways forward, including practical steps the Government could take right now. They could protect the strategic priorities grant in real terms, supporting institutions with rising Teachers’ Pension Scheme costs, and maintain the balance of dual support for research funding. Ultimately, what is needed is a coherent funding settlement that recognises the full economic and societal value of higher education. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether she will urge the Government now to provide clarity on inflation-linked tuition fee uplifts and to set out a credible plan to secure the financial sustainability of our universities?

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.

My Lords, what a pleasure and what a privilege it is to speak after four brilliant maiden speeches. It is a special personal honour for me to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon. In 2016, I became the chair of a large voluntary organisation, a drug and addiction charity. The day after I accepted that demanding and unremunerated role, I was told that the chief executive was leaving and was going to be the chief executive of Children in Need—which he did. So I held on to the railings, as it were, and realised that I had to find a new chief executive. We had a formidable shortlist that included two internal candidates and a young fellow called Mike Dixon, a rising star in the voluntary world in social enterprise and benefit. He was irresistible, and we appointed him—and here he is today. He proved to be clever, strategic, eloquent and wise. He knew how to tell truth to what he perceived—possibly falsely—to be power in the organisation, and he led essential changes.

Shortly after he joined us, I was at a meeting with Hilary Benn MP. Mike Dixon had been in the past one of Hilary Benn’s special advisers, when Mr Benn was in one of his many roles over the years as a Cabinet Minister. I told Mr Benn at the end of the meeting that I had just appointed Mike Dixon as our chief executive. Without blinking, he replied, “In that case, Alex, you are a very lucky man”. Indeed I was, and I say to your Lordships that we are now a very lucky House to have the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, here. I look forward with your Lordships to his many contributions in the future, perhaps over the next 30 or 40 years or more, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, who made such a magnificent speech.

In the context of this debate, I will make some comments on technology and education in relation to children and the threat that gambling brings to their lives. I am not a spoilsport about gambling, by the way. Last weekend, I actually won £2.90 on the National Lottery. However, as a parent, grandparent, lawyer and citizen, and a Member of this House, I am very concerned about the potentially addictive exposure of children in their everyday digital environments to online temptation that could ruin their lives. I am going to speak, briefly and specifically, about loot boxes. If noble Lords do not know what loot boxes are, do as I did and ask your grandchildren—or possibly the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, and the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, who may already know.

Loot boxes are items within computer games which are accessed either through gameplay or are purchased within a game and offer virtual currencies, but sometimes ask for real money. It is the temptation to pay that real money they do not possess that is the real danger and may lead them to a life of addiction and a life that is shortened as a result. Actually, as your Lordships know, under-18s are not permitted to gamble, yet they remain exposed to temptation and all too often circumvent prohibitions. In short, I would urge His Majesty’s Government to classify and regulate all loot boxes as gambling. This would bring them under Gambling Commission oversight, ensuring a ban on access and targeted promotion that is aimed quite specifically at the under-18s as a vulnerable group.

Some loot boxes are completely unregulated and represent a threat to children and young people. There is an excellent organisation now called Peers for Gambling Reform, to which I belong, and it has shown, through evidence it has collected, a consistent link between loot-box spending and later problem gambling and potential lifelong addiction. This risk was acknowledged by the previous Government in 2022 in a consultation which fully recognised that link. This has been addressed, in part only, by the Pan-European Game Information body and applies to new games from next month. However, it is not retrospective, and young people for a very long time will remain subject to this egregious temptation which could ruin their lives. I ask His Majesty’s Government to apply the new rule to the huge number of pre-June 2026 games for the protection of future generations. As I said earlier, I am not against gambling, but I am against uncontrolled gambling and the effect it has on future generations.

My Lords, I start with compliments and thanks to all those who have given their maiden speeches today; I look forward to hearing much more from them. I put on record my registered interest that I am the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

I want to discuss electricity. Electricity accounts for 20% of the overall energy use in this country. The other 80% is oil, gas, kerosene and coal, or a bit of home wood-burning—and thank heavens we do that, because there are countless times when winter storms regularly bring down power lines for extended periods. One can lend a neighbour a bucket of logs but you cannot lend them a bucket of electricity.

On a particularly good day, when there is perfect wind and perfect sunshine, the renewables system that we have, and that is planned, will overproduce the 40 to 45 gigawatts that the country uses. But if it produces more, we have to pay for constraint payments. Unfortunately, most days are nothing like that. More payments are needed to encourage gas stations to turn up, and we pray that France has some nuclear power to spare or that other countries, via their interconnectors, have some spare capacity to export to us. Although we seem desperately concerned about where our domestic electricity comes from, we do not seem too concerned about where the interconnector electricity comes from, because when it comes from Germany and Belgium, it is broadly coal-produced.

The perversity we have seen is that the more renewables we have in the system, the higher the price we seem to pay for our electricity—and we are already paying one of the highest prices in the world. That is because we have two systems: the irregular renewables and the backup that has to be paid for as well. There is an absolute correlation: more renewables, more cost.

If the ambition is to have virtually all electricity produced by non-fossil fuel means by 2030 then I have a bridge to sell the Minister. We have the problem of night and the problem of the Dunkelflaute—a fantastic German word for the high-pressure system which often sits across the entirety of northern Europe, often for a week or more in the depths of winter, when it is both cold and very dark. We would therefore need to overproduce a lot of our renewables, so that we may store it.

How might we store it? We might look to Chinese-produced batteries and to cobalt produced by children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We could look at some untried systems, such as hydrogen or reservoirs that do not exist so that we can use hydro storage. All suffer from huge thermodynamic losses. That is just for electricity—that 20%; we have not even started to have an alternative to the 80% of energy from other sources. Hydrocarbons will be with us for a very long time yet, because there is no at-scale alternative to power jets to heat our homes and fuel our vehicles.

The recent Iran problem has proven some things. It has proven that there is an international price for LNG and it is pretty high, but there is not an international price for locally piped gas. Gas priced in the USA is infinitely cheaper than the LNG market and gas from Norway that we rely on is cheaper than LNG. It has certainly proven that energy security is valuable. It is absolute madness that we are considering cancelling or banning any future use of the North Sea while Norway goes gangbusters for it and we then buy from Norway.

There is a serious constitutional point that Parliaments cannot bind their successors, and that is for any legislation. I find it amazing that a Government who secured 18% of the support of this country can be allowed to consider such long-term legislation. I welcome any legislation, because it will allow me to highlight the problems of the UK’s energy security.

My Lords, I congratulate all the noble Lords and noble Baronesses on their excellent maiden speeches. In particular, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hobby, who, when I was general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, was general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. When the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said that he said things very gently about which other noble Lords and Baronesses on the Benches were more robust, I think she was looking at me, and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. But there is room for everyone in the House, is there not, and for different styles of address?

I welcome the Government’s ambition that the UK should be a country fair for all and a place where every child is included in the nation’s highest aspirations. Central to this ambition, in this legislative cycle, is the Bill being brought forward to raise standards in schools and to introduce generational reforms of the special educational needs system in the education for all Bill. The Government have already signalled the seriousness of their intent to mend the utterly broken SEND system they inherited. The £5 billion they are giving councils to pay off 90% of the debts built up supporting children and young people with SEND is clear evidence of that intent, staving off what would, in 2028, have been widespread council bankruptcies.

A long time ago now, in the 1990s, I worked in a school where children with physical and mental disabilities were included in the mainstream life of school, with a special unit which supported their inclusion. It was a wonderful place to work and to learn. Many of the children who had the support of the inclusion unit went on to achieve marvellous things academically, socially and professionally, which they would not have been able to do if they had been confined to a more narrow, restrictive curriculum, which at that time was usual in special schools. That school was Whitmore High School in Harrow, and its head teacher was a future Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert.

I applaud the Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson, for whom SEND inclusion is clearly a passion, for grappling with the Treasury to release £1.6 billion over the next three years to support SEND inclusion and to equip staff with the knowledge and skills needed to deliver excellence.

I should declare an interest: I am chair of the Teaching Commission. Our second report, to be launched this July, focuses on the implications for teachers and leaders of the 2028 dual introduction of the revised national curriculum and the SEND reforms, which I have already said I wholly support. However, I have to express a key concern, which was one expressed to the commission by a series of expert witnesses: namely, that the insufficient reduction of only 10% in exam time for GCSE students and the lack of consideration in the curriculum and assessment review, led by Professor Becky Francis, of adaptive, modular and authentic assessment methods which could better support learners with SEND, mental health needs or anxiety, might limit and constrain inclusion.

The delay until post-16 in providing a pathway for students who cannot access the mainstream curriculum has also been questioned. Why, witnesses asked, did students with low prior attainment and SEND have to fail at GCSE before they were offered level 1 and 2 qualifications post 16? The witnesses were clear that this delay will drive a deficit in inclusion.

A coherent alignment of curriculum, assessment and accountability is essential. Without this, the Government’s ambitions for inclusion, improved belonging and reduced attainment gaps may remain out of reach, and policy incoherence will continue to frustrate and demoralise the profession. I ask the Government to look again at this issue. The curriculum will not become more inclusive if its assessment remains exclusive. This is not what I want and I know it is not what the Government want. I hope that this issue can be resolved prior to 2028. There is still time and the will to get this right.

My Lords, I also congratulate the quartet of Peers who have spoken their maiden speeches: my noble friend Lord Hobby, the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, and finally the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, who had to live up to quite a billing before he managed to say a word but achieved it with distinction. While I am on the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, suggested that we should speak to our grandparents about loot boxes, but I think he meant grandchildren. If Hansard corrects the record, I am sure he will appreciate that too.

I want to speak about energy security and energy independence, which the Government committed to in the gracious Speech. There should be no doubt, since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and the war in Iran leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, that there is an urgency to get policy right and to get on with delivering UK energy independence. Indeed, to oppose doing so would be an act of self-harm, leading to significantly higher prices for businesses and consumers, and to energy insecurity when it comes to keeping the lights on. Renewables and nuclear are clearly the front-runners for our future sources of supply, and both exist outside the international markets price regulation, which will enable the UK to be independent of the high price-fixing of international markets.

However, as a point of reassurance to those opposite who made this point, the change to renewables will not happen overnight or at the expense of gas and oil from the North Sea. The North Sea will continue, at least until the next century, to produce vital energy for the UK. Those who argue that this Labour Government are putting jobs at risk are scaremongering. I live in the north-east of England, where companies are pleading with us to go faster and further on renewables so that they can retain the skills of those employed in the construction of pylons, wind turbines and the control mechanisms they operate under.

By creating this certainty, the UK will retain these skills, and that is what the Government are committed to doing. The Government are introducing the energy independence Bill to ensure energy security, and the nuclear regulation Bill to pave the way for greater nuclear energy investment. Building on the Fingleton review of the nuclear sector, this will see an acceleration of the UK’s commitment to wind, wave, solar and a nuclear future, with improved light-touch regulation to overcome price gouging by unscrupulous companies.

From the starting point of 3% in the year 2000 to just under half of all our energy now, renewable sources are on the up. It is predicated that, together with nuclear, renewables will dominate the market for the foreseeable future. On 1 April 2026, we saw the first 24-hour period in which renewables met all our energy demands. Third-party intermediates, which operate in the business sector, are currently controlled only by voluntary measures and general consumer protection laws. Therefore, I welcome the Government’s proposal for them to be properly regulated by Ofgem, and Labour’s proposal to make sure that the country’s energy is independent and secure.

Can the Minister say whether the following statements are true? First, the Government will protect customers from international market volatility. Secondly, they will boost employment in the future industries for green power. Thirdly, they will remove delays in planning, especially grid access, and cut costs. Fourthly, they will increase UK resilience to energy threats. Finally, through GB Energy, they will quicken the transition and ensure that considerable benefits are felt by everyone.

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in the debate on the humble Address, and I congratulate all noble Lords on their excellent maiden speeches.

I warmly welcome the Government’s renewed commitment to tackling violence against women and girls and to ensuring that women can participate fully and equally in our society. I declare an interest as receiving pro bono legal advice from Mishcon de Reya on image-based sexual abuse, and as a member of the advisory board for Arãya Ventures, a venture capital company.

Noble Lords will know that I have long raised concerns about the rise of tech-facilitated abuse, which continues to disproportionately target women and girls. Against that backdrop, I was disappointed by the lack of online safety provisions in the humble Address. I fear that, once again, your Lordships House may find itself compelled to strengthen protections through ad hoc amendments to other legislation.

I was also saddened by the recent resignations from the Government of Jess Phillips MP and Alex Davies-Jones MP, with whom I worked on my previous amendments during their time as Ministers. It is troubling to read in Jess Phillips’s letter of the intransigence in government to delivering meaningful change in tackling VAWG. The Minister, in his opening remarks, stated that the Government stood up to X to stop the spread of intimate deepfakes on the platform. Noble Lords will remember that in the last Parliament, this House had to push the Government to include these essential provisions in the data Act to criminalise the creation and requesting of sexually explicit images without consent. These protections were then sat on by the Government for over seven months, and were enacted only in the face of the large-scale abuse of women who would have had criminal recourse had the Government enacted the available law sooner. This is not good enough. The Government must heed Jess Phillips’s warning and use this new parliamentary Session to act at pace if we are to tackle violence against women and girls.

On the issue of tech-facilitated abuse, I believe there is unity across this House in recognising the seriousness and urgency of the challenge before us. The pace of technological change is accelerating rapidly—from chatbots being weaponised to harm and abuse children, to AI-enabled glasses covertly filming women without their consent, to the continuing and deeply concerning rise in intimate image abuse. The revenge porn helpline has reported that image-based sexual abuse has increased by one-third compared to this time last year. These threats are evolving at speed, and we cannot afford complacency. I hope that the Government will adopt a more proactive and forward-looking approach to addressing these harms so that women and girls may live and engage online free from abuse and intimidation.

As the Government advance their growth agenda, it is vital that women are central to that vision for the future. We must ensure that young girls are encouraged and supported into STEM education and careers, so that the AI future we are building reflects the diversity of the society it is intended to serve. Women in Tech reports that, as of 2026, women comprise only 29% of the UK technology workforce, 19% of core engineering roles and just 13% of cyber security positions. If women are absent from the development and deployment of these technologies, we risk embedding inequality in the foundations of our digital future.

My Lords, I too congratulate all the Peers who have given their maiden speeches today. I would also like to endorse the speech of my noble friend Lady Bousted in all its particulars. There is a widespread agreement that the current SEND system is, as the NEU describes it, “adversarial, fragmented and under-resourced”. The current parlous state of provision has been worsening for more than a decade, with teachers and schools stretched to beyond capacity and families forced into exhausting battles to get support for their children. The daily challenges facing teachers is one of the reasons they leave the profession, and I know this from talking to them, including my own former primary teacher daughter.

Against that background, the ambition of this Government to change the system to meet the needs of all children is indeed laudable. The cap on independent special school fees to address the flow of public money to private providers is exactly the right thing to do. Experts at Hand is also very welcome. As for Targeted and Targeted Plus, many of us who were teaching when we had School Action and School Action Plus will be delighted to see the return of this. The NEU has campaigned for it, as have I.

As the CEO of Mencap has said:

“Families must have their children’s needs identified early and for them to be given the right help straight away, backed by services fully funded to do the job”.

I earnestly hope that all the resources will be found to meet the very big challenge of doing the right thing by all children and young people with SEND. As Nick Harrison, chief executive of The Sutton Trust, says:

“Schools are in a financial crisis that’s more than a decade and a half in the making”.

Little wonder, then, that not just the NEU but the NASUWT, the NAHT, ASCL, the Local Government Association and the Save Our Children’s Rights campaign all agree that if mainstream schools are to do much more on inclusion for every child, the right level of funding must be available.

In conclusion, I will just say a few words about further and higher education. The deepening crisis in post-16 education and the consequences of treating education as a market rather than a public good are clearly out of step with the Government’s ambitions. When your Lordships’ House debated the value of modern foreign languages teaching and learning, we were as one in agreeing that the value of learning modern foreign languages is very high. Yet such courses are being cut and sometimes, even whole departments in universities are. The logic of competition between institutions has not improved student experience. What reassurances can my noble friend the Minister give to students worried about the financial stability of their universities, when four in 10 of them are facing budget deficits? We all want the best for all our children and young people, so we must will the means.

My Lords, I congratulate all the maiden speakers on excellent contributions and particularly welcome my two new colleagues, the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, who are both taking a well-earned break. We are delighted to have them join us and we look forward to working with them.

I know the convention is not to repeat a point made earlier in the debate, but as number 48 it is quite difficult to find totally new things to say. However, I will concentrate on education within the many subjects of today’s debate. I thought I was going to say something new in talking about modern languages—and blow me, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, has just talked about modern languages.

I am a former modern linguist, and how pleased I am to see that we seem to be rejoining Erasmus, a brilliant programme for encouraging young people to learn languages and experience life in other countries. Leaving it was one of the very many losses from Brexit, but Erasmus+ gives hope that the Government will be able to support this valuable scheme. Will they also introduce group passports and find other ways of enabling disadvantaged youngsters to afford life-affirming experiences? If we wish to be an internationally minded country, we need to be able to speak other languages. It is no good just speaking English loudly. It honestly does not get you anywhere.

It is a matter of shame that numbers of GCSE and A-level entries are dropping, leading to some universities having to close language departments through lack of applicants. A knock-on effect of this, of course, is fewer language teachers. Starting languages in primary schools enables children to learn so much more enthusiastically. What support are the Government giving to ensure that there are language teachers to enthuse and inspire the young?

Just as languages need a boost in our education system, so do life skills and practical skills. We should be ashamed that a million young people are not in education, employment or training; many of them will have been turned off learning by the largely academic curriculum so beloved by the previous Government. Yet the country is short of skilled people in engineering, construction, hospitality and crafts. Schools need to offer music, as we have heard already, and art, drama, sport and dance, if we are to maintain this country’s reputation for creativity. The creative industries are major assets for the country in their earning power and their power to make people feel good about themselves. We need to encourage the next generation to follow Tom Stoppard, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lucian Freud. Well, perhaps not Lucian Freud; perhaps Tracey Emin instead.

This Government have made some good decisions in addressing the curriculum to give a focus on skills for life, moving away from the facts leading to university which are so highly prized, but not relevant for many learners. Can the Minister say when we will see a curriculum to cater for all young people which will prepare them for life, enthuse them about learning and help them get jobs the country needs, and which will give them self-respect and the satisfaction of work?

Please will the Government also review their draconian treatment of independent schools? Some of the smaller, more specialist schools dealing with special needs, music and dance are struggling with the imposition of VAT and taxes, which cannot be passed on to embattled parents. Not all parents at private schools are wealthy; some are just struggling with their children, who need a particular environment. We need to encourage talented and disadvantaged youngsters. Can the Minister say if the Government will review the very broad brush they used to extract money from independent schools? I look forward to the other speakers and to the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, my arthritis is not very good today, so I am sure your Lordships will forgive me for speaking while seated. I will focus on energy, and I warmly welcome the speeches of my noble friends Lord Whitehead and Lady Curran, and that of the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I add my congratulations to all our wonderful maiden speakers.

After the second fossil fuel crisis in five years, it is clear that clean power is the only route to energy security. Energy independence is a vital goal of national security, as shown by recent events in the Middle East. This requires increased production of homegrown, clean and affordable British energy. Faster action on the energy transition and climate change will help address many of the country’s most pressing challenges, including long-term cost of living, energy security and local job opportunities, and will have many co-benefits, such as cleaner air and warmer homes.

The energy independence Bill must strengthen us against energy price shocks for the long term and create thousands of clean, green apprenticeships and jobs. As my noble friends said, we need to get off the oil price rollercoaster. Energy independence must mean affordable energy for consumers, including private renters, not just more generation. We must secure a just transition for workers from old industries to new, and place tackling energy poverty at the heart of all relevant legislation. I wrote the energy poverty manifesto, which was adopted by the European Parliament and the European Commission. Now as then, no one should have to choose between eating and heating or cooling their homes.

To touch on culture very briefly, I congratulate Coventry City FC on their promotion and say, “Play up, Sky Blues”.

My Lords, I too congratulate the four noble Lords who made excellent maiden speeches today. I also congratulate Aston Villa, who are playing in the Europa League final tomorrow.

The Stone Age did not end because mankind ran out of stone; we just found more effective ways of doing things. Science, innovation and technology have historically brought solutions to everyday problems. Britain can be proud that it started the Industrial Revolution. We are now in the fast-moving artificial intelligence revolution, but the issue is whether we are leaders or followers, giants or clients.

One of the lessons from history is that we should learn lessons from history. It was my Bill that, in 1997, established Britain’s first ever comprehensive DNA database. As a result, we became the first nation in the world to embrace this ground-breaking technology. Nearly 30 years later, the DNA database has positively transformed the effectiveness of medicine, and forensic and research science. Of 195 nations in the world, 175 now utilise DNA profiles. I declare a further interest as a vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence. I am also a former chancellor of Bournemouth University, which has its own specialist data science and AI department.

The King’s Speech included key Bills of direct relevance to the technology sector, including the cyber security and resilience Bill and the regulation for growth Bill, but there was no mention of an AI regulation Bill. Meanwhile, AI is being monitored in pieces, through the Online Safety Act and a patchwork of policies in various sectors. This is not the same as a coherent framework for the development, deployment and use of AI.

The cost of this delay is showing up most visibly in copyright. The dispute between rights holders and AI developers has been running for years, with no resolution in sight. Ironically, in the music industry, wealthy musicians such as the UK’s Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney have been speaking out on behalf of lesser-known creative artists, who cannot afford expensive legal fees to protect their copyright. Clear regulation is not the enemy of innovation, so will the Minister indicate when we are likely to see an AI regulation Bill?

The cyber security and resilience Bill is long overdue, in an increasingly pressurised, cyber-threatened ecosystem. In recent months, we have seen major airports such as Heathrow, retail chains such as Marks & Spencer and large manufacturers such as Jaguar Land Rover all immobilised by cyber hacking, so can the Minister say whether this Bill will properly account for AI stewardship?

The regulation for growth Bill claims to give organisations controlled environments to build and test AI tools, but I query whether this will be enough to support the innovation landscape and retain AI companies in the UK. There are numerous examples of UK AI start-ups that were created here but bought out by the Americans. For example, DeepMind in London was sold to Google; SwiftKey in Cambridge was acquired by Microsoft; and VocalIQ, another start-up company in the east of England, was taken over by Apple.

Earlier this month, I was invited to speak at an awards ceremony in America; it was the biggest AI event, presumably, in the world. It was backed by the federal Government and Wall Street. We need that here now.

My Lords, I have no doubt that all noble Lords have seen “KPop Demon Hunters”. It is the most-watched original film in Netflix’s history and is of course centred around K-pop—Korean popular music—which is now a $10-billion industry for Korea. On the back of it, Korean dramas, food, cosmetics and fashion are all thriving.

Korea is not alone. It is just one of several emerging cultural superpowers. When we get home tonight, a billion people will have watched a Turkish drama this evening; every night, a billion people watch a Turkish drama. Turkey is now the world’s largest producer of television episodes. In a town called Mardin, more than a million hotel nights were booked last year just because it featured in one Turkish drama. Nigeria’s Nollywood produces more films than Hollywood and employs 1.5 million Nigerians. Finally, China is now leading in micro-dramas. These episodes, which are two minutes long, can be watched on a bus or on the Tube, and an entire 60-episode series is shot in 10 days for $300,000. It is a $7-billion industry.

None of this is happening by accident. These are results of a deliberate state strategy. The Turkish Government subsidise these productions, which promote their culture, by $100,000 an episode. The Korean Government are opening cultural centres all around the world. Meanwhile, we are retreating. For centuries, we have been the world’s leading exporter of ideas, stories, music, art, film and education, but today we are dismantling that influence. The British Council is shutting offices all over the world. The British Council’s library in Chennai has sold all its books and is shutting down. Our programme to teach English in Italy, which has been running for 80 years, is shutting down. We have stopped thinking of culture as a strategic export.

There is no reference to culture and the creative industries in His Majesty’s most gracious Speech. But this year, 2026, is a great year because, after 20 years, the next James Bond will be cast. I hope that the Minister can assure the House that this year projecting British cultural influence will once again be at the heart of our soft-power strategy.

My Lords, I congratulate all four of our maiden speakers, whose speeches were very moving and inspirational.

I have been reflecting that, if this were the King’s own speech, rather than the Government’s plan relayed by His Majesty, there would be far more on nature and biodiversity in it, as my noble friend Lord Russell said. That really is an immense lack in this legislative programme. Given that nature underpins our food production and what we drink, it is essential that we take better care of it. The only mention of it in the Government’s plans—it was not even in the King’s Speech; it is just out for consultation—is the trail-hunting Bill. I do not think that banning trail hunting will contribute anything to biodiversity; it is just a political choice.

What is far more important for preserving our British mammals and would command cross-party support—the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, introduced it as a Private Member’s Bill last Session—is introducing a closed season for hares. In England, they can be shot while pregnant, lactating or caring for young. However, Scotland and Northern Ireland have recognised how important a closed season is, and they have passed such legislation. I really wonder why the Government cannot just introduce such a simple Bill and do it.

The sad decline of hare numbers is obviously due to other factors as well, such as hare coursing and lack of habitat, but it does make recovery impossible where the closed season means that, as soon as the females are pregnant, they can be shot. The book Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton joins other remarkable books, such as The Leaping Hare, to show why we must protect these wonderful, iconic creatures, which are a really central part of our natural heritage.

I join my noble friend Lady Grender in welcoming the water Bill, but there is a lot of work to be done on it. I think it should be called the water and sewage Bill. It needs to be much bolder than what is currently envisaged. The fact is that, as the remarkable programme “Dirty Business” showed, we are poisoning our very rivers. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, chose to take the title of a river, because rivers need friends.

We are choosing to poison our rivers with sewage, but it is not only that; a lot of other things need to be addressed, such as the fact that the sludge that comes from industrial waste is now mixed with sewage sludge and spread on farmland. The run-off from that contains the forever chemicals that the industrial process is using. That is really toxic—it is entering into people’s bodies, including the bodies of our children—and is the sort of thing that absolutely must be addressed in the water Bill.

Finally, I ask the Minister what plans the Government have for educating children about nature. Obviously, there are forest schools and field trips, but we need our children to become nature champions. David Attenborough has inspired many, of course, but we need the next generations; we need the citizen scientists, who showed what was happening to rivers; and we need the activists.

My Lords, while there is a lot to be welcomed in the Government’s proposed new legislation, I will focus on further and higher education, especially skills and apprenticeships.

The Government have done a lot to encourage SMEs to take on apprentices, but the latest figures are disappointing, and we know how necessary these skills, whether in construction, energy, or the crafts needed to repair churches and cathedrals such as stonemasonry, are to so many of our industries. So many of our villages have thatched roofs, and we need the next generation of thatchers to preserve that heritage. Too many schools advise young people that university is the only choice and fail to tell them that apprenticeships provide a good career path, good pay and a guaranteed job.

There is another major challenge we face: thousands of young people not in employment, education or training. The cost to our economy is enormous, and it encourages young people to believe that living on benefits is an option—something we cannot afford and certainly should not be encouraging them to do.

Giving 16 to 17 year-olds the right to vote is important, but I hope we will realise that we need to educate them about the importance of their choice, and I believe that that should be from the age of 14. If we leave it until they are 16 years old, we will have missed a golden opportunity.

I welcome lots of the reforms relating to schools and education, but I still think we have a long way to go on skills and apprenticeships.

My Lords, I warmly welcome all new Members of your Lordships’ House and congratulate them on their impressive maiden speeches.

On university campuses, real freedom of speech is vanishing. Please watch, if you have a moment, the brilliant speech Maeve Halligan recently gave at the Cambridge Union on how LGBTQ+ ideologies are failing gay people. Her student union originally blocked her from starting a group for women to meet with other women. Why? Because the group was not inclusive of trans women. Elsewhere, Jewish students in our country face appalling ordeals. The StandWithUs report documents bomb threats, physical attacks and doxing. A Jewish student at King’s was reportedly required to write a 1,000 word essay explaining why displaying an Israeli flag had been wrong.

Two-thirds of academics believe that their university would prioritise feeling safe over freedom of speech. This focus on safetyism is completely wrong. It is antithetical to developing robust adults who are able to thrive in the world outside their ivory towers. The Government have faffed about with the Conservatives’ 2023 free speech Act, stripping out duties on students’ unions, and I am very disappointed that there is nothing in the gracious Speech on freedom of speech, which is foundational to a successful society.

Secondly, I will touch briefly on SEND. The Government recognise that there is a problem, but nobody has the appetite to ask the very honest question: why are there so many more SEND children? If up to one in five children is now deemed to have special needs, surely that is an absurd stretching of the concept of “special”. The Government are promising more money. My noble friend Lady Spielman notes:

“Spending more money on a child will not necessarily improve their experience or outcomes. But parents desperately want to believe that something can be done, and it is easier for the state to be kind than to be honest. This may explain why we already spend £15bn a year—more than £500 from every household—on high needs SEND and children’s disability living allowance, with no real idea of what difference this spending makes”.

The recent explosion in SEND is not caused by profound physical disability or severe cognitive impairment. The numbers are driven up by autism, ADHD and behavioural disorders. The idea of neuro- diversity, which covers all these conditions, started life as a campaigning movement, and now the terms “neurodiverse” and “neurodivergent” can be found all over social media. Of course, teenagers seeking to find their tribe are drawn to these identities.

I have two psychology degrees and I learned in those degrees that every human brain is genetically unique. It is genetically diverse, so neurodiversity is a simple biological descriptor of every human brain. More dangerously and more worryingly, I believe, the converse concept is that there are some people who are perhaps unfortunate enough to be neurotypical, and that means that they are undeserving of any special help. I think that is damaging when there is no objective test to distinguish who is neurodiverse and who is neurotypical.

To be crystal clear, I do not doubt for a second that these children are being failed by the current school system, as we heard in an excellent maiden speech, but we lack evidence that the current approach is helping them. The next generation deserves better from this Government.

My Lords, in opening our debate on the gracious Speech, my noble friend Lady Anderson described our Government’s ambition as having one central mission: to build a more resilient country that spreads opportunity for all. The country in which we live is one in which talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. It is through our creative sector that we extend opportunity to those with talent, so I welcome two measures that will support that sector. The draft ticket tout ban Bill is a long-awaited measure. My friend Sharon Hodgson MP has campaigned since 2010 for government to act to stamp out ticket touting. I was proud to put forward this measure for the Labour manifesto of 2024 when I was the shadow Minister for Music, and it will be welcome to see it scrutinised as soon as possible, so that we can legislate to stamp out ticket touts for good. I know that music fans and others who buy tickets for live events will be delighted when that happens.

Secondly, I support the measure to grant new revenue-raising powers to local leaders in the overnight economy. When we travel to European cities, we often pay a city tax or tourism levy. Italy raises over €1 billion per year through city taxes. My noble friend Lady Hodge of Barking argued in her review that a modest tourism levy in England would ensure that visitors contribute fairly to the cultural assets they come here to enjoy. I agree with the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions that such funds must be fully ring-fenced and reinvested locally in culture, tourism infrastructure and heritage. I also totally support all that my noble friend Lord Smith said in his excellent contribution on keeping free entry to museums.

I welcome the Bill to strengthen ties with the European Union. Looking back to 2019, the EU was the largest live music market. Theatre is also part of our fast-growing creative industries. In fact, the UK’s performing arts sector supports some 244,000 jobs and generates £2.3 billion per year in gross value added. However, our exit from the EU has introduced significant barriers around visas, work permits and cabotage limits, and it has made tax arrangements more complex.

In a 2023 UK music survey, 82% of musicians surveyed said that their earnings had decreased because of Brexit, and 43% said it was no longer viable for them to tour to the EU. Our strengthening of ties with the EU must lead to solutions to these problems, which prevent UK artists touring and hamper growth in our performing arts sector.

Finally, I turn to two other measures announced in the King’s Speech: the competition reform Bill and the regulating for growth Bill. There are some key questions around these two Bills. The competition reform Bill seeks to streamline the work of the Competition and Markets Authority, but concerns have been raised, particularly by the News Media Association, about removing the role of the independent panel. I ask my noble friend the Minister: can the Government reaffirm their support for independent regulation by the CMA and say what safeguards are proposed to maintain expert decision-making that is independent of government?

Among measures in the regulating for growth Bill is one that will allow for the creation of AI sandboxes, allowing the testing and adoption of AI products. In the consultation on these AI sandboxes, or AI growth labs, the Government considered specific protections for IP and copyright law. Can my noble friend the Minister make a clear commitment that the UK’s gold-standard IP and copyright law will not be disapplied as part of AI sandboxes?

I end quickly by echoing the congratulations on the four excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today, from my noble friend Lord Hobby, the noble Lords, Lord Blackwater and Lord Dixon, and the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman. We look forward to their future contributions. It would be welcome to continue the debate on music education started by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater.

My Lords, I follow the noble Baroness who has just sat down in thanking the maiden speakers in this debate: the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, and my noble friends Lord Dixon and Lady Leaman. I think we are going to hear a wee bit more about them. I am very glad to have my two colleagues with me today, because I am looking forward to offloading on them a great deal of the work I am currently having to do. “Sorry, this is what you’re here for”.

What attracted me to speak to speak in this debate will come as no surprise to anybody. It is the proposed Bill on special educational needs. It was over 39 years ago that I made my maiden speech on the subject. It was then something of a novelty: dyslexia in my case. We all have our little part of this fence to jump over. It was, “Oh, haven’t you done jolly well to have got to university?”

It is not quite that now, but there is still a slightly patronising attitude in certain quarters, and there is always somebody saying, “Oh, just try harder”. It does not work that way. Anybody who has a special educational need and is identified as part of the neurodiverse community has a brain that works slightly differently. You process information differently. That is why you need special education—that is, different education—to get through.

When the Bill comes forward, the opening statement from the Government Front Bench saying they would make sure this was a part of how a school is assessed and how you do it is probably the first step that should be taken. After that, you will need a trained workforce that accepts that you have to get in and teach differently. Then you have to define what you are doing, and this is where I start disagreeing with the Government.

As I have said, I am a dyslexic, I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am chairman of a company, Microlink PC, that deals in technology supporting people, usually with disabilities but anybody who has got a problem—we put the package together.

You have to work differently; “special” here does not mean anything other than “different”. You have a different pathway through. In the case of dyslexics— I will stick to nurse, if the House will permit me to at this point—I am not going to handle huge amounts of written work or having to take notes; I did not in my education process and I have not in this House, but I will be able to do it if I use technology and listen, so this is quite a friendly place for me. If we bring that into the classroom and make sure people implement that, dyslexics—10% of the population—stand a chance of achieving their full potential. If the Government make sure people are trained and people are assessed, they will stand a chance.

We have a very short time to get this in place by the end of the Parliament. We need real energy here, and we need to make sure that people are checking that it happens. If that does not occur, we will not achieve and there will be another list of things which are not happening. It will be difficult to maintain this with the rest of this Bill as it goes through Parliament, but please remember that learning differently will give people the chance of getting out there so they can function independently for the rest of their lives. That is what it should be about.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Over the many years I have seen him performing, he has been a brilliant contributor and we need to recognise that, because of his educational needs, he brings a particularly important thing to the attention of the House. He has done it again tonight, and I hope that the Education Minister is listening because what everybody with any form of special needs requires is recognition that they are just a bit different from the rest of us and that all of us are different. I hope that message is taken up.

This is probably about the 30th gracious Speech debate I have attended, and I always try, meticulously, to follow the recommendations suggested for the particular day. My problem is that my main obsessions these days are climate change and employment and neither of them actually appears in the titles for the day, so I have decided to use the energy security hook to mention some things which, broadly speaking, relate to climate change.

In that context, I congratulate the Minister, my noble friend Lord Whitehead, not only for sitting through 90% of this debate, which I know from experience is a terrible drag, but also for making clear that, despite all the shots that we are getting from all sides, including from some within the Labour movement, our commitment to our net-zero strategy remains. I was disappointed in the Opposition for effectively repeating and underlining that what was a good cross-party consensus for about 10 years has now entirely disappeared. I am really glad that the Minister made it clear that our commitment is to energy security through the use of renewable and nuclear energy. That is the investment we need to make, and we need to recommit ourselves to that.

Perhaps I can pick up a couple of other environmental issues. The water Bill is absolutely necessary but, as two or three noble Lords have already said, it is not enough. I have always advocated renationalisation of the water sector. I recognise that is not approved by any party in this House, but the second-best solution is actually the rationalisation of the regulator. However, that has to be for real. The fact that we have two or three regulators regulating the same sector, while the Environment Agency—the main regulator, in a sense—was starved of resources for 10 years during past Governments has meant that, effectively, the regulation of the water sector has not operated. We need stronger measures than are apparently going to appear in the Bill to deliver the water sector that we need.

My only other comment is to congratulate the maiden speakers in this House, while recognising that this debate has been primarily about the education sector. The Government have to think again about aspects of the interface between education and the development of technology. I say that energy security depends on having a just transition for the workforce, but so too for parts of the wider workforce the whole AI revolution is going to transform the white-collar sector in the way that the energy one has transformed its blue-collar sector. We need proper and effective manpower planning for that transition which is going to take place. I hope that the Government, in focusing on not just the FE end but the whole question of training and retraining, recognise that the technology challenge means a much more effective, and much more interventionist, programme of training, retraining and planning for the future workforce.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, my noble friend Lord Blackwater, the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, on their superb maiden speeches. May I now introduce them and the House to the next frontier? The next 18 months will, I believe, define Britain’s place in the future of digital finance. The question is whether we lead it or follow others who moved faster.

I welcome the ambition set out in the gracious Speech, in particular the three Bills that speak directly to this challenge. The regulating for growth Bill, with its statutory growth duty and regulatory pilot framework, is a genuinely important step, but may I put one challenge to the Government directly? Industry’s frustration is not with the concepts of sandboxes and pilots; it is with what happens next. Too often, successful pilots demonstrate viability but fail to translate into scalable market change. The framework must include a clear pathway from pilot to authorisation, with timescales, accountability and presumptions in favour of scaling that works. Without that, we risk creating a more elaborate holding pattern, rather than genuine acceleration.

The enhancing financial services Bill is equally welcome. Consolidating the Payment Systems Regulator within the FCA should mean fewer regulators, less duplication and a more coherent experience for scaling firms. The proposed reforms to the Financial Ombudsman Service also address a long-standing concern. Both changes send the right signal, but they must be followed through in practice.

These reforms matter because they are about AI, yes, but also digital assets, and these are no longer separate policy questions. We are entering the era of agentic finance: AI systems that will not merely analyse markets but act within them, initiating payments, allocating capital and managing liquidity in real time. The rules governing digital finance are therefore also the rules governing the next generation of AI. Why does this matter? It is because of AI credit cards, personal agents, programmable money and fractional payments for social media content, and many more use cases.

The world of money is changing, so it was good to see the Bank of England’s willingness last week, as reported in the Financial Times, to revisit its stablecoin approach following industry pressure. This is welcome, but it also reveals a structural weakness. Too often, good outcomes arrive through ad hoc pressure rather than by institutional design. To address this issue, I therefore ask the Government to commit to one specific measure: a standing cross-regulator and industry advisory group, bringing together His Majesty’s Treasury, the FCA and the Bank of England, alongside scaling digital asset issuers and exchanges and AI finance firms, both domestic and international, that are seeking to build here.

The decisions taken in the next 18 months will shape where capital flows, where firms scale and where the next generation of financial technology is built. Agentic financial services can become part of the engine of Britain’s economic growth for the next generation, but only if we are prepared to move with the urgency this moment demands. Regulators can move only as boldly as the political environment permits. It falls to the Government to provide clear direction, to industry to innovate and to Parliament to provide active engagement so that our regulators have the confidence to build systems worthy of Britain’s ability and ambition.

My Lords, I am deeply distressed and depressed that I have to speak, as I do this evening, on education—though my account could just as well have been on one of the other days of debate on the gracious Speech. I chose education because that is where the current crisis of Jew hatred starts. There is a cancer at the heart of our education system: the antisemitism which the gracious Speech promised to tackle. Even today, after I wrote my draft, a report came from Parents Against Antisemitism describing how little children are reverting to the old antisemitic tropes and giving Hitler salutes to their Jewish classmates. Their teachers do not dissuade them, and the teaching unions indulge in Israel hatred.

Because antisemitism is now disguised as anti-Zionism, this paves the way for Jewish students to be subjected to systemic humiliation and violence. It is set out in the Union of Jewish Students and StandWithUs testimonies, which is horrifying reading. Jewish students have been accused of using the blood of non-Jews to make matzah, and there have been Arabic chants calling for the killing of the Jews on our reputable university campuses. The targeting of Muslim or Chinese students on allegedly political grounds would not be tolerated for a moment. University authorities have ignored the abuse or belittled it.

Will the Government ensure that vice-chancellors, head teachers and their unions are summoned to appear before relevant parliamentary Select Committees to provide an account of their institutional responses and use of their disciplinary procedures? Public appearance worked in the United States, where university presidents had to own up. Will the Government call on universities to regulate and ban encampments, occupations, face coverings and megaphones near classes and meetings, and for the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti- semitism? This is all compatible with freedom of speech.

The Government must acknowledge that Holocaust education and memorials have achieved nothing for students, except to teach them that Nazi symbols and parallels are useful tools for harming Jews. It has failed to teach them about Jewish history, life and Israel. The Government have gone along with the Jew hatred by recognising a State of Palestine, contrary to international law, when the hostages were not even free. They have cast Israel as inimical, and though Zionism and Judaism are distinct, we all understand that the obsessive focus on Israel, displayed by this Government and by the BBC, is not helping. They ignore worse tragedies in, for example, Sudan and Nigeria, and Pakistan’s expulsion of Afghans. Our right reverend Prelates should be going into churches and schools to tell them that antisemitism is wrong, and they should be leading the marches against it.

Well-meaning actors in the Government have got it all wrong. This Government have specifically and shamefully refused to allow the planned learning centre in Westminster to focus on the Jewish genocide and on antisemitism. They have universalised the Holocaust and removed its Jewishness. It is likely to be co-opted into antisemitic narratives and, frankly, the current plan is an insult to our intelligence. The Government should condemn the Islamists and the extreme left in this area. Will they overhaul Holocaust education and turn it into lessons about the living, not the dead? Will they promote a Jewish museum to explore the amazing 1,000-year story of Jews in Britain, their contributions and their survival?

My Lords, my speech today is on education, and to ask His Majesty’s Government a variety of questions surrounding this important subject, which I am passionate about. This morning, in my capacity as chair of the Race Equality Engagement Group, I attended a round-table discussion with DfE teams that covered behaviour management, exclusion and alternative provision for SEND, including the disparity between those groups. As education is the foundation of all our futures, and for it to have the greatest impact on our lives, what steps are being taken to ensure that our education system properly reflects the diversity, history and lived experience of all those who have helped shape modern Britain as it is today?

First, can the Government continue to outline the measures in place to ensure that teachers receive adequate training and continued professional development in promoting racial equality and addressing racism within educational settings? Teachers are often at the forefront of fostering understanding, respect and inclusion, yet many still report feeling insufficiently equipped to manage difficult conversations around race and discrimination in the classroom.

Secondly, within initial teacher training curricula, are teacher training providers required to include meaningful teaching on Black history, the experience of minoritised communities and the impact of racism, both historically and in contemporary society? If we expect teachers to deliver an inclusive and informed education, it is essential that they are given the confidence, knowledge and tools to do so from the outset of their careers.

Thirdly, what steps are the Government taking to encourage schools to deliver a more inclusive history curriculum—one that properly reflects Black history, migration histories and the immense contribution that diverse communities have made and continue to make to British society? Young people benefit enormously from seeing their roots and the richness and complexity of our shared national story represented in what they learn. This should not be done only in a month at the end of the year but be integrated into all parts of school life.

In considering these matters, it is important that we do not overlook the experience of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Too often, children from racialised backgrounds within the SEND system are misunderstood, insufficiently supported and misidentified within our education sector. There is a clear need to strengthen early intervention, to ensure equitable provision across both mainstream and specialist settings, and to embed lived experience and community expertise into developing policy and practices. Any approach to inclusion must recognise and address these disparities to ensure that all children receive the support they need to thrive.

It is equally important to consider the experience of pupils educated within a pupil referral unit and other forms of alternative provision. These settings disproportionately affect children from marginalised backgrounds, many of whom have already faced exclusion, unmet needs or disadvantage within mainstream education. There must be a clear and sustained focus on ensuring that these children are not further marginalised but instead are provided with a high-quality, inclusive education, a clear pathway to reintegrate into mainstream school where appropriate, and the support necessary to achieve positive outcomes.

I congratulate all the maiden speakers today.

The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, explained the Government’s priorities yesterday: to “right past wrongs”, to “rebuild … trust”, to

“make sure that systems work as they should and to restore fairness and predictability”.—[Official Report, 18/5/26; col. 163.]

So I am bringing this week a new case of injustice—not new, but new for government to act on. I have met with a group of the victims of this injustice: Sean Davis, Brian Deane, Rod Wallace, Craig Short, Tommy Johnson, Paul Williams, Michael Thomas, Danny Murphy and Andrew Cole. They are part of the V11, some of the top footballers this country has ever produced.

They did what was right. They followed the government advice on the film schemes to promote the British industry, established by Chancellor Gordon Brown 20 years ago. Rather than squander their money, they invested it as government advised, with a company called Kingsbridge Asset Management. What is unique about them, as opposed to large numbers of other footballers, famous and non-famous, is that they were mis-sold. It is not just them; most footballers were mis-sold. Tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions, has disappeared. That money is gone, but, with those in this group, HMRC decided that it would pursue them in addition for tax on money that they have never had and never seen.

I have met with this group. They were persuaded in the dressing room by major football organisations and football authorities—people they trusted to invest their money in the way that government advise people to invest their money. They lost that money—huge amounts. But what really gets to their soul is that they are constantly pursued and have battled for 14 years with the financial advisers who mis-sold. The City of London Police describe it as “financial fraud”—those not my words but the police’s. It is not just that they cannot get the money back from there but that government, through the HMRC, then pursues them and continues to pursue them for taxation.

That is not fair or reasonable when you have done your best for your family. When working-class people suddenly get into money, be it footballers, sports stars or musicians, HMRC should have a direct hotline for tax, like they do for MPs, to help them pay their tax and not have the secondary scammers advising them, ripping them off even more and leaving them in the state they are in. The Government have a responsibility to get in and solve the problem. Working-class people making good, wanting to do the right thing, should be allowed to do the right thing. This should be part of, and will be part of, the Government’s agenda.

My Lords, I must start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, on his powerful speech, rooted in his substantial career in education, and the other noble Lords and Baronesses who made maiden speeches today.

The education programme laid out in the Speech is strikingly thin. On one hand, I take this as a positive: it is widely recognised internationally that education in England has in the main been a major success story over the last 15 years, and I spend much of my time now, including this evening, talking to educators from overseas who want to learn from the success of our reforms in England. But of course it is right to address the issues of special educational needs. We have the worst of all worlds at the moment: a hugely expensive system that leaves many parents, and many schools and teachers, unsatisfied. We are labelling a startlingly high proportion of children, including a much wider range of children with lesser needs, and the incentives in the system can be perverse, and in some cases may even be contributing to reducing children’s aspirations and achievement. Also, over the last 30 years, the schools budget itself has increased enormously in real terms, and the share spent on special educational needs has risen inextricably.

The high needs block and children’s disability living allowance together cost every single household in England £500 a year. But this is still not achieving the desired outcomes, and those statutory priorities for SEND and for social care mean that local authorities have less and less money for all their other responsibilities, which is leading to the depressing downgrading of the public realm around us. The White Paper offers little comfort that this Bill will make the right kind of difference. I will pick out just three important points, though there are many others. First, practically, the plan introduces a huge administrative burden on schools, which will have to prepare and maintain an individual plan for every child with SEND—perhaps five or six times as many children as now. Even if these plans cannot be enforced by tribunals, they may contribute to pushing parent expectations beyond the realistic capacity of mainstream schools, and so actually worsen the quality of provision and fray relationships.

Secondly, the references to evidence conceal the fact that there is remarkably little firm evidence of what makes a real difference to outcomes for children with special needs, or what is unjustifiably expensive relative to its cost. It is easier for the state to be kind than to be honest. The sad truth is that much of the current budget could probably be spent much better. In the health sector, this is why NICE was set up to gatekeep health treatments, and I believe that a SEND equivalent is urgently needed. I hope that when the Bill is published, it will make explicit provision for building such a function.

Thirdly, I must point out that the most difficult questions seem to have been ducked, perhaps to avoid taking on either the powerful SEND lobby or Labour Back-Benchers. The proposals are not really going to focus sufficiently clearly on the children who have the most to gain from extra help, and costs will continue to escalate, with guarantees baked in, so a ready-made SEND crisis will be dumped into the lap of the next Government.

Finally, I must point out that the Minister made erroneous remarks about Ofsted inspection of inclusion and of provision for children with SEND, which he said Ofsted would be assessing for the first time. In fact, both were substantial elements of inspection throughout my seven years at Ofsted, including in the 2019 framework, which was unequivocally focused on quality of education for all children. Both inclusion and SEND provision contributed significantly to judgments of quality of education and of overall school effectiveness. This would be a good opportunity for him to correct the record, as this misstatement appeared in the Government’s consultation document as well as in his speech.

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.

My Lords, I too add my congratulations and welcome to all the maiden speeches today.

I declare an interest as founder and CEO of a biotech company, NeuroBio Ltd, where we are developing a first-in-class effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Consequently, I welcome the relief mentioned in the gracious Speech under the regulating for growth Bill. However, I was disappointed by the lack of any further mention of government support for small, highly disruptive companies such as mine, since there are some clear opportunities being missed.

The first is R&D tax credits. It is estimated that for every £1 of tax credit, companies will spend an additional £2.30 of R&D in the UK. This creates jobs and value immediately, followed by an incredible dividend if resulting in a globally competitive technology. However, the rates of relief for R&D companies have shrunk, from 33% before April 2023 to 15% now. This change may provide a negligible uplift in the tax revenue, but it comes at a great cost to the company itself. Moreover, if we factor in the significant amount of time and effort required to make a claim, new administrative requirements and the risk of HMRC inquiry, smaller companies may give up making a tax credit claim altogether.

A second issue—this was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Hunter—is that relating to women and, in my case, women in STEM. This is not just about fairness; it is about progress. Studies consistently show that diverse teams drive innovation and that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to outperform their competitors. However, one oft-cited statistic is that less than 2% of VC funding goes to female founders. We need a formal sponsorship program where senior figures in industry actively champion the careers of promising women scientists and perhaps a women in STEM talent bank—a centralised platform where women scientists in the private sector could access mentorship, funding opportunities and leadership training.

My third point touches on education. Leaving aside, or perhaps in the light of, the time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles now required post-Brexit to recruit scientists worldwide, there is an even greater need to increase the potential pool of those who are already here. Although much has been said over the decades to encourage the take-up of STEM subjects, there is still room to do even more. One possibility would be to offer wider industrial sponsorship of university places, as already offered by the Armed Forces, in return for an agreed period working as a postgraduate in that company, reverting to a loan if the individual left early.

A fourth point is that there is little help currently available for a university academic who then takes the bold decision to transit way out of their comfort zone into business. I can say from my own personal experience, where I just had to learn as I went along, that entrepreneurial training and mentoring in the thrills and spills of the commercial world would be invaluable. It would give confidence, save time and ensure maximum productivity. Currently, there is no training on the basics of business or commercialisation for a scientist until after they have had their light-bulb moment—and even then it is rare.

The fifth and most basic problem is not a lack of innovation; it is the baked-in, oftentimes biased decision-making that stifles otherwise great economic impact. It is safer to fund small, transitional technologies at the cost of truly disruptive innovation because there is very little in the way of incentives or protections if an investment does not work out. Yes, we have schemes such as EIS, where the incredible returns are well acknowledged, but they should be expanded and strengthened.

The current state of affairs creates an incentive to back only very small-step innovations, to the detriment of truly transformative companies. This risk-averse mindset often forces disruptive scientists into looking further afield for funding. Too often, the UK is seen as a feeder ecosystem into the US.

Let us return to my own area of Alzheimer’s as an example of why this trend needs to be reversed. In the UK, current costs for dementia will be £42 billion this year, rising to £90 billion in 2014. It is clear that finding an effective treatment could have a significant impact on individual well-being, society and our economy. We need an improved national strategy across the areas on which I have briefly touched. A wider and deeper consideration of UK biotech in the gracious Speech would have been more welcome and more timely.

My Lords, I have very much enjoyed the range and quality of the speeches that have been made this afternoon and into this evening. In particular, I congratulate those members of the class of 2026 who made their maiden speeches today. I am biased, but I think this is going to go down as a vintage intake and a very special one for the future—I would say that, would I not?

Before I make my comments, I declare my interest as a director of the Government-backed terrorism reinsurer.

I welcome the Government’s continued focus, set out in the gracious Speech, on strengthening the resilience of the United Kingdom in an increasingly uncertain and volatile world. In that context, the cyber security and resilience Bill represents an important and timely step in modernising the framework that protects our digital economy. However, if we are to build a true national resilience to cyber threats, we need to think not only about how we prevent incidents but about how we respond to them and recover quickly when they occur. In that spirit, I will briefly highlight the importance of the cyber insurance market in keeping us safe.

Insurance is a vital but often underrecognised component of our economic resilience. It helps businesses absorb shocks, supports recovery, and enables those who have been impacted to get back on their feet fast. In every survey of leading businesspeople, cyber risk tops the poll of what they are concerned about, with a recognition that the capabilities of those who wish to harm us are evolving at pace and that we just cannot keep up. In this context, specialist insurers are well placed to help businesses, especially small businesses, understand the risks that they face and the mitigation activities they can take to protect themselves.

Underinsurance, however, is a real problem. There remain significant protection gaps across the full gamut of the risk spectrum. At one end, among small businesses, the take-up is worryingly low. A recent report by the Association of British Insurers, Small Business, Big Risk, shows that fewer than 20% of SMEs have any cyber insurance at all, and that percentage goes down as the business gets smaller. Many SMEs either underestimate the risks they face, particularly supply chain risks, or they find the market far too complex or, frankly, too expensive to engage with it. Statistics show that 20% of SMEs that experience a cyber attack will be out of business six months later. So it is an important element of keeping them safe.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the spectre of systemic cyber attack, which, while reassuringly remote, is still imaginable. A single event, or co-ordinated attacks, could generate widespread outages and result in correlated losses across the economy. This could be a direct action by a state or non-state actor, or even as the consequence of yet unknown vulnerabilities in our complex supply chains and systems.

The incident at Jaguar Land Rover last year only too graphically demonstrated the impact that these events could have on our economy. It is worth noting that Jaguar Land Rover was in the throes of getting its insurance in place and did not have any, whereas Marks & Spencer had insurance in place and made a claim in excess of £100 million. In one incident, the Government had to step in and make financial support and help available to Jaguar Land Rover, but they did not have to do that for Marks & Spencer.

We have to do this in a better way. Pooling arrangements have long been an important and established way for businesses and Governments to risk-share. In other areas of systemic risk, notably terrorism, which I have some experience of, we have recognised the benefits of public and private partnerships, so that the taxpayer does not always have to step in when a significant event happens. The creation of Pool Re back in 1993 as a response to a sustained campaign of terrorist attacks has proved to be an effective partnership for government and industry, enabling, over the 30 years that it has been operating, a fund of £13 billion to be built to pay claims in the event of a catastrophic terrorism event. This is money collected as insurance premiums that is then invested and will be spent before any Government have to step in—before we as taxpayers are called on to support organisations. There is now a growing discussion in the insurance industry, here and across the Five Eyes community, about whether, in time, a similar approach might be required for systemic cyber. I hope that this is a discussion that our Government will consider being part of.

As this important legislation makes its way through this House, I hope we will consider how the insurance sector could be better utilised and its expertise leveraged in helping to meet the ambitions of the cyber security and resilience Bill.

My Lords, again, I rise to say that I understand how important this debate is to everyone, but the speeches since I came into the Chamber have all been creeping over the four-minute recommended time. I ask everyone to be very focused in the last few speeches, to give our winders the opportunity to give a proper round-up to the debate.

My Lords, I first congratulate the four noble Lords on their maiden speeches, which were so inspiring.

I welcome the importance with which the Government rightly take the well-being of children. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, passed in the Session that has just ended, delivered the statutory backing for mobile phone-free schools that begins at the end of June and the consultation on social media that closes on 26 May. I thank my noble friend Lord Nash and others for their tireless efforts. These are not small things. They reflect a country waking up to the harms that have been done to a generation of children by an industry that profits from their attention.

In the limited time that I have, I will turn to faith schools. They exist because parents in this country have, for centuries, claimed the right to raise their children within a moral and spiritual inheritance. Faith schools are not a footnote in the British education system but a foundational part of it. Long before the state took an interest in educating poor children, the churches, the synagogues and later the mosques were doing the work. Today, faith schools—Anglian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu—consistently outperform the national average. They are popular with parents of every background, and with parents of no faith at all. Yet they live under a permanent suspicion in parts of Whitehall, as if private conviction was a public danger.

I will focus on the Haredi community, because its case is the hardest and the hard cases test the principles. It is with a sense of irony that Haredi children already live in a world that we are trying to legislate into being. They do not own smartphones. They do not scroll. They are not groomed in the small hours by strangers in foreign jurisdictions. They are not driven into eating disorders by algorithms. They do not need a Bill, because they have a tradition.

The Haredim are not trying to be different for difference’s sake. To them, the precise content of what is taught—the topics permitted and the topics deferred, the relationship between religious and secular learning—are not preferences but obligations. They cannot, in conscience, accept a curriculum that requires them to teach what their faith forbids. They are not asking the state to fund their dissent. They are asking the state not to extinguish it.

When they ask that certain topics, including aspects of sex education, be taught in ways consistent with their faith, they are not asking to opt out of being British. They are not being difficult. They are simply asking to remain who they are. The transmission of a 3,000 year-old inheritance from one generation to the next is not a lifestyle preference. It is, for them, a sacred obligation.

Walk into any Haredi classroom and you will not find a child scrolling on a smartphone. You will not find a child filming a fight in the corridor. You will not find a child who has been up half the night in the company of strangers on the internet. The corridors are not toxic. Truancy is almost unknown. The addictions that the Government rightly worry about—to screens, to vaping, to pornography—find no foothold there.

Let me say plainly what is too often left unsaid. There are Haredi schools in this country that have been threatened with closure by Ofsted: not because their pupils are failing, not because they are unsafe, not because they are unhappy but because their curriculum does not include precise content in the precise terms that the Department for Education had decided that every child must hear. That is not safeguarding. That is conformity dressed up as safeguarding. These parents will not hand the moral formation of their children to the state, and the state has no business demanding it.

My plea to the Minister is a simple one. In the pursuit of high standards, let us not confuse difference with deficiency. In seeking better SEND provision, let us not assume that one model fits all. In dealing with faith communities, let us proceed not with suspicion but with understanding and compassion, with the full consultation that this community are still waiting for and which is long overdue.

My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker in this debate, I want to speak about something that seems to be missing from His Majesty’s gracious Speech: a sense of the bigger picture and why it feels to so many as though the country “just isn’t working”.

Our public services and the services from companies that we rely on are just not delivering what we expect and need. We want water companies to take away the dirty water, treat it and deliver it back to us as clean drinking water. We are happy to pay a fair rate for that to be done as efficiently as possible. We do not want to be paying money directly into the large profits of a few individuals while our dirty water is being dumped into our streams and seas.

Likewise, we want to be able to use digital services to do things quickly and effectively, without worrying about whether all the information we put in is being used or sold by the company providing the service, without our consent. We do not want companies to use our children’s social and psychological vulnerabilities to hook them in to doing and sharing more and more online, so that they can be profiled and marketed to.

Unfortunately, the proposals in the gracious Speech to address issues such as these and many others, if they exist at all, seem to be sticking plasters of regulation or legislation, with nothing about tackling the root causes of why people feel that things are not working. We all know that it is very hard and very expensive to get a company or institution to do something that goes against its incentives or fiduciary duties. The Government appear to be making the profit or growth duties stronger and stronger with their proposed agenda. Instead of adding a new priority of growth to regulators or any public service in order to try to increase tax income that can then be spent on the expensive business of trying to remediate the problems, we need companies and public services to be focused on delivering what people want in the first place: the job they were founded to do.

People care about the environment, child online safety, data security and about every job actually being done well. We need the Government to design the basic incentives and the duties of institutions and companies to deliver these outcomes in the first place; to help ensure that all sectors of the economy contribute to the common good; to create incentive structures that allow companies and organisations to develop naturally in the right direction, with minimal need for regulation. Obviously, we can shape what public companies are aiming to achieve through their statutory duties. We can also help shape what private companies do, through changing their fiduciary duties. We need to be able to assign value to what people value, so that we can help companies maximise what people want them to maximise: for example, looking at longer-term outcomes, and mainstreaming natural capital accounting alongside financial accounts.

Even on a utilitarian basis, the services we currently get for free from ecosystems need to be valued before we destroy them and have to invent an expensive way to replace them. Peatlands have a certain value if considered as bags of horticultural compost or drainable agricultural land, but they have a greater value when considered on a bigger scale. Financially, it could be natural flood prevention, saving costs somewhere else. In terms of climate stability, our peatlands could be carbon sinks, but ONS figures show that we are still degrading them and they are releasing carbon dioxide instead of capturing it. The Government have still not announced a Bill to deal with this.

The same is true of how we treat digital tech companies. These companies provide a service to people that to start with is efficient and easy to use. But then companies start to try to maximise their short-term financial return to investors, almost regardless of the impact on all their users and on the environment. Again, it takes government to stand up for and measure what people care about—the service they receive and the protections for them, their children and the environments they care about—and then enshrine these measures into the incentives of the companies wherever possible, and, where it is not, to regulate on behalf of the people it represents.

Prevention is better than cure. Let us get the incentives right so that corporate behaviour follows. Then we might see the jobs we want done finally done well, because the profit motive will no longer be the sole driver.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman—I think I am going to be the last Back-Bench speaker in the debate tonight—to congratulate the noble Lords on their excellent maiden speeches, and to have the privilege to speak to the humble Address in the gap.

The introduction of the energy independence Bill aims to increase home-grown renewable energy to hopefully protect living standards for future years. While the direction of travel has been broadly welcomed across the sector, questions remain around delivery and infrastructure readiness. Unfortunately, grid connection delays continue to be a long-standing challenge for the UK energy sector, with renewable projects, battery storage and major developments often facing lengthy wait times to connect to the electricity network. Urgent support from government is required to build out as pressure mounts, and urgent expansion on grid infrastructure has to be developed at a really fast pace.

All this is set against the backdrop of unreliable imports. The possible opening of Jackdaw and Rosebank could be part of the UK’s energy security and reliability and would help complete the jigsaw as we work towards net zero. Skills are particularly needed where infrastructure is built, not concentrated elsewhere, and we must adapt similar occupations to new technologies, as engineers move from oil and gas into offshore wind. As the clean energy workforce is set to grow rapidly, demand will inevitably concentrate in sectors that already face recruitment pressures. I question what further proactive support is being given to those retraining—particularly, as I said, to workers moving from other industries with a relatively weak base—to ensure that jobs in the clean economy are of a high quality and standard, so that people will want to train and retrain into them.

In ensuring that the UK has a stable and competitive business environment, the UK steel sector is essential, as it is to the UK’s security. It has been severely impacted as a result of unfair trading practices, including market-distorting subsidies. The UK currently has some of the highest electricity costs in Europe, in part due to the social and environmental levies placed on electricity bills. The emphasis must be on reducing our electricity prices. Competitive electricity prices are an important enabler of the steel sector, especially as producers and supply chains transition towards electrified green steel production. High electricity prices hurt, and cut deeply into business competitiveness and reduce business confidence for future investment.

I turn finally to the issue of large solar farms and communities that are increasingly on the front line. As an aside, it is important to note that 58% of grade 1 agricultural land—the most productive and versatile land—is situated in the flood plain and 9% is at the highest risk of coastal flooding. Our food and farming sectors’ contributions to the economy must not be overlooked. The question is just how many acres of good-grade land are still determined at the planning stage, while the alternative sits waiting. Urgent action should first be taken to target large industrial warehousing, car parks and brownfield sites, which would therefore support food security as well.

My Lords, we have had a very rich and wide-ranging debate, which presents some challenges on winding up. I am very tempted to take a leaf out of the book of the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, and just give a big tick to a number of the speeches that we heard. Perhaps one of my biggest ticks would be for the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman; she expressed pretty much how I feel on Monday mornings and I thought she made some very refreshing points.

I warmly congratulate my noble friends Lady Leaman and Lord Dixon, and the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on their excellent maiden speeches and the thoughtful points they made. It is difficult to shine with 70 or so other speeches in the same debate but, in my view, they all sparkled. I look forward to many future speeches from them.

The noble Lords, Lord Hobby, Lord Isaac and Lord Touhig, the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Browning, and my noble friend Lord Mohammed mentioned SEND provision and the Government’s proposals to fix what is, in essence, a broken system. This will involve earlier, more local support but autism charities—I am president of Ambitious about Autism—are clear that this must not come at the expense of families’ hard-won legal rights. Parents’ rights to assessment, EHCPs and redress must not be traded away for administrative efficiency, and every provider, including private SEND schools, must be properly regulated.

A number of noble Lords have referred to what might be considered very high demands on our teachers. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, was extremely eloquent in that respect. I absolutely share in the support of the noble Lords, Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Willetts, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, and my noble friend Lady Garden for higher education, but, of course, that comes with considerable responsibility in terms of how those institutions are run.

I also believe that our education system must prepare young people for the age of AI; that is one of its particular responsibilities. I declare my advisory interest on the register as regards AI. A dangerous skills divide is already opening up. State schoolteachers are less than half as likely as those in independent schools to have received formal AI training. The National Foundation for Educational Research projects that up to 3 million UK jobs could disappear by 2035. That compounds the issues raised by a number of noble Lords—including the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Elliott, my noble friend Lady Garden and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott—regarding young people who are not in education, employment or training, which is why we on these Benches have committed to a lifelong training grant of £10,000 as not a “nice to have” but a crucial lifeline.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to a broader computing GCSE and the exploration of new data science and AI qualifications, but, with the final curriculum not due until September 2028 and the AI qualification still being only explored rather than confirmed, the pace is simply too slow. We on these Benches are calling for AI literacy to be embedded across the curriculum from primary school age now, not in two years’ time, and to be woven into how we teach critical thinking, civic understanding and creative writing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, and the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, talked about the new proposals from the Government on ticketing. I must pay tribute to the FanFair Alliance, UK Music, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse, Sharon Hodgson MP and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—that is quite a roll-call. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, for his fan-led review. I welcome the Government’s move to tackle industrial-scale ticket touting. The new Sporting Events Bill is welcome, but relegating the broader ticket tout ban Bill, which will cover the face-value cap for which music fans have waited for so long, to draft Bill status, despite the efforts of so many, risks years of further delay. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire —and, I suspect, the noble Lord, Lord Brennan—we are rather disappointed at it being only a draft Bill.

My noble friends Lord Strasburger and Lady Bonham- Carter, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, have powerfully set out the damage done to the creative industries by Brexit. The AI copyright battle is where that damage risks being compounded. The creative industries contribute more than £145 billion to our economy. The music sector alone contributes £8 billion, while publishing contributes £11 billion. We welcome the Government’s decision to drop the text and data mining exception. A functioning licensing market already exists. A report published by the BPI in May this year documents 274 commercial agreements between content providers and AI developers that are already in place.

As chair of the ALCS—I declare an interest—I can confirm that the narrative that AI developers cannot access content legally has always been a myth. These three things are now needed: mandatory transparency, requiring AI developers to keep clear records of training inputs; labelling of AI-generated content; and, crucially, that any AI model deployed in the UK must comply with UK copyright law, regardless of where it was trained. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, raised the same concern from the Conservative Benches last week. I directly ask the Minister the same question that the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, asked today: will the Government give a clear commitment that the UK’s gold standard IP and copyright law will never be disapplied as part of the AI growth lab sandboxes or under the regulating for growth Bill powers more generally?

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, on the success of the National Year of Reading already, as we are now half way through it. Emerging research suggests that AI’s very ease of use may undermine the critical thinking we are trying to develop. Unfettered AI access without challenge does not develop judgment but kills it. Media literacy, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Caine of Kentish Town, is extremely important. The same AI models that scrape creative content without consent are producing the synthetic media—the deepfakes, fabricated quotes and algorithmically generated news—that is steadily corroding public trust. The Government’s media literacy action plan is welcome in parts, but we need a statutory media literacy duty that extends to platforms, requiring them to actively support media literacy, rather than leaving it entirely to Ofcom and the public sector.

Of course, the single greatest instrument of media literacy in this country is the BBC. It received not a mention in this King’s Speech. My noble friend Lady Benjamin mentioned its key role in children’s programming. Reuters Institute data from last November shows that the BBC remains the most trusted news source, not just in the UK but globally. In an era where outrage travels faster than facts, that matters enormously. We wish the new DG, Matt Brittin, who started this week, well. As my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter emphasised, the BBC is far more than news; it is an ever-more vital instrument of British soft power. That was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alli, as well.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the technology and digital sovereignty aspect. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford spoke of the impact of technology. Rishi Sunak has admitted recently that he wishes he had spoken to the country more about the change that AI is going to bring. This Government have been equally reticent. As I mentioned, there is a rising lack of trust in AI and concern about its implications. This makes the absence of an AI Bill all the more inexplicable. My noble friend Lord Fox asked the question directly last week, and a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, asked the same question today. I will repeat it. Given that AI is set to affect every aspect of our economy, how can that be sensible? Ahead of artificial general intelligence, fragmented rules will not be adequate. We need binding comprehensive regulation—particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, pointed out, in the world of money.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, says, we look forward to the results of the children’s online safety consultation, but there is disappointment that the Government have not brought forward any Bill on online safety. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, her imagined future, if you like, which was enshrined in so many amendments that we failed to pass or the Government failed to accept into legislation. We are confined now to amendments bolted on to other Bills in response to specific crises rather than any coherent strategic architecture.

There are many other aspects. The noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, expertly discussed the question of AI sovereignty. We are threatened by President Trump with tariffs unless we abolish our digital service tax, and Washington is using the tech prosperity deal to pressure us into diluting the Online Safety Act and failing to regulate AI. I hope the Minister will give us sufficient assurances that we have the ability, as a sovereign power, to regulate AI, protect data and levy appropriate taxes, and that that will not be traded away. We must not become an AI taker, wholly dependent on foreign hyperscalers. I commend the Lords Science and Technology Committee’s report, Bleeding to Death, published last November, which clearly sets out the scale of the crisis, which was reinforced by what the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, had to say.

We could say more on the digital access to services Bill. The voluntary character of this scheme must be guaranteed in primary legislation. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hunter and Lady Paul, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, talked about cyber security and resilience. There are gaps. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos has demonstrated how important it is that we fill those gaps. There is the update of the Computer Misuse Act, and I hope that the Government will work with the industry to ensure that these reforms support the UK cyber security sector and will meet the CyberUp Campaign to discuss the proposals. I hope the Minister will assure us that that will be the case.

I urge the Government to introduce Herbie’s Law without delay. It would enable a phase-out of animal experiments over the next decade, supporting scientists with the transition and positioning Britain as a global leader in cutting-edge, human-specific medical research.

I will not repeat the wise words of my noble friends Lord Russell, Lady Grender and Lady Miller on energy, the environment and climate change, but energy strategy cannot be decoupled from our technology ambitions. The exponential growth of AI has created 30 gigawatts of data centre demand, currently stuck awaiting grid connection. Grid connection reform is urgent.

Across all these four areas, the question is the same one that I return to repeatedly: will this technology be our servant, augmenting human potential and distributing opportunity more widely, or will it become our master, concentrating power in the hands of those least accountable for its consequences? The answer depends on whether this Government can focus on growth and opportunity and, at the same time, give citizens trust and confidence when they access new technology. We on these Benches will be holding them to that objective throughout the Session ahead.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a founder of a health tech company, HealthTech Fund, which is likely to have many investments in the AI space. It is late, so I will not try to summarise all the excellent speeches we have heard tonight, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, did such a good job of summarising. I will avoid that repetition. I enjoyed the maiden speeches. I look forward to learning from my noble friend Lord Blackwater’s history lessons, laughing at his humour and sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing when he makes those controversial points. The noble Lord, Lord Hobby, made a speech of such intelligence that I know that listening to him will be a learning experience for me and the rest of the House. I was touched, like many others, by the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, especially as a father of a neurodivergent child, and I look forward to working with her in that area. I think the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, takes the prize of all noble Lords in terms of Jericho. It has to be the coolest place of which to be a Lord. I look forward to hearing from him on what matters to people and how public services can be designed to meet their needs.

This being a King’s Speech debate on education, culture, technology and energy security, I must admit that, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, I expected more of a strategic King’s Speech—a bigger picture, if you like, that sets out some of the challenges and the Government’s vision and values on how to address them. For instance, I expected a major AI plan, as the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, and my noble friend Lord Taylor said. I expected to hear how AI represents a generational opportunity to transform productivity and output, increase our human knowledge and free us from mundane tasks to enjoy our leisure time, improve our lives and create unprecedented wealth and prosperity.

I expected to hear about the generational threat that AI brings to certain types of jobs, to potentially many of our freedoms, to cyber security, and to the whole nature of modern warfare and the defence of this nation. Most of all, I expected to hear how we are going to ensure that the UK is in the AI fast lane, and about the dire consequences of being stuck in the AI slow lane—yet, as many have said, we do not even have an AI Bill.

On education, as my noble friends Lady Maclean and Lady Spielman, and many others, said, I expected to hear how we would use education to equip our kids to thrive in the AI future, to train and attract the best AI talent in the world, and, as said by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to avoid a dangerous skills divide. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who, as ever, spoke so passionately, and my noble friend Lady Owen, I expected to hear concrete plans and action on how we are to protect our children from the threats of AI, social media and the technical world.

Instead, on education, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, we heard how we have been making degrees harder and less attractive. We have introduced new funding systems, especially around plan 2 students, with loans with much higher interest rates, where debt grows faster than their ability to repay. This is not only grossly unfair but a deterrent to skills and education. I ask the Government to look at a Conservative proposal to link student debt and interest to inflation as a fair and just approach.

I expected the Government to set out an energy policy that would achieve competitive prices, so that we can attract AI data centres and keep our industrial base. I perhaps expected them to have learned some of the lessons that we have seen in Norway, where it has been shown that you do not have to make a binary choice between renewables and oil and gas production; you can combine the two, and focus on renewables and grant new oil and gas licences, as my noble friends Lady Bloomfield and Lord Mackinlay said. If you look at Norway versus the UK, you can see what I call the rule of double. Norway has double the UK’s oil and gas production and double the percentage of renewables, while UK business and consumers face double Norway’s costs. This means that data centres can afford to be in Norway, as can manufacturing companies, to the benefit of Norway’s economy, its people and the strategic security of that country in a dangerous world. I understand the Government’s ambition for renewable energy—it is the ambition of many on this side as well. However, it does not have to be at the cost of our own North Sea oil production; it does not have to be either/or.

Finally, in this uncertain world, I expected a serious sovereign technology agenda. What, for instance, is our approach to ensure semiconductor resilience? How can technology and AI be at the forefront of our defence, drone capability and cyber security? How can we develop critical AI and tech infrastructure that can protect us all?

These are the things I would have expected and hoped for in a King’s speech. These are things of vision—a set of values and ambitious goals. These are the things that the country needs. What do we get instead? In the words of Wes Streeting, dare I say it,

“where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift”.

As I said, those are not my words but the words of the former Health Secretary.

I say to the Government and Ministers here today—who are vastly talented, and I highly respect—please do not settle for the mediocrity set out in many parts of this King’s Speech when we can do so much better and our country needs so much more. I am going to conclude using the words from another Minister’s resignation letter, that of Jess Phillips. I think many of us, probably all of us, have enormous respect for her campaigning. It might surprise you to hear me say this. She said:

“Labour governments come around rarely … they are precious … Have a row, push back, make arguments”.

Stand up and be counted and bring back a King’s Speech with vision, boldness and energy equal to the task at hand.

My Lords, it is a tremendous honour and pleasure to be closing today’s debate—a debate, as we have heard, with very many interesting and important contributions, not all of which, I am afraid, I will be able to do justice to in this response. But I certainly want to draw attention to the excellent maiden speeches we have heard today. My noble friend Lord Hobby, notwithstanding his confession of not having actually taught, nevertheless, through his representation of head teachers and his important work to bring new people into the teaching profession through Teach First, brings an enormous amount of experience in the field of education that I know he will use to good effect in this House.

My good friend, the Conservative broadcaster, blogger and podcaster Iain Dale, told me to be nice to the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater. I can see it will be worthwhile if I am, recognising, of course, that what Iain and the noble Lord have in common is that they are both Essex boys. I do not think it is a bad thing to have more political staffers around the place. I think that was demonstrated by both the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon. The noble Baroness will undoubtedly, as we heard from her experience, bring an emphasis on cohesion, children and care to our debates in this House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, that it is always a winner to bring your mum into it, speaking as a mother myself, and I am sure she is very proud of his great achievements, bringing not only that political background but that leadership in the voluntary sector to our debates in this House.

As we begin a new parliamentary Session, we know that this country continues to face long-standing challenges that cannot be solved quickly but require long-term strategic solutions that make a positive difference to people’s everyday lives. Rather than promising quick fixes, this Government have set out a series of Bills and measures that face down these challenges and deliver the change the British public voted for. The hard work of change is already under way. I will not list the full legislative programme of the last Session, but for my part I am proud of our reforms to education and children’s social care through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act. Through the IfATE Act we laid the foundations for Skills England and the post-16 skills White Paper to help us understand and meet the country’s skills needs; and, of course, our non-legislative reforms and implementation continue to drive change outside this Chamber.

We had a volley of criticism of education policy at the beginning of this debate from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, although I note that we do not yet have an opposition education spokesperson. The Opposition chose not to have a debate on education in the other place. Perhaps today we have been watching an audition for that Opposition spokesperson. The shoes of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, are enormous ones to fill, but I look forward to somebody making an effort, at least, at that.

Since coming into government, we have got children back to school for 5 million more days and turned the tide on teachers leaving the classroom. Parents are benefiting by as much as £8,000 from government-funded childcare, and young people are benefiting from new training opportunities in technical excellence colleges across our country. New foundation apprenticeships and hiring incentives for small businesses are turning around the 40% fall in apprenticeships for young people and the tragedy of nearly 1 million young people not earning or learning. We, unlike the previous Government, will not abandon a generation to this. We are cutting the cost of living and boosting standards at every stage of our children’s education.

To return to this Session, as noble Lords have heard, we are going further, because we cannot deliver opportunity and economic growth in every part of the country without a programme of legislation to match our ambitions. This includes our once-in-a-generation reforms to special needs education, which we have designed in partnership with families and teachers to give every child the opportunity to do well at school.

We are accelerating the UK’s drive to energy security through the nuclear regulation and energy independence Bills. The cyber security and resilience Bill will strengthen a different kind of infrastructure, supporting businesses of all sizes to improve defence against cyberattacks across the economy. We will introduce digital ID to parliamentary scrutiny during this Session; built to the highest security standards, it will provide an optional choice for efficient access to public services. Finally, our secondary ticket Bill and Sporting Events Bill will strengthen the UK’s capacity to host world-class sporting fixtures and ensure fans of live events can no longer be exploited by ticket touts. All this legislation supports the Government’s primary mission: to build the economic growth this country needs and the opportunities our people deserve.

To respond to some of the particular points raised during this debate, I thought we had very good contributions on special educational needs from many noble Lords with both personal and professional experience in this area. We are clear that every child deserves a chance to achieve and thrive—not some children, not children in the right postcode but every child, whatever their background and whatever their need. Raising standards means raising expectations for all.

The education for all Bill will transform support for children and young people by providing access to high-quality education, health and care services in every community. It will ensure every setting delivers the stretching, rewarding education that all children and young people deserve. This is how we build a truly inclusive education system, because when settings get it right for children and young people with SEND, every child and young person benefits. We will carefully consider responses to the ongoing SEND consultation. Subject to this and ongoing engagement with the sector and experts, we will meet our reform principles by providing support that is early, local, fair, effective and shared.

The Bill will bring forward measures to enable effective delivery from 2029. We will provide early support to children with SEND through embedding inclusive practice and requiring settings to publish an inclusion strategy. We will equip early years providers, schools and colleges to intervene early and effectively by creating national inclusion standards to support settings to identify and implement best practice. We will enable local support by making mainstream settings more inclusive. Of course, we recognise the significance of teachers in this, which is why we will deliver more training on SEND and inclusion than ever before, backed by over £200 million of investment. The Bill will require settings to produce an individual support plan for every child and young person with SEND, but we will streamline and standardise both the content of EHCPs and the process for obtaining them, while ensuring that the transition from the current to the new system is as smooth as possible.

Once the new system is in place, a triple lock of transitional protections will mean that no child loses the effective support they already receive. Every child with a special school place in September 2029 will be able to stay in a special school until they finish education. No child with a current EHCP will transition until the end of their phase of education and not before September 2030. Children who transition out of their EHCP will have an individual support plan in place, ahead of their plan’s ceasing and when the new inclusive mainstream has been built, to ensure no break in support.

We will reform the role of the SEND tribunal, encouraging greater use of mediation before appeals, including placement appeals. There will be a continued right of appeal to the SEND tribunal for key decisions about education, health and care needs, assessment plans and placements. We will ensure that children with the most complex needs receive high-quality, consistent support through new specialist provision packages. This legislation will utilise partnerships and ensure that support is shared across settings. We will make these changes because every child and young person deserves to belong, achieve and thrive.

In order to facilitate them, we will put in place the necessary investment. We are already supporting local authorities with the deficits that they built up through the failed system we inherited. We will invest £1.6 billion over three years in our inclusive mainstream fund to support high-quality inclusive teaching. Over the next three years, £1.8 billion will be invested to create a new national offer called Experts at Hand, wrapping professionals such as educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists around mainstream settings. We will put in place £3.7 billion-worth of investment to create 60,000 specialist and inclusive education places.

I turn to some other aspects of education. Several noble Lords raised higher education. These are challenging times for higher education. The freezing of tuition fee income by the previous Government has caused considerable financial stress. We took the decision to reverse this and we will legislate to ensure that that tuition fee income for universities is index-linked. We have already ensured that that will happen for three years. We are putting research funding on a more sustainable basis.

On the subject of student finance, I have to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that plan 2 loans were introduced by his Government. We have inherited the problems; their design was the previous Government’s. We will review the student finance system to make sure that we protect those who have taken part in higher education. To encourage more to take up the opportunity of higher education, we will also reintroduce the maintenance grants that were done away with by the previous Government.

When it comes to young people who are neither earning nor learning, we are determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all our young people. That is why we are investing £2.5 billion over the next three years in the youth guarantee and the growth and skills levy, to create up to 500,000 opportunities for young people to earn and learn. We will strengthen the role of schools, so that every young person leaves with a planned post-16 destination. We are piloting the automatic allocation of places in further education for those who do not already have one. We are improving how the system works together with local authorities, strategic authorities, schools and FE providers. We are investing in new data tools to identify earlier those at risk of becoming NEET. We are expanding the number of youth hubs across the country and through the jobs guarantee scheme, the youth jobs grant and new apprenticeship incentive for small and medium-sized businesses. By doing that, we will work with employers to get more young people into work.

I turn to the important issue of energy, mentioned by several noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Curran and Lord Lennie. My noble friend Lord Whitehead tells me that my noble friend Lord Lennie gets five “yeses” for the questions he asked in his speech. The lessons for the UK, as we face a second fossil fuel shock, is clear: we need to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster with clean, home-grown power that we control and the electrification of our wider economy.

The energy independence Bill will underpin action on three core objectives: tackling the affordability crisis and protecting consumers; accelerating the UK’s drive for energy security; and delivering a fair, managed and prosperous transition and good jobs in clean energy. Important points, particularly around the transition, were made by my noble friend Lady Griffin. The Bill supports the Government’s efforts to bring down energy bills and support vulnerable households. It gives the energy regulator the powers it needs to act as a strong consumer champion and stay ahead of a rapidly changing energy system. It supports the biggest investment in home upgrades in British history through the warm homes plan.

The energy independence Bill accelerates the delivery of clean power 2030 and the electrification of the economy so that we can deliver a fair, affordable, secure and efficient electricity system that will bring down bills for good. The Bill will enable vital grid upgrades after decades of underinvestment and help to create a global blueprint for a fair, managed and prosperous transition in the North Sea that acts in line with the science of fossil fuel. The Bill will expand workers’ rights and protections and pave the way for a new generation of good jobs in clean energy. The energy independence Bill legislates for the powers the Government need to fight peoples’ corner and go further and faster on our clean energy mission.

The nuclear regulation Bill fulfils the Government’s commitment to strengthening the UK as a nuclear nation. We have been clear that nuclear power will play a key role in achieving clean power 2030 and beyond. The Government have committed almost £17 billion across the spending review period to the biggest nuclear building programme in a generation, funding Sizewell C in Suffolk and the small modular reactor programme at Wylfa in north Wales. We have progressed Hinkley Point C in Somerset, and we are welcoming a new era of advanced modular reactors as part of our clean energy mission.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, we recognise, as the 2025 nuclear regulatory review found, that an overly complex and bureaucratic regulatory system that favours process over safe outcomes is holding back the industry and making the UK the most expensive place in the world to build new nuclear. We accept this diagnosis, and the measures in the nuclear regulation Bill will support quicker delivery of nuclear projects in a way that produces a win-win for building critical infrastructure while protecting nature, the environment and high standards of nuclear safety.

I now turn to the issues around technology and AI. First, in response to the contributions by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Owen, my noble friend Lady Hazarika, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, this Government have been clear that we will be putting some form of age or functionality restrictions for online services in place for under-16s. Our consultation will determine the best route to do this. To ensure the safety and well-being of our children, we will act by the end of the year.

When this Government published the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we set out our ambition to ensure that Britain leads in shaping the AI revolution. AI has the potential to grow the economy, create good jobs and deliver huge societal benefits. We are making sure that we shape a future that works for all, not just a few at the top. We are building on Britain’s technological strengths and expanding our domestic capabilities through the £500-million sovereign AI fund to back British start-ups. At the same time, our AI growth zones are accelerating the delivery of data centres and bringing in billions in private investment, and we are working towards a copyright solution that both protects the UK’s creative industries and unlocks the potential of AI driven innovation. However, if we are to realise any of AI’s benefits, we need to make sure that it is safe. That is why we have taken important steps to ensure that most AI systems are already regulated at the point of use by our existing expert regulators.

The Government continue to act decisively to address harms where the evidence suggests it is necessary to do so. That is why we have taken powers in the Crime and Policing Act to bring unregulated chatbots into scope of the Act to mitigate illegal content risks like non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material. We have also taken powers in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act to ensure that we can act on the findings of the consultation, including, as I say, whether restrictions should be placed on children’s use of chatbots.

We recognise that AI capabilities are accelerating rapidly and bring the potential for serious risks. This is why we are strengthening cyber resilience through the cyber security and resilience Bill and a new national cyber action plan, while ensuring that AI is regulated at the point of use. We are also supporting our world-leading security institute, which is working with frontier developers to identify and mitigate model vulnerabilities to ensure that we understand and prepare for AI’s potential impacts.

In the area of culture, in introducing the draft secondary ticketing Bill, we will have the opportunity to build on the important work of my noble friends Lady Debbonaire and Lady Keeley and to reflect the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, preventing fans being ripped off by touts, bringing support to those who want to attend events and ensuring that money is going into those events rather than into the pockets of touts.

Arts and culture are at the heart of community life. They bring people together across divides, which is why we are taking decisive action to ensure that the arts are accessible to everyone, everywhere. In March, we published our response to my noble friend Lady Hodge’s independent review of Arts Council England, accepting all the recommendations. We are backing that vision with significant investment. Last year, we announced £1.5 billion to help protect more than 1,000 treasured arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across England. In April this year, we announced the first set of organisations to benefit from this support, which included £96 million through the creative foundations fund, £25.5 million for museum repairs and development and £6.3 million to modernise libraries so that they can continue serving communities for generations to come.

In recent decades, we have lived through a revolution in media. That is why we are improving the curriculum to ensure better standards of media literacy, and it is why we launched the local media action plan as well as committing up to £12 million in funding. This includes a campaign to inspire young people about future media careers and help them understand the importance of journalism to our society. Similarly, both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State believe that public service broadcasting, and the BBC in particular, are vital British assets that support our democracy, bring our communities together, and help to shape and define our nation through telling stories about the lives of people in all parts of the UK, enabling the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, to have influenced very many of our childhoods through her “Playschool” period—and of course, perhaps enabling us to all get to know “KPop Demon Hunters”, if that is something we want to do. We are acting to future-proof this vital institution and our review of the BBC’s charter aims to protect the BBC for decades to come.

We are at the beginning of this new legislative agenda, which does not shy away from tackling problems that are complex, long-standing and multifaceted. We will build on the foundations we have laid in our first two years in government, reforming where carefully designed change is needed and strengthening and empowering what works well. I look forward to working with noble Lords as we take this important legislative agenda through this House.